This year’s African Soul Rebels tour boasted two of the continent’s most powerful acts. But it was the outfit in the middle, South Africa’s Kalahari Surfers, that proved the most subversive.
Tucked behind a desk strewn with laptops and turntables, the trio mixed electro dub and drum’n’bass with lyrics that challenged, probed and borrowed from ANC speeches; dreadlocked Teba Shumba delivered dramatic sub-commentary in Zulu and tongue-clicking Xhosa. The wallop it packed was too much for some in the largely white crowd, for whom African music isn’t African music without djembes and polyrhythms.
Could you put on record for me how disappointed and shocked I was at the music and exile conference to be approached by Gwen Ansell at tea time on day 2 and asked to stop “bashing her party”
when I asked what “party” she was talking about I was told “the ANC”
I replied to her that I had quoted from Chats’s paper in which he quoted Hugh Masekela and that anyway we live in a democracy and it is my democratic right to express my opinion on the behaviour of the ruling party if I feel like it.
The little Stalinist then had the temerity to mention our spat from her podium before her paper … blathering some nonsense about how much good “Her Party” had done for women!
I’m still furious.
Some-one should tell her that the ANC today is like one of those dinosaur Rock bands from the 70’s who are still playing gigs but with completely different personnel and a string of disappointed fans. It is not the same party we voted for in 1994.
This is just a short note to encourage you to have a look at a documentary I have just edited called WELCOME NELSON which will be broadcast by etv on wednesday 10 february at 8pm.
This documentary takes a different angle on the 20th anniversary celebrations of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
The release is analysed in terms of Guy Debord’stheory of the spectacle and views the event as an entirely staged media coup for the Machiavellian F.W. De Klerk.
Instead of the customary portrayal of Dr. Mandela as a liberating Messiah he is shown to have been taken completely by surprise by his release, pleading with De Klerk to allow him to stay inside for longer, and tragically identifying with his white warders in what must be one of the most acute cases of Stockholm Syndrome in history.
The never-before screened behind the scenes footage of the press conference and first speech provides a fascinating glimpse into how the news media shape and manipulate our memories of the future.
The documentary is shot, produced and directed by CRAIG MATTHEW
sound design and original music score DANIEL EPPEL
sound recordist WARRICK SONY
theme song SIMONE WHITE
editor ARYAN KAGANOF
2010, 23 minutes
first broadcast wednesday 10 february 8pm on etv
We meet South Africa’s avant-garde radical Kalahari Surfers ahead of the upcoming African Soul Rebels UK tour with Oumou Sangare and Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou.
“I’m an African and I’m a soul rebel. It’s logical that I should be playing on the tour.” Warrick Sony speaks simply and softly but his voice masks an angrier, more complex character. This maverick South African pioneer has always been sensitive to the aural and political currents that surrounded him, absorbing the best and challenging the worst. The musical education of the Kalahari Surfers founder evolved in the context of Apartheid; late 1970s and early 1980s South Africa, where the law was imposed by a racist, fervently Christian and staunchly anti-communist political elite.
“My stuff is very eclectic”, he says, referring to his music, in his musing, lilting South African accent. His sentences seem to float. Just when I think they are landing and prepare to ask another question, he takes off with further thoughts. “I grew up with the idea of the guitar” he says. Another pause. “Rock music was the norm. But then I grew up in Durban, which had the largest Indian community in the world outside India. I was very influenced by Indian music and culture. I had lessons at the Hindu school. I learnt the tabla, rhythmic music, Sunni music. And I was influenced by the way Zulus play and the Shanga from Mozambique…”
Sony talks of his time in the brass section of an army band, playing the B-flat horn, the euphonium, and where he also taught himself the drums. He was eventually released from compulsory military service, something he loathed so much he went on a thirty day hunger strike in protest, drinking only water. “Then punk happened. It was ’77” he adds abruptly. “My dad came back from London with a slew of punk records; The Pistols, The Clash, The Boomtown Rats and reggae…Reggae was a big turning point. Practising bass at the time I was trying to be like Stanley Clarke and then I realised I could do it the African way, that the less you play, the more powerful you are.”
His first album Own Affairs was released in 1984 thanks to Chris Cutler’s Recommended Records, a radical London label. “Their punk and African elements were a huge influence. But also I drew a lot from them on the political side. These guys were serious communists, Trotskyists even…” Together they produced Sony’s second album Living in the Heart of the Beast in 1985, to critical acclaim.
The Kalahari Surfers aspired to bring the radical stance of punk against an ultra-Conservative political regime. Using early Frank Zappa albums as a guiding template, Sony began cutting up tape and re-formulating politicians’ audio clips, presenting ironic and sometimes scathing social comments to the country’s youth. “Whoever owned the media owned the mind” says Sony. So he began his own one man media backlash. What was the impact? “A splash and a ripple” he says. “In South Africa at the time, not many people were being very outspoken. I set a legal precedent in that one of my albums was banned.” He refers to his fourth album Bigger Than Jesus, produced in 1989. The title was a nod to Lennon’s controversial 1966 statement. The Beatles singer was assassinated in 1980. In 1989 Salman Rushdie, under Islamic fatwa for The Satanic Verses, was speaking in Cape Town when a bomb threat cleared the venue hall. “I was struck by censorship, struck that you could die for your art” says Sony.
Although presented as a collective, Kalahari Surfers is actually Sony’s long-term personal alias, providing some protection against persecution by the South African authorities. But Warrick Sony has sought more than mere political provocation over the years, engaging with numerous other artists in live and recording collaborations, including Soweto performance poet Lesego Rampolokeng, whose contributions have provided Sony with the kind of lyrical substance he’s so keenly desired and who appears with him on the upcoming tour.
Indeed together their work reaffirms Sony’s initial claim, that truly, the Kalahari Surfers are genuine African Soul Rebels.
African Soul Rebels 2010 UK tour
Featuring: Oumou Sangare, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou and Kalahari Surfers with Lesego Rampolokeng
18 February // Poole Lighthouse lighthousepoole.co.uk
19 February // Brighton Dome Concert Hall brightondome.org
20 February // London Barbican barbican.org.uk
21 February // Northampton Royal & Derngate royalandderngate.co.uk
22 February // Bristol Colston Hall colstonhall.org
24 February // Basingstoke The Anvil anvilarts.org.uk
25 February // Warwick Arts Centre warwickartscentre.co.uk
26 February // Liverpool Philharmonic Hall liverpoolphil.com
27 February // Edinburgh Usher Hall usherhall.co.uk
28 February // Manchester Bridgewater Hall bridgewater-hall.co.uk
2 March // Leicester De Montfort Hall demontforthall.co.uk
3 March // The Sage Gateshead thesagegateshead.org
27 January 2010 9.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m. (followed by the Hartmann/Moerane concert at the Linder Auditorium at 8.00 p.m.)
Wednesday 27 January 2010
9:00 Welcome and introduction
Session 1: Exile, Literature and Music
9:15 Muff Andersson - The nomad sings, the nomad walks, the nomad rests: the ‘condition’ of exile
9:35 Matildie Thom-Wium - ‘My country, my dry, forsaken country’: On exile in Arnold van Wyk’s, NP van Wyk Louw’s and Ovid’s Tristia.
9:55 Willie Kgositsile - Title to be confirmed
10:15 Questions/comments/discussion
10:45 Tea
Session 2: Identities
11:15 Michael Haas - From Bach to Schönberg: How “German” was music from fin de Siècle Vienna?
12:05 Xoli Norman - Title to be confirmed
12:25 Stephanie Vos - Interpreting the notion of nationality in the case of John Joubert
16:00 Jean-Pierre de la Porte - Exile on the spot: how does one recognize minor music?
16:30 Pre-concert talk by Mokale Koapeng (on Moerane) - Title to be confirmed
17:00 Pre-concert talk by Tim Jackson (on Hartmann) - Title to be confirmed
18:00 Symposium ends
18:05 Drinks and dinner at Goethe
19:15 Travel to Linder
20:00 Concert at Linder - Moerane, Hartmann and Mozart
Thursday 28 January 2010
Session 5: Places
9:00 David Coplan - S.A. Jazz in Exile: Exporting Sophiatown and District 6
9:20 Hilde Roos - Opera in exile: the Eoan Group
9:40 Gwen Ansell - So close to home: South African jazz in African exile
10:00 Questions/comments/discussion
10:20 Tea
Session 6: People
10:50 Tim Jackson - keynote address - Title to be confirmed
11:40 Aryan Kaganof - Blue Notes from Johnny
12:00 Chris van Rhyn - The wingless flight – A consideration of Priaulx Rainier and her Requiem in the context of exile
12:40 Colette Szymczak - Jonas Gwangwa, musician and cultural activist
13:00 Questions/comments/discussion
13:30 Lunch
Session 7: Perspectives
14:15 Christine Lucia - The smell of a grass fire
14:35 Chats Devroop - Emotional displacement amongst South African Jazz Musicians who stayed behind
14:55 Mokale Koapeng - Composing in South Africa
The Music and Exile: North-South Narratives Symposium explores the relationship between sound and place in South Africa and internationally. This is done from the perspective of scholars, performers, composers and other stakeholders in the discourse, and covers a wide variety of music, including art music, jazz, South African traditional and popular music. The Symposium forms part of the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, and will present an informative and thought-provoking extension of the Festival’s 16 music concerts. The Symposium is specially linked with the concert on 27 January at the Linder Auditorium, where works of double-exiled composer Friedrich Hartmann and South African composer Michael Moerane will be performed.
The topic of exile is of great significance in music of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century, as the political situations of Apartheid and the Second World War, to name only two instances, caused many migrations. Exile is, however, not only limited to experiences of political oppression: exile could be forced or voluntary (or combinations of both), as well as physical and/or spiritual. Composers or performers who have been forced to leave their countries are different to those who leave it voluntarily; musicians who use their music to migrate ‘inwards’ in their art are different to those who use it to remember the places they have left behind. Exile prompts categories like ‘Before the departure’; ‘uprootment’, ‘flight’, ‘arrival’, ‘place’, ‘new beginnings’, ‘nostalgia for home’ and ‘return’. Although these conditions of exile are universal, and enable a geographically and historically wide-ranging discussion, exile can be seen as a topos of South African cultural, and specifically musical, production.
Some of the prominent scholars who will present papers at the symposium include Timothy Jackson (University of North Texas), Michael Haas (Jewish Museum, Vienna), Christine Lucia (Stellenbosch University), David Coplan (University of the Witwatersrand) and Gwen Ansell (author of Soweto Blues). There will also be discussions led by Stephanus Muller (Stellenbosch University) with composers and performers Michael Blake, Mokale Koapeng, Steve Dyers, aryan kaganof and Warrick Sony.
Members of the public are welcome and attendance is free. To reserve a place please send an e-mail to dpt@johannesburg.goethe.org. For more information, contact Stephanie Vos at 012 429 6782 or svos@unisa.ac.za, or visit the website www.join-mozart-festival.org. The symposium programme will be made available on the website next week.
the african noise foundation is proud to anounce that two of its members feature in the mail and guardian list of top south african music recordings of the decade 2000-2009.
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.
Godfather of local electronica, Warrick Sony aka The Kalahari Surfers, needs no introduction. Following his musical rebirth in 2000 Sony has gifted us his epiphanic masterpiece ‘Akasic Record’ (2000), all mystery and dreamy elegance, followed by the more upbeat, bass-driven ‘Muti media’ (2003) and the excellent ‘Panga management’ (2007); this in addition to 2003’s trance outing through Microdot Records, ‘Conspiracy of Silence’.
While all this was going on, a great, unreleased collaboration was coming to life in the shadows. Sony gives us a peek into the makings of what sounds to be a magnificent beast. As he put it: “ex-ORB Greg Hunter and Kris Weston vs. me and Brendan Jury. Unlimited budget and never finished – began in 1998 and a version finished now. 2 continents, self-flagellation, yoga and the beach!”
Warrick’s low-down: “[MELT2000’s Robert Trunz] suggested a collaboration [between Trans.Sky, comprising Warrick Sony and Brendan Jury, and] his favourite producer Greg Hunter, who at that point was finishing off his ‘Alien Soap Opera’ project and decided to swop freezing London for a particularly fantastic Cape Town summer.
‘Turntabla’ began in the summer of 1998 at what was then Shifty Studios in Camp Street, Cape Town. Greg fell in love with a Berimbau I bought when I was in Brazil, and worked on it day and night until he was shitfuckn hot on it. Brendan did string stuff on his viola and processed viola. We were jamming with piano, tabla, viola, veena, berimbau, mridangam, turntables, udu pots.. We even went out and bought and old Wurlitzer church organ for the bass pedals – I’ve never had so much fun in a recording. I think we all did.”
Following the initial swell of inspiration the project was dormant for two years, with Hunter and Weston back in the UK and other key conspirator Brendan Jury moving to Joburg. “Greg returned in 2000 and we finished the album at Milestone [studios], blowing all their main studio speakers in the process. This was a very productive period and the album shifted from the very synthesized sound to more organic; Greg taking control and shaping performances from myself, Madala Kunene, and a string quartet for 2 of the tracks.”
“The album lay around for a decade until Robert Trunz asked me if I wouldn’t mind doing some of my own mixes - a sort of remix of an album that never was. I returned to the album, found amazing performances [to replace some uncleared samples] that we’d done ourselves, and some great Madala Kunene guitar.. and so I reworked 3 quarters of the album.”
With Greg Hunter and Warrick Sony as inter-successive heads of this decade-spun project, and all the heady, exotic ingredients in the mix, I can’t wait to wrap my ears around this one!
On May1 I finished reading a thriller called ” Wolves Eat Dogs ” by Martin Cruz Smith
Set in Chernobyl 20 years after the the worst nuclear accident in history. I was spellbound by the descriptions of the ghost town and the JG Ballard like landscape…it is science fiction become fact. Three years after the accident
I visited and played gigs in the former Soviet Union never really being aware of how massive the impact that disaster had been then. The novel inspired me to find out more about this and what it means to us now. So many of the issues of the 80’s are reappearing today like bounced cheques. I thought May Day particularly auspicious to put this together because it happened just before and good Soviets were busy preparing for the big day.
I stumbled upon this website /blog by a woman who calls herself Filatova Elena Vladimirovnaa -
She is in love with a Kawasaki big ninja, ZZR-1100 (ZX-11) and rides it through radioactive countryside and villages like Pripyat the city 3 kms from Chernobyl which was evacuated.
She also takes photos and writes a journal.
“My favourite are roads that haven’t been ridden for years. Sometimes, I leave a log on the road to see if someone else will travel here. When I return in a year or two, seeing my log has not been moved suggests that I still have no followers.”
Her passion (apart from the bike )is the Chernobyl disaster and she has collected just about every bit of info about the event that exists
the main page to her site is here:
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/highres/highres.html
her photo journey through Chernobyl and surrounding villages is here http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
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the story of Chernobyl Reactor 4 (the worlds biggest nuclear power station -5 & 6 were still in being built ) : as told by Elena:
On the Friday evening of April 25, 1986, the reactor crew at Chernobyl-4, prepared to run a test the next day to see how long the turbines would keep spinning and producing power if the electrical power supply went off line. This was a dangerous test, but it had been done before. As a part of the preparation, they disabled some critical control systems - including the automatic shutdown safety mechanisms.
Shortly after 1:00 AM on April 26, the flow of coolant water dropped and the power began to increase.
At 1:23 AM, the operator moved to shut down the reactor in its low power mode and a domino effect of previous errors caused an sharp power surge, triggering a tremendous steam explosion which blew the 1000 ton cap on the nuclear containment vessel and rised it in the air.
Some of the 211 control rods melted and then a second explosion, whose cause is still the subject of disagreement among experts, threw out fragments of the burning radioactive fuel core and allowed air to rush in - igniting several tons of graphite insulating blocks.
Once graphite starts to burn, its almost impossible to extinguish. It took 9 days and 5000 tons of sand, boron, dolomite, clay and lead dropped from helicopters to put it out. The radiation was so intense that many of those brave pilots died.
It was this graphite fire that released most of the radiation into the atmosphere and troubling spikes in atmospheric radiation were measured as far as thousands of miles away.
These were inexcusable errors of design.
The causes of the accident are described as a fateful combination of human error and imperfect technology. Andrei Sakharov said, that Chernobyl accident demonstrates that our system cannot manage modern technology.
In keeping with a long tradition of Soviet justice, they imprisoned several people who worked on that shift - regardless of their guilt. 25 from the shift died.
Radiation will stay in the Chernobyl area for tens thousand years, but humans may begin repopulating the area in about 600 years - give or take three centuries. The experts predict that, by then, the most dangerous elements will have disappeared - or been sufficiently diluted into the rest of the world’s air, soil and water. If our government can somehow find the money and political will power to finance the necessary scientific research, perhaps a way will be discovered to neutralize or clean up the contamination sooner. Otherwise, our distant ancestors will have to wait untill the radiation diminishes to a tolerable level. If we use the lowest scientific estimate, that will be 300 years from now……some scientists say it may be as long as 900 years.
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any-one remember the hit song by Nena -
99 Red Balloons guess what it’s about…..
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You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got
Set them free at the break of dawn
Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base bugs in the software
Flash the message, something’s out there
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by
99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells it’s red alert
There’s something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky as 99 red balloons go by
99 Decision street
99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super flurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we’ve waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by
99 knights of the air
Ride super high tech jet fighters
Everyone’s a super hero
Everyone’s a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify, and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by
99 dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It’s all over and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go
NOTE: These lyrics are from the English version of the song.
To see a literal translation of the German original, see: 99 Luftballons - English.
Text: Carlo Karges (English by Kevin McAlea)
Musik: J. U. Fahrenkrog-Petersen
I got back into surfing a few years ago, taking it easy with a longish board at Muizenburg, and was amazed at the style and dedication of small group of black kids who had taken up Long board surfing there as well. Here is a short pilot movie of the story of the man behind them . I even allowed them to use my music
Still awake as day is breaking
my spirit’s broken too
Fed on leeks, by now too weak
to speak when spoken to
Nannies, fussing with flannels
feeding the spaniel celery
These grey sickbay days
Slowly the sacred core decays
Above the bed the virgin’s head
perspective all askew
On the rail a grail of pale
medicinal gruel
Nurses, whispering verses
click shut their purses and depart
These grey sickbay days
Slowly the sacred core decays
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from Desperate Straights - Henry Cow
