Rus Nerwich

Happy people, is life good?

I trust the answer is yes, on my side of the street its been sunny, in fact its been extremely hot, Prague has treated me very kindly, the last week opening my eyes and my heart, I sit here at my favourite little café in a neighbourhood called Letna, to have my last breakfast before heading of to play at a Jazz festival in Spain, and with the intention of sharing some of the magic of the last ten days, I arrived here with a completely open mind, one of the positive results of not paying much attention at school, I didn’t listen to what my teachers had to say bout things so I got to discover for myself, im feeling like it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, the down side of course was being held against a cupboard by my mom in standard 6, the second time round, after getting a G for a final maths exam, while she enquired “What the Fuck have you been doing at school the whole year?

It was the only time in my life I heard my mom say the “F” word, I do need to make a blanket apology now, as the spelling in this is likely to be pretty shocking, im typing this once through cos there aint no time for makin it pretty, but youll get the groove.

As I was saying I arrived in Prague last Tuesday, invited here by an extraordinary gentleman named Keith Jones, he had heard my Mantras4ModernMan album and invited me here to try and facilitate some concerts and festival performances for 2009, he had kindly organised me both a ride from the airport and a place to stay, this was to become home for 10days, its amazing how making a real mess of your room in a short period of time makes it homely, so advice for anyone living out of a suitcase, if you feeling a little scattered cos you don’t have that grounded this is my crib feeling, turn your bags upside down n scatter your shit all over the room, its a quick remedy, the cause can be dealt with when you return home, by any reasonably skilled Jungian analyst, any ways this place is fantastic, its run by a very sweet lady, whose name I don’t know cos we cant really talk to each other, as I don’t know Czech n she doesn’t know English, She took me up to my room, which we have earlier established was being taken over by a vicious mould, taken care of by burning copious amounts of incense, but that’s been covered, the joint cost 40 euros which is okay, unless you have to multiply it by 15.

Day one in Prague saw me going to meetings keith had set up, it was incredible how seriously and efficient people were, no flaky over dressed entertainment industry types, these people get stuff done, they are interestead in new engaging new ideas and rekindled my hope in the Music business, of course walking through the Letna gardens which are 300 meters from where I was staying is a glorious experience, it’s a huge garden, with big old trees, loads of cool bugs that don’t bother, people playing all kinds of games, and its totally safe, many nights as late as 2 or 3 in the morning I found myself wondering in the dark through the park, as you leave the garden you head down a long flight of stairs that runs down to a the foot of the bridge that takes you to the old town square, I can only describe the view of the city as breathtaking, I attempted to write a description of what I saw, but its sounding like the cheese, so ill let a picture or two do the talking, the old town as beautiful as it is, is pandemonium, no that’s not a powder bleach that can remove grime from kitchen tiles, available for R99 at you closest glomail, but if you buy it now, ill throw in a vacuum cleaner that can take away the memory of the night before! Pandemonium is every kind of 20 – 35 mashuganah who can afford to get on a plane n have a holiday in Prague, with the primary aim of getting laid n drinking as much as possible without regressing to pre birth state, only to be reborn with fatal alchohol syndrome. These animals are everywhere, day and night, British, Japanese and of course, our favourite, the Americans, My only moment of tension in the last ten days, a little disagreement with a 20 something politics student who was convinced America has sound political institutions, they count votes and that it is the land of the free and home of the brave, I have said it before n ill say it again, stay of the crack!

Back to the Prague, Friday morning saw me doing an interview on Radio Wave, The legendary cat who did the interview was a guy from Scotland, he goes by the name Craig Duncan, I have since decided to give him the title of Squire Craig Duncan, the man is a legend, he dropped 3 of the tunes from my my new album “Under the Poetree” being released in November in SA, we spoke for a while he featured some tunes from Waddy Jones n Tumi, the station has since decided to playlist one of the tracks, which is groovy, mostly cos the track features a Lithuanian survivor rappin in Yiddish, Zol Sheyn Kumen De Geule! Given that I now find myself in a tiny village in Spain, n quite behind on my behind, I will not give you the day by day run down of Prague but rather a couple of highlights.

I had the incredible opportunity to play and record with a North Indian hand drum maestro, we did a short recording session in my hostel room, possible only because im lugging around 15 kilograms of Sound recording equipment, that’s, mikes, cables, sound cards n all the other necessary paraphernalia, any ways the recording came out wonderfully which resulted into going back into a “real” studio on my last day in Prague.

An incredible scene in was, the engineer came straight out of a Cohn brothers film, he was a classic American cat, balding heavily on the forehead, sweated like a lumberjack and drank vodka out of the bottle, that said, he was an amazing engineer and we managed to get a good session together. I was incredibly lucky to be welcomed into Keith and Craigs circle of friends, which is the difference between a great stay and a magic stay, cos it’s the connections and the conversations that make the difference, if you dig? on that note one of the most amazing cats i met n played with was a half Czech half gypsy, i was chiling with keith in the gardens after a meeting and hear a guy praciticing drums, seriously, the dude set up his kit n was getting his groove on in the gardens, anyways, went to talk to him n he invited me to play the next night, it was groovy time, except that the police came and shut it all down cos we were playing to loudly, the cafe was called “The Latino Art Cafe” if you in Prague, check it out its groovy, i hung with this guy, his name is on the 3rd floor, for a while, learnt alot about gypsy culture and some amazing musicians that are apart of their musical tradition, as well as a place called the International School for the Human Voice, i will investigate more n put something up, Otherwise the things that struck me about Prague, aside from the astoundingly beautiful architecture, the river, chilled people and good goulash, was that IT IS SAFE! I forgot what it feels like to walk in a big city at 3 am and not feel anxious and worried that some freak on TIK is gonna pipe you for two dollars and a biscuit, I could go on about this, and I have in my head, but I reckon the point is clear, the next stop on my journey is Alberaccin, which I mentioned earlier, cos im already here, but this joint needs a page all of its own, it is literally out of this world, and finding myself playing on the steps of a 14^th century moore in Moore built village, with cats from Czeck, Belguim, Brazil and SA was one of the most glorious moments ever, but of this you will hear more, till then, onwards and inwards.