"It's going to be great to go to one of the world's most powerful financial centres and to spit lyrics of fire from above them!" This was one response when the MC and poet Jonzi D invited hip-hop artists from South Africa to take part in Flight 5065 on the London Eye next Tuesday.
"There's this image of Africa as a country of starving, Aids-ravaged people. This is not my understanding of Africa," Jonzi D says. "What I see are urban environments. What I want to say is, we are like Africa. The underground artists I've got over are all really excited. They've been inspired by this event."
Kaptin, Hymphatic Thabs, Crook'd, Isaac Chokwe and British saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch will be performing a "rap cipher", a jam session where a circle of MCs take it in turns to rap.
Unlike Live 8, the event isn't open to charges of neo-colonialism. Each one of the Eye's 32 pods will host new music, comedy and theatre which aims to "bust through stereotypes and create a real awareness of Africa at a personal level" and also to highlight Cafédirect's fair-trade commitment to African coffee growers. Those going along won't know which event they'll be seeing until they're in the pod.
The British playwright Mark Norfolk has adapted a short story by the Ugandan writer Jackee Budesta Batanda. He thinks that the theatre pieces will have the hardest time because of the strict timing: "It could be a logistical problem where you have people getting on for two minutes and then at the end preparing to get off. It's up to the actors to time it right."
Writer Alecky Blythe has produced another piece of verbatim theatre - recordings of conversations she had with Tanzanian coffee farmers relayed through actors wearing headphones. "In Tanzania, women are starting to stand up for themselves. The difference that fair-trade makes is enormous. Cafédirect also run educational workshops - they learn how to sell to cooperatives and about their rights."
Also on the bill are Damon Albarn, Beth Orton and Jo Brand, and there will be up to 27 one-minute plays from Royal Court writers including Tanika Gupta and Joe Penhall. But a tip-off for those who find themselves in Jonzi D's pod: "We're going to have a bit of audience participation too."
