Quick Reminder: Melville is Awesome

I’ve had half a dozen bloggable experiences in the past 48 hours. Please bear with me while I catch up.

I’ll start with the most recent: yesterday’s Fête de la Musique in Melville. Fête de la Musique is a free music festival sponsored by the Alliance Française. This is the second year in a row that the Fête has taken place in Melville, which is a great source of pride to those of us who live here and believe our suburb deserves more love.

I blogged about the Fête last year, so yesterday I decided to enjoy the day like a regular person rather than a blogger. I brought my camera with me but didn’t really plan to take any photos.

Then I found myself standing on a table in a new venue on 7th Street called the ‘Fro Music Lounge, watching a band called The Brother Moves On. I was so amazed by the scene that I had to pull my camera out.

The Brother Moves On performs at ‘Fro Music Lounge.

Note the sea of people, both inside the club and stretching to infinity outside. Note the band members in the center of the room, clad in what appear to be boy scout uniforms and red berets. Note the band’s drag-queen sidekick (red gloves, leopard-print jacket, curly black wig) shaking his booty in the middle of the crowd.

It’s not the best photo I’ve ever taken, but I think it says everything that needs to be said about Fête de la Musique and Melville more generally. Such fun.

After the performance my friend Pearl took a photo of me with Siya, lead singer of The Brother Moves On. Unfortunately the lighting was bad the photo came out very blurry. Sad.

Since I can’t include that shot, I’ll post another shot of Siya that I took a few months ago.

On the day the shot below was taken, I received a random Facebook invitation late in the afternoon to watch The Brother Moves On perform at their house in Melville. I had seen the band play a few times, but had never met the musicians and didn’t realize they live a couple of blocks from me. I was initially suspicious when I got the Facebook invite, which was shared publicly. The Brother Moves On is a popular band – would they really invite a bunch of strangers to their house for a gig?

Instagram of Siya and The Brother Moves On, performing in their living room.

This is Melville. So the answer is yes. It was one of the best live performances I’ve seen in South Africa.

Melville = awesome.