kagablog

“Collaboration” is such a romantic word on a music flyer. It invites the audience to a privileged once-off experience to partake in the making of musical history. It reveals the behind-the-scenes nuts-and-bolts of music creation between two personae-stripped musicians. It elevates the humble music gig to an act of subversive performance art.

Billed to start with a movie showing, followed by collaborations between four moody, enigmatic and disparate musicians each with their own cult following, the Felix Laband, Warrick Sony, Righard Kapp and Aryan Kaganof gig at the Armchair Theatre promised all of the elements of an Eighties anarchist meeting. AND it was on a Sunday night as though no one who would be interested was even mildly affiliated to the corporate world.

Except Felix Laband and except that there appeared to be too many nuts and bolts on show with no musical suspension of disbelief. See, the perennially persuasive heroine-drop beats of Felix Laband pulled the wrong crowd. Cape Town trendies suffered their way through Kaganof’s documentary Unyazi of the Bushveld, talked their way through Kapp and Kaganof’s gig, and, finally, after Laband and Sony’s first track, gave up on their dream of a candy flipping dance floor. Most of them cleared off to Stones at this point (Kaganof could have been proud).

A handful stayed and were sporadically intrigued by what Laband was pulling out, allegedly. According to organizer Rosemary Lombard, it was in fact Sony’s sounds that pulled the admiration and Laband was just strumming his bass guitar. I couldn’t really tell. Truth be told, besides the Unyazi of the Bushveld showing, I struggled to dedicate any more than moments of the concentration to the performances.

The music just didn’t seem to filter through the general clatter of a distracted fidgety audience. Maybe in a different environment, the fragments I picked up would form a greater whole, but clearly that whole wasn’t arresting anyone on the evening. I do remember enjoying momentous bits on Kapp’s guitar and finding Kaganof’s voice a gravelly cross between William Burroughs and Trent Reznor. I remember wanting Kaganof to do more poems and being super intrigued by the accompanying visuals – which I found out afterwards was Chelsea Girls by Andy Warhol.

Kaganof also revealed post-gig that it was a memorial for German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. I had to Google Karlheinz. He sounds like quite an interesting dude with his controversial electronic compositions for symphony orchestras. One review admitted that his admiration was not unanimous and that “British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who founded the London Symphony Orchestra, was famously quoted as answering a question as to whether he had ever conducted any Stockhausen by saying: ‘No, but I believe I once trod in some.’”

This reminded me of the interview with Matthew Ostrowski in Unyazi of the Bushveld, when he said something along the lines of… just because an electronic musician is pushing the boundaries of his instruments and the plasticity of his medium, doesn’t mean he’s making anything either musical or significant. This was my general feeling about the Warrick Sony and Felix Laband collaboration – not that I had trod in it, but that it didn’t seem to amount to anything.

Apparently they hadn’t practiced are jammed together before the gig at all, which brings me full circle back to the allure of “collaboration”. While “practice” does remove the allure of the occidental in “collaboration”, it does seem prudent to at least check that you gel before performing. As an intellectual exercise in the raw nuts and bolts of music before being shined up for consumption, the performance could be deemed interesting. However, I think everyone would have preferred to be sublimated to a state of musical awe. That said, Kaganof and Kapp did apparently practice and click, but didn’t manage to translate this on stage.

Unfortunately I am not a musician, so pontificating on what the ideal elements and levels of commitment that collaboration requires can not be revealing in any manner. However, I would love a musician to give me some insights on how it does and can work…

Still, I would go to the gig again and many more like it for giving me that exclusive experience and offering me sound that is not replicable, placating or dismissible.