Bertha Egnos
Bertha Egnos (1 January 1913 – 2 July 2003) was a South African musician, director, and composer in musical theatre, best known as the co-creator and director of ''Ipi Tombi''. Early life Bertha "BeBe" Egnos was born and raised in a Jewish family in a suburb of Johannesburg. She was always musical, and left school as a young teen to start playing piano in a performing group. Around 1934 she left South Africa to work for the BBC in London; she also studied jazz piano with Reginald Foresythe while she was in England, and made a few solo recordings. Career Egnos returned to South Africa by 1936. During World War II, she started and led an all-woman Drum and Bugle Band. She also started writing and directing swing music revues, with titles including ''Swing 1939'' and ''Swing 1941''. After the war, she wrote musical comedies. Among her shows were ''Bo-jungle'' (1959), ''Dingaka'' (1961), ''Eureka!'' (1968), and ''Ipi-Tombi'' (1974, with her daughter Gail Lakier and 1988 “The New G ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bertha Egnos South African Musician
Bertha is a female Germanic name, from Old High German ''berhta'' meaning "bright one". It was usually a short form of Anglo Saxon names ''Beorhtgifu'' meaning "bright gift" or ''Beorhtwynn'' meaning "bright joy". The name occurs as a theonym, surviving as Berchta, a figure in Alpine folklore connected to the Wild Hunt, probably an epithet of ''*Frijjō'' in origin. ''Bertha'' appears as a Frankish given name from as early as the 6th century. The monothematic ''Bertha'' as a given name may, however, not originate with the theonym but rather as a short form of dithematic given names including the "bright" element. This is notably the case with the mother of Charlemagne, Bertrada (properly ''berht-rada'' "bright counsel") called "Bertha Broadfoot." Carolingian uses of the name ''Bertha'', as in the case of Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne and Bertha, daughter of Lothair II, are in this tradition. In modern times, the name is associated with an unusually large example of a class ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ipi Tombi
''Ipi Tombi'' (also produced as ''Ipi N'tombi'', both corrupted transliterations of the Zulu ''iphi ntombi'', or "where is the girl?"), is a 1974 musical by South African writers Bertha Egnos Godfrey and her daughter Gail Lakier, telling the story of a young black man leaving his village and young wife to work in the mines of Johannesburg. The show, originally called ''The Warrior'', uses pastiches of a variety of South African indigenous musical styles. Productions The show, which starred Margaret Singana, enjoyed major success in South Africa and Nigeria, and toured Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia to critical acclaim. It played in the West End at Her Majesty's Theatre and on Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (other) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ... at the Harkness Theatre. The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demographia, the Johannesburg–Pretoria urban area (combined because of strong transport links that make commuting feasible) is the 26th-largest in the world in terms of population, with 14,167,000 inhabitants. It is the provincial capital and largest city of Gauteng, which is the wealthiest province in South Africa. Johannesburg is the seat of the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa. Most of the major South African companies and banks have their head offices in Johannesburg. The city is located in the mineral-rich Witwatersrand range of hills and is the centre of large-scale gold and diamond trade. The city was established in 1886 following the discovery of gold on what had been a farm. Due to the extremely large gold de ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Reginald Foresythe
Reginald Foresythe (28 May 1907 – 28 December 1958) was a British jazz pianist, arranger, composer, and bandleader. Early life Foresythe was born and died in London. His father was a West African barrister of Sierra Leone Creole descent and his mother was an Englishwoman of German descent. The Foresythe family descended from Charles Foresythe, a Sierra Leonean colonial official who settled in Lagos, Nigeria, in the 1860s. Charles Foresythe was born in the early nineteenth century to a European army captain and a mother from Tasso Island, Sierra Leone. Career He played piano from age eight. He worked in the second half of the 1920s as a pianist and accordionist in dance bands in Paris, Australia, Hawaii, and California. He also wrote music for films by D. W. Griffith and played in Paul Howard's Quality Serenaders. In 1930, Foresythe moved to Chicago, Illinois, United States. In America he wrote arrangements for Earl Hines and music for Paul Whiteman. Hines made one of his so ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Margaret Singana
Margaret Singana (193822 April 2000), born Margaret M'cingana, was a South African musician. She is perhaps best known for her Xhosa song, "Hamba Bhekile". An English version of the song, "We Are Growing" was used as soundtrack to the South African TV series Shaka Zulu. Early life Margaret Nomvula M'cingana was born in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, the daughter of Agnes M'cingana. In the 1950s, she moved from Queenstown to Johannesburg in the then Transvaal, where she found work as a domestic servant.Max Mojapelo''Beyond Memory: Recording the History, Moments, and Memories of South African Music''(African Minds 2008): 87–88. ISBN Music career While she was working as a domestic worker, Margaret Singana was discovered singing while cleaning.Peter Makurube"Lady Africa is Waiting"''Mail & Guardian'' (18 December 1998). Her employers were so impressed that they recorded her voice and sent the tape to a record company. The producers of the musical ''Sponono'', written by Alan Paton, gav ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Newspapers
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports and art, and often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns. Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also published on websites as online newspapers, and some have even abandoned their print versions entirely. Newspapers developed in the 17th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt (born Eartha Mae Keith; January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008) was an American singer and actress known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 recordings of "C'est si bon" and the Christmas novelty song "Santa Baby". Kitt began her career in 1942 and appeared in the 1945 original Broadway theatre production of the musical ''Carib Song''. In the early 1950s, she had six US Top 30 entries, including "Uska Dara" and "I Want to Be Evil". Her other recordings include the UK Top 10 song "Under the Bridges of Paris" (1954), "Just an Old Fashioned Girl" (1956) and "Where Is My Man" (1983). Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world". She starred as Catwoman in the third and final season of the television series ''Batman'' in 1967. In 1968, her career in the U.S. deteriorated after she made anti-Vietnam War statements at a White House luncheon. Ten years later, Kitt made a successful return to Broadway in the 1978 original product ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sophiatown
Sophiatown , also known as Sof'town or Kofifi, is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sophiatown was a black cultural hub that was destroyed under apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ..., It produced some of South Africa's most famous writers, musicians, politicians and artists. Rebuilt under the name of Triomf, and in 2006 officially returned to its original name. Sophiatown was one of the oldest black areas in Johannesburg and its destruction represents some of the excesses of South Africa under apartheid. History Sophiatown was originally part of the Waterfall farm. Over time it included the neighbouring areas of Martindale and Newclare. It was purchased by a speculator, Hermann Tobiansky, in 1897. He acquired 237 acres four miles or so west of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1913 Births
Events January * January 5 – First Balkan War: Battle of Lemnos – Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it will not venture for the rest of the war. * January 13 – Edward Carson founds the (first) Ulster Volunteer Force, by unifying several existing loyalist militias to resist home rule for Ireland. * January 23 – 1913 Ottoman coup d'état: Ismail Enver comes to power. * January – Stalin (whose first article using this name is published this month) travels to Vienna to carry out research. Until he leaves on February 16 the city is home simultaneously to him, Hitler, Trotsky and Tito alongside Berg, Freud and Jung and Ludwig and Paul Wittgenstein. February * February 1 – New York City's Grand Central Terminal, having been rebuilt, reopens as the world's largest railroad station. * February 3 – The 16th Amendment to the United S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2003 Deaths
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societies. Evolution of the Arabic digit The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use. That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically. However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line. The Nāgarī script rotated the lines clockwise, so they appeared horizontally, and ended each line with a short downward stroke on the right. In cursive script, the three strokes were eventually connected to form a glyph resembling a with an additional stroke at the bottom: ३. The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |