The live music, dance and theatre scene is buzzing in South Africa, at venues ranging from bushveld festivals and botanical gardens to dark nightclubs and posh theatre complexes.
Music
Music is in our blood. Buy a CD, go to a club, listen to street buskers, visit a cultural village or walk past a church on a Sunday morning - however you experience South African music, you'll find it difficult to keep your feet still.
One of the more interesting ways to listen to South African music is at one of many outdoor summer concerts - at the Kirstenbosch, Durban and Roodepoort Botanical Gardens or the Oude Libertas Amphitheatre in Stellenbosch. Take a picnic, sit on the lawns among gambolling children and listen to anything ranging from a symphony concert or opera to kwaito, reggae, blues or jazz.
Festivals
If you want your music in large doses, visit one of South Africa's festivals. Rustler's Valley in the
Free State hosts alternative music festivals over the Easter weekend, the winter solstice and the whole holiday period over the summer solstice. Splashy Fen is held in the Drakensberg mountains in May, Oppikoppi in North West province in August, and the Woodstock youth music festival in September.
For a greater choice, the National Festival of the Arts, usually just called the Grahamstown Festival, is the place to be. Music, visual arts, dance, theatre and much more keeps this small university town awake 24 hours a day for 10 days at the beginning of July. It's the second biggest arts festival in the world, after Edinburgh.
Even more homegrown is the Klein Karoo Kunstefees, held in Oudtshoorn in late March. It started off as an Afrikaans festival but it's grown to encompass other languages, mostly English. Then there's the Aardklop - Afrikaans for "earth beat" - festival in Potchefstroom in late September, and the FNB Vita Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg in late February.
Theatre
There's a range of theatre opportunities in South Africa's cities. The main venues include the Market Theatre, Civic Theatre and Liberty Theatre on the Square in Johannesburg, the State Theatre in Pretoria, the Baxter, Artscape and On Broadway in Cape Town, and the Playhouse in Durban.
Even the small towns are joining in. The Western Cape village of Darling, for example, is becoming a theatre centre, mainly through the efforts of one of its most illustrious citizens, playwright and comedian Pieter-Dirk Uys and his alter ego Evita Bezuidenhout.
For South African entertainment guides, events listings and related websites, see the related links box on the right.
SouthAfrica.info reporter and South African Tourism
