Cape Town Military Tattoo

CT Military Tattoo

Please all spare me a thought this even­ing.  Id rather be on the couch watch­ing the DVD set of the 3^rd sea­son of Private Practice but instead I will be at the Cape Town Castle watch­ing the Cape Town Military Tattoo!  The last time I went to a Tattoo was about 30 years ago at the Kings Park Stadium in Durban.  My mother bundled my brother and I up in all sorts of warm wool­ies (not sure why, it was Durban after all) and off we went.  It just so hap­pens that my hus­band and his fam­ily used to watch the Tattoo whenever it was on in Durban, so he’s insisted we go to this one in Cape Town!

Presented at the Castle of Good Hope, the Cape Town Military Tattoo star­ted on Wednesday even­ing in Cape Town and the last per­form­ance is at 8pm tomor­row night.  The theme this year is ‘Come Home to Africa’ and the show will pay trib­ute to unsung her­oes.  With this the sixth tat­too, The Cape Town Military Tattoo is well on its way to becom­ing a fix­ture in the annual cal­en­dar of events for Cape Town and scores of full-time and part-time mil­it­ary staff have been work­ing for months on the pro­gramme of events.

CT Military Tattoo

The word ‘tat­too’ is derived from a cen­tur­ies old mil­it­ary ritual which saw patrols sent out near night­fall to warn off-duty sol­diers rehyd­rat­ing in tav­erns that it was time to return to their bar­racks!  In Cape Town, a drum­mer would be sent up to the Leerdam Bastion where he would beat his drum for thirty minutes to warn sol­diers of the Castle gar­rison that it was time to return to bar­racks for the even­ing parade.

Among other things will be the ‘repeat-customer’ acts; the open­ing cere­mony by the Castle Guard, the play­ing of Tschaikovsky’s ‘1812’ over­ture and the Final Muster.  The music itself might be a bit of a sur­prise for some of the audi­ence; the usual foot-tapping mil­it­ary marches are on the agenda but so are some fam­ous old tunes that have their place in the her­it­age of the Cape.

With all seats sold out before the first 2009 per­form­ance, the Cape Town Tattoo is gain­ing pop­ular­ity and has star­ted to attract inter­na­tional attention.

Bookings & Tickets:
Tickets, at a price of between R80 and R100 for adults and R40 for chil­dren are avail­able at Computicket.
Alternatively, get tick­ets at the gate, if still avail­able.
Tickets at the gate range between R100 to R120.
The tat­too begins at 8pm and is sched­uled to fin­ished at 10.15pm.

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