kagablog

Koos Kombuis, though he might deny it, is a South African institution. Cultural commentator, social provocateur, songwriter extraordinaire, poet and prankster, icon. The man’s CV is – well, impeccable is an ill-fitting word – ‘perfect’ seems wronger, but somehows closer to the truth. We glimpse through four seasons of the laughing, shrugging, living legend’s time..

The wandering poet & That kitchen – The early years.

Koos Kombuis’ particular flight into Rock & Roll destiny kicked off juuust right. Essentially a drifting poet, he wandered his earth kinda like Kane from ‘Kung Fu’, only with a pen rather than a sword – a stranger adrift and homeless in an alien world. Following a brief stint in a loony bin, he sold short stories to Huisgenoot and began publishing his idiosyncratic verse, living, for a meandering time, as the bum that would later inform his third album. It was in this period that a year-long stint squatting in mate Al Lovejoy’s kitchen got him the nickname later etched into South Africa’s Rock canon. Kombuis, under then pen-name Andre’ Le Toit, published 6 novellas and collections of poetry before releasing debut recording ‘Ver van die ou Kalahari’ in ‘87. In stores the cassettes of ‘Kalahari’ were emblazoned with stickers announcing ‘Vermy!’ (avoid!), courtesy of the Government.

Afrikaans my darling: Freedom in the Moedertaal – Let the music roll!

The guitar met Koos by accident. Neither had been particularly drawn to the other, but as the quirky alignment of stars would have it theirs was to be a destiny entwined. Koos the songwriter, appropriate to the mythology of SA Rock, came into focus while he was sharing a flat and girlfriend (you read right, don’t ask) with someday-to-be Valiant Swart. Songwriting seduced Koos away from literature for most of the following decade-and-a-half.
Along with founder Johannes Kerkorrel, and James Phillips, Kombuis spearheaded the legendary Voëlvry movement. The Eighties’ more three-dimensional answer to the literary political revolt of Die Sestigers (from, well, the Sixties), Voëlvry gave the Establishment and ol’ Groot Krokodil a stiff middle-finger, while strumming and celebrating that Afrikaans and Apartheid weren’t synonyms, and could rock and wail as much as the next lingo.

It’s a bird!? It’s a plane?? It’s Tassies onstage – The legend blooms.

The years that the icon of Koos began glowing, tipsily. That amused smirk, the dubious bandana, the ol’ faithful bottle of Tassenberg, and a bare stage. There is something strikingly modest about Koos’ relation to his larger-than-life presence. Outside of the vaster orbits of historically key politicians, and SA’s version of movie-stars – the sports heroes - Koos Kombuis is more deeply, mythologically ingrained into South African consciousness than most of its celebrities and cultural figures. He is folkloric. And yet the man seems to shrug at it all. Never seems to have acquired that aura of inaccessibility that even college bands nurture.
‘Plat oppie aarde, vonk innie oog’, that’s Koos.

God’s back-porch & ‘n huisie by die see – The literary flex.

Since the turning of the millennium, Kombuis has taken the time to re-indulge his literary energy. Besides his witty, weekly columns for Rapport, he’s ventured into the new form of full-length novels – following his autobiographical update ‘Seks en Drugs en Boeremusiek – Memoires van ‘n volksverraaier’ in 2000, he’s brought out everything from Sci-Fi (‘Paradise redecorated’ and ‘Hotel Atlantis’), to Thriller (‘Raka – The Novel’), to cheekily transcribing God’s diary entries in ‘The secret diary of God’. Whether in book-form, or riding a melody, it’s Kombuis’ words that resound..

Where most local Rock bands, and even Pop artists, rarely amass more than a wee handful of hits memorable enough to outlive their respective albums, Kombuis has enough to fill several. From out-and-out, canonic classics like ‘Lisa se klavier’, ‘Onder in my whiskey glas’, and ‘Kytie’, to strings of die-hard singalong tunes like ‘Ek is verslaaf’, ‘Johnny is nie dood nie’, ‘AWB Tiete’, and ‘Liefde uit die oude doos’, there are too many to mention here..
And while he’s found the autumnal peace of his ‘huisie by die see’, and Tassenberg no longer duets with him onstage, 2008’s ‘Bloedrivier’ – that romp-stomping, controversial, and critically-acclaimed State-of-the-Nation address - shows that the fire, the musical muse, and the winking court Jester still burn deep…

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first published in muse magazine