Provincial Snake Jazz - an album

PROVINCIAL SNAKE JAZZ N ICOLAAS MARITZ

PR O V I N C I A L SN A K E JA Z Z An album of images from the video by Nicolaas Maritz & Vlooi Visagie Nemesia*Press DARLING 2015

PROVINCIAL SNAKE JAZZ N ICOLAAS MARITZ

INTRODUCTION PROVINCIAL SNAKE JAZZ Nothing quite prepares you for your first encounter with a snake. My first time was long ago on a family farm in the Thabazimbi district. At that time the area was known as the North Western Transvaal, or the ‘bushveld’. Now it is called Limpopo. The snake was a large dead blackish mamba (makoppa). It seemed huge. They say there’s nothing like the first time. With snakes it’s probably also true. But I still love them.

Part of my later childhood was spent in Port Elizabeth, a provincial city by the sea, which boasted a rather tired old snake park. There was always the uneasy feeling that those snakes might escape. And then what…? One could visit the snake park to peer at poisonous snakes through thick glass, and for a snake ‘demonstration’ by the smug ‘handler’. One could take ‘refreshments’ in the tea room afterwards. My favourite was a cream soda float. It was a beguiling light green colour, more or less the belly colour of a green tree snake.

There is something about the visual liveliness of snakes and the patterned rhythms and sounds of jazz that seem to ‘go’ together. At least it seems that way to me. Vlooi Visagie, also a local snake enthusiast in his spare time, shares this perspective. We collaborated on the music for this project. We hissed together like two snakes in the grass. This album features images made for PROVINCIAL SNAKE JAZZ. The video can be viewed on youtube at https://youtu.be/XCMlMRjMaxE The mp3 track is a free download from my soundcloud page: https://soundcloud.com/nicolaasmaritz Nicolaas Maritz Darling, South Africa September 2015

NICOLAAS MARITZ LINKS ART https://sites.google.com/site/nicolaasmaritzgallery/ www.issuu.com/nicolaasmaritz http://bignick098.wix.com/nicolaas-maritz MUSIC https://sites.google.com/site/nicolaasmaritzmusic/ https://soundcloud.com/nicolaasmaritz http://www.last.fm/user/NicolaasMaritz

MUSIC - AVATARS https://soundcloud.com/vlooi-visagie-d-v-p https://soundcloud.com/herbalsyntax https://soundcloud.com/scrumpy-jones https://soundcloud.com/gilbert-finkel

SELECTED VIDEO RHINO STOMPER (Nicolaas Maritz): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDudXuSTLZI Antie by die bar (Vlooi Visagie en die Vaal Polony’s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsZwfNudMik Lentebloeiselmars (Nicolaas Maritz): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNAEBO_IRY4

Š Nemesia*Press maritzstudio@telkomsa.net All content, text and mages Š Nicolaas Maritz bignick098@gmail.com