‘A brand-new chapter': Minnie Dlamini joins Gagasi FM
Television presenter and businesswoman Minnie Dlamini has officially joined the SABC Durban-based radio station, Gagasi FM.
The 34-year-old media personality is the new co-host of the weekday drive show, The Gagasi Fastlane, which airs weekdays from 3pm to 6pm.
Minnie made her Gagasi FM debut on Tuesday, joining the popular duo Sphectacula and DJ Naves, affectionately known as The Kings of the Weekend.
Announcing her new venture, Minnie shared a heartfelt video featuring her son on the beach, along with glimpses of her home.
'Some places never stop calling you back. Where the waves hold your memories and the wind whispers what's next… my heart lies at Gagasini, and that's where I return. Durban, I am home for a brand-new chapter,' she says in the voice-over.
ALSO READ: 'I will continue to pursue legal recourse': Minnie Dlamini breaks silence after MacG's apology
Minnie replaces Thandi Mhlongo
Minnie joins the station following the departure of Thandi 'Zisto' Mhlongo, who previously co-hosted The Gagasi Fastlane with Sphe and Naves.
Zisto resigned in March this year after eight years with the station.
In a lengthy social media statement, Zisto explained that she chose not to renew her contract as she has joined another station, East Coast Radio.
'I am truly grateful for the incredible journey I have had with Gagasi FM over the past eight years. From starting out as a young broadcaster on the weekend breakfast show to co-hosting the afternoon drive for the past three seasons, it has been a fulfilling experience.
'While this decision was not easy, I believe I have made my contribution to this amazing brand, and I have also grown immensely as a person. At this stage of my life, considering my personal and professional aspirations, I feel it is the right time to move on,' she added.
NOW READ: 'Spring Awakening' musical wins big at 20th Naledi Theatre Awards
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Daily Maverick
2 days ago
- Daily Maverick
The Barber of Seville is an operatic funny business
For Cape Town Opera's latest production, leaning into physical comedy has proven liberating. It's that narcotic moment of creative bliss, that point at which all the elements of a production magically coalesce, producing something far greater than the sum of its parts. Getting there, though, seldom comes without side-effects. For theatre director Sylvaine Strike it's been three weeks of voluminous ear worms. She'd experienced a similar phenomenon while working on the musical Spring Awakening, but Strike says that directing her first opera has produced in her head an after-hours aftermath of unrelenting music and top-volume voices unlike anything she's encountered before. 'It's been relentless,' she says. 'I tried driving home in silence – because that's what I need after a full day of rehearsals. But it didn't stop in the car. It didn't stop in the shower. It did not stop when I climbed into bed. I had severe insomnia from it. I heard the music and singing constantly.' Not that listening to it first-hand, in the rehearsal room, has in any way been unpleasant. Far from it: 'It's glorious to be in the presence of those voices,' Strike says. It's when it's stuck in your head that it's unforgiving. The opera is The Barber of Seville, Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's comic masterpiece, and the ear worms are as much down to the addictive beauty and hypnotic power of the music Strike has been hearing all day, every day for three weeks, as it is a consequence of her obsessive dedication to the work. It's been a mighty task. Aside from shaping the opera she has been consumed by the challenge of fashioning the singers from two casts into formidable physical comedians. Part of the encouragement was to shift the focus outwards. 'I asked the singers to make each moment about the other person in the scene,' says Strike. 'Whether it's the rich and handsome count you're falling in love with or the young woman you want but can't have because you're an old fart, I said make it about that person… Once they took the licence to not focus on themselves, they started to play.' The other encouragement was to not take themselves too seriously. To have fun and embrace the comedy. Once this freedom had been unlocked, a momentous transformation happened. I witnessed the results of the singers leaning into this newfound playfulness during their final day in the rehearsal room, a week before opening at the Theatre on the Bay on 5 August. Rehearsing that afternoon was the so-called Red Cast: the dashingly handsome Innocent Masuku (the London-based South African tenor who made a name for himself by reaching the finals of Britain's Got Talent last year) in the role of Count Almaviva; local superstar soprano Brittany Smith as an utterly enchanting Rosina; ebullient baritone Thando Zwane as Figaro, the titular barber who is in fact a hustler who'll do anything for money; and a hilariously self-aware Conroy Scott as the aforementioned old fart, Dr Bartolo, who schemes of marrying the much, much younger Rosina. Each of them was sublime – as was the rest of the cast of colourful characters, and the all-male chorus, who at one point spontaneously began dancing, one of the many natural expressions by the performers in response to the music that Strike decided to keep in the show, 'because it's their truth in that moment'. It was the Cape Town Opera company like never before: having the time of their lives, not only singing their hearts out, but expressing the opera's hilarity with their entire bodies. It was enthralling to say the least, everyone consumed by the magic of the music, the madcap comedy fully embodied. Watching them play, having fun as they sang and leaned into the ridiculousness of the comedy, I completely forgot that I don't understand Italian. The story came alive, crisp and clear and compelling. 'I just told them to own it,' says Strike. 'Own the joy! Own the hilarity! For God's sake, it's a farce!' Own it they do. While the story's way more convoluted than your average opera and can cause confusion because of its strange twists and turns and Almaviva's various disguises, Strike has made it so visually vivid that even a Rossini virgin will follow the action without knowing a word of Italian. 'I was obsessive about sculpting every moment in order to make the meaning clear,' she says. Strike, who trained at the Lecoq School in Paris and has practised physical theatre for decades, draws on a rich tradition of embodied comedy that goes back to Commedia dell'arte and draws on a range of movement techniques, even tai chi. 'It's a lot to ask of them,' Strike says. 'Comedy is terribly, terribly hard. And they're singing at the same time, so there's the technique required to deliver the vocals while performing the comedy.' Her approach is to give the performers agency. 'I'm not a director who tells you what to do,' she says. Instead, it's been up to each singer to find the physicality of their character. Strike says the process has been incredibly liberating, giving the singers new tools with which to connect to their character's truth. 'It's not cerebral in any way,' she says. 'Just take the thinking away and sing with the entire body.' Apart from giving the singers licence to play, Strike has also added a meta layer to the performance by bringing accompanying pianist Jan Hugo, who is also the show's musical director, into the opera. His role? Rossini himself, composing in real time. 'We're not going to pretend that there isn't a piano accompanying them, because I think that's disrespectful to the pianist,' Strike says. 'And I love the idea that Rossini is there with us, creating the opera as it unfolds.' It is not only respectful, but has created an opportunity for comic interaction between Rossini and the singers who are performing his opera. It's especially fun in those moments when the performers get a chance to express their exasperation at the extreme demands Rossini placed on the singers. And it's true, Rossini's schtick was writing extremely demanding songs. It's a bel canto opera, meaning that it's very expressive and literally packed with 'beautiful singing', with a lot of trilling up and down the scales, arias that build and build at pace as though they exist to showcase the extreme potential of the human voice. It's music designed to show off the agility, speed and prowess of the singers who are required to perform some hardcore vocal gymnastics. Some of the songs feel like a comedic, galloping race to a finish line that refuses to appear. Never mind the absolute loveliness of the melodies. The opera's opening night in Rome in 1816 was a disaster, although not because of the material. It's believed that a rival composer who had created another opera based on the same play had hired hecklers to boo the premiere performance. When Rossini stepped out to conduct the orchestra, his outfit apparently attracted laughter, and then not only did a black cat at some point pad across a stage full of superstitious opera singers, but one of them fell on his face and broke his nose. The show continued but there was blood everywhere. Despite the unmitigated fiasco of opening night, it's become perhaps the most-produced and best-loved comic operas yet made, and its music, undoubtedly well ahead of its time, has influenced and infiltrated popular culture in myriad ways (from Bugs Bunny's Rabbit of Seville to an episode of The Simpsons, several of the songs are widely recognisable). Rossini's genius is irrefutable, and he wrote operas like a machine, composed two a year for 19 consecutive years and retired by the age of 40. He was just 24 when he dashed off The Barber of Seville – in under three weeks, according to most musicologists. 'It's just ridiculous,' Strike says of the pressure Rossini must have felt to meet his commission deadline in time for the singers to learn their parts and pull the show together. The composer was known in his day as Señor Crescendo, attributable to the manner in which his music would repeatedly build and then come down. 'It must have been like pop music to audiences when they first heard it,' Strike says. 'It's witchy music. It's wrong. The cadences are out. It's pushing the boundaries. Utterly revolutionary for its time.' Watching the rehearsal, witnessing the hilarity and properly comprehending the music for the first time, what struck me was how 'mathematical' Rossini's compositions are. In his madcap imagination, he must have calculated the comedy so precisely in order to make it work as an effect of the music which so cleverly and clearly conveys the mounting madness of the farcical plot. 'It is mathematical,' Strike says. 'He wrote comedic moments into the music. It's like Beckett, so timing-based. You sort of hear Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, that chase-scene music of silent-era movies… He was inventing a kind of music for comedy that would eventually become definitive.' Strike believes the music fits the 'complicated puzzle' that is at the heart of the comedy. 'It's complex and intricate and it's the nature of farce, which involves confusion and disguises and the mistaken identities and the pursuit of something.' And, apart from a comedic sensibility that was avant-garde for the time, Rossini seemed to also have a taste for parody. There are instances in The Barber of Seville where he appears to laugh at the institution of opera itself to some extent, poking fun at the form while simultaneously expanding its possibilities, revelling in the potential to play and experiment and push the boundaries. 'There are these moments when Rossini simply decided there was going to be 'more', and then some more again,' Strike says. 'And so some of the songs are florid and embellished and they go on and on, really testing the singers. 'That's why in this production we have comedic moments in which we see the singer's frustration because an aria just never ends. It's a dig at the reverential way people saw opera – and still do today. Rossini was evidently having a laugh while milking it in the most extraordinary, genius way, because the compositions are so fine and beautiful. And because he could. As though he was saying, 'Screw you all, it's not actually all that serious. We can have a laugh at the opera.'' And Rossini is laughing to this day. No doubt rolling in his grave as those ear worms persist 200 years after conjuring them into existence. DM
IOL News
2 days ago
- IOL News
From beats to healing: Lex LaFoy on music, meaning and making space
Lex LaFoy is a rapper, poet and cultural storyteller who has spent many years mastering her craft in South Africa's hip hop scene. Image: Umsizi Media Lex LaFoy is more than a rapper - she's a poet, cultural storyteller and lyrical force who has spent two decades sharpening her craft in the trenches of South Africa's hip hop scene. Formerly known as Lexikon, the Durban-born artist has redefined her sound and message with each season of her life. In a deeply personal and expansive conversation with 'Independent Media Lifestyle', she opens up about her roots, resilience and what it truly means to live with purpose. Born Ash-Leigh La Foy, she spent her early years in the tranquil coastal suburb of Treasure Beach in Durban's south before her family moved north, settling between Red Hill, Greenwood Park and Durban North. Though she spent seven years living and creating in Johannesburg between 2012 and 2020, Durban remains her true home - and her creative anchor. 'I came back the day before lockdown and I've been home ever since,' she said. Often mistaken for being of Indian descent, La Foy clarifies that her heritage is a rich and complex blend: 'I'm not Indian at all. I'm of Cantonese, English, St Helenian, Dutch, Xhosa and Griqua descent.' Her maternal surname, La Foy, was once Foy Lai, tracing back to her great-great-grandfather from Canton in China. Amid political tension and xenophobia, the surname was altered for safety. 'My identity allows me to view the world from many perspectives - both inclusive and subjective,' she said. 'Being mixed race has taught me to find peace and purpose in an increasingly fast-paced, impermanent world. My background is my strength.' Durban's hip hop underworld birthed La Foy's artistic journey. She cut her teeth at legendary sessions like Hip Hop Inqaba at the BAT Centre as well as Bling Free and Life Check - movements that helped shape a generation of serious lyricists. 'I came up in an era where being an MC meant you could write, freestyle and battle,' she recalled. 'The role of the MC was sacred - you had to uplift, inspire and sometimes even entertain with humour.' Influences ranged from Jay-Z and Lauryn Hill to Lil' Kim and even Alanis Morissette. Locally, groups like Godessa and Brasse Vannie Kaap gave her a blueprint for what was possible. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading Performing as Lexikon from 2005 to 2012, her early work was spiritual, intellectual and lyrically dense. But after a painful experience with an independent label - where an entire body of recorded work was lost due to contractual disputes - she decided it was time for a rebirth. 'In 2013, I moved to Joburg and rebranded. Lexikon became Lex, and I added my surname - becoming Lex LaFoy,' she explained. 'Lexikon was the wise sage, but I also wanted to reach people more directly.' Today, she fuses the depth of Lexikon with the versatility of Lex LaFoy. 'I've learned not to take myself so seriously. The playfulness in my music now reflects that.' Known for her razor-sharp freestyle and battle skills, La Foy is a product of an era where mediocrity was never tolerated. 'If you were wack, you were shut down - simple as that,' she said. 'That training taught me how to read a crowd, master delivery and ensure the energy I record is the same energy I transmit on stage.' She draws a distinction between Durban and Johannesburg's creative landscapes. 'Jozi values image - Durban values skill. We're the birthplace, the source. But our industry is underdeveloped. There's too much political interference and too little private sector involvement. It's changing slowly, thanks to young innovators, but it's a process.' La Foy doesn't sugarcoat the struggles women face in the South African music industry. 'I've experienced all forms of abuse - physical, emotional, psychological - in spaces where men control the studios, the masters and even how your career unfolds,' she said. Without a manager or protective male figure by her side, La Foy had to learn the hard way. 'I had to fight for my space, for my right to just be me,' she said. 'Eventually, I chose peace. I stepped away from toxic spaces and artists who lacked integrity. The industry can break you if you don't protect your spirit.' Her advice to young women? 'Know yourself. Protect your peace. Don't let anyone define you - especially in this industry. And in the words of the late AKA, 'Don't forget to pray.'' 'I no longer separate the poet from the rapper,' she said. 'They've made peace with each other. The poet shapes the rhyme scheme, the cadence - it's all one now.' Her latest single, "FRISK", is a perfect example of that fusion: poetic lyricism layered over a dub-inspired beat, delivered with confidence and control. For La Foy, the biggest problem plaguing local hip hop is the lack of proper industry infrastructure - particularly in Durban. 'In Joburg and Cape Town, there's a well-established industry, whereas in Durban, it's still referred to as a scene," she said. 'We need serious media houses, real record labels and a move away from mediocrity. Let's stop hyping people who look the part and start supporting real artists who have honed their craft.' She also called for professionalism from artists and event organisers alike. 'Show up on time. Respect your audience. And promoters - stop booking the same faces. Give new talent a shot.' Locally, La Foy dreams of collaborating with Thandiswa Mazwai, Nduduzo Makhathini, Ricky Tyler and Okmalumkoolkat - artists she described as 'authentic, present and powerful.' Internationally, she admires Daniel Caesar's songwriting, gospel rapper Hulvey and Gunna, whom she recently learned is also a runner. As she continues to evolve, Lex La Foy hopes her legacy will be remembered not only for the music but for the message. Image: Page Furness In terms of upcoming projects, she's excited about two music video features: one for the 'Sho Leyo Remix" and another with duo 2Unique titled 'Ready To Love Me'. She's also working on a new EP with Eastern Cape producer Qdee, also known as The 11th Decibel. Another passion project is the Peace4Newlands Free Concert In The Park, a community-driven event returning for its third edition on September 27, 2025. For La Foy, success in 2025 looks like balance: peace, health, family and meaningful work. 'I want to perform with my all-female band, return to festivals, complete my honours in Health and Community Psychology and simply be present in beautiful spaces.' She added, 'Success is wholeness. It's being healed and helping to heal others - financially, emotionally and spiritually. One day, I want to live in a healed country. But I know that starts with us.' As she continues to evolve, La Foy hopes her legacy will be remembered not only for the music but for the message. 'That she lived with purpose. That she mastered her craft. That she made timeless music - even if it took time to get there.' Catch 'The Lexikon 2.0 Project' mini documentary, written and produced by LaFoy, premiering on Friday, August 29, at The Music Imbizo in Durban.
The South African
3 days ago
- The South African
Devastating news for 'Uzalo' viewers as uncertainty grips the show
The future of SABC1's flagship show Uzalo is hanging in the balance, as production has been paused due to financial constraints. In a shocking development, production on South Africa's beloved soapie Uzalo has come to a complete standstill. Following this, Stained Glass TV issued a memo to cast and crew announcing an immediate production pause. According to the memorandum, cash flow problems have, in turn, forced the award-winning soapie to press pause on filming. 'We regret to inform you that, due to severe cash flow constraints, we are compelled to pause production with immediate effect.' 'Please know that we are actively engaging with the SABC to resolve the matter as swiftly as possible. We understand the impact this has on each of you and remain committed to keeping you informed as the situation develops,' reads the memo. In their official memorandum, the producers expressed deep regret and assured the team they're working tirelessly to find a solution. 'Your contributions continue to inspire us, and we are doing everything in our power to get back on track.' The announcement has sent shockwaves, with fans, actors, and crew left wondering what the future holds. Interestingly, this news comes shortly after Uzalo celebrated major wins at the 12th Annual Simon Mabhunu Sabela Awards on July 19. Former Uzalo actor Andile Zamokuhle Mtambo scooped Best Newcomer Actor and Best Supporting Actor for his role as Mselomanzi. Meanwhile, Uzalo actress Duduzile Ngcobo also walked away with honours, winning Best Supporting Actress in TV for her powerful performance. DO YOU THINK THE SHOW WILL BOUNCE BACK Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1. Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X, and Bluesky for the latest news.
