kagablog

this article first appeared in the weekender of 7 november 2009

Warrick Sony was born in South Africa in 1958.He first came to public attention in the early 1980’s in South Africa as the sole member of the Kalahari Surfers.

They released five albums of politically radical music with numerous South African session musicians. Many of the albums where released by Chris Cutler’s Recommended Records in London as they were too political and anti-apartheid for South Africa at the time. The musicians where credited only by first names in fear of the Apartheid police. The music was only available to South Africans as imports during the 1980’s.

Most of the music also included sound recordings of political speeches from apartheid years in South Africa. This material had been collected while he was working as a sound recording engineer for American and European media networks while covering political activity in South Africa during the Apartheid years.

He then toured Eastern Europe with session musicians mainly from Henry Cow. Sony not only had to get permission from Anti-Apartheid organizations to perform, but had to have his passport stamped on a special pull-out page so that he could remove it when he returned to South Africa, as it was illegal for South Africans to enter the former Eastern European countries.

He then went on to produce music for many artists for Sony, BMG, Recommended, M.E.L.T. 2000, African Dope, Microdot and Shifty records. He is also involved in numerous sound recordings for film and commercials. He has also held sound recording workshops with Brian Eno for post graduate students.

PSF: What was your early musical background before you were ever in a band? Who were some of your favorite artists when you were young?

W.S.: I am autodidact, totally self-taught. Started playing guitar at age of 12, learning chords from a guitar course in a weekly magazine. First song I could play was “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence. I loved a South African band called “the Suck”- they destroyed a grand piano on stage and played a killer version of the Black Sabbath song “War Pigs”- (it was) my intro into social comment and music. My friend’s brother had a wah-wah pedal and played a Hendrix riff through it and totally blew my mind. Hendrix was my introduction to electronics– this changed my life. The Suck also played “21st Century Schizoid Man,” a King Crimson song which led me into the murky depths of Prog and ART music. The psychedelic side of the Beatles led me to the work of Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha and I started collecting Indian music from Roopanand Brothers; my favourite Indian record dealer was off Grey Street in Durban (at that time, Durban had the biggest Indian community outside of India in the world). I listened to South Indian Veena music and learned tabla from the Surat School.

PSF: Could you talk about your upbringing and how that influenced your work? Did you have any first hand experiences with apartheid that left an impression on you?

W.S.: I grew up in Cowies Hill, a suburb of Durban. Attended Westville High School but was frustrated with the conservative confines of Christian Nationalist education. I played bass guitar in various school groups, doing Who and Hendrix covers. Left school a year early to go and live in an Krishna Ashram in Desai Nagar near Tongaat. In 1976, he was drafted into the Apartheid army - tried to fail (the) medical by fasting for 30 days drinking only distilled water. Military authorities declared me 100% fit for duty however and I had a 2 year stretch to sit out. I protested that as a Hindu pacifist I couldn’t use a gun so they put me into Medical Services and then in the Band where I played the trombone and enjoyed some formal musical education. I was politicized by Punk in ‘77 and formed a punk band in the army called “Grim Reaper”. I heard of Steve Biko’s death on my birthday whilst standing guard in the vehicle park without a rifle.

PSF: Could talk about any bands you were in before the Surfers started?

W.S.: Very influenced by the Crass/Lee Perry/Pere Ubu /Max Romeo/Talking Heads/Pop Group/This Heat/Art Bears/DAF, etc.. Very influenced by Punk and new wave and Reggae whilst in the army 1976-78 after leaving went to Cape Town and played in various punk/art/new wave bands: Rude Dementals, Happy Ships, Under Two Flags, The Cortisones

PSF: The Kalahari Surfers is essentially you with who ever you can get or choose to play on your recordings?

W.S.: Kalahari Surfers began as a musical exploration between 3 friends of likewise musical and political interests. Working in Cape Town, during the early ’80’s, a number of compositions were realized using a variety of tape machines. We discovered that the best way to compose was to record all of our improvisations, then to revisit, edit, rework and rehearse.

Later, with access to a studio, the process became more refined but essentially the studio or the ability to record was the instrument of composition. I had a fascination and love of gadgets and technology so with the access to multi-track recorders, I was able to realize more of my art alone.

PSF: Describe your creative process- how do you come up with songs?

W.S.: I often come up with a song title or song title idea like “Let’s Build a Shack” which was an obscure allusion to a Swell Maps song called “Lets Build a Car.” I then South Africanize the idea and set it in the near future ala JG Ballard – so the scenario is: we’re running from the cities which have been burnt and rubbled during civil war , families heading for the country with the refrain ” Let’s Build a Shack.” This was also a turn around for whites who don’t have these skills and for whom this would be an alien way of living but is totally normal for many South Africans.

PSF: You started as a sound recording engineer for various international media networks in the 1980s covering political events in South Africa and anti Apartheid activities?

W.S.: I worked as a free-lance sound recordist after moving to Johannesburg in 1983. I could work hard for a few months on a drama or feature film and then plough the money into the studio and spend a few months doing my albums.

PSF: Did you consider the Surfers’ work to be explicitly anti-apartheid?

W.S.: Surfers were an expression of an average white middle class teen’s rage against the injustices of that system. Punk helped me realize that. That we had a right to express ourselves and that we had a duty. This was our reality. We were suffering in the army against our will.

PSF: What censorship did you come across during time under the Apartheid government?

W.S.: I teamed up with Lloyd Ross (of Shifty Records) towards the end of last year (2003). Lloyd made a documentary (for the new South African Broard Corporation under democracy) on James Phillips (musician who had passed away). While he was in the South African Broadcasting Corporation archive, he found records with gouge marks on them. Someone had the job of carefully dragging a nail across the offending track to make sure no-one would play it ( low tech censorship).

PSF: Did you ever have to leave South Africa to record because of censorship?

W.S.: Lloyd Ross had a mobile studio in an old Rand Mines house which we all lived. I went to Lesotho to help him record a group called Uhuru who (because of the reggae band) changed their name to Sankomoto and became, over the years, very successful. They were banned for political reasons from entering South Africa at that time, so the only way to record them was to take the studio there. At that time, we were sharing a house with Jaqui Quinn who was murdered in Lesotho during an operation to kill her husband who was in African National Congress ( the liberation party that fought the Apartheid Government) which was done a Vlakplaas (the Apartheid security police) hit squad directed by Eugene de Kock. Check out the Truth Commission report.

PSF: Your music has a lot of speech recordings of 1980’s political events. Did you collect these and then decide to put music to them?

W.S.: This was the environment we lived in. Later, as international interest peaked and Apartheid was in its last throes, more and more work came from the foreign media networks. I did hard news for CBS News, ABC News, WTN, BBC and ITN in an environment which was hostile to media workers. I was often suffering the same tear gas and police bullying as the protesters. I ran a cassette machine and collected audio whilst working. I still have piles of cassette tapes with all sorts of audio: Hitler Youth type school sports days, Afrikaaner right wingers singing hymns, rallies, marches, police announcements radio broadcasts as I was the collector of Apartheid’s audio garbage.

PSF: Could you talk about the use of humor and satire in your work?

W.S.: South Africans use humour to get out of and express all sorts of troublesome situations – Puns and word plays are part of black newspaper culture and a way of seeing. Living through the John Vorster and (prime minister) P.W. Botha era one couldn’t help laughing a loud at the antics of the State (nothing has changed I might add – check out the work of Zapiro in the Mail and Gaurdian newspaper now), I also found in the early work of the Mothers of Invention very inspiring – the cynical critique of American culture and its covert operations world wide, the jaundiced cynical eye of Frank Zappa always helped me to see South Africa in a certain way.

PSF: Since you use so many field recordings in your work, who were some of the artists who also used this medium that influence your work?

W.S.: Holgar Czukay’s album Movies, Eno & Byrne’s Bush of Ghosts, This Heat– both albums, Karlhenz Stockhausen.

PSF: Looking back now, what are your favorite Surfer albums?

W.S.: The albums fall into two distinct time period– those of the ’80’s which are word and concept albums and those of the post ‘94 freedom period, which are more film and music driven.

Pre ’90’s, I like the Bigger than Jesus album– the last of that lot of work which I think was lyrically the most accomplished. Of the post ‘94 stuff, the last album Panga Management, which was mostly done using Ableton Live, the first major new software I’ve adopted since Protools in the ’80’s.

PSF: Where can one listen or purchase any of your found sound recordings?

W.S.: Everything is a negotiation as have contributed my recordings to, South African artist, William Kentridges theatre production Ubu and the Truth Commission as well as the theatre production Truth in Transition. More recently, Sweetnoise, a metal band from Poland, made use of my work for their new album Tripty.

PSF: When apartheid ended, did you have to change focus musically?

W.S.: I didn’t ‘HAVE to’ as it was more a freedom as like now we can write about love and rivers and trees and shit without being insensitive. My musical freedom was to enjoy working with music without words.

My post-Apartheid work evokes atmospheres of ambiguous discomfort… sort of strange worlds of ethnic misfits. Music suited better to film.

PSF: What musicians toured with you?

W.S.: For the UK and European concerts, Recommended Records put together a band for me which consisted of:

Mick Hobbs (from Officer) on bass
Alig (from Family Fodder) on keyboards
Tim Hodgkinson (from Henry Cow) played keyboards and sax and slide guitar for the East Germany gigs
Chris Cutler on drums (Henry Cow, Art Bears, etc.)
Myself on guitar and vocals and tapes
Maggie Thomas did our sound

In South Africa, I worked with existing bands and we toured together as a two part act:

The Kerels played with me in Durban
The Cherry Faced Lurchers did many gigs for me
Louis Mahlanga and his Musiki Afrika played with Lesego & the Surfers

In France, at the festival of Angoulemem, Ubuyambo and Amampondo have also done gigs and tours with me. Ghetto Muffin was a Ragga outfit I played with in Norway.

PSF: In the 1980’s, you toured Eastern Europe. How did this come about?

W.S.: During the middle of February 1987, the Kalahari Surfers were asked to play at the 17th Festival of Political Song in East Berlin. “Rote Liede” was the title of that years effort and the line up included artists from all over the world. These were the times when politics were fashionable in Western popular music. It had been 10 years since punk, Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev and P. W. Botha were in power and many songwriters worked social comment and political satire into their lyrics. In England left wing pop stars had formed a movement called the Red Wedge which include people like Billy Bragg and the Communards. Communist Chic was in.

I came from a country where a man had gone to prison for having an A.N.C. (liberation movement that fought the apartheid government) flag on his beer mug, where the state employed its Iron Fist against any form of criticism regularly banning and detaining activists and artists. My passport had to have a special removable page when I traveled to the East Bloc so that the South African authorities would not be tempted to enquire about my goings on behind the Iron Curtain.

Chris Cutler was well connected with the East Bloc and set it all up. He was brilliant at getting gigs. We played in East Germany and Soviet Union. I met political exiles in Moscow and in East Germany, people like Max Mfazwe who had fought for (Zimbabwe prime minister) Robert Mugabe and Umkonto (armed wing that fought apartheid) and was married to an East German girl. I later bumped into them in Johannesburg South Africa many years later having resettled in SA after liberation. Good people with interesting stories.

PSF: You toured Brazil also.Who did you play with there?

W.S.: Lesego Rampolokeng and I were invited to perform at a poetry festival in Belo Horizonte and we performed together with backing tracks. The new South Africa had just happened and I was of the opinion that The ANC (newly democratically-elected government in South Africa) ad agency Hunt Lascaris had done a great job on selling the flag, peace and a happy transition to the Nation, along with our great leaders. Indeed, it was heady optimistic times and I told Brazilian journalists the same. Lesego disagreed and said that they were all untrustworthy corrupt sellouts as I guess there was some truth in that.

PSF: You went to Chris Cutler’s Recommended records in the 1980s to record Own Affairs. Why didn’t you record and press it in South Africa?

W.S.: I recorded all my albums in South Africa. They were manufactured in the UK by Chris Cutler’s company because no-one in SA would do them. EMI made me pay for cutting the vinyl acetate of side one of my first album but told me to basically go away and don’t do that sort of thing as it was ‘political, anti-religious and pornographic,’ as they called it (your basic hit rap album now!)

PSF: You named your one album after Tim Hodgkinson’s song on a Henry Cow album?

W.S.: The album is called Living in the Heart of the Beast which Tim took from a book called In the Belly of the Beast (by Lyndall Hare) because that’s what living in S.A. felt like… the Beast.

PSF: You have done recording workshops with Brian Eno?

W.S.: He came to South Africa to do a series of interactive art workshops and basically connect with SA musicians and artists. I engineered the session at the Baxter in Cape Town (February 1998) where he composed with about 30 non musician artists a piece using various found sounds and instruments of great miscellany.

PSF: What soundtracks have you contributed to?

W.S.: Most notably the Truth Commission film of John Boormans called In My Country based on the book Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog.

PSF: What musical acts/groups have you toured with?

W.S.: We played with Fred Frith (from Henry Cow) band Keep the Dog in Russia and during the ’90’s, I had a band called TransSky (a pun on the homeland in Apartheid) and we toured with Massive Attack during their South African visit.

PSF: You used political speech recordings and incorporated them into songs. The song “Teargas” is interesting and great. How did that come about?

W.S.: I had recently played a concert for the End Conscription Campaign (ECC), during which the police rolled a canister of teargas into the hall creating pandemonium. That same evening, I laid down the vocal line for a track which featured a distorted voice shouting ‘Teargas! Tear gas’ over and over and coughing and choking. It was a performance piece in the studio. Tragic comic… that was South Africa in the ’80’s.

I was working then as a film sound recordist to pay off the 16 track tape recorder I had bought for the studio that I shared with Lloyd Ross. The state media machine was like a theatre of the absurd. I used bits of propaganda films in my music: P.W. Botha’s State of Emergency speech, news broadcasts and quiz programs. I’d intercut material that I’d recorded in the field as a documentary sound recordist for the BBC or Channel 4. William Burroughs was the guiding light in splice and paste word/content experiments and I’d devour anything thing that spoke to me in the ironic voice.

PSF: Touring Russia in the 1980’s must have been quite an eye opener for a South African?

W.S.: We played at Festâ- it was put together by the Committee of Youth Organizations,(KOMSOMOL) and was held at the Palace of Youth. Gorbachev was making massive reforms then. I never met a communist in Russia, even though I was staying in the Communist Youth League’s fanciest hotel. It made me feel strange, the distance between foreigners and locals. The haves and have-nots in the socialist dream. The place was awash with Americans. Perestroika and Glasnost were the buzz words. I could get three times the official rate on the black market, but money is worthless when there is nothing to buy.

Luckily I found Melodia (the only Soviet record company) made good vinyl so I stocked up on hundreds of fantastic classical records.

I was amazed at the extraordinary experiments (that) humanity has attempted. The break up of the Soviet Union was beginning… which was the exact opposite to what was happening in South Africa. We were trying to bring all the former homelands under one united South Africa- separate development of all the different races was a bad idea for us. I had many arguments with Russians over this. Here were a people moving toward democracy, away from Socialism, whereas we still had the overtures of Socialism, in fact, one could have died for being a communist in South Africa at that time. To be a rebellious youth in Russia, you’d become a Christian and wear a pendant with a picture of the last Czar aroundyour neck.

To be a rebellious youth in South Africa, you’d be anti-Christian and wear a lapel badge sporting a hammer and sickle. The Russians never got their democracy and we (South Africa) never got our socialism. Another one of God’s curved balls.

PSF: Your original title of one of your albums Bigger than Jesus was banned, and later released as Beach Bomb. Was this as a result of Christians telling everyone that rock music had hidden Satanic messages, or because of multi tracking and sampling?

W.S.: A piece I did called “Play it Backwards” as on my second album used voices from Radio Today (a morning news broadcast of the ’80’s), discussing the hidden messages in rock music, which are found by playing records backwards. I was intrigued, so I ordered the tape from a guy who made a living out of doing this stuff. He’d even written a book, assembling hundreds of examples of these ridiculous messages that he’d discovered by playing his record collection backwards! He later charged that these secret messages could be found on some of Shifty’s releases. We challenged him on this, and by using his same technique, I proved that even Christian songs had demonic undertones, when I demonstrated that the line “God is in all of our aims,” turned into “Satan is in all of our aims” when it was played backwards. He settled out of court.

PSF: Are there other South African bands now that you admire? Are there any that you feel are kindred spirits to you?

W.S.: I have always been intrigued by African computer programming in music – the beginnings of this with Chico’s work on the MC500 on Brenda Fasi’s albums to early Kwaito (songs like “Magents” by Senyaka ) and Arthurs’ Kaffir, right up to the Gabby Leroux’s work with Mandoza. I’m also still an avid listener of ’70’s mbaquanga music, especially now that it has been re released on CD, especially Moises Mchunu, Soul Brothers Abafana Basequdeni and the African Cheese stuff like Harari.

(I like) an experimental rock group called EMP (that) I used for a movie a few months ago- they are really brilliant in an instrumental style similar to what 65 Days Of Static are doing in the UK. Also Felix Leband, Waddy (Max Normal) , Tumi and The Volume, Real Estate Agents, Teba, Crosby, Zukile, MArekta, Mzi & Ginga, Lesego, Marcus Wormstorm- all are out there ploughing a new groove.

I liked Miriam (Makeba) when she was with the Skylarks during the Sophiatown period and Hugh (Masekela) when he was with his band “The Union of South Africa” and of course, he did write one of the best South African songs ever- “Stimela.” For Dollar (Brand), the album he did with Johnny Dyani was for me his greatest- Good News From Africa on the Enya label, a real gem. Sakhile first album was OK. Ladysmith (Black Mambazo) is the most imitated group in our history.

PSF: What do you think the prospects are for the political future of your country?

W.S.: This is an inspiring and amazing country, predictions of which will always surprise one. The present government has taken us down the road of many other African dictatorships, with its corruption and divide and rule personality cult… and that persons’ (South African President Thabo Mbeki) obsession with race, and his veiled Stalinism. He has removed his opposition, not terminally, but clinically and being an exile brought his, understandable, bitterness against whites to the countries leadership. The political spectrum in the ANC divides along the 3 lines: the exiles, the Islanders (those incarcerated on Robben Island like Nelson) and the UDF - those who fought apartheid from within the countries mass democratic movement. It is these latter that Mbeki purged and forced from office a la Joe Stalin.

There are many wonderful people waiting in the wings to lead us back to optimism and good will. With the demise of the Mbeki regime, I feel we will be a great country with abilities to solve our great problems peaceably.

this interview first published on furious.com

The brainchild of award-winning South African filmmakers Vincent Moloi and Norman Maake, Vuma - A Music Revolution, is a six-part documentary series that captures the essence of the local dance music genre, Kwaito. It will be broadcast on SABC1 during the festive season, from 1 December until mid January 2010.

Creating an in-depth understanding of Kwaito’s beginning and influence in the early 1990s, the series tells the untold story of South African youth with all its sophisticated dynamics, through music. It profiles Kwaito legends Oskido, Mandla Spikiri, Thebe, Bruce “Dope” Sebitlo, Mjokes and numerous other groups like Trompies, Boom Shaka, Alaska, Chakaroski, Mafikizolo, Bongo Maffin and many other dancers, producers and club DJs that were at the centre of Kwaito. This formerly underground culture has now become mainstream.

The individual experiences of owners of the successful, black-owned production company, Kalawa Jazmee, form part of this collage of stories. These are individuals who were at the forefront of pioneering this lucrative, independent music industry, which has grown into an avenue for self-expression for many young people.

Moloi and Maake have joined forces to form Glowstars, a production company that focuses on telling the stories of urban youth culture. Both of these filmmakers have worked as directors across genres in the local and international film industry. This is their first film project as co-directors.

“Norman and I are both avid lovers of film and Kwaito, and after years of talking about a project we could do together, Kwaito was a natural choice. We know that iKasi will love this series and we hope the general South African audience will enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it. This has been a two-years labour of love.” says Moloi.

“Kwaito is an important part of us as young South Africans and as film practitioners it is our patriotic duty to capture such history the best way we know how,” adds Maake.

wednesday november 4@arts on main
live 6pm till 9pm composer’s workshop:
MANTRA as formula and as process

LEADER: composer mokale koapeng

WITH: pianists jill richards + liza joubert

producer jean-pierre de la porte

MANTRA is probably the most influential piece of music of the last four decades. It allowed karlheinz stockhausen himself to move uniquely between intuitive, process-based music and more structured, notated music without losing the power of either. MANTRA is at the heart of wolfgang rihms fluent yet logical composing, it is a kit of parts for ‘new simplicity’ composers and a blueprint of karlheinz stockhausens own 27 hour long music theatre LICHT. MANTRA has had a shotgun effect on the way musical possibility is imagined and listing its effects on current music, whether acknowledged or not, would give it the same status as marcel duchamps LARGE GLASS or Picassos DEMOISELLES d’AVIGNON - not to know MANTRA is an irremediable handicap in understanding the present. This is why it is important for MANTRA to be performed many times and in many ways. It needs to enter the repertory of young pianists from where it immediately expands into a new way of hearing and performing bartok, schonberg, messiaen, nancarrow, stravinsky debussy webern boulez and the great jazz piano idioms –few if any compositions have so much power to reinvent their ancestors, to completely disturb and redistribute the 20 c canon and its performing traditions. This is also why composers of all genres need to invent music able to resonate in different ways with MANTRA – not because MANTRA is definitive- nothing is- but because it subtly yet fully translates so many of the objectives of 20 c composers and seems to present a violent and compellingly OTHER reading of ten decades of its- and our- precursors.

Preview and outtake of the forthcoming (second) album of The Mount
Fuji Doomjazz Corporation.
The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble’s live improv alter ego.
‘Succubus’ is a live improv session recorded while viewing Jess
Franco’s exploitation classic ‘Succubus’ from 1969.
Release date mid 2009 on Ad Noiseam.
www.tkde.net www.adnoiseam.net

&
Free Composers’ Workshops - not to be missed!
Mantra
This is to invite you to a special event: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Mantra”, for two pianos and electronics, at Joburg’s most exciting arts venue, Arts on Main on 5 November at 8pm. Admission is free.

This performance by Jill Richards, Liza Joubert (pianos) and Shaughn Macrae (sound projectionist) will be a first for Johannesburg. It recreates the original 1970 analogue specifications of one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. The pianists will do a short user-friendly introduction to the work.
Free Composers’ Workshops with Mantra as a Focus

There will be three free composition and analysis workshops, run by Mokale Koapeng and Jean Pierre de la Porte. These are primarily for composers, but everyone is welcome to attend:

Sunday 1 November, 4pm to 7pm:
Meet the Piece: a workshop with the performers, preceded by an open rehearsal from 10am to 1pm. There will be short video excerpts shown, and then discussion around the similarities and differences between Mantra and other two piano repertoire, working with ring modulation and other challenges of playing Mantra. The workshop will have time for questions and answers.
Monday 2 November, 6pm till 9pm:

Live electronic performance and ring modulation, a workshop run by Shaughn Macrae, about live electronic performance in general, the sound engineer’s role in Mantra, etc, with Tony Voorvelt from Wits Unversity’s physics department, and demonstrations by the pianists as well as violinist Waldo Alexander.
Wednesday 4 November, 6pm till 9pm:

Formula composition and the question of variation; does Mantra help to stimulate our composers and inspire new ideas; engaging in composition without having to work through older styles.

For more information contact 079 183 4283/www.artsonmain.co.za

Dear friends and colleagues

I am happy to announce that my new music work ‘Sonic Tapestry Ⅲ’ will be presented at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ/ Concert Hall of the 21st Century in Amsterdam on Tuesday the 3 November.
‘Sonic Tapestry III’ is a music journey of four centuries of music zigzagging from east to west. The fragments for this tapestry include Bach, Schumann, Sciarrino, Sato and my new piece.
I am preparing a small visual surprise between my music.
On that same evening my new CD-Book -en blanc et noir- will be presented. It is a new cd-release after 10 years. The cd is part of a vinyl size photobook with never published portraits and photos taken by Philip Mechanicus.
I sincerely hope you can come to hear and see me on the 3rd of November.

Tomoko

///////////////////////////////////

Tuesday, 3 November 2009, 20:15

Muziekgebouw aan t IJ, Grote Zaal

Ticket: € 23,- Normaal, € 18,50 Stadspas/CJP

reservation 020-788 2000

www.http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/agenda/291/Tomoko_Mukaiyama/Sonic_Tapestry_III/

Tomoko Mukaiyama : concept / composition / piano

Frank van der Weij : live-electronic

Here is a small interview about the performance.

http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/actueel/46/Interview_met_pianiste_Tomoko_Mukaiyama/

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

Unless writing music proceeds from knowing that you don’t know anything, it adopts an opinionated register as it tends to fall back on whatever is available in the ideas-closet. Writing music is a matter of tone more than content, and tone can only ever be unpredictable, haphazard, immediate en probing (backwards and forwards). The moment writing music is about content, it becomes writing on something else. So I don’t know if I agree with what Boulez is saying (transposed to writing music). Once music becomes part of history, it is severed from experience anyway. The issue of memory is an issue of curatorship, not performance. And language and music in the present can only ever be engaged in guess work and fore-play - but then it can’t be driven by theory, which immediately consumates the relationship.

stephanus muller

Hans Ulrich Obrist: You see a lot of young composers today who work on computers and don’t write the musical score. You might get the impression that electronics are going to lead to the disappearance of the musical score. Do you think that the score should be saved?

Pierre Boulez: Yes, it must exist, because it enables musicians to combine things. And for our collective memory. You know that technique is in a transitory period, however perfect it is, even nowadays. As time goes by the transitory periods are getting shorter. You know, even work made twenty years ago has to be re-recorded onto new support. Hardware is completely renewed every five to ten years, so we have to adapt the old to the new, copying into another language, onto another piece of hardware. We have less problems with nineteenth-century pianos than with twenty-five-year-old technology - and it is impossible to work with such time gaps, so the score is absolutely necessary. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a score with the notes and scales. It can be a different type of score, numbered and digital, any imaginable form is possible. But it must be written out so that whatever future developments take place, any technical incompatibility can be rethought, taking into account the new hardware. In other words, you can rethink the way in which the score is written, but its data is still needed.

Philippe Parreno: In a sense, would you say it’s the score of the score.

Pierre Boulez: Exactly.

from “an interview with pierre boulez”
in sound unbound: sampling digital music and culture
edited by paul d. miller
2008

reviewed by Alexander Tudor

Judged by its cover alone, Deceit (1981) is the great prophetic record of the era – the front depicts a scream beneath a mask that is a collage of: Mushroom-Cloud between-the-eyes; JFK & Khruschev shaking hands; Stars & Stripes across the tongue; Ron & Nancy on the forehead. These are the images still familiar in 2008. The lyric-sheet is scattered with the same clippings, and some more helpful captions. Much of this is identical to the collage ingredients for OK Computer (1997) and its singles: what to do in the event of a bomb, or when the siren sounds; where tactical nukes are deployed, worldwide; those oddly dehumanizing line-drawings of how to prepare your fall-out shelter. Deceit came out in 1981, though – a couple of years before Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative); before Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein; before the first massacre of the Kurds. Ten years later, GW1; ten years further on, 9/11; then the War for Oil, then the Credit Crunch; and only this week can we see real hope of a decline in Republican war-mongering and financial mismanagement (the legacy of Milton Friedman, via Reagan & Thatcher). You know most of this; the point is, to get a sense of history… but also a sense of “prophecy” as a meaningful term in the context of avant-garde music.

Back in 1979, punk in the sense of scuzzed-up glam or sped-up blues had already exhausted its capacity for subversion. Nonetheless, a door had clearly been opened for the experimentalism of post-punk (in a loose sense), and within that (or overlapping), a kind of proto-industrial music that has little to do with Ministry, NIN, or Front 242. Alongside Lydon’s definitive nail-in-the-coffin of the Pistols – Metal Box (1979) – This Heat’s debut was the sound of re-invention and refutation, both musical and ideological. Heavier than Throbbing Gristle or Cabaret Voltaire, the industrial analogies (at the time) require some contextualizing: industrial as a simile (metal on metal), industrial as a reflection of process (customized machines), industrial as an allusion to critiques of the “military industrial complex”. The best (or worst) was yet to come, however…

Deceit (1981) is prophetic, for a start, in that it’s glossolalic – it’s gibberish, it’s speaking in tongues, it’s too many ideas at once, and if you throw them at the wall, some of them are bound to stick, and look like a warning three decades later, if not like Revelations. Thing is, prophecy often attracts the wrong people, and gets ignored by the rest, when they assume it must refer to some specific event in the future (i.e. Kabbalism), rather than referring to the horror here and now, but visibly imminent to those who can see the historic patterns (…which is one aspect of Gnosticism). Track 5, ‘Cenotaph’ spells this out: “his-tory / his-tory / repeats itself / repeats itself / Poppy Day – remember poppies are red / and the fields are full of poppies” – it’s literally a song about decoding symbols, and not letting the signal become noise; it’s not a Fuck You to the jingoism and self-righteousness of the generation who “served” (as Sid, Siouxsie, and others claimed their Nazi regalia was meant to suggest), nor does this song disrespect the dead, but it does demand that we re-consider our values. The most recognizably “punk” track on the album, ‘SPQR’ (Track 4), identifies another repetition, and how we’re taught by rote to repeat the values, and sometimes the mistakes, of our parents – right back to the imperialism and centralized government of 2,000 years ago: “we’re all Romans / we know all about straight roads / every road leads home / home to Rome / amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.”

The devastating industrial freak-out, ‘Makeshift Swahili’ (Track , condenses most of these ideas into one song, although you wouldn’t know it at first from the Dalek-voice: “…makeshift she sings / in her native German / you try to understand / what she’s trying to say / she says ‘You’re only as good / as the words you understand / and you, you don’t understand / the words.’ / CHORUS: Tower of Babel!!! / Swaaaaaaahili!!! / It’s all Greek to me!” The middle-eight introduces a pretty guitar figure, and a second voice relates a fragment of history that might have been dropped in as a sample, years later: ” ‘we give you firewater / you give us your land’ / ‘white-man speak with forked tongues / but it’s too late now / to start complaining…’” The sinister drones resume almost immediately, and then the song explodes with an intensity surpassing punk at its most violent – Charles Hayward shrieking “Rhubarb! Rhubarb! Rhubarb!” Granted, this track may not be the most obvious demonstration of the genius of This Heat – Yes, Babel remains the best-known parable of the dangers of imperialism (if not globalization) collapsing under the weight of its ambition; there are also hints that language is power, and literacy was an instrument of subjugation, in the case of the Native Americans, rather than being the gift of enlightenment (see also, Gang of Four’s contemporaneous Entertainment!). These allusions operate according to the collage-principles of juxtaposition and partial-tearing to create new meanings – collage being the best known Dadaist strategy – but This Heat also employ sound-poetry and a kind of automatic-speaking akin to channelling and possession (these being associated with Dadaism’s loopier, more magic(k)al experiments, pre-WWI). Art-history lesson almost done, it remains to point out that when inter-war Surrealism re-visited Dadaism, it used the slogan “Surrealism in the service of the revolution”, and was firmly Marxist in its orientation. If 1970s English Progressive Rock was a debased surrealism in the service of trippiness, This Heat brought the revolutionary spirit back.

What of the rest of the album? It’s a complex beast, whose intra-textualities are as numerous as the inter-textualities. The use of loops, drones, found-sounds, and unusual percussion (girders, dummy-heads) was so elaborate that you have to look to The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ for a precursor, and as far ahead as Aphex Twin when describing the more danceable and abrasive tracks. A guitarist as evil – but subtle – as Charles Bullen wouldn’t be found until Dave Pajo (of Slint), and if you want a comparison for the first album, only Liars have come close, with Drum’s not Dead (2006). Personally, I can hear the ghost of Nico channelled into This Heat’s weird mix of fucked-up lullabies (Track 1: ‘Sleep’), and drone-based proto-industrial nightmares. The drawing of parallels between the End of Rome & the Cold War Era is also very Nico, and the phrase “the sound of explosions” on ‘A New Kind of Water’ (Track 10) feels like a reference to Eno’s “bomb-noises” for Nico’s The End. (Eno also recorded Manzanera’s pre-Roxy band, Quiet Sun, who included one Charles Hayward, later of This Heat. Rhubarb Rhubarb.)

Opening track ‘Sleep’ tells us we’re all unconscious, lulled by commercials (hence “softness is a thing called Comfort”), and these operate on us like Pavlov’s dogs (CHORUS: “stimulus and response”). ‘Triumph’ might be suggesting a parallel between Neighbourhood Watch (imported from the US in 1982 – a landmark in the history of surveillance), and the early years of Nazism, when Riefenstahl assembled her filmic montage Triumph of the Will. ‘SPQR’ is sung in the first person plural and refers to the supposedly democratic electorate as “unconscious collective” – Cold War propaganda and sci-fi alike often fantasized the enemy as an insectile hive-mind, but this song isn’t about an external enemy: the enemy is now internal. ‘Independence’ (Track 9) is, quite literally, the Declaration of Independence. Ask yourself, as a UK-citizen, have you ever read it? Do you know what it says? Could you imagine trying to implement its ideals now? Doesn’t its endorsement of revolution sound – well, “un-American” (as the Patriot Act defines “American”)? The climax is post-punk masterpiece and personal favourite, ‘A New Kind of Water’, which layers un-synchronized drums, bass, and a chiming guitar line – a distant siren that hasn’t yet been recognized as a warning signal. As the parts cycle, and change in volume, the notes interact differently. The initial chorus vocals are those of impotent, infantilized consumers (”we were told to expect more / and now that we’ve got more / we want more”). After that, the vocal delivery is soulless and hollow – Winston Smith at the end of 1984 – we have hope, it says: ‘a cure for cancer / we’ve got men on the job.’ Urgency increases… the drums begin to pound… you realize the apocalypse is here and you wish you were in Neverland (”fly away Peter / hideaway Paul…”). The title of the final track is written in Japanese characters, transliterated into Romaji (’Hi Baku Shyo’), and then translated into English (’Suffer Bomb Disease’). There are no words in this murky, marshy soundscape – maybe this is the world in which only cockroaches have survived. Maybe English-speakers are only tolerated as slaves of the victorious “Yellow Peril” (hence the Romaji-script). Then again, maybe the bomb has already dropped, and we became insects without realizing it.

this review first appeared on drownedinsound.com

Ours is a continent infused with magic and lore, there is an ancience to Africa that many have forgotten in their daily travels through spacetime and shopping malls. BLK JKS are effortlessly tapped into this knowledge. Stripping away the veneer of contemporaneity, with its capitalist prejudice and digital obsessions, the JKS make a music that straddles time as it does influence and culture - their heart is thumpingly South African, but their reach is everywhere. It’s as easy to imagine them reverently abiding the words of legendary sangoma Credo Mutwa; as being awed by a particularly intergalactic Eddie Hazel guitar solo; or admiring a devious percussive experiment by Aphex Twin.

BLK JKS wear mystery like a casual tee. They seem to permanently reside in that dusk time-zone where familiar objects are cast in a nebulic glow - transformed into Other. I ask co-founder and axe-slinger Mpumi Mcata whether the mysterious informs their experience of reality: “We come from Africa sir, the Mystical are always amongst us; some people say angels we say ancestors - these energies are everywhere - what an amazing thing…to be floating in out of space_we hope our music/After Robots in some way allows people to drop the distractions and just revel in the wonder of being - it’s the drug of all drugs; to be connected.”

While the media has latched onto the ‘Black guys playing Rock?’ surprise (tellingly omitting the likes of Fishbone and Living Colour - and, for that matter, the entirety of Funk - from memory), and reach for the most exciting blurb to box their ridiculously anticipated ‘After Robots’, BLK JKS’ music speaks for itself, and often in tongues.
Mpumi monosyllabically asserts BLK JKS’ attitude to all this, “‘After Robots’ rides/battles a rather tall wave of hype that’s been building since the Mystery EP, do you embrace this expectation?”, Mpumi: “No.”

The last year has been quite a ride, culminating in their full-length debut recorded in Jimi-drenched Electric Lady Studios NYC. The JKS had been making ripples abroad even before droppin their virally popular Mystery EP in March. The unexpected darlings of all the right music and culture zines, their waves have swollen to such dimensions that ‘After Robots’ clocked in a 78 on Metacritic, with glowing reviews from the likes of The Onion (A.V Club); Spin magazine and PopMatters - a significant splash for any outfit.

Mpumi was kind enough to exchange binary code with us, from the midst of the American leg of their ‘After Robots’ tour:

*Your songs often enter a kind of trance/invocational feel - is performing a spiritual sensation for you?
“Yes.”

*You guys seem to fit seamlessly into the Chimurenga fold (PASS etc.), do you enjoy their myriad endeavours?
“Indeed, those guys are amazing - Forwarding the Agenda…we’re totally into them_phambili ngo Mzabalazo!!!! - lots of good work being done by South African peoples right now, it’s so refreshing that after just over 10 yrs of “democracy” and “freedom” we’re coming into our own; not so much corporate cock blocking anymore - although it’s not all roses - we’re really getting over the crab-in-bucket stuff and holding each other up.”

*I-Pod or tape-deck?
“Record Player (Vinyl Deck)”

*What music/artists have been making you guys smile or nod-in-rhythm in the last coupla months?
“Well plenty - Mastadon… and we like Righard Kapp’s new album [’Strung like a compound eye’]; always swim back to Bheki Mseleku’s ‘Celebration’, and things like Baaba Maal and the Brazilian Girls’ get-together on his new album ‘Television’ etc.”

*It’s been something of a whirlwind since you guys hooked up with Diplo Stateside last year - what have been some highlights of your international adventures?
“Being on a bill that read Squarepusher and BLK JKS at South Bank in London, I mean when we saw that poster/////// it was a super gig, we played after him, we were the only acts and he brought a huge rig with Pink Floyd-style light and then struck it down when he was done and all that was left was three amps and a drumkit - a little bit of Wow!”

‘After Robots’ is happening all around you - it’s time to get onto the train, destination? BEYOND

[originally published in Muse magazine]

this review first appeared in oor.nl

This ink is daunting. In preparation of teasing this feature into view, I am listening to ‘Bitches Brew’ for the first time in years. And the opening strains, instructively, and deceptively quietous (the proverbial ellipse preceding rupture), displace me: I am seventeen again, and I have unwittingly opened Pandora’s box by nothing more innocent than pressing ‘play’. I am unprepared for this shit. A new alphabet is at the door, and I’ve naively let it in.

‘Bitches Brew’ is one of those inspired works of art that can’t be over-praised, words literally pale. It is also one of those rare works - rare in any technical field of endeavour - that don’t date. This is a central characteristic of true, naked originality: To be so self-contained, so self-defined, as to bear no signs of its location in time. Miles Davis was quite a kerel; few today can dispute his gargantuan presence in 20th century music. He shared the insatiable, dionysian genius of that other creative giant, Picasso. By the 60’s Miles had already altered the currents of Jazz twice, re-introducing melody and space to the then-buzybee soloing era of Be-Bop, with his appropriately named ‘Birth of The Cool’ in 1950, and freeing Jazz from its ironically rigid chord-obsessions by spearheading modal Jazz, in what some have called the perfect sonic event: ‘A Kind of Blue’ (1959).

But Mr. Davis didn’t know about standing still. It was the late Sixties - Rock was hitting its second mighty crescendo; everybody and their tannie were opening the doors of perception; Funk was beaming into view; and Sex was tearing off its clothes. Times were stimulating. Miles was with a young beaut called Betty Mabry (who herself would turn out quite the motherfucker - hint, Mabry was her maiden name), whom Miles had recently pedestalled as his central muse, with the sonic gorgeousity of 68’s ‘Filles De Kilimanjaro’. Mrs. Davis (yes, THAT Betty Davis, underrated Funk Maestress ala ‘They say I’m different’) was very much of-the-scene at the time, and introduced Miles to the psychedelic punch of Hendrix and Sly Stone.
The deal was sealed. Jazz didn’t know it yet, but a bomb was about to go off, ironically cued by the hush of ’69’s ‘In a Silent Way’.

At the time of recording, Jazz was considered an art of the acoustic instrument. The handful of jazzos who dared explore electricity were seen as musicians using gadgets to disguise obvious lack of skill and finesse. Electric instruments were taboo, a vulgar crutch. Having tentatively insinuated electricity into 1968 recordings ‘Water Babies’ and the afore-mentioned ‘Filles’, Miles finally shrugged off the purist’s glare with ‘In a Silent Way’, a fully electric silence that preambled ‘Bitches Brew’.

But ‘Brew’ is a beast unto itself. AT LEAST two drummers, two bassists, and two horns are juggling sound at any given point in its timespace, resulting not in cacaphony, but blisteringly detailed sonic texture. Interestingly, the impression ‘Bitches Brew’ leaves in hindsight is that of storm, and slow-motioned explosions; but on actual listening, the stretches of sound are for the most part laid-back. There Are many bursts, many slashes of fever - especially in John McLaughlin’s staccato-pathic fretwork, which suggests the scrawls of mechanical arachni - but, ultimately, ‘Bitches Brew’ doesn’t flaunt its energy, its potency. Most of its space is a lazy stretching of musculature.

One of the first albums to hint at what would become Fusion and Jazz-rock - certainly the most influential - ‘Brew’ had Rock fans’ jaws clanking onto the floor. McLaughlin was a guitar revelation, and Miles showed that Jazz could do fire-and-brimstone as well as any stadium-straddling Rock outfit.
Also influential on the yet-to-be-born Electronica movement, ‘Bitches Brew’ is a crackling meditation more than an album - as ambient as Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works vol.2′, only an ambience of storm. Its production was also phenomenal. Opener ‘Pharao’s Dance’ alone contained 17 edits, with frequent loops and cut’n'pastes - unheard of at the time - producer Teo Macera wielding the studio like an instrument in itself.

Turbulence shaking hands with chill.
Darkly dazzling.

[first published in Muse magazine]

to contact the collective: shaneleecooper@gmail.com

l-r: kevin flame, clive dickinson, keith harwood