IAIN ‘Ewok’ Robinson and his father, Jeff Robinson, find their shared groove in an upcoming showcase titled Dubious Gurus. The performance is a unique blend of poetry and music that is aesthetically aligned with their combined jazz and hip-hop roots, being staged for one night only at St Clement’s Restaurant in Musgrave Road on Friday, July 14 from 18:30.
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Iain Ewok Robinson is no stranger to the eThekwini scene. As a Spoken Word Hip-Hop activist and educator, his career has crystalised at the intersection of the arts and social justice. An artist with both a national and international footprint, his work has found stages from as far afield as the Medellin International Poetry Festival in Colombia to the Uppsala Ordsprak Poetry Festival in Sweden. His repertoire includes a series of award-winning Spoken Word Hip-Hop theatre shows and a body of recorded music of his hip-hop and Spoken Word.
A founding member of Durban’s original live hip-hop crew, Illuminating Shadows, and one-half of Spoken Word duo, Blue Gene, alongside French artist Charles Amblard, he continues to write and recite for any astute audience to appreciate. Ewok’s critical lyrical form was forged in the freestyle battle-rap and poetry-slam scene. As a theatremaker and independent musician, Ewok uses his words to stimulate debate and awaken critical consciousness. He is a qualified educator, a published poet and playwright, and a professional aerosol artist producing street art that both provokes and promotes.
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With the Dubious Gurus project, Ewok brings it all the way back home to his earliest influence and most faithful mentor, together on stage with his father, Dr Jeff ‘The Jazzman’ Robinson, who is also a familiar face doing the Durban rounds. An adept multi-instrumentalist and artist, his primary platform for performance is with the jazz flute and alto saxophone. Playing as a part of the Melvin Peters Quartet that travelled to the Nantes Rendezvous de L’Erdre (2004) and featuring regularly with the Platform Jazz ensemble, Dr Robinson was formerly a lecturer in Music Education at UKZN and has been involved with the CJPM since 1998 under its first director and good friend, Darius Brubeck.
His work as both an educator and a performer is an inherent part of his ‘musicing’, and his doctoral thesis, The Darwinisation of Music Education, is a deep dive into the adaptive origins of the human brain and its capacity for both music-making and music appreciation. A lover of lyric and poetic literature, Robinson Senior sets the mic alight with the language of his instrumental soloing, creating the space for the heart to meet the mind and together find the soul.
Tickets for the show are priced at R75 and will be available at the door.
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