kagablog

one should never trust a man who is a teetotaler because he obviously has something to hide. A drunkard – who reveals all to god and man when he is inebriated – at least isn’t the bearer of any terrible secrets!

The best things in life are free
But you can give them to the birds and bees
I want money

(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)

You love gives me such a thrill
But your love won’t pay my bills
I want money

(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)

Money don’t get everything it’s true
But what it don’t get I can’t use
I want money

(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)
That’s what I want
(That’s what I want)

I want money
I want lots of money
In fact I want so much money
Give me your money
Just give me money

hey man! i’ve been trying to email you
a copy of my penis but it doesn’t
wanna go through. maybe it’s
the size of the file. 22 mb?

As you will see from the project description – there are still a lot of loose ends pertaining to the composition of the band…. i have put my thoughts on the slots still needing to be filled at the end of this document … but first a few thoughts about what’s cooking in my brain as far as the musical component of the show goes……

I had a kind of audio-vision under this full moon in the Karoo in April about the opening sequence – or a sequence – of the performance…

I imagined a cinematic soundscape – tracing the history of the cape…
simply said – from the time the land was only occupied by the Khoisan people to the arrival of the europeans – first da Gama, then the Dutch – then the slave populations imported from Malaysia, indonesia and from other parts of the east and africa…

The basis of the soundscape – a trance rhythm – a khoi prayer connecting to the moon … building in layers – and adding samples of the arrival of different influences… an audio experience – a sacred quality that brings the audience into a certain space / state … and arrives in a awesome islamic call to prayer… performed live… (possibly) in combination with a predikant preaching in High Dutch – i had an idea of a feeling of being transported into a trance and flying through time… this was re-enforced by the image below….

At the KKNK – we saw a very old woman singing traditional songs – it was incredibly moving to watch as someone had to help her turn around and face the audience… the sound was awful – although i could imagine that if this were performed, effected and mixed – it could be incredibly powerful and emotive/spiritual – a living embodiment of ancient to the future – much like the resurgence of the khoi connection in Afrikaans hip hop.

Out of a kind of digital static ancient truths transpose themselves into a contemporary form…..
I imagine this ensemble of poets/vocalists, musicians and VJ – being versatile and operating as a flexible unit to aurally and visually paint each scene of the performance. These scenes will ultimately all be woven together to take the audience on a journey. I want the production to be be visually breathtaking and the sound and music are an integral element of creating the total experience.

The VJ component is important – and is inextricably linked to the audio component of the show… the visuals will be at their most powerful when they are considered and composed in the total of what is happening on stage… so for now i imagine that many of the soundscape pieces will form the basis of soundtracks of the cinematic images you will see on screen …. thus in a way the screen will sometimes be an extra member of the band… for example:

I imagine the scale of the screen to be quite large ( about 6 X 4 m) The screen will sometimes function as a classic theatre backdrop to the performance on stage. I imagine a time-lapse animation-like sequence of a monumental piece of graffiti art emerging from a blank wall to finished art work – an explosion of colour in the form of a written statement – that massive illuminated art work then becomes a backdrop for a particular poem or song… it will be interesting to explore what makes up the base track for such a scene – is maybe as simple as looping a rhythm of a spray can being shaken and then giving 3 short sprays which forms the basis of a track….? so that that video image is sometimes completely integrated in the musical composition???

I would like to sometimes play with using musical devices visually….I remember you showed me a program at your studio that recorded a tune being played live on guitar – and then translated the tune for keyboards and played it back on a keyboard which appears on the desktop or with the notes also written as a musical score – something like a digital translator/transposer could be a nice tool to work with… that you see and hear notes being played on the screen….

I mentioned to you before how much i loved the vocoder used by Laurie Anderson – As this is so much a performance about language and the spoken word i would love to play with effecting the voice live…. playing with the playback possibilities…

The sound design as we discussed before is also very important – and i am still very much thinking a long the lines of low and high tech combined – which again connects to the Ancient to the Future idea…. I can imagine really over the top hollywood style hip-hoppy sequences juxtaposed with small, intimate acoustic scenes, with the power of the spoken word in it’s purest form.

An example of one of the more epic scenes which would require full-on orchestration would be The Rock Face Scene….
An iconic monumental image of the Cape Town landmark recast in new stone faces. An animated sequence where the faces of the ensemble appear out of the rock-face of table mountain in an earth moving spectacular animation…..rocks falling, crashing and cracking to reveal the faces of the voices….the storytellers……CGI – epic stylee! – An earth shattering/changing experience – for which i imagine one of Kyle’s epic compositions building to a climax!

Kyle has a distinctly Cape South African jazz style – a quality that is very emotive and charged… he plays insanely with goema and kaapse klopse… and also performs a kind of spoken word poetry on some of his pieces – he even sings on one track on his CD – Die maan skyn so helder… which i love – it’s very delicate and sophisticated

Jitsvinger – is really fabulous – his cd is very much produced hip hop style with collaborations with various people – i love the way he can tell story on a beat – punctuated with samples which make his story telling all the more vivid and humorous – and snappy and smart! When you get the CD from Kaganof particularly check out ballade vannie epigoon

Blaqpearl – is more of an R&B/ hip hop girl – for me she’s at her best when she is doing it in Afrikaans – i’m not particularly fond of the american type thang she sometimes has going on… but she has a nice voice – and is great spirit and presence….

I would like the ensemble to be 6 or 7 people in total – so far with the VJ (Dylan Valley as part of the on stage ensemble) there are still 3 places to be filled

more info on chimurenga.co.za

There is actually no murder mystery:

When Thomas Sankara was killed after four years as President of Burkina Faso, it was at the orders – if not at the hands – of one of his oldest friends, now President Blaise Compaoré. Echoes of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as much as Disney’s The Lion King. Why should we care about this particular African tragedy?

We should care because the revolution Sankara led between 1983 and 1987 was one of the most creative and radical that Africa has produced in the decades since independence. He started to blaze a trail that other African countries might follow, a genuine alternative to Western-style modernization – and, like other radical African leaders such as Patrice Lumumba and Amilcar Cabral, was shot down as a result. Whereas his murderer, still in power eight now twenty years later, has pursued self-enrichment and politics as usual – and has been fêted by the West for his compliance.

An incorruptible man

*

A major anti-corruption drive began in 1987. The tribunal showed Captain Thomas Sankara to have a salary of only $450 a month and his most valuable possessions to be a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer. He was the world’s poorest president.
*

Sankara refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes.
*

When asked why he had let it be known that he did not want his portrait hung in public places, as is the norm for other African leaders (and as Blaise Compaoré does now), Sankara said ‘There are seven million Thomas Sankaras’.

Chronicle of a revolution
Feb 1984 Tribute payments to and obligatory labour for the traditional village chiefs are outlawed.

4 Aug 1984 All land and mineral wealth are nationalized. The country’s name is changed from the colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, words from two different local languages meaning ‘Land of the Incorruptible’.

22 Sept 1984 A day of solidarity: men are encouraged to go to market and prepare meals to experience for themselves the conditions faced by women.

Oct 1984 The rural poll tax is abolished.

Nov 1984 ‘Vaccination Commando’. In 15 days 2.5 million children are immunized against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.

3 Dec 1984 Top civil servants and military officers are required to give one month’s pay and other civil servants to give half a month to help fund social development projects.

31 Dec 1984 All domestic rents are suspended for 1985 and a massive public housing construction program begins.

1 Jan 1985 Launch of a campaign to plant 10 million trees to slow the Sahara’s advance.

4 Aug 1985 An all-women parade marks the anniversary of the Revolution.

10 Sep 1985 The mounting hostility of the region’s conservative regimes is revealed at a meeting in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire.

Feb-Apr 1986 ‘Alpha Commando’. A literacy campaign in nine indigenous languages involves 35,000 people.

End of 1986 A UN-assisted program brings river blindness under control.

15 Oct 1987 Sankara is assassinated in a coup d’état along with 12 aides. His body is unceremoniously dumped in a makeshift grave which quickly becomes a shrine as for days thousands of people file past it to pay their respects. Popular feeling forces the new regime to give Sankara a decent grave.

A villager’s assessment of Sankara
‘I wasn’t surprised when he was killed – the Revolution took me by surprise but that didn’t. He had bad men around him, people who just wanted to get fat and drive around in big cars. Many things changed in the Revolution. Not always in the best way. But because of the Revolution we know a little more about the type of politicians we need. It taught us to work by ourselves for ourselves. But Sankara wanted everything to happen too quickly – he expected too much.

‘If I were President myself I would do just as Sankara did and send my ministers out to the villages to learn what it’s like there and give the peasants help. Sankara’s very best idea was to teach us that it wasn’t enough to live with what we get in wages each month – we should get by with the minimum and give the rest to the development of the country instead of always asking for aid from overseas.’

An eminently corruptible man

*

Captain Blaise Compaoré played a key part in the 1983 Revolution – he led the march on the capital that released Sankara from house arrest to become President. Compaoré himself served as Justice Minister and Sankara’s effective second-in-command.
*

Compaoré has garnered a considerable personal fortune from his position and allegations of corruption and nepotism under his regime now abound. One of his early acts was to buy a presidential plane to reflect his personal prestige.
*

Power from a major new hydro project has been diverted to electrify Compaoré’s home village, Ziniaré, while big towns have been ignored.

Chronicle of a ‘rectification’
15 Oct 1987 Blaise Compaoré assumes the Presidency, backed by Major Jean-Baptiste Lingani and Captain Henri Zongo.

Nov 1987 The Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, the local bodies which had replaced traditional élites, are abolished.

1988 Salaries of civil servants, reduced under Sankara, are increased and the special tax that forced them to contribute to health and education projects is scrapped.

Dec 1988 A World Bank report lauds the unusually high standards of financial management in Burkina Faso during the revolutionary years while noting the increasing incidence of corruption since Compaoré’s takeover.

Sept 1989 Lingani and Zongo attempt to oust Compaoré in a coup and are executed.

Dec 1989 31 Sankara supporters are detained without trial for over a year. Lecturer Guillaume Sessouma dies during torture.

Dec 1990 The draft constitution guarantees freedom of association and expression and property rights. It provides for an elected President and National Assembly.

Early 1991 A structural-adjustment package is agreed with the IMF, involving privatization and liberalization of the market.

May 1991 All political prisoners are released.

Dec 1991 Blaise Compaoré wins the presidential election. This is not surprising since he is the only candidate – 73 per cent of the electorate do not vote.

1993 The IMF lends Burkina $67m for 1993-5 on condition that it continues implementing free-market policies.

June 1993 An official presidential visit to Paris establishes Compaoré as France’s favourite ally in West Africa.

Jan 1994 The CFA franc is halved in value in relation to the French franc at the insistence of Paris and the IMF.

March 1994 Compaoré tightens his control, sacking the prime minister to install a loyalist.

A villager’s assessment of Compaoré
‘France gave Blaise money. I don’t know exactly how but they did. And when you have money in Africa you can do anything. The trade unions have been bought off, for example – the President gives them money so that they’ll shut their mouths. He’s our President, we agreed to that – but his policies come from France. Every order comes from France and he never asks the Assembly’s opinion.

‘There is no real opposition. Politics here means who will give money. People who want to become ministers or deputies look to develop themselves first and the country after – they all know the Western way of life, they want everything easy. Politics is just a means of becoming rich and giving you a big car. And Blaise gives money to opposition groups so they will divide and, voilà, no opposition. Another Sankara simply couldn’t arrive out of the current democratic landscape.’

‘I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution and organization we deserve victory… You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.’

Thomas Sankara, 1985

this article originally appeared on mathaba.net

TWO

TRISH

Trish is Helen of Troy. The kind of woman men go to war for. And one of Deep’s biggest fears is that one day he would be forced to go to war for her, or kill himself, for her. There is a sense of excitement about her which is accompanied by a looming danger. Trish brings the God and the devil out of him. She both torments and mesmerizes his soul. To his heart, she is a kaleidoscope of colours. Sometimes when he thinks of her, he thinks in crimson blood, bleeding to touch her. Then like a chameleon, his colours change into envy green. He envies to dwell his eyes on her for eternity. Then the colours transform into summer green like September, with emotions springing back to life. Then it somersaults to brown winter of nudist trees and barren sands.

Sometimes when he thinks of her, the sun sets and he sees her silhouette in pitch darkness. When he searches for her in cold darkness his eyes freeze to an iceberg pining to be melted by her smile. He becomes the east, and the sun rises in his eyes. In his dreams, he longs to see the flare of her shadow, under the glare of the moonlight. He longs to go with the glow of her flesh in the still of night and to set his eyes on her face the first thing before he wakes up. In this dense forest, of human dinosaurs, that devour alive, the raw spirit of men, his biggest fear is that one day he would stop loving her.

Trish dresses herself. Fashion is nothing to her. She is fashion and she is always in fashion. She is committed to gaining influence. She has her own fashion label, In Flew Enza, with the slogan “Spread It”. The logo for her label is a colourful bird taking flight. She labels herself. And you thought wearing a label defined who you are? Trish is free, and beautiful, she had recently opened her own boutique in Newtown because she had claimed “Newtown is the future”. She has a style of dressing that says look at my middle finger if you are conventional. She goes around spreading the influence. On this evening she is dressed in black shorts, black fishnet stockings and long boots. She is draped in a white t-shirt with a black bow tie and a long coat which looks like it belongs to a men’s department store.

She gives him a big hug when he comes to collect her in his motorbike outside her boutique.
“this time you really put your foot in it did n’t you” she says as she climbs on the bike behind him.
“I ve always wanted to put my foot in it, somehow I always missed” he replies as he revs his motorbike.

After being fired he is fired up. They ride to Trish’s place in Bramley in his motorbike, the XTR 250 cc. He enjoys the adrenalin rush and the kiss of the wind. Deep rides a bike because he says “it gets you there faster than you can think”. Wearing helmets, they cruise through the Mandela Bridge past Wits University on Jan Smuts Avenue. They join MI North and off ramp on Corlett Drive to Trish’s place in Bramley north of Johannesburg. He likes the feel of Trish’s bosom on his back as they ride through the wind against the general tide of driving a motorcar.

When he speeds on the highway, he loves the sense of carrying the receding past on his back and approaching the distant horizon. The feeling of penetrating the future, the unknown. It is a sponsored bike given to him so he could become the face of XTR 250 cc. The bike is called the Deep Range. When more famous celebrities have sneakers named after them he has a motorbike.

They met four years ago on a queue of a Standard Bank ATM opposite Moyo Restaurant next to the Market Theatre Photography Workshop. A beggar had come to Deep asking for a donation. He had said to the beggar

“I will not offer you money but a love poem
“The poem in your bowl will not tinkle like a coin
“But in your heart it will sprinkle like a stain”

The man had said “great what is the poem? Deep had replied “that was the poem”. So the man left and never begged again. Trish, who was behind him said it was a great poem.
When he turned around to look at her he was momentarily paralyzed by her beauty. It was the kind of beauty you could still see vividly with your eyes wide shut. He knew that for him it was love at second sight. He was surprised himself he had said something poetic. He was not a poet. He had once decided to write poems before only to learn later only bad poets decide to become poets. You do not collect poems, they just drop on your lap like bird shit.
“Today I am feeling generous, I have a poem for you too” he had said pushing his luck.
“What’s the poem?
He closed his eyes briefly and suddenly blurted out the words:
“My love is deep”
She blushed like a schoolgirl not knowing his momentary inspiration had reached a dead end.

She had refused to give him her number preferring to take his. She wanted to take back the power men had over women after getting the number. The woman hangs in suspense for a call that would come or not come at the whims of a man. She did not want to go through that. Women give men too much power, she believed. The plan worked, as Deep almost went crazy pining for that call. When she finally called after three weeks he gave a deep sigh.
“What have you been doing for the last three weeks? She enquired
“I‘ve been thinking” he said
“Thinking about what”
“You already know”
He had long thought about her before the atm meeting, only she did not know, she also did not know that the atm meeting was not the first time he had laid his eyes on her. He had first seen her at a traffic intersection in Johannesburg city centre where they were going to different directions. The red light stopped him dead in his tracks. She stood at the traffic lights on the other end. The green man at the robot blinked at her. She crossed straight into his heart. She parked in his head, permanently. She had the hooters blaring in him. She drove straight into the commotion and got lost in the madness, after that she had stalked his dreams and haunted his memory.

**********************

THE MAYOR AND THE NEPHEW

They sit on the garden chairs of Trish’s the spacious family home in Bramley north of Johannesburg. Trish shares the house with his brother Hamilton, grandmother and nephew from his brother Hamilton’s estranged wife. Their parents had since passed away shortly after his brother had returned from political exile in 1990.
“So what are you going to do with your life now that you have managed to get yourself fired?”
Mimi’s brother Hamilton asks over the dinner table as he dips his spoon over a large bowl of salads. Hamilton is a former mayor who is now one of the more successful businessmen. Even though he is now a businessman everyone still calls him “the mayor”. The mayor trades on his struggle credentials. He runs a consultation business where he is paid “a facilitation fee” to hook up businesses with politicians for lucrative government tenders. His job is perfectly legit and he sleeps soundly at night as a result of it. After all, he is one of the chief architects of democracy, the country is the brainchild of his party.

Before being called the mayor he had simply been called Ham for short which had deeply annoyed him. He had changed his name soon before being appointed mayor to his African name but the title of mayor stuck. The merging of persona and state. The mayor is rapidly gaining weight even though he is paying for a gym membership he does not use. He can train at home but he pays Virgin Active to train him. This has become fashionable. People paying for services they do not need or use and complaining about services they need and use. Like water and electricity.

The mayor has a man who speaks for him. When Deep and Trish arrive they find the mayor sitting with his spokesperson going over some “new strategy”. The mayor is dressed in a football t-shirt jeans and sneakers. It is part of his new strategy of being down with the people. When they had first met, Deep and the mayor had not got on like a house on fire.

The mayor had summed up Deep as a too self opinionated man with no real ambition. The mayor was a party man who distrusted free spirits that did not fall under any organizational discipline. But people like Deep and his friend Graphit were products of democracy and there was nothing that could be done about them he concluded. Deep had thought of the mayor as another cocky and dissembling politician with too much food on his plate. He was suspicious of anyone who wanted to convert him into a certain system of beliefs. But they had both found out they grew on each other and they had now settled on taking cheap swipes at each other at any given opportunity.

“I am going to concentrate on my writing”
“You mean you are going to concentrate on being unemployed”
“I have been working on this book for some time and I believe it has the potential to do well in the market”
“oh, what is this book called?
“Its called Blood Sex”
“Blood Sex? sounds interesting, go on”

Deep hesitates as he glances around the table. All eyes wait eagerly on him. He glances briefly at the twelve year old Mimi’s nephew who also seems to be waiting to hear about his book. The nephew is a factory fault of democracy. He is a Mandela child. He was born free therefore he is chained by too much freedom. Life is too safe.

He goes into a private school and lives in a mansion surrounded by high walls and barbed fence. He longs and itches for the action of the eighties he hears about. The closest violence he has ever come to is the wrestling on television and MTV. He envies the poor kids. He composes hip hop songs with dirty lyrics to earn himself some street credibility. In his room he has access to an arsenal of toy guns even though his fathers party campaigns for a gun free society. He wears pants that resemble army combat to breed some violence into his mind. He has a violent game on his playstation that has as one of its rules: it is not enough to win, you must dominate. He constantly wears a mournful and disdainful face of someone who has just been forced to gulp down a bottle of castor oil. He is about to vomit. Life is one big bore.

The nephew is staring at Deep with undisguised scorn and contempt. Some time back Deep had caused some discomfort in the family after relaying some piece of information to the nephew. He had asked the nephew what his favourite sport was and the nephew had excitedly replied that it was wrestling. Deep had explained wrestling was not sport but entertainment and showmanship.
“Wrestling is a reality show with good actors and a good script” he had explained
“You mean the players are not real?
“No, just good actors”
“You are lying, John Cenna and Batista are real” the nephew screamed.
“Are you saying wrestling is fake? The mayor asked like someone who found it hard to believe the world was not flat.
The nephew was devastated at this piece of information. He threw tantrums and ran away screaming to his grandmother who had also been critical of Deep. Everything the kid had believed in had been exposed as a human fabrication. Deep insisted he was only telling the truth.
“You don’t tell children the truth, they don’t handle it very well” Trish explained.
“In fact you don’t tell the truth to anyone” the mayor had supported his sister “it upsets the balance of chaos”
Deep had realized they were both right. This whole civilization was based on a lie and people were more comfortable with the lie than the truth. These are the same people who believe in the tooth fairy, santa claus, the easter bunny and the silent night of Christmas. These are the same people who take politicians seriously when they speak.

Looking at the nephew now, Deep can still feel a certain level of hostility and distrust. He turns his attention back to the mayor.
“It’s a PG kind of book” he explains.
“Parental guidance, you writing porn?
“What is porn? The eager young mind of the nephew wants to know.
What the hell, Deep thinks, the mayor asked for it.
“Well it’s about this prostitute who chokes to death while giving this politician a blow job”
“What’s a blow job? The scornful nephew asks again.
“A blow job means its time for you to go to bed” Mimi says as she leads the protesting nephew away.
“That’s hardly a basis for a book but good luck son”
“And the pimp sues the politician for loss of income” Deep explains further.
“The pimp cant be allowed to profit from his own crime” the mayor objects
“Well there is more, the prostitute had a surprise in her will, her last wish was to be cremated and for the pimp to carry the ashes everywhere he went” but the book is still in developmental stages”
The maid comes to clear the table. When she is finished Deep hands her a ten rand note. Unsure of what is happening, she takes it and leaves with a grateful smile.
“What was that?” the mayor asks
“I was giving her a tip”
“A tip, but this is not a restaurant, it’s my house, a private residence, you don’t come to my house and give my maid a tip” the mayor barks.
Who says maids cant be given tips? Deep responds unpertubed.

the rock i built this song
on is flowing out
of me

test

in south africa “busy” means doing nothing. i’m busy writing my next feature film. i’m busy developing a script. i’m busy with post-production. actually all i’m gonna do is chunk when i get home. the director gets onto the set about an hour late, fraught with tension. screeches at the production manager “don’t give me eye contact, just don’t give anything to me”. some wag from the costume department mutters “bosbevok”. now listen to me nicely koos, that clown was bevok before he went to the bos. the day is very long and arduous. at the end of it we tear into our lagers. koos is a moffie but boy can he eat! i mean this oke goes back for a full plate but four times! his voice is squeaky but he gets respect from the rest of a crew. he grins at me, “i’m a mulligan. a fight’s a fight. no one’s put my lights out yet.” then he gives the salute, stands to attention and tries to click his heels. but there’s no sound. it’s hard to click your heels when you’re wearing sneakers. he marches out of the catering van. then the director storms in and berates me for not keeping up with his updates on twitter. “don’t blame me, i walked in on this job late.” the director’s face is way too close to mine. this breath is not good for my nose. i’ve got a good nose and this breath is definitely bad. “so listen schlemiel, what kind of professional are you? this script is a fuckup, don’t you care?” me i just shrug and say to the director, “as long as i get paid to do this i care.”