e.tv's new crime series
Traffic! starts on e.tv and eKasi+ this Wednesday (12 February) at 21h35 and 21h30 respectively and features one of my long-time friends Pierre Malherbe ...
Pierre plays Roy Davids, the forensics dude who assists detectives Lungi Mtaba (Bonnie Mbuli) and Songezo Sibanda (Bongo Mbutuma) with their criminal investigations.
I was chatting to Pierre about the series recently and our convo moved to a trip he went on to the Edinburgh Festival last year where he experienced a Silent Disco.
Which I'd never heard of before. The Geordie Shore crowd visited one during an episode on MTV so you may have seen it on the show or you may have already been to one because they're arriving in South Africa too.
To fill you in in case you haven't heard of them ... they're literally silent discos. They have a regular disco set-up, bar, dance floor etc. except patrons don't listen to the same music.
Everyone listens to the music through headphones to dance so from the outside it looks as if everyone's dancing in silence.
There are various DJs who play the music and dancers can choose which DJ they want to listen to through their headphones. People dance and then try to see who's listening to which DJ and gravitate towards people who are listening to the same tune.
The set-up creates a competition between the DJs because each DJ wants to get most of the people dancing to their track instead of the other DJs.
Word from Pierre is that people also chat to each other in between so you'll be dancing, move over to someone, remove your headphones and then chat to them in the silence so you don't need to shout over the music. He said he had the best time ever and loved it.
The concept trips me out because I'm convinced that they'll be the future - or
not. While Pierre was telling me about them I had visions of a future where there are only Silent Discos with people saying stuff like: "Can you believe that years ago everyone used to dance to the
same music at a club!?"
It makes sense that not everyone wants to do dance to the same music. The trouble with them is that you wouldn't have that same communal feeling you get when a whole club dance to the same thing.
On the other hand, you'd probably feel even more connected to people when you discover that you're listening to the same music as you - music that other people aren't listening to.
Whether they're the future or not, I definitely want to try one out.
Here's a vid. of one ... you'll see that they play the music that people are switching between and have some moments where there's no music so you can hear what the place sounds like without the headphones on: