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Nominated 13 times at this year’s African Movie Academy Awards, Otelo Burningis a coming of age of story set against the backdrop of political conflict in South Africa during the late eighties. Directed by Sara Blecher (check out her remarkable earlier project, Surfing Soweto) the film charts the lives of three ‘township’ youths who, in the midst of the mayhem, discover freedom and solace in surfing.
To accompany the release of the film, the creators teamed up with hip-hop poet Tumi Molekane’s Motif Records to produce the Otelo Burning Mixtape. Sara Blecher told the press that the 13 track free-to-download compilation “comprises music from the film that captures the spirit of the time, while the new, more modern tracks give the story a great contemporary edge”.
Echoing Blecher’s statement, Tumi said of the mixtape: “it’s a mixed, non-linear audio narrative of the ideas that live in the movie. Dialogue from the movie is weaved throughout the soundtrack into one continuous musical flow.”
The 45-minute long mixtape is well curated, featuring an amazing cast of well-known names such as Zaki Ibrahim ("Something in the Water") alongside lesser known acts like the neo-jazz collective The Fridge ("Ucash") and up-and-coming emcee, Perfecto ("What the Hell is a Perfecto").
>>>Download: Otelo Burning Mixtape
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