South Africa – Vol. 1
Tomorrow, June 11, is the day South Africa has been looking forward to for the past six years: today the country will be the host to the world. For a month, South Africa will present itself to an international community of which the country has never really felt it was part of. Twenty years ago, SA was internationally excluded. After that, it was a “special case”, the problem child that suddenly and unexpectedly did astonishing things.
As South Africa grew up to become a spotty teenager, the disappointment that the Mandela-led miracle was not quite as amazing as everybody wanted it to be gave South Africa a reputation of being a state waiting to fail. It is easy to believe that for many people the supposed failure of the Mandela miracle serves as a welcome confirmation that even those African countries that hold the promise of great things will fuck it up.
The same kind of people are doubtless hoping that SA will host a sub-standard World Cup. For six years we’ve heard that we won’t be ready, that FIFA will take the tournament away from us, that there will be a race war, that terrorists as far away from us as Bosnia is to England are endangering players, that criminals will wait with AK-47s to shoot at German players and travelling fans. And so bloody on. I can understand why some want SA to fail; if Africa can put together something as huge as a football World Cup, against apparent expectations, then these people will have to revise their notions of South Africa and the continent itself. Worldviews and prejudices are at stake here. The sceptics will take satisfaction from every little mishap (the Daily Express will blame all of South Africa for the injuries some pissed Ingerlund fan will sustain knocking his head on a fountain), so that they can exclaim, with relief: “Told you so!”
Cape Town's purpose-built stadium, between the sea and Table Mountain.
I expect there will be some blunders; it is inevitable in an event of this scale. There may even be embarrassment at a poor opening ceremony or a stupid statement by the president. And the noisy vuvuzela — the annoying plastic trumpets — will be criticised as not sufficiently dignified for a World Cup. Except by Americans, who’ll love the cultural expressions of the locals. Some particularly ignorant idiots may even consider the vuvuzela as typifying a supposedly backwards culture. But I have full confidence that where it is important, in terms of organisation, the World Cup will be a success. The world will see South Africa in a new light.
To celebrate, this post inaugurates a weekly series of South African music (with further comments) for the duration of the World Cup. The song selection will be random, with no claims of providing any sort of comprehensive history or representativity of South African music. Check this blog for articles on current South African music.
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Sophiatown jazz. Photo by Jürgen Schadeberg
Nancy Jacobs & her Sisters – Meadowlands (1955).mp3
Meadowlands is one of the great and most frequently covered South African standards. This is the 1955 original version by Nancy Jacobs and her backing group who in fact were her mother and cousin. Jacobs was too shy to become a really big star, the way her contemporaries such as Dolly Rathebe or Miriam Makeba did. Instead of pursuing a career on stage, Jacobs soon married and retired from the music scene. The song Meadowlands might sound joyful, but it is in fact very sad: Meadowlands is the name of the settlement in the conglomeration of Johannesburg townships known since 1963 as Soweto (an abbreviation of South-Western Townships) to which the residents of the vibrant Sophiatown were forcibly moved as of 1955. In a further insult, Sophiatown’s now white area was renamed Triomf, which in English means exactly what you guessed it does. The above picture was taken by the great Drum photographer Jürgen Schadeberg (lots more photos on his excellent website)
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Mandoza – Nkalakatha (2000).mp3
I’ve posted this kwaito anthem by the genre’s biggest star before. It’s a fantastic hype-up song, one for getting ready before a party or for an iron-pumping work out. Born in Soweto as Mduduzi Tshabalala, Mandoza as a teenager spent time in jail — the ironically named Sun City — for car theft (the makers of a particular video game might want to include Mandoza on their famous radio playlists). He now tries to infuse his music with constructive messages aimed at a lost generation, but denies that he is a role model (which is a good thing, given some of his behaviour, including a 2008 conviction for culpable homicide involving a car crash). “Nkalakatha” is township slang for a man who has it all, not necessarily obtained by exclusively ethical means.
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TKZee & Benni McCarthy – Shibobo (1998).mp3
TKZee were about as big as Mandoza, and trailblazed the kwaito genre. Football fans will recognise their co-star. Benni McCarthy (second from left on the cover) is one of South Africa’s most successful football players ever — the only one with a Champions’ League or European Cup medal to his name. McCarthy was the great hope of South African football, but his strained relationship with the local football association meant that his appearances for the national team, known as Bafana Bafana (“the Boys”), were erratic, marked by serial “retirements”. For that the functionaries and McCarthy share the blame. The Cape Town-born player has been excluded from this year’s World Cup squad, reportedly for disciplinary reasons. The song was released to coincide with the 1998 World Cup, the first in which South Africa took part. “Shibobo” means to dribble or play the ball through an opponent’s legs.
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Monty Webber and Friends – Love Song (1976).mp3
Earlier I mentioned the forced removals from Sophiatown in 1955. Eleven years later PW Botha, then the apartheid minister responsible for oppressing Coloureds (that is, the mixed race Afrikaans and English-speaking majority of Cape Town) declared the multi-racial slum District Six, on the outskirts of central Cape Town, reserved for whites. Over the next decade, families were moved to new ghettos far away from the city. These had few recreational facilities and no entrenched community to replace the close-knit one of District Six. The violent gang culture of the Cape Flats can be attributed in great part to the brutal destruction of a community. Almost three decades since the last streets and houses (other than a few churches and mosques) were razed, much of what once was District Six remains an uninhabited wasteland. I pass it on my way to work every day.
This song comes from a very rare jazz-fusion concept album titled Remember District Six, which I found through my good friends at the afrotastic Electric Jive blog. For the fans of Cape jazz, the line-up is star-studded, all at one time collaborators with Abdullah Ibrahim/Dollar Brand. Apart from the great drummer Monty Webber (now sadly without legs), it also includes the late Basil “Mannenberg” Coetzee (whose saxophone made Dollar Brand’s incorrectly spelt classic Mannenberg such a jazz classic), guitarist Errol Dyers, keyboardist Sammy Hartman, bassist Lionel Beukes and somebody credited as Monwabisi, whom I guess to be the late Winston Mankunku Ngozi. I don’t know who did the vocals on this lovely song.
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Vicky Sampson – African Dream (1995).mp3
This is one of those songs that get wheeled out whenever a dash of African pride is needed. I am sick of the song due to overexposure and its mongering in cliché, but there is something quite appealing to it. It was written by Alan Lazar of the group Mango Groove, who will still feature in this series, and became massive when South Africa hosted (and won) the continental football tournament, the African Cup of Nations, in 1996. Vicky Sampson, born in Cape Town, was once voted South Africa’s most beautiful woman. Her promotional blurb claims that she has performed with a roll call of music notables including Al Jarreau, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Grace Jones and Randy Crawford. The same blurb of ill-considered hyperbole likely written by an over-animated intern gushes, with just a touch too much gush: “Her latest release is ‘nothing short of world-class’. License To Sing [seriously?], is an adult contemporary masterpiece that provides a platform for Vicky’s quite astonishing voice, which must surely now be considered the best to ever grace the South African music industry.” But don’t blame poor Vicky for her PR team’s total absence of perspective.
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The Parlotones – Beautiful (2005).mp3
Apparently The Parlotones are being heavily promoted in Britain, and I think they have a decent shot at stardom. I suppose they will appeal most to the people who liked David Gray (note to Parlotones’ manager: get them on Irish TV) or, heaven forbid, the horrible Dave Matthews Band. Dave Matthews himself is a South African, of course. Though, unlike Charlize Theron, he does not seem to mention it much. And unlike Charlize Theron, we aren’t particularly proud of him. Anyway, the Parlotones’ sound is as good as that of any comparable international act, though I’m not a big fan of singer Kahn Morbee’s voice. They’ve been big in South Africa for a long time, and the catchy Beautiful has been something of a signature tune for them. Personally, I prefer Staring At The Sun, which was not a hit, but is available legally for download (direct DL link)
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Nelson Mandela and Francois Pienaar contemplate whether Wesley Snipes and Kevin Costner shall play them in the invictusable film of SA's 1995 World Cup win.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Shosholoza (1995).mp3
A post on SA music must include one of the country’s most famous exports singing the country’s most popular song, the Ndebele workers’ anthem Shosholoza. Don’t expect this to be huge in the townships, though. Ladysmith Black Mambazo (named after the town they are from; there have been loads of groups calling themselves Black Mambazo over the years) are very much a crossover act, and Shosholoza is the one African song that whites are most likely to know how to sing, perhaps better than the national anthem. In 1995 it became the unofficial anthem of the rugby World Cup, which SA hosted and won — the great Invictus story. The rousing song does sound magnificent when sung in a full stadium. Perhaps somebody will strike it up during World Cup; if so, it will probably a white guy. This version here is not very good, I’m afraid. But as I said, it must be posted for purposes of symbolism.
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Anneline Kriel – He Took Off My Romeos (1981).mp3
This might be a collectors’ item. Those in search for songs by former Miss Worlds will want this. And collectors of potential worst records ever will welcome the inclusion of this into their anthologies. Anneline Kriel was Miss World in 1974 — before even that horrible contest joined the international boycott of apartheid South Africa — after the British winner Helen Morgan resigned her crown for not being a virgin. Kriel subsequently became the wife of the diminutive South African hotel magnate Sol Kerzner, who built Sun City and more recently the obscenely extravagant Atlantis on the Palm in Dubai. Kriel then converted to Judaism for her new Jewish husband, and after divorcing him married a fellow called…Bacon. Apparently Kriel’s excursion into the world of pop in 1981 was not the result of a lost drunken bet. Whatever prompted a succession of people to decide that making this record was a good idea, sanity was not among them. Kriel couldn’t hold a tune if it was bolted to her vocal chords and the backing track must have been programmed by a tone deaf chimpanzee let loose on a bargain-basement synthesizer.
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