The Cape Town festive season is fast creeping up on us and usually this time of the year, the city would be buzzing with road marches and the sounds of brass bands setting the Kaap on fire.
Singpakke would be practising and klopskamers would be alive with the sound of music, but of course, due to the pandemic and the number of restrictions placed on gatherings, and whispers of a fourth wave of Covid in December, there will once again be no klopse festivities.
So how lucky are we to have the Jive Culture Shock competition, beamed straight into our homes, to give us that much needed dose of klopse and Malay choir spirit.
The first episode of the competition took place on Saturday, with the YMA Cultural Entertainers going up against the Aquarians.
The teams were tasked with putting together a 30 minute show with a topic of their choice and the Artscape Theatre is the perfect venue for this.
The first team up was the YMA Cultural Entertainers who put together a beautiful musical theatre piece with their take on the future of the Kaapse Klopse.
Mahdee Jacobs who played the role of the narrator gave a star-making performance and held the audience's attention throughout the show.
YMA showcased their strength in the singing while the choreography was amazing.
One could not help but feel a sense of pride when watching this production, knowing that they did it all on their own without any theatre experience.
It could easily have been a full scale musical about the future of the Kaapse Klopse taking place at the Baxter Theatre.
I did feel that their dystopian storyline of the Klopse dying out because of the coronavirus is a bit far-fetched.
This is a culture that has survived over 100 years so far and in my heart I do not want to accept that we will never see a road march or klopse competition ever again.
In the end nobody can predict the future but we do know that anything is possible.
So well done to YMA for thinking outside the box and for a beautiful ensemble performance.
When the second team took the stage, I was really nervous for their part as the bar was set pretty high.
It did not help Aquarians either that they opted to do a similar storyline with their Klopskamer production.
They were immediately in danger because they did not have the futuristic edge which YMA had.
They also went for a more comedic approach but made it more difficult on themselves because there was not a live audience to get the laughs from.
However, the lead actor who played the role of the coach was amazing and could have a bright future in theatre.
The show was also well put together and had good moments as far as singing and choreography was concerned.
I think that Aquarians have a lot of star quality in the arsenal and as the competition progresses, they will become stronger in the other categories.
The stage production is a new facet to the Jive Culture Shock competition which is unearthing new talent and stars all the time, this much was clear from the first episode.
With that said, Jive Culture Shock is giving hope to the future of the Kaapse Klopse and Malay choir fraternity and this new category makes it uniquely different to any other cultural competition.
Who knows, it might birth the next big musical in years to come.
I am looking forward to section two when the Fairfield Tjommies go head to head with The Los Amigos.
Tickets to the competition are available on Quicket.
Please support our culture and our youth who are giving it their all for the love of this beautiful game.