marcel van heerden launches the koos cd
one of the great afrikaans actors of his generation, marcel van heerden, explains the background to starting the legendary noise-protest group, koos, during the darkest days of apartheid in south africa. in the late 1980s he travelled through namibia as part of an afrikaans theater troupe. he had been exempted from military service; so he had no idea of the severity of the war, until his group arrived at the northern military town of oshikati near the angolan border. to his amazement there were trenches and bunkers on an enormous scale around the entire town. he hadn’t realised this was happening. the white population in South Africa was screened from the reality of the war by the state controlled media. that night they performed their play in the town and shortly afterwards the sky lit up with arcs of tracer fire and the ground shook with the percussion of motar bombs. marcel ended up having to take shelter in one of the bunkers, shaking through a long night of automatic fire and explosions.
when he got back to south africa he decided he had to do something – what else could he do? he started a band – koos.
after three years of playing they released a single cassette, sold in a brown paper bag – the black tape.
marcel van heerden was photographed at the launch of this previously unatainable recording made by the group in 1989 with shifty records. the new release of the black tape was produced by warren siebrits with paul riekert’s one f label.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I met marcel in , i think, 1986? Dublin theatre festival. he was touring with the market theatre and i was with my own theatre company ‘charabanc’ from belfast We were involved in similar work and had long conversations. i stumbled across this site whilst looking for something else. delighted to see he kept up his thinking and righteous anger, both our homeplaces have changed so much, it’s good to have played a part.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
it is great hearing from an Irish voice of dissent. eleanor methven was part of a very brave theatre collective from Belfast in the eighties. i would very much like to get in touch with her on face book
August 29th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
now whatever happened to mud ensemble?
another group marcel played an important part in?
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
ok am now on facebook,
August 18th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
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