27.04.2012
27.04.2012
Return of the ‘White Zulu’, 14. Mai 2009
SOUTH African legend Johnny Clegg is touring Down Under in May and June 2009, 13. Mai 2009
Johnny Clegg, Writer as well as Musician, 18 Mai 2009
By Thabiso Mochiko
http://www.busrep.co.za/general/print_article.php?fArticleId=2257326&fSectionId=563&fSetId=662
October 12, 2004
Johannesburg - Unused electronic material will finally be put to good use
following yesterday's launch of African Sky, an electronic-waste (e-waste)
recycling company.
The firm said it would recycle obsolete goods such as cellphones, computers and
switchboards through its partnership with the world's largest electronic
recycling group, Citiraya.
Allan Werth, African Sky's chief executive, said the components would be shipped
to Citiraya, while plastics and metals would be recycled locally.
"We don't have the technology to recycle the components and we believe that
Citiraya has the capability to turn the goods into good value," he said.
Ninety six percent of a telephone could be built from recycled material.
African Sky, started four months ago, specialises in the recovery and recycling
of surplus, defective and obsolete electronics equipment.
It is owned by empowerment group Vuthela, with a 52.5 percent stake. The balance
is held by Crystal Holdings.
Vuthela is owned by musician Johnny Clegg, radio personalities Tim
Modise, Thabiso Sikwane and Jonathan de Vries. Crystal Holdings is owned by
Werth and African Sky's chairman, Athol Milford.
The company collects computers from its clients with no costs, although Werth
said some clients required payment for the machines.
"The costs are negotiable, however, we charge for monitors and batteries because
they are difficult to recycle. We try to make the process viable for customers,"
said Werth.
African Sky has signed agreements with cellular providers, banks, medical
equipment suppliers, information and technology and blue-chip corporations to
manage their e-waste requirements from collection to recycling.
Johnny Clegg, African Sky's director and co-founder of Vuthela Services,
said components were full of toxins and a danger to the environment.
"Fortunately, countries around the world are making manufacturers more
accountable for their products when they fall out of use and into the global
waste stream," he said.
Vuthela will also build a lodge with the Makhabela Tribal Authority in
KwaZulu-Natal. This will be run by Sipho Mchunu, formerly of the band, Juluka.
Published on the web by Business Report on October 12, 2004.
Allgemeine Zeitung Windhoek, Namibia 19. November 2004
Bühne frei für Johnny
Clegg und Juluka!
von Irmgard Schreiber http://www.az.com.na/kultur/bhne-frei-fr-johnny-clegg-und-juluka.9338.php
Als die Erfolgsgeschichte von Johnny Clegg und Juluka begann, war die Gruppe schon fast eine Legende. Juluka machte Geschichte, weil es die erste gemischte Band im Apartheids-Südafrika war, weil Clegg als ,,der weiße Zulu" galt - und weil ihre Musik trotz Zensur und Verboten die Massen erreichte und begeisterte. Heute ist Südafrika frei und kulturelles Cross-Over nichts Besonderes mehr, aber die Musik von Johnny Clegg und Juluka hat nichts von ihrer Faszination verloren. Anlässlich des Konzertes in Windhoek ein kleiner Einblick in das Leben eines außergewöhnlichen Musikers.
Johnny Clegg lernte die Grundlagen der Zulumusik und den traditionellen ,,Inhlangwini"-Tanz von Charlie Mzila, einem Straßenmusiker. Er war 13 Jahre alt, hatte gerade begonnen, klassische spanische Gitarre zu lernen, und traf Mzila auf dem Weg zu einem Einkaufszentrum. ,,Ich habe ihm beim Spielen zugeschaut und dachte Diese Gitarre ist völlig anders gestimmt", erinnert sich Clegg in seiner Online-Autobiographie.* ,,Ich fand die Gitarre unglaublich. Er fing an zu spielen und zu singen und es war das erste Mal in Südafrika, dass ich ein ähnliches Gefühl der Freiheit hatte wie zuvor in Sambia. Plötzlich waren da Chancen für eine neue und offene Welt."
Clegg wurde 1953 in Rochdale, England, geboren und wuchs im Heimatland seiner Mutter, Simbabwe, auf. Als er neun Jahre alt war, zog seine Familie nach Südafrika, später besuchte er ein Jahr lang eine Schule in Sambia, in der er der einzige weiße Schüler war. Clegg erinnert sich an dieses Jahr in einem Vorort von Lusaka als an eine der glücklichsten und aufregendsten Zeiten seiner Kindheit. Er war zwölf, als er zurückkam nach Südafrika. Sein Stiefvater, der südafrikanische Journalist Dan Pienaar, war ein afrikaanser Intellektueller und Apartheidsgegner, der ihn oft in die schwarzen Townships mitnahm. ,,Ich sah dort das andere Gesicht der Rassentrennung", erinnert sich Clegg.
Nach der Begegnung mit Charlie Mzila wollte Johnny eine billige Bellini-Stahlsaiten-Gitarre haben wie dieser - anstelle seiner teuren spanischen Gitarre. ,,Meine Mutter war entsetzt. Aber sie war eine Musikerin, also verstand sie es auch. Das war eine dieser unglaublichen Seiten an meiner Mutter Sie hatte davon geträumt, Ella Fitzgerald zu sein, also verstand sie den Wunsch, in der Musik kulturelle Grenzen und Genres zu überbrücken", so Clegg. ,,Charlie und ich begannen auf dem Dach seines Gebäudes zu spielen. Er brachte mir etwas bei und ich ging heim und übte auf der Bellini auf meinem Dach. Ich hatte diesen Spleen, dass ich auf einem Dach sein muss, um Gitarre zu lernen. Also bin ich auf das Dach von unserem Bediensteten-Häuschen geklettert und habe gespielt."
Der junge Johnny sang und spielte Zulu-Lieder, anfangs ohne die Sprache zu verstehen. Später nahm der zehn Jahre ältere Charlie ihn mit zu den Proben einer traditionellen Zulu-Tanzgruppe in einem Heim für Wanderarbeiter aus den südafrikanischen Homelands. ,,In den ersten sechs Monaten habe ich einen kompletten Idioten aus mir gemacht. Aber Teil all dessen zu sein war wunderbar. Für mich war es eine Ehre, dass ich mit diesen Kriegern tanzen durfte. Das ist es, was sie waren. Sie waren nicht Putzkräfte oder Ladenangestellte, sie waren Krieger. Ich sah sie nicht bei der Arbeit, ich sah sie nur als Tänzer."
Seine Schulfreunde fanden das cool, aber auch gefährlich. ,,Die `schwarze Gefahr` war immer Teil des weißen Unterbewusstseins zu dieser Zeit", kommentiert Clegg. Einmal nahm er mit zwei Freunden Reißaus aus dem Internat und fuhr ins Zululand. Einen ganzen Monat verbrachten die Jugendlichen auf einer Farm, bevor die Polizei sie festnahm. ,,Das Apartheids-Südafrika war ein schrecklicher Ort, aber für mich war es so aufregend. Ich lebte eigentlich im ganzen Land, nicht nur im weißen Teil davon. Ich wollte ins Zululand, weil ich mit den Zulus leben wollte. Ich glaube, ich habe mich damals als eine Art kultureller Tarzan gesehen."
1969 lernte Johnny Clegg seinen späteren Freund und Musikerkollegen Sipho Mchunu kennen. Sipho hatte von dem weißen Jungen gehört, der wie ein Zulu mit Stöcken kämpft und den Ruf eines kompetenten Zulugitarristen in der Masikande- (aus dem Afrikaansen ,,musikant") Tradition hat. Eines Tages erschien er bei ihm im Garten und forderte Johnny zum Gitarrenduell auf.
,,Da stand er, mit seiner Gitarre. Ich werde das nie vergessen. An der Gitarre klebten Spiegel, Plastiksoldaten, Münzen, Perlen und Bierdeckel. Die Gitarre war unglaublich. Er kam in mein Leben und jetzt ist er mein ältester Freund."
Nach dem ersten Song habe er bereits gewusst, dass Sipho besser Gitarre spielt als er selbst, erinnert sich Johnny Clegg. ,,Ich hatte einen Kassettenrekorder und ich habe ihn aufgenommen. Er hatte noch nie einen Kassettenrekorder gesehen und bekam einen Schrecken. Er war anfangs sehr misstrauisch, aber dann musste ich seine Aufnahme wieder und wieder abspielen. Er war völlig fasziniert davon, dass die Maschine ihn so lebensecht wiedergeben konnte. Es ist sehr seltsam, heute darüber zu reden. Er war so unschuldig. Er konnte weder lesen, noch schreiben. Davon spricht der erste Vers in dem Song `Universal Men` `They could not read and they could not write / and they could not spell their names / But they took this world in both their hands / and they changed it all the same.`"
,,Sipho war ein Gärtner", erzählt Clegg. ,,Er hat sein Zuhause verlassen, als er neun war, als sein Vater starb. Er ging nach Durban und kam schließlich nach Johannesburg. Sipho wurde ein ganz erstaunlicher Visionär. Er hat zwei Schulen für seine Gemeinde gebaut. Er hat 35 Kinder, er hat die Welt bereist - und er hat mit all dem angefangen, ohne lesen und schreiben zu können. Er hatte bis zu seinem siebten oder achten Lebensjahr nie einen weißen Menschen gesehen. Das war die letzte Generation von schwarzen Menschen, die weitab von weißem Einfluss lebten. Das war sein Hintergrund, und dann landete er bei `Good Morning America`und im deutschen Fernsehen. Das ist eine ziemlich weite Reise."
Als sich Sipho und Johnny zum zweiten Mal trafen, hatte Sipho einen Kassettenrekorder gekauft. ,,Er strahlte", erinnert sich Clegg. ,,´Hier ist eine Kassette, ich habe ein paar Songs für dich gemacht`, sagte er. Ich saß in seinem Zimmer und habe seine Musik gehört. Dann nahm ich meine Gitarre und fing an, Gegenmelodien dazu zu spielen. Ich fing an, eine Beziehung zu seinen Tapes aufzubauen, die er mir gab. Es war ein bisschen so, wie ich mir Simon und Garfunkel vorstellte. Wir waren ein Duo. So begann alles mit Sipho und Johnny. Und dann kamen die ersten Auftritte."
Das Duo spielte in Kirchen, Schulen, Universitäten und privaten Räumlichkeiten. Wegen der Apartheidsgesetze waren dies illegale Aktivitäten. Selbst in den Universitäten wurden die beiden Musiker immer wieder von der Polizei verfolgt, Clegg mehrmals verhaftet. Auch auf den Straßen stieß das schwarz-weiße Duo auf Skepsis und Kritik.
1976 hatten Sipho und Johnny mit der Single ,,Woza Friday" einen Hit. Johnny arbeitete an einem neuen musikalischen Konzept. Er verband englische Texte und Melodien mit der Musik der Zulu. Aus diesem Mix entstand ,,Juluka". Juluka stand in totalem Widerspruch zu den Rassentrennungsgesetzen. Ihr Publikum konnten sie ,,dank" Zensur und Verboten nur live erreichen.
Trotzdem nahmen sie 1979 ihr erstes Album ,,Universal Men" auf. 1981 folgte das zweite Album, ,,African Litany". Obwohl sie im Rundfunk nicht gespielt werden durften, wurde das Album durch Mund-zu-Mund-Propaganda zum Durchbruch für Juluka.
Nach dem dritten Album, ,,Ubuhle Bernvelo", tourte Juluka 1982 und 1983 durch die USA, Kanada, Skandinavien, England und Deutschland. ´83 kam ,,Work for All" und ´84 ,,Musa Ukungilandela" auf den Markt.
Die Gruppe löste sich 1985 nach wiederholten Konzertabbrüchen und Drohungen von Seiten des verärgerten Apartheidsregimes auf. Sipho Mchunu zog sich auf seine Farm im Zululand zurück, Clegg formte mit ,,Savuka" eine neue Gruppe, die einen mehr verwestlichten Pop-Sound produzierte. Clegg mischte jetzt afrikanische Musik mit keltischer Volksmusik und internationalen Sounds. In den folgenden Jahren unterstützte er Sipho bei seiner Solo-Karriere. Als 1993 das Ende von Savuka gekommen war, bauten Johnny und Sipho Juluka neu auf. 1996 brachten sie das Album ,,Ya Vuka Inkunzi" heraus, 1997 erschien es unter dem Titel ,,Crocodile Love" in Europa. 1999 begeisterten Juluka in der Frankfurter Jahrhunderthalle, als sie gemeinsam mit Nelson Mandela auf der Bühne standen und ,,Asimbonanga" sangen.
Fünf der Juluka-Alben erreichten Gold-Status, zwei Platinum. Ihr viertes Album ,,Scatterlings" hatte ihnen Anfang der 80er Jahre den internationalen Durchbruch gebracht. Savukas Debütalbum ,,Third World Child" verkaufte zwei Millionen Exemplare weltweit. Johnny Clegg veröffentlichte im Oktober 2002 ein neues Solo-Album, ,,New World Survivor". Bei seiner darauffolgenden Tournee in Südafrika spielte er vor 40000 Fans in Johannesburg, Durban und Kapstadt. Im letzten Jahr tourte er erneut durch Frankreich und Deutschland. Bei einem der Konzerte brach er dabei alle bisherigen Rekorde Über 60000 Zuschauer waren zu dem Festival 140 Kilometer nördlich von Paris erschienen.
Juluka in Windhoek
Johnny Clegg und Juluka geben am Samstag kommender Woche (27. November) gemeinsam mit PJ Powers und Steve Hofmeyr ein Konzert in Windhoek. Das ,,Kalahari Sands Fight Against Aids"-Konzert soll auf dem Wanderers Sportgelände stattfinden und um 16 Uhr nachmittags starten. Ein Teil der Einnahmen soll Aids-Organisationen zugute kommen.
Karten kosten N$ 70, für Kinder N$ 30, und sind erhältlich beim Wanderers Sport Klub, Kalahari Sands Hotel und allen Shell-Select-Läden.
* Alle Zitate übersetzt oder paraphrasiert aus Johnny Cleggs Online-Autobiographie auf www.johnnyclegg.com
Zulu und Buren im Kampfgesang
Was für ein Ereignis! Johnny Clegg war in Windhoek, und mehr als 5000 Menschen sind zu seinem Open-Air-Konzert auf dem Wanderers Sportgelände gekommen. Die Stimmung war ausgelassen wie selten bei einem Live-Konzert in Windhoek.
Von Irmgard Schreiber http://www.az.com.na/kultur/zulu-und-buren-im-kampfgesang.9501.php 03.12.2004
Das Wanderers Sportgelände sah am vergangenen Samstag aus wie ein riesiger Picknickplatz. Mit Campingstühlen, Kühlboxen und Kinderwagen beladen pilgerte Windhoek zu dem Sportclub in Pionierspark, um drei Stars der südafrikanischen Musikindustrie live zu erleben PJ Powers, Steve Hofmeyr und Johnny Clegg.
Wer erst gegen Sonnenuntergang kam, in der Hoffnung damit den afrikaansen Schnulzensänger Steve Hofmeyr zu verpassen, wurde enttäuscht Am Nachmittag trat zuerst PJ Powers auf. Dann kam Steve - mit Playback und einer Video-Show auf Großleinwand, die diejenigen afrikaansen Schlagermusiker feierte, deren Lieder Hofmeyr am liebsten recycelt.
Steve Hofmeyr schien das große Publikumsaufkommen vor allem seiner eigenen Musik zuzuschreiben. Die Fangemeinde stand auf Bänken, das Bier in der Hand, und schunkelte zu den afrikaansen Schnulzen. ,,Wenn irgendjemand der Englischsprachigen das Gefühl hat, dass dieses Konzert sehr afrikaans-lastig ist Ihr habt vollkommen Recht!", rief Steve gegen Ende seiner Vorstellung. Mit einer unerwarteten Heftigkeit, die seinem sonst so süßlich dahinplätschernden Gesang abgeht, fuchtelte Steve mit dem Finger ,,Wenn du afrikaans bist, dann zählt dein Beitrag zu diesem Kontinent rein gar nichts mehr (bockerol). Damit hört´s jetzt auf! (dit stop hier!)"
Ein
wenig gealtert, aber immer noch voller Power Johnny Clegg bei dem Live-Konzert
am vergangenen Samstag auf dem Wanderers Sportgelände.
Die deutschsprachigen Namibiern nennen ihn Mief Stofeier - und warteten geduldig auf Johnny Clegg. Der lieferte dann auch prompt die Antwort auf Steve Hofmeyrs afrikaans-nationalistischen Ausbruch. ,,Die Buren haben viele Kämpfe gegen die Zulus gefochten, in fast allen gingen sie als Sieger hervor", erzählte Clegg als Einleitung zu einem seiner großen Hits. ,,Doch bei drei Kämpfen haben die Zulu die Buren geschlagen. Wenn Ihr damals dabei gewesen wärt, dann hättet Ihr in etwa folgenden Gesang gehört." Als Clegg und Juluka dann den mächtigen Zulu-Kampfgesang ,,Impi" anstimmten, muss das allen Zuhörern unter die Haut gegangen sein.
Die großen Hits wie ,,Kilimandjaro", ,,Scatterlings" und ,,Asimbonanga" einmal live gehört zu haben, in einer Menge von 5000 laut mitsingenden Juluka-Fans, war ein Erlebnis, das den Windhoekern nicht oft beschert wird. Viel zu kurz war dieses Konzert, noch einmal solange hätte man Johnny Clegg zuhören können, die unglaublich breiten Hüften seiner Sängerin im Rhythmus wiegen sehen mögen. Aber Clegg und Juluka ließen sich zu nur zwei Zugaben überreden. Um elf Uhr Abends war das Konzert vorbei - Grund dafür mag die Beschwerde der Anwohner gewesen sein. Sie hatten wegen Lärmbelästigung schon im Vorfeld dagegen protestiert, dass auf dem Wanderers Sportgelände Livekonzerte stattfinden.
Ein wenig gealtert, aber immer noch voller Power Johnny Clegg bei dem Live-Konzert am vergangenen Samstag auf dem Wanderers Sportgelände. Foto: Wiebke Gebert
http://www.spierarts.org.za/overview.php?show_id=4
Fans
of Johnny Clegg will be thrilled to know that he’ll be performing at Spier’s
outdoor amphitheatre for Part II of A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY.
2002 saw Johnny performing one of his most successful shows ever, with over 25
000 people flocking to see the show in Johannesburg alone. Now, two years later,
due to the unprecedented demand from the public and with South Africa proudly
celebrating 10 years of democracy, Johnny and his band return to the stage.
Audiences will be entertained by amusing anecdotes, historical bits ‘n pieces
and anthropological facts – all culminating in the kind of story that legends
are made of.
JOHNNY CLEGG
More than two decades after his first unleashed, with creative comrade, Sipho
Mchunu and the group Juluka – the most intoxicating crossover music South Africa
has ever produced, Johnny (Jonathan) Clegg remains an authentic African icon.
You only need join Clegg for coffee on the pavement of a Johannesburg café to
understand the potent impact the man and his music has had on the people of this
country. It’s not long before people passing by recognise Clegg and stop in
their tracks to say hello. But what’s most remarkable about Clegg’s music is
it’s on-going sway on the lives of ordinary people. From waiters and domestic
workers to restaurant cleaners and the moneyed folk of Joburg’s northern
suburbs, all feel the need to pay homage to the man who effortlessly and
authentically drew the lines between the musical dots of traditional Zulu
musical structures and melodies located in the western sonic landscape. And it’s
not just in this country that Clegg – through Juluka Savuka and his solo work –
has penetrated the consciousness of an awe inspiring cross – section of music
fans.
In 1990 the French government conferred it’s highest cultural award (Chevalier
de l’order des Art et des Lettres) on Clegg for the unique way in which he
articulated and communicated the culture and politics of South Africa through
his music.
It’s ironic then, when you reflect that this is an individual born (7 June 1953)
in Rochedale, outside Manchester, UK and who spent his second year of life
living in Israel! But, in 1955, Clegg found himself on the African continent and
for the next decade shifted between Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia before
finally settling in Johannesburg in 1965.
It has to be said that Clegg’s immersion in the Zulu culture as a young boy
growing up in Jo’burg is the stuff of legend.
In 1967, Clegg (then studying classical Spanish guitar at the behest of his jazz
singer mother) met Charlie Mzila who taught the youngster guitar – and so begin
his love affair with Maskande (Zulu traditional) music. And in spite of the
heavy hand of apartheid government, which emphasised the separation of culture,
language and race, Clegg was smitten and regularly snuck off into the migrant
worker hostels to learn Zulu stick fighting and all the intricacies that go with
these cultural forms.
The next pivotal moment in Clegg’s life became when he first met Mchunu in 1969
when the deeply traditional Zulu sought out and challenged Clegg to guitar dual!
Out of that and in spite of the outward ban on cultural mixing – Juluka was
born. From the groups first single “Woza Friday” (released in 1967) to it’s
astonishing repertoire of recorded work (Universal Men, African Litany, Ubuhle
Bemvelo, Work For All, Musa Unkungillandela, Scattering and Y Vuka
Inkunz/Crocodile Love) here was a group unprecedented in apartheid South Africa
for its ability to combine English and Zulu lyrics with western melodies and
Zulu musical structures. Aside from this, Juluka’s sheer popularity marked it
out. Armed with carefully crafted, instantly accessible songs, dazzling
musicianship, awesome dancing and more, Juluka effortlessly pulled crowds at
home and Internationally. This in spite of the apartheid state broadcaster, the
SABC banning material like the utterly beautiful song “Asimbonanga”.
(astonishingly only unbanned in 1990!)
In 1985 Sipho retired from music to become a full time traditional cattle
farmer. Clegg went on to form a new band, Savuka (“We Have Risen”) and produced
a harder, and more rock influenced mixture of International and African sounds.
Their first album (“Third World Child”) went on to sell over a million copies in
Europe and firmly established Clegg on the international touring circuit. This
was followed by three more albums (Shadow Man, Cruel Crazy, Crazy Beautiful
World and the Grammy nominated album Heat, Dust and Dreams) Clegg has now also
just releaseda new solo album entitled “New World Survivor”
And now, in the year 2002, Clegg is ready to share his life’s experiences, his
intimate knowledge, his intellectual insights and, mostly his love of Zulu
culture and his ability to connect with western forms with audiences in this
show.
“The shows are very important for me because they are a one-off set of cultural
performances that bring together everything I have learned in my creative life”,
he says. “It’s cultural because you hear all the songs and hits but it’s built
around a very important South African story for me, is the hidden cultural
mixing which took place during a period of 60 or 70 years in the last century.
Although you had cultural segregation and apartheid, people listened to other
people’s music. They looked at how they dressed. They smelt and tasted their
food. Look at how the concertina became so Africanised! It’s amazing how people
took elements of their cultures and incorporated them into their own and even
new sub-cultures, that are often times modern western thoughts adapted into a
tribal world view.”
For more information on Johnny Clegg go to
www.johnnyclegg.com
His just released solo album New World Survivor is available mow. Look out for
the new Juluka release in the near future.
| TIME | DATE |
Big Dada- The rise and fall of Idi
Amin
Die Burger By MARENETJORDAAN,
20 Dec 04
http://www.spierarts.org.za/reviews_view.php?news_id=70
"HY het 'n mooi storie vertel."
So wil Johnny Clegg he mense moet horn eendag onthou.
Die energieke sanger en liedjie-skrywer het as lid van Jaluka, Sa-vuka en as
solo-kunstenaar die we-reld al sedert die vroee sewentiger-jare aan die dans.
Clegg en Sipho Mchunu, sy
eer-tydse sangmaat van Jaluka, is eersdaags op die Spier-wynland-goed op die
verhoog met A South African Story - Part II. In die mu-siekproduksie word onder
meer gekyk hoe hul liedjies deur die om-gewing en gebeure in die geskie-denis
be'invloed is. Volgens Clegg het die eerste helfte van die ver-haal oor 1970 tot
1994 gehandel. Die slag bekyk hulle die afgelope tien jaar. "In die tweede deel
word Suid-Afrikaanse identiteit bekyk. Wat maak ons wie ons is? Hoe
vorm ons onsself in die nuwe Suid-Afrika in teenstelling met hoe ons dit in die
verlede gedoen het?"
Vir horn bly die betowering van optree voor 'n gehoor die belang-rikste deel van
wat hy doen. Op 51 is hy ook nog glad nie moeg van op-tree nie - soms van reis,
maar nooit van die shows nie.
"Ek is 'n vermaakkunstenaar. Ek hou daarvan om te kommuni-keer - idees wat
uitdagend is, wat mense se koppe laat draai. Dit is 'n ervaring wat jou lewe
verander."
Clegg se sy sterk punt is juis dat hy 'n "killer show" aanbied. "Dit is goed
aanmekaar gesit en handel oor regie issues." Volgens horn kom dit uit die
tradisie van die folksanger-skrywers van die sesti-ger- en sewentigerjare wat
oor ware gebeure geskryf het - "of dit nou snaaks of hartseer was".
"Dit is ook kenmerkend van Zoe-loe-straatkitaarmusiek. Jy moet
skryf oor wat rondom jou ge-beur... Ek het nooit werklik daarvan wegbeweeg nie."
Omtrent die helfte van die mu-siek op sy nuwe album, wat in Fe-bruarie uitgereik
word, is weer in Zoeloe. Clegg se hy sing hierop oor sake soos die liefde, die
probleem van kindersoldate wereldwyd en vigs. Volgens horn gebruik hy net
moderner ritmestrukture en 'n bree'r kitaarraamwerk, met invloe-de van Spaanse,
Zoeloe en Latynse kitaar. "Dit is waarlik wereldmu-siek."
Volgens Clegg is dit deesdae vir hom makliker om oorsee op te tree. Nie net
vanwee die uitwer-king van die inligtingsamelewing en die toerismebedryf nie,
maar ook omdat mense toegankliker is vir ervarings uit ander lande. Hy was
verstom oor die reaksie wat hy onlangs gekry het toe hy in 28 vertonings in
Amerika opgetree
Johnny Clegg
het. "Daar is oral 'n positiewe ge-voel teenoor die land."
Hier in Suid-Afrika is al die loka-le vir sy vertonings ook stampvol. Clegg glo
dit gaan hier oor die lang geskiedenis wat met hom saam-kom. "Daar is 'n diep
gevoel van kontinuiteit. Dit is baie belangrik
Foto:SIDDIQUE DAVIDS
vir die aanhangers. Ek het gegroei soos dinge ontwikkel het. Ek was 'n barometer
vir wat hulle voel." • Clegg en sy orkes tree Woensdag in die Kirstenbosch
Botaniese Tuin op. Hy en Mchunu is op 28 Desem-ber en 6 tot 9 Januarie by Spier
met A South African Story - Part II.
The New Zealand Herald - October 30, 2005 Sunday
I was a teenager in South Africa when
I first saw Johnny Clegg live on stage in the mid-1980s. It was like nothing I'd
ever experienced. The music was loud, vibrant and distinctly African, but most
importantly it was good - very good.
It was like Paul Simon's Graceland before Graceland took the world by storm.
And then there was the dancing - floor-stamping, sweat-dripping Zulu war
dancing.
In the middle of it all was Clegg. At first glance, the skinny white man looked
out of place in the line of black dancers, but it was soon clear he set the
standard with his instinctive moves. He felt the music.
It was a glimpse into what South Africa could become and Clegg showed me and
hundreds of other youngsters what we were missing.
With his bands Juluka (Zulu for "sweat") and then Savuka ("We have awakened"),
Clegg demonstrated, through his music, that racial harmony was achievable in
South Africa.
"You would come to see a Juluka show and for those two hours you lived in the
future. And although you went back to your little segregated community you had
in your mind a sense of an alternative and I think that is what people really
responded to," Clegg says.
Since those days I have followed his career closely, bought his albums and seen
first-hand his amazing popularity in France, of all places.
Twenty years later I'm in Auckland interviewing Clegg, who is on a whistlestop
visit before returning for his first concert dates here.
He's 52 now but the trademark gestures and enthusiasm are still there.
Clegg's story is remarkable because he is an enigma. He is not particularly tall
and he was born in England, but in his heart he is a bristling Zulu warrior.
In France he is simply known as Le Zulu Blanc - the white Zulu.
"I am a complete schizophrenic, culturally, and I am happy. I just have more
tools and more ways of understanding than many other people."
For more than two decades Clegg has been drawing on his different worlds to
create an eclectic blend of rock, township jive and traditional Zulu rhythms.
These days he tours with a band for about three to four months every year and is
no stranger to success.
His former band Savuka's fourth album, Heat, Dust & Dreams, was nominated for a
Grammy in the Best World Music category and won the Billboard award for Best
World Music album in 1993.
Clegg is big in France. In 1989, on the road to Paris I was given a lift by a
young French engineer, who asked me in English where I was from.
"Afrique du Sud," I replied.
His reponse was a broad smile and: "Ah, Johnny Clegg."
To get to this level of international stardom, Clegg has travelled a long road
since first learning his art in the oppressive, segregated world of apartheid
South Africa.
In time he became the musical conscience of a nation on the edge.
An anthropologist by training, he is fascinated by culture and uses his music to
explore the impact a changing society has on culture.
As a teenager in Johannesburg, he was drawn to the tough world of the Zulu
migrant workers who would leave their homesteads in the foothills of
KwaZulu-Natal and journey to the City of Gold to toil in the mines.
These men, living in crowded hostels and working deep underground, created a
world of their own, allowing their cultural heritage to shine through their
bleak surroundings.
At weekends their singing and dancing would transport them back to the streams
and misty hills of their youth.
Clegg, a middle-class white guy, was drawn to this exciting, dangerous world -
unthinkable in 1960s South Africa.
Clegg soon became obsessed with Zulu culture. He was taught to play street
guitar by Zulu apartment cleaner Mntonganazo Charles Mzila and
immersed himself in the exciting music.
He broke strict laws preventing a white person from entering black townships
without a permit.
He was arrested many times, but his musical education laid the platform for
future international success.
Clegg shakes his head when recalling some of things he did in those early days.
"I knew I was pushing it. I was arrested in hostels. I look back at that time
and it seems like it was another life on another planet. When I think back on
those feelings, I feel that we were mad.
"It was a form of madness."
Clegg regards teaming up with Sipho Mchunu, a Zulu gardener working in the posh
white Johannesburg suburbs, as the critical point in his musical journey.
Together they formed Juluka, a band which broke new ground despite many
obstacles. One was the ban on some Juluka songs by the state-owned South African
Broadcasting Corporation because Zulu and
English lyrics were being sung on the same song, thus breaking cultural
segregation laws.
Their first album, Universal Men, bombed because it received no airplay on state
radio stations.
Despite these setbacks, Juluka went on to record some of South Africa's iconic
songs, including the yearning Scatterlings of Africa and the rousing Impi, which
is played before Springbok games.
Where Juluka was something of a cultural experiment, Savuka - formed in 1986
after Mchunu quit to become a cattle farmer - was more of a political statement.
Clegg used his music to send out a strong anti-apartheid message and no song was
more powerful than Asimbonanga, Clegg's tribute to the jailed Nelson Mandela.
The song was banned in South Africa and later covered by Joan Baez.
Although Clegg's protest-song activism is no longer necessary, his passion for
his music and country remains as strong.
But he does recognise the impact apartheid had on his musical development.
"The intensity of the struggle can never be duplicated in a society where all
your rights are guaranteed. Cultural ferment is where any artist thrives. It
brings out the best in them."
These days Clegg is happy to record songs and tour every year, while maintaining
a strong interest in a variety of subjects, including genetics.
He does, however, want to try new things. Hence the tour to New Zealand and
Australia. Although he will initially rely on some support from nostalgic
expatriate South Africans, he believes his music will have broader appeal.
He is also interested in Maori culture.
"I am a dancer and I have seen the haka in South Africa. For me the language and
chanting of the haka is very similar to Zulu war chanting. The role of the oral
expression in rhythm is exactly the same, because these are war chants with a
story designed to give the teller or the shouter of those chants a sense of
destiny, a sense of invincibility.
"Most importantly it is physically enacted.
"It is not proclaimed like a poem, you actually do all these things."
Now it's our turn to see why Clegg has been so successful internationally.
"We are still doing a unique blend of music. No one is doing what we are doing."
WHO: Johnny Clegg, pioneering South African musician
WHERE & WHEN: ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland, Tuesday, November 29; Events
Centre, Wellington, Wednesday, November 30.
Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia) - October 16, 2005 Sunday by PAUL STEWART
JOHNNY Clegg does not forget his mates. One of Africa's most acclaimed
musicians, he migrated from Zimbabwe to South Africa aged 9.
At 14 he received guitar lessons from a poor Zulu flat cleaner named Charlie
Mzila.
The old African musician taught him the fundamentals of Zulu music and dancing
and the now world-famous Clegg has not forgotten this debt.
In an interview promoting an approaching tour, the musician said he still sees
Charlie Mzila.
In fact, Charlie, 64, now works for him as head of security of a factory in
South Africa that recycles old computers for poor people.
Clegg said he inherited his love of music from his mother.
"My step-father left for Australia and we were on our own and Mum worked as a
cabaret singer," he said.
"I got used to being around music and musicians.
"Working with black musicians did not seem that unusual to me."
Despite being one of Africa's best known musicians, he was not invited to appear
at the recent Live8 concerts in aid of world poverty.
"I do not believe in what Geldof was pushing," he said.
"We do not need debt relief in Africa; we are sick of going to the Western world
with a begging bowl; what we need is to be able to compete on common ground.
"We need a level playing field."
Clegg said under South Africa's strict apartheid regime, he had originally been
forbidden to play with black musicians.
"We were not allowed to play together in public; it was far too revolutionary,"
he said.
"They thought it would upset people too much.
"Because of this ban I became an anthropologist so I could still study Zulu
music and dance.
"Later, a Zulu chief adopted me and made me his son."
Clegg stunned audiences and critics when he developed a musical hybrid in the
mid-1980s that acknowledged both his celtic roots and love of African music.
He famously teamed up with African musician Sipho Mchunu and formed Jukluka, who
made history as the the first mixed-race band to play on stage in racist South
Africa.
Their song Scattering of Africa became a worldwide hit.
However, after repeated concert shutdowns and threats from authorities, band
founder Mchunu retreated to his farm. Clegg went solo and then created a more
westernised pop sound with the group Savuka.
He said playing such unusual music made it difficult for him to be your average
pop star, but added: "I do not want major mainstream success. Who would really
want to be a superstar? I really enjoy what I do and it seems that things just
keep growing."
Johnny Clegg and his six-piece band, as well as two traditional dancers appear
at Dallas Brooks Hall, East Melbourne, on December 2.
They call him the White Zulu, but Johnny Clegg's musical vision is
not just about skin colour, writes Michael Dwyer. November 30, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/music/da-zulu-code/2005/11/29/1133026465514.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
Out of Africa: Johnny Clegg's music combines African and Western styles.
Photo: Shaney
Balcombe
Johnny Clegg always knew there was some kind of a secret code at the heart of music. Trying to break it, the South African teenager was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned and threatened with deportation. But the apartheid system crumbled long before his curiosity.
"As a teenager I would put on Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, and at a certain point I would get goosebumps," he says. "I would pick up the needle and put it back on, to see if it happened again, and it did, and again, every day. Even now, it happens to me.
"So I always knew that there is something in the actual formulation and presentation of music, in sound and rhythm, which is very powerful - so powerful it can change a life. I wanted to have that power, to understand what makes it tick."
Clegg speaks not only with the authority of a world-renowned singer, songwriter and performer, but with the passion of a trained anthropologist with an almost manic enthusiasm for population genetics and the evolution of the human species.
To fully explore his historic union of Zulu song and dance and Celtic-based music in the divided city of Johannesburg in the 1970s, one has to go far beyond the politics of skin colour and the cross-cultural notion of "world music" later popularised by Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel
"When I saw Zulu dancing for the first time, I saw these men whose bodies were hard-wired to carry messages that my body wasn't," he says. "Their comportment was different. The information your body carries as you walk into a room, theirs was different. As soon as I saw that, I thought, 'I wanna know what's going on here'."
It was the same with the power of their songs and poetry, he says. The fact that he was the only white teenager sneaking into the Zulu migrant labour hostels to dance and sing was of no concern to him. What drove him had little basis in culture, and everything to do with emotional response and intellectual curiosity.
"Street music, for me, was a wonderful compass to work out who I was," he says. "My problem was that I had grown up in three different countries by the time I was 11 (he was born in England in 1953). So I was pretty confused when I got back to South Africa, and I was a loner.
"I would go to the migrant labour hostels and check out the street music and war dancing, or go visit people who could teach me stuff about history or praise poetry."
Unique among his peers, Clegg bought a phrasebook to guide him into the officially denigrated Zulu language. When he graduated from high school in 1970, he was the only South African to write Zulu in matriculation. "And I had to get permission from the government for that," he adds.
The security authorities were less forgiving of his extracurricular activities. He was arrested at 15 for contravening the Group Areas Act, a law that enforced recreational segregation of blacks and whites. It would not be the last time.
"I'd rock up at home standing between two policemen, and my mum would freak out," he says. "They would say, 'He's young, he doesn't know what he's doing, but when he's 18 he'll be put in jail'." When he turned 18, he was. Finally, at one arrest, the Zulus fought back.
"They said, 'He's our boy, he's been dancing with us, and no matter how often you take him away, he keeps coming back'. So I basically became part of the team, competing with other street musicians in the hostels."
The competitive tradition of South African street music was "a bit like musical gunslinging", Clegg says. His regular street-corner guitar play-offs included one fiery exchange with a Zulu migrant worker named Sipho Mchunu. It was a meeting that would change his life and make South African music history.
With their band Juluka, the pair in 1979 released an album titled Universal Men. With their mixture of Zulu and English lyrics, African and European musical roots, and themes of cultural and political schism, a subsequent string of albums found little favour with South African radio while building an enormous fan base that went global in the early '80s.
Tired of touring, Sipho went back to farming in KwaZulu in '85. Clegg formed Savuka and continued to reflect South Africa's escalating wave of political upheaval in his lyrics. Among his best-known songs is Asimbonanga, the country's first commercial song about Nelson Mandela, issued four years before his release from prison in 1990.
Beyond political commentary and the complex mechanics of combining Western and African music, however, Clegg's proudest moment as a songwriter is rooted in anthropology. He wrote Scatterlings of Africa in the early '80s, but only came to appreciate its prescience as genetic science caught up with evolutionary theory a decade later.
"As a statement, that song is my credo: the most important song I've ever written: 'We are the scatterlings of Africa/On our way to the stars/Far below we leave forever/Dreams of what we were.'
"What I was juxtaposing was African humanism against technology. It's now conventional wisdom that Africa is the birthplace of mankind, about 160,000 years ago. Now, with the convergence between computer technology and the genetic revolution, we're going to see a major upheaval in us as a species, because we are going to be consciously evolving ourselves into something new."
As he elaborates, Clegg's years of lecturing and academic discourse converge with his musical expertise, from African tribal music to blues, jazz and Western pop; from mitochondrial DNA tracing to binary computer language to cyborg technology.
It's a mind-blowing trip, like watching a long, slow, camera tracking shot from the nucleus of a human cell, out of Africa, off the planet, into some weird post-human organic pod thing, and deep into Stanley Kubrick's wildest dream. But, hey, what about the show?
"The concert is get down, boogie," Clegg says, "punctuated by some very serious moments and some very traditional African moments. Good dancing, good storytelling - that's what we do."
Johnny Clegg plays at the Dallas Brooks Hall on Friday night. Phone: 132 849, or www.ticketek.com. Details: www.stetsongroup.com
By David Honigmann http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cfce4590-744e-11db-8dd7-0000779e2340.html
Published: November 15 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 15 2006 02:00
In his time, Johnny Clegg has been a pop star, an academic anthropologist, a political activist and a businessman. During our interview, he shuffles between all these roles, in acappuccino-fuelled discourse on constitutionalism in South African politics under the African National Congress, the rise of the entrepreneurial black middle class, the construction of masculinity in the context of Zulu wedding rituals, and his appetite for musical cross-dressing.
Clegg is passing through London on a breakneck European tour promoting a new album, his best in many years; he has just played a private concert for a South African specialist banking group. That is a far cry from the days of apartheid, when he made himself a lot of enemies. The band he led, Juluka, broke the law whenever it played in public, because it mixed white and black musicians. But he fell out with the anti-apartheid movement as well, because his playing contravened the letter, if not the spirit, of the cultural boycott.
Clegg, who was born in Rochdale, England, in 1953 but moved to South Africa with his mother as a child, became fascinated with Zulu guitar. Another maskanda guitar player, Sipho Mchunu, who was working as a gardener in Johannesburg, challenged him to a musical contest. The two became friends and performed as Johnny and Sipho before establishing Juluka in the 1970s. A tape of the duo at the Cologne Zulu Festival was credited with sparking Paul Simon's interest in South African music.
Juluka released a series of albums between 1979 and 1984 that combined folk-rock (Clegg is an unashamed Jethro Tull fan) with the strong shouted choruses of Zulu umzansi, or war dance chants. Clegg's easy facility for the anthemic ("I respond to pop/rock melodies quite strongly; I can't help it") and his athletic stick-fighting dances with Mchunu made Juluka a popular live act, although its concerts were held under the ever-present threat of police disruption. The very notion of mixing English and Zulu culture was anathema to the apartheid state's notions of separate development.
But Clegg's reinvention of himself as a "white Zulu" was problematic in other ways. He fell foul of the various cultural boycotts that prevented musicians from travelling to or from South Africa. As he recalls ruefully, at the same time that he was working with the anti-apartheid movement in France, he was prevented from playing in the UK by the British Musicians' Union. "Do I resent it? I did at the time. They banned me; they did nothing about Elton John" (who had played at Sun City).
Many of Clegg's friends were harassed by the security police, and in the transition to democracy violence became more widespread. "In 1992, I lost a lot of friends," Clegg recalls.
At this time, the Zulu cultural nationalism that Clegg had explored as an anthropologist at the University of the Wit-watersrand, and espoused as a performer with Juluka, turned rancid. The conservative Inkatha Freedom Party, largely composed of Zulus, fought a low-level war with the more diverse ANC. One flashpoint was Inkatha's insistence that its supporters should be allowed to carry "cultural weapons", such as knobkerries and assegais - precisely the kind of props Clegg had adopted. "I was doing something which had suddenly taken on this extra significance - it had been usurped, taken and used as a rallying point."
When Clegg publicly expressed his support for the ANC, he was warned to stay away from the East Rand workers' hostels where he practised Zulu dancing. (He is still a "senior member" of a dance team at Jeppe Hostel, performing there every Sunday.) "My support for traditional activities," Clegg says, "was a means for me to get a cultural identity. Some of these traditional values clash with my western values. Far from being a lucid cultural anthropologist, I've been in conflict over where the truth lies. I have a progressive position on women, and in traditional societies women are bound by rules. So I often have a conflict."
Juluka had broken up when Mchunu returned to Zululand to raise cattle, and Clegg's new band, Savuka, pursued a more heavily westernised sound, ladling on the keyboards. Although Clegg wrote election anthems for the ANC and performed "Asimbonanga", a roll-call of the missing and murdered of the apartheid years (also covered by Joan Baez), at Nelson Mandela's inauguration in 1994, the precise detail of Juluka's songs (Mama Shabalala with her "car-tyre shoes") was replaced by abstractions. Clegg's new solo CD, One Life, is more overtly political than a lot of his subsequent work with Savuka. "The Revolution Will Eat Its Children (Anthem for Uncle Bob)" is a lament for Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe; "Boy Soldier" stems from his horror on watching a documentary about child soldiers in Sierra Leone. "Asilazi", a late addition to the South African version of the album that is not included on the European release, sets the complaints of a working-class white South African stripped of his familiar world against a chiding Zulu chorus angry at how long they have had to wait for change.
Clegg himself is cautiously optimistic about the new South Africa and its potential to "emerge as Africa's first constitutional nation"."Am I happy?" he asks. "Well, we didn't go the way of Bosnia."
Musically, One Life is in some ways a return to his roots. "These are the sounds which permeated my life. And still do: traditional music in South Africa can still sell in the hundreds of thousands." But its musical palette is varied: the opening track, "Woman of Eden", has an Afro-Cuban sway that recalls the Senegalese giants Orchestra Baobab; elsewhere, gritty rai rhythms are to be heard. "I like being dressed up in different kinds of attire," says Clegg. "And I wanted to push the boundaries a little."
The range of languages has expanded. "Faut pas Baisser les Bras", with lyrics by Clegg's international manager Claude Six, is a plea for constant vigilance in the defence of liberty, as well as a nod to his substantial French fan base. "Thamela - Die Son Trek Water", which compares the itinerant life of the musician to that of southern Africa's migrant workers, has verses in Afrikaans. This may raise some eyebrows, given the language's central cultural role under apartheid, but Clegg is unfazed.
"I played a concert in Potchefstroom [the first capital of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Republik and a cultural bastion of Afrikanerdom] to six or seven thousand kids, all Afrikaners, and they all knew the words to all my songs. There's room for everybody:everybody's voice, everybody's sound. We're not a nation; we're a collection of 15 ethnic groups, all on the road searching for who we are."
Johnny Clegg plays the Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, tonight, tel 020 8354 3300.
The Financial Times Limited 2006
It was announced at the Sithengi Film & Television Market in Cape Town in November that the SABC's R45m seed amount for its Film Fund, launched in the last financial year, will be used to produce, among others, 10 films about South African Icons. In the meantime the SABC has appointed an external consulting panel to formulate a Film Policy.
Project leader Shan Moodley reports that the consulting panel, comprising Thami Nxasana, Glynn O'Leary and co-ordinator Monique Cleton, is currently busy with research into international best practices, a process which will be followed by consultation with industry stakeholders at the end of January or early February.
'We hope to have completed our research and formulated a Draft Policy by the middle of March, for submission to the SABC Board,' said Moodley.
While the policy is being drawn up, the SABC is proceeding with film projects with its existing Film Fund. Mvuso Mbebe, CE of SABC Content Enterprises (under which the Film Fund falls), told Sithengi delegates that the broadcaster had already identified icons such as Nelson Mandela, Miriam Makeba, Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu and was in negotiations with their families. Other icons mentioned were Oliver Tambo, Desmond Tutu, Steve Biko and Winnie Mandela.
Read more in the January 2007 issue of Screen Africa
http://www.screenafrica.com/latest_edition/521733.htm
A stock theft case against Sipho Mchunu, a former member of Juluka, Johnny
Clegg's band, was postponed in the Khombe Magistrate's Court today.
Jay Naicker, a police spokesperson, said the case against Mchunu was postponed
to May 7.
Mchunu was arrested in February for allegedly stealing and selling cattle at his
home in Kranskop, KwaZulu-Natal.
Police set a trap for him, after an elderly woman bought three allegedly stolen
cows from Mchunu. "He is out on bail," said Naicker. - Sapa
+++++++++++++++++++
Former Juluka member cleared of theft charges
Published in: Legalbrief Today
Date: Tue 21 October 2008
Category: In Court
The Nkandla Magistrate's Court has acquitted Sipho Mchunu (57), a former member
of Johnny Clegg's band Juluka, on a stock theft charge, arising from an incident
in 2007.
Magistrate Joseph Ngidi said there was no evidence implicating him in the crime,
says a report in The Mercury.
Mchunu's two sons were among six who initially faced the same charge, but were
acquitted during the trial. Ngidi said there was suspicion that Mchunu and his
co-accused, Sibusiso Sibiya (27) were involved in the theft of cattle, but he
was not satisfied the state had proved their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Over the decades, many artists and singers shaped and molded South African music to what it is today. Johnny Clegg is one of the extraordinary examples...
Not only did Johnny Clegg help put South African music on
the map, he also used his voice to make a statement against apartheid, through
his songs and by the formation of South Africa's first mixed-raced band. His
ability to speak different African languages such as Zulu & Xhosa fluently
continues to make him an example of the new South Africa for both black and
white people in SA.
Johnny Clegg - born in Rochdale, England - was a baby when his
parents decided to leave the United Kingdom for Zimbabwe and Zambia. At the age
of nine, the Clegg family immigrated to South Africa. Moving out on his own at
age 14, Johnny met a Zulu street guitarist who introduced the young boy to the
Zulu culture. The white Johnny Clegg Clegg became so caught up in this new world
that he was made an adopted son of a Zulu chief and an epic example of.
The experiences in his young life, his fascination and
participation in the Zulu society later all came back in Clegg's musical career.
Many of his songs have very strong Zulu musical and vocal. No need to explain
why Johnny Clegg is also known as the White Zulu.
In the early 1970's Johnny Clegg gave a kick-start to his
musical career by forming the band Juluka with Sipho Mchunu. Meanwhile, they
made history: Juluka was South Africa's first mixed-race band. Back in the
apartheid days when interracial interaction was prohibited, this was
groundbreaking. And quite difficult: Clegg and Mchunu constantly had to deal
with racial abuse, threats of violence, police harassment and violent concert
shutdowns. Due to the apartheid laws, places to perform were limited and Juluka
had to stick to the street or private venues such as churches and university
halls.
The many difficulties and obstacles made Clegg and Mchunu
decide to each go their own ways. In 1986 Juluka was no more. Mchunu went back
to his farm in Zululand while Clegg, who could not give up his love for music,
formed Savuka.
Two years Savuka and Clegg released their debut album Third
World Child, which sold over 1 million records within the first two years. In an
incredible moment on the album and singles charts, SAVUKA held the number 1 and
number 2 position on the album charts with the 1st and second album at the same
time, and on the singles charts held the number 1 and number 7 position with
their singles " Asimbonanga " and "Scatterlings of Africa".
Despite their success - including many international awards -
Savuka split up in 1994, the year South Africa officially regained its freedom.
Shortly after, Clegg and Mchunu decided to revive Juluka, to great joy of their
old fans.
Until this day, Clegg and Juluka are performing on a regular
basis, all across South Africa. Keep an eye out for the Baxter Theatre or the
Appletizer concerts in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and don't forget to check
the events calendar of CapeTownMagazine.com.
Source: Miriam Mannak / Cape Town Magazine.com
Clegg has even written a song for the campaign — A Man Knows —
challenging men to have the courage to take the test and choose life.
Springbok rugby hero Bryan Habana, Paralympian gold medal winner Natalie du
Toit, former Bafana Bafana captain Lucas Radebe, Olympic silver medallist Khotso
Mokoena and Paralympian sprinter Oscar Pistorius are among the sports stars who
have teamed up to support the initiative.
The campaign aims to test 30000 South Africans in five provinces in the first
week of November.
BRYAN HABANA
LUCAS RADEBE
KHOTSO MOKOENA
OSCAR PISTORIUS
CELEBRITY MUSCLE:
Champion swimmer Natalie du Toit is among the sports stars and celebrities who
have joined singer Johnny Clegg in the A Man Knows campaign against Aids.
(Picture: RAYMOND PRESTON)
"Musician’s song anchors drive to encourage HIV testing and living responsibly"
Only about one million South Africans, fewer than one fifth of those who are
HIV-positive, know their status.
Clegg says his song comes from the traditional concept that: “A man is a man by
means of other men. When you have a problem or a very deep decision to make ...
you select key men in your life and you sit down and have a beer and chat.”
He says that in his song a man who knows he must take an HIV test says to his
group of men: “I’m asking you to encourage me to go and face this day.”
Clegg performed his anthem at the launch of the A Man Knows campaign in
Johannesburg this week.
“I’m connected to migrant labourers in Johannesburg, and many feel that if you
have Aids you are unlucky and that it is not really your responsibility.
“This campaign is saying to men: ‘You have decided to sleep with somebody. You
must take responsibility and find out your HIV status.”
A Man Knows targets the emotions that act as a barrier to testing.
Du Toit, who took an HIV test at the launch, says: “I think everybody has a fear
in life ... What’s important is to get out there and to treat it. If you’re
disabled, it’s to get the physiotherapy help and to get stronger and be a better
person.
“With HIV and Aids, it’s also to go out there and get help — to go on
antiretrovirals where possible, really just so that you can go out and have a
good life.’”
The HIV/Aids treatment organisation Right to Care and the Society for Family
Health, through its testing arm New Start, will be running the campaign in
KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape and the Northern Cape.
Right to Care chairman Dr Ali Bacher says serious measures are needed to ensure
that all sexually active people know their HIV status or “South Africa could end
up with a catastrophe”.
The Department of Health’s HIV director Dayanand Loykissolal says the department
offers HIV testing at 4623 primary health facilities and 427 non-medical sites.
At the launch he said: “Too often we do not ask enough of men, as women take the
lead in HIV and Aids. We encourage men to take the first step — start with
yourself.”
The US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief is funding the testing drive,
which is also backed by non-governmental organisations and companies.
South Africans who take an HIV test are eligible to enter the Discovery Health
and Sunday Times HIV testing competition, Right to Know, and stand a chance of
winning R100000.
Messages
1a.
Re: A New Era
Posted by: "Roy Francis" threedogssinging@yahoo.co.uk threedogssinging
Fri Apr 24, 2009 12:36 pm (PDT)
Thanks Max,
In the heart of his creative soul, I'd always had the impression that Johnny
Clegg's musical inspiration came from his anti-Apartheid instincts. To sneak
into the townships as a young man to play and listen to Zulu music was truly
courageous, and as he became famous, BOSS, The South African Bureau of State
Security must have tried or succeeded in infiltrating his musical circle with
informants.
I often wonder why Johnny Clegg never became more engaged in the popular
movements championed by the likes of Bob Geldof, Peter Gabriel and Bono. Well
yes, perhaps Bono and Peter Gabriel had more clout than Johnny. Peter Gabriel's
song, "Biko", is perhaps the most powerful and moving anti-Apartheid song ever
written.
An academically inspired roommate (who later went off to do his PHD in art
history at Yale) once objected to Gabriel's song "Biko", because he believed
Gabriel to be just an uninformed pop star who couldn't possibly know and
understand the entire anti-Apartheid conflict. Looking back, the only possible
criticism of Gabriel's song is that he might have sung about other victims or
better know people within the struggle.
This was the mid-80s, and there were reports that Johnny Clegg was a professor
at a university, but if I recall correctly, Johnny had lectured on
anthropological topics related to native African tribal culture. In the mid-80s
to the mid-90s, Johnny was essentially a cultural ambassador for the cause of a
fair, just and free South Africa.
Musically, I think Johnny Clegg has been more successful than Bob Geldof (and
we'd be spared Geldof's constant cussing and swearing), so he certainly had
enough clout to be successful in some kind of international aid relief project,
and he seems to be a smart guy (who can even play guitar and carry a tune fairly
well). I certainly hope that he continues to use his considerable talents in
some way. The only disadvantage is that he'd have to suffer being called Sir
Johnny by his mates at the local shebeen if he were successful.
Best,
RF
--- In scatterlings@yahoogroups.com, Debra Clayton <maxclayton@...> wrote:
>
>
> I generally lurk, but I have actual information to share on this question.
>
> Several years ago, I was working at the local NPR station. Although I was the
promotions director and not on-air talent, I was given the opportunity to
interview Johnny Clegg during his U.S. tour. Everyone at the station knew I was
a major fan.
>
> Got to sit in a cafe drinking espresso with the man himself. One of the
questions I asked him was on the subject under discussion. With the end of
apartheid, what's next...
>
> He said he felt like a man than had been climbing a huge and difficult
mountain for years and finally reached a plateau. He could "go in any direction
except back." He went on to say that he had focused on this one very important
issue for decades, and now felt somewhat unsettled. He felt that the energy
generated by the frustration and anger of the apartheid years was gone. And this
was the energy that drove his music. He actually looked a bit lost as he sat
there drinking his coffee. He looked up at me and said, "I guess we'll just have
to wait and see."
>
> Perhaps he is yet to find the issue that drives him the way apartheid did.
>
> Max
>
>
> In a 2005 interview at entitled "Freedom Fighter" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/14/PKGATE4PTQ1.DTL),
Johnny said,
>
>
> "The most amazing thing about (the fall of apartheid) was that nothing
happened," Clegg says. "No war, no fighting. Mandela and the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission defused the antagonism. When the white edifice
collapsed, the level of expertise the African National Congress brought with it
from exile was highly sophisticated. Politicians were well educated by the years
of struggle. We have a lot of issues like AIDS, unemployment and poverty, but
that's also a general African condition. There is a new culture of nonracialism,
new cultural forms are coming out of the townships and the relation between the
black middle class and working class is improving. Even the fact that there is a
black middle class is remarkable."
>
>
>
> What I meant by changing musical directions was how Johnny's mentality and
song writing practices may have changed after the anti-Apartheid struggle was
over and he was no longer a rebel songwriter and musician. Sure you can deduce a
lot from his lyrics, but perhaps he mentioned something more substantial in
recent interviews?
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 21/4/09, Cerrberus <cerrberus@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> > From: Cerrberus <cerrberus@...>
>
> > Subject: Re: A New Era
>
> > To: "Roy Francis" <threedogssinging@...>
>
> > Date: Tuesday, 21 April, 2009, 8:12 PM
>
> > --- In scatterlings@yahoogroups.com,
>
> > "Roy Francis" <threedogssinging@> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > ~~Xnp~~
>
> > >
>
> > > When I first started listening to Johnny Clegg, his
>
> > main inspiration was the Anti-Apartheid struggle. Has Johnny
>
> > ever let on how his musical directions have changed since
>
> > the end of Apartheid?
>
> > >
>
> > One can get a sense of this through Johnny's music.
>
> >
>
> > Cerrberus
1b.
Re: A New Era
Posted by: "MYLENE W BROCK" MYLENEWB@MSN.COM
Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:59 pm (PDT)
I often wonder why Johnny Clegg never became more engaged in the popular
movements championed by the likes of Bob Geldof, Peter Gabriel and Bono.
In the mid to late 80s, I remember Johnny not being invited/allowed at those
anti apartheid rallies because he carried a british passport and was regularly
performing in SA. The anti-apartheid movement didn't let in anyone who wasn't
boycotting SA, unless they were nationals of SA. He thought it was quite silly
and unfair - well, he used different words when we talked about that - that he
be banned from these gatherings; SA was where he had lived most of his life, he
"felt" South African, even if he had been born elsewhere.
As always, some rules are to be broken sometimes, and that should have been one
of those times.
Mylène W. Brock
Praise Darwin...Evolve beyond belief!
To: scatterlings@yahoogroups.com
From: threedogssinging@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:52:51 +0000
Subject: [scatterlings] Re: A New Era
Thanks Max,
In the heart of his creative soul, I'd always had the impression that Johnny
Clegg's musical inspiration came from his anti-Apartheid instincts. To sneak
into the townships as a young man to play and listen to Zulu music was truly
courageous, and as he became famous, BOSS, The South African Bureau of State
Security must have tried or succeeded in infiltrating his musical circle with
informants.
I often wonder why Johnny Clegg never became more engaged in the popular
movements championed by the likes of Bob Geldof, Peter Gabriel and Bono. Well
yes, perhaps Bono and Peter Gabriel had more clout than Johnny. Peter Gabriel's
song, "Biko", is perhaps the most powerful and moving anti-Apartheid song ever
written.
An academically inspired roommate (who later went off to do his PHD in art
history at Yale) once objected to Gabriel's song "Biko", because he believed
Gabriel to be just an uninformed pop star who couldn't possibly know and
understand the entire anti-Apartheid conflict. Looking back, the only possible
criticism of Gabriel's song is that he might have sung about other victims or
better know people within the struggle.
This was the mid-80s, and there were reports that Johnny Clegg was a professor
at a university, but if I recall correctly, Johnny had lectured on
anthropological topics related to native African tribal culture. In the mid-80s
to the mid-90s, Johnny was essentially a cultural ambassador for the cause of a
fair, just and free South Africa.
Musically, I think Johnny Clegg has been more successful than Bob Geldof (and
we'd be spared Geldof's constant cussing and swearing), so he certainly had
enough clout to be successful in some kind of international aid relief project,
and he seems to be a smart guy (who can even play guitar and carry a tune fairly
well). I certainly hope that he continues to use his considerable talents in
some way. The only disadvantage is that he'd have to suffer being called Sir
Johnny by his mates at the local shebeen if he were successful.
Best,
RF
--- In scatterlings@yahoogroups.com, Debra Clayton <maxclayton@...> wrote:
>
>
> I generally lurk, but I have actual information to share on this question.
>
> Several years ago, I was working at the local NPR station. Although I was the
promotions director and not on-air talent, I was given the opportunity to
interview Johnny Clegg during his U.S. tour. Everyone at the station knew I was
a major fan.
>
> Got to sit in a cafe drinking espresso with the man himself. One of the
questions I asked him was on the subject under discussion. With the end of
apartheid, what's next...
>
> He said he felt like a man than had been climbing a huge and difficult
mountain for years and finally reached a plateau. He could "go in any direction
except back." He went on to say that he had focused on this one very important
issue for decades, and now felt somewhat unsettled. He felt that the energy
generated by the frustration and anger of the apartheid years was gone. And this
was the energy that drove his music. He actually looked a bit lost as he sat
there drinking his coffee. He looked up at me and said, "I guess we'll just have
to wait and see."
>
> Perhaps he is yet to find the issue that drives him the way apartheid did.
>
> Max
>
>
> In a 2005 interview at entitled "Freedom Fighter" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/14/PKGATE4PTQ1.DTL),
Johnny said,
>
>
> "The most amazing thing about (the fall of apartheid) was that nothing
happened," Clegg says. "No war, no fighting. Mandela and the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission defused the antagonism. When the white edifice
collapsed, the level of expertise the African National Congress brought with it
from exile was highly sophisticated. Politicians were well educated by the years
of struggle. We have a lot of issues like AIDS, unemployment and poverty, but
that's also a general African condition. There is a new culture of nonracialism,
new cultural forms are coming out of the townships and the relation between the
black middle class and working class is improving. Even the fact that there is a
black middle class is remarkable."
>
>
>
> What I meant by changing musical directions was how Johnny's mentality and
song writing practices may have changed after the anti-Apartheid struggle was
over and he was no longer a rebel songwriter and musician. Sure you can deduce a
lot from his lyrics, but perhaps he mentioned something more substantial in
recent interviews?
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 21/4/09, Cerrberus <cerrberus@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> > From: Cerrberus <cerrberus@...>
>
> > Subject: Re: A New Era
>
> > To: "Roy Francis" <threedogssinging@...>
>
> > Date: Tuesday, 21 April, 2009, 8:12 PM
>
> > --- In scatterlings@yahoogroups.com,
>
> > "Roy Francis" <threedogssinging@> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > ~~Xnp~~
>
> > >
>
> > > When I first started listening to Johnny Clegg, his
>
> > main inspiration was the Anti-Apartheid struggle. Has Johnny
>
> > ever let on how his musical directions have changed since
>
> > the end of Apartheid?
>
> > >
>
> > One can get a sense of this through Johnny's music.
>
> >
>
> > Cerrberus
by Paul Cashmere - April 25 2009 http://undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=8155
South African
superstar Johnny Clegg has some competition in the family. His son Jesse has had
two number one hits in South Africa.
The elder Clegg is no stranger to the charts. He is the biggest artist the
country has produced. That sets him up wonderfully to pass on the family secrets.
“We talk it a lot and I say ‘you are as good as your last album’. You just can’t
rest on your laurels because you have had two number one hits on a Top 40 chart
in South Africa,” Johnny tells Undercover News. “It is a much bigger game. It is
pacing yourself. It is stamina. It is putting yourself at risk all the time and
getting on with the writing. If you’ve got the songs, write them, put them away
if you’ve got 20 or 30 songs you have written it makes it so much easier to do
the next album”.
21-year old Jesse could be considered a veteran. He was six months old when he
first went on tour with his father.
Last year he had a number one hit with ‘Today’ and a number one album with ‘When
I Wake Up’.
“He is much more in a commercial rock genre,” Johnny says. “Nothing as exotic as
his father. He is doing very well. He is very talented and a very good
songwriter. He understands songwriting very, very profoundly. He understands
harmony, chord and structure, arrangement, melody. He has just got it”.
Don’t expect a father and son duet though. “We have separated our careers very,
very consciously,” he says.
Johnny Clegg will tour Australia and New Zealand in May and June
Dates are:
Perth: Thursday 21st
May 2009 ?The Riverside Theatre, Perth Convention & Exhibition Centre
Melbourne: Monday 25th May 2009 ?Palais
Theatre
Sydney: Tuesday 26th May 2009 ?Sydney
State Theatre
Brisbane: Thursday 28th May 2009 ?QPAC
Concert Hall
Wellington: Saturday 30th May 2009 ?St.
James, Opera Hall
Auckland: Monday 1st June 2009
?Auckland Town Hall, The Edge
09:57 AEST Wed Apr 29 2009 By Alyssa Braithwaite
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/807471/cleggs-music-a-cultural-melting-pot
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/807471/cleggs-music-a-cultural-melting-pot
 South African singer Johnny Clegg, known as "the white Zulu", is set to tour Australia in late May. |
South African singer Johnny Clegg is a world musician with truly global
inspirations.
During the three decades he has been making music, Clegg has borrowed from Zulu
street rhythms, Zimbabwean guitar playing, folk rock and hip hop music.
He is known around the world as "the white Zulu" for his ability to blend
Western and African influences in his music.
"We mix and find meeting points between different cultural, rhythmic, melodic
and linguistic traditions," Clegg told AAP from Johannesburg.
"I've sung in Indian, I've sung in Zulu, the last album I did songs with French,
Zulu and English in the same song, I draw broadly on Zulu traditional street
music, I draw sometimes on some Zimbabwean guitar style, and obviously rock and
pop.
"The wonderful thing about a world musician is they're allowed to meander
through all the various traditions really."
Clegg was born in the UK, but grew up in South Africa, where as a teenager and
budding guitarist he developed an interest in traditional Zulu music and dance.
He formed South Africa's first racially mixed band, Juluka, with Zulu musician
Sipho Mchunu.
Not afraid to get political, Clegg's 1987 song Asimbonanga (We haven't seen him)
called for the release of Nelson Mandela.
Since then he has lent his voice to Mandela's 46664 HIV and Aids campaign, and
performed at the former South African president's 90th birthday concert.
Clegg said Mandela has been an inspiration to him for many years.
"I'm like most people who came out of the 1980s and the 70s and the
anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa - Mandela was a very important central
figure which acted as a unifying symbol," Clegg said.
Clegg said he prefers to express his political beliefs through his music.
"I think all art, real art, is revolutionary - all real art challenges and puts
up an alternative view," he said.
"There's a very strong tradition in folk music and folk rock music of social and
political comment.
"It makes you see something else is possible, and to that extent it can change
somebody's ideas."
Now working on a new album that he describes as "a very weird mixture" of modern
and traditional music, Clegg will take time out from recording for his second
Australian tour in late May, visiting Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
MUSIQUE. Johnny Clegg se produira à Saint-Ciers-sur-Gironde au mois d'octobre http://www.sudouest.com/gironde/actualite/blayais/article/578774/mil/4483646.html?type=98 SUD OUEST | Lundi 04 Mai 2009
Johnny
Clegg présentera les titres de son nouvel album, au gymnase de la commune. (photo
archives « sud ouest »)
À noter qu'un nouvel album sortira juste avant la venue du chanteur. Les Saint-Cyriens seront donc parmi les premiers à pouvoir découvrir les morceaux sur scène.
Conjugaison de forces
Une venue de prestige que l'on doit à la toute nouvelle association La 5e Saison, présidée par Laurent Chopy, qui avait déjà organisé la venue l'an passé de Louis Bertignac, l'ex « guitar-hero » de Téléphone. C'est d'ailleurs à ce moment-là, et devant le succès de l'événement, qu'est née l'idée de l'association. « Avec Christophe Jeanneau, l'adjoint à la culture de la commune, on s'est dit que ça marchait et qu'il fallait donc continuer », résume Laurent Chopy. Sitôt dit, sitôt fait, le comité des fêtes et l'Office de la culture ont été dissous et leurs bénévoles réunis au sein de la même association. « Ça donne plus de forces, plus de bénévoles, et donc plus de compétences dans tous les domaines. » La 5e Saison était née, avec, dans sa besace, plein de projets : « En gros, l'idée est de proposer quelque chose une fois par mois environ ».
Christophe Jeanneau rappelle que la fusion de l'office de la culture et du comité des fêtes avait été évoquée durant la campagne électorale, « histoire de varier l'offre culturelle ». Et puis, le maire de Saint-Ciers, Anne-Marie Plisson, souhaitait que les propositions restent financièrement accessibles au plus grand nombre.
D'autres ambitions
Côté stratégie, l'association mise sur des têtes d'affiche pour faire connaître Saint-Ciers, sans négliger des actions en direction des écoles et des enfants.
« On veut utiliser tous les atouts culturels de la commune (cinéma, école de musique, médiathèque) et, comme on est chef-lieu de canton, essayer de monter des spectacles avec la Communauté de commune de l'estuaire ou les autres communes, comme le cirque Oups ou la venue de l'ensemble vocal Saggi- tarius », poursuit Christophe Jeanneau.
Et la 5e Saison ne compte pas s'arrêter-là. D'autres artistes sont pressentis, dont un très connu, qui se produirait l'an prochain. Mais, par contrat, l'association n'a pas encore le droit de communiquer à son sujet. On devra donc patienter encore un peu pour que son nom ne soit officiellement divulgué.
(1) Bien que né en Angleterre, Johnny Clegg a passé toute son enfance en Afrique du Sud.
nEWs (may 14, 2009)
Dubbed “the White Zulu”, South African singer Johnny Clegg will perform around
Australia this month. Photo: Claude Gassian
JOHNNY Clegg is known around the world as
“the White Zulu” -– a title that carried immense significance against the
backdrop of a politically charged and divisive apartheid South Africa.
“It started off as a kind of in-joke in the early 1970s because people in the
townships called me that because I stood out from other white people,” Clegg
explains over the phone from South Africa.
“I was very connected to the local Zulu migrant culture in Johannesburg ... It
was said with affection and bit of a laugh.”
In a time when the oppressive law regime of racial division irrevocably changed
the face of South Africa, Clegg -– then a teenager -– was defiant of the law and
driven only by his insatiable appetite for Zulu music.
“I had a very strong Zulu romance developing in my brain because I wanted to be
a Zulu warrior -– I was stick-fighting and doing Zulu war-dancing as a youngster
it was just a fantastic experience,” he recalls.
Born in England in 1953, to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father, Clegg was
raised in his mother’s native land of Zimbabwe before immigrating to South
Africa at the age of nine.
Clegg says his Jewish background had a minimal impact on his identity, which has
primarily been formed by African traditions and the multicultural environment he
was immersed in as a child.
His love of the Zulu culture and music -– which would come to define his life
and career -– began at the age of 13, when he first saw traditional Zulu
dancers.
His interest led him to Charlie Mzila – a Zulu cleaner who played street music
near Clegg’s home.
For close on two years, Clegg learnt the fundamentals of Zulu music and
traditional Zulu Inhlangwini dancing with Mzila.
Armed with a guitar, he accompanied Mzila to all the migrant labour haunts, from
hostels to rooftop shebeens (illegal bars in townships).
“Charlie was very generous and kind ... He was quite protective of me in the
tough hostels that I was going around with him to. It was very important
[because he] enabled me to feel safe and trusted in a time when there was a lot
of suspicion and, in some parts, hatred between the race groups.”
In a landscape wrought with the scars of apartheid, Clegg found a way -– even as
a teenager -– to navigate a path into the hidden world of the Zulu migrant
labourers. He quickly developed a reputation as a skilled Zulu guitarist.
He was first arrested at the age of 15, and subsequently re-arrested on many
occasions for contravening the Group Areas Act -– an apartheid law forcing
different races to keep to their own residential and recreational areas.
“The Group Areas Act was obviously a huge issue,” he says, and takes a deep
breath before continuing, “I slowly understood that people were upset by what I
was doing. I didn’t understand why my behaviour was criminalised I didn’t
understand why it was illegal for someone to play music with someone else.”
News of “the White Zulu” spread quickly by word-of-mouth and reached one young
man in particular – migrant worker Sipho Mchunu.
“Sipho had arrived from Durban and heard there was this white boy playing Zulu
music and he didn’t believe it,” Clegg recalls. “So he arrived at my flat to
challenge me ... I came back from school and saw him standing outside.
“The thing I remember was that his guitar was a fantastic collection of objects
that were stuck to it: he had Coca Cola and Fanta bottle-tops, pink-and-blue
budgie mirrors and toy soldiers it was like a work of art.”
Unlike most of the other street musicians he played with up until that point,
Mchunu was close to his age -– Clegg was 16 and Mchunu 18 –- and despite their
initial rivalry, they formed an inseparable bond over their love of Zulu music.
As a pair, they formed South Africa’s first inter-racial pop group and
ultimately went on to change the face of the country’s music.
“We got together because we liked each other ... We weren’t on some political
crusade. We did it because we both loved guitar and Zulu culture, and we were
both fascinated at the possibility of playing together.
“Like most things that start in an innocent way, it took on huge political
ramifications.”
After completing schooling and a university degree, where he lectured in
anthropology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Clegg worked on
the concept of blending English lyrics and western melodies with Zulu musical
structures.
The blend was recognised by South African producer Hilton Rosenthal, who became
a champion of the project and recorded Clegg and Mchunu’s first hit single, Woza
Friday, in 1976.
Soon after, they formed the band Juluka -– meaning “sweat” in Zulu -– which was
in total contravention of the cultural segregation laws of the time, which
emphasised the separation of language, race and culture.
Their music was subjected to censorship and banning and the only way they could
access an audience was through live touring. Yet, despite the odds, they enjoyed
great success and released several albums.
In 1982 and 1983, Juluka toured the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and Scandinavia.
The band split in 1985, and Mchunu went back to his farm in Zululand where he
was born. They still remained in contact, with Clegg funding and producing
Mchunu’s solo album in 1989.
Clegg went on to form another crossover band Savuka, meaning “we have risen”. By
the end of 1980s, Savuka was the biggest-selling world-music group in the world.
The band broke up in 1994 -– the same year apartheid ended -– and Clegg and
Mchunu began looking at reforming Juluka. This came to fruition in 1996 and
today, they continue to collaborate.
In the years since, Clegg has released a number of solo albums and has performed
around the world to thousands of fans in sell-out concerts.
He’s chalked up countless accolades, including a Grammy nomination and a Knight
of Arts and Letters, awarded by the government of France.
In more than three decades, he has sold more than five million albums of
crossover music worldwide.
Today, Clegg is one of South Africa’s most celebrated artists and in France,
where he has a loyal following, is affably called “Le Zulu Blanc” – the White
Zulu.
He is a singer, songwriter, dancer, anthropologist and musical activist, whose
crossover music helped to break racial barriers that had, for so long, defined
South Africa.
Looking back, Clegg admits that as a teenager romanced by Zulu music, he didn’t
realise the immense political ramifications of his actions – and what, of
course, paved the way for inter-racial bands and African pop music.
“I didn’t understand -– and I don’t think Sipho did -– that Juluka was a much
bigger thing than the two of us for our country. It was only later on ... that
the penny dropped,” he says.
Clegg will be touring Australia from May 21-June 1, for the second time since
his maiden tour in 2005.
Johnny Clegg will perform in Melbourne on May 25 at the Palais Theatre and in
Sydney on May 26.
Bookings:
www.cleggdownunder.com 136 100.
Win tickets to see Johnny Clegg
Listen to a podcast with Johnny Clegg
http://www.sabona.com.au/articles_detail.ews?articles_category.ewdcategory=12&&articles_detail.ewdid=274 21. April 2009
He's
widely known as “The White Zulu”, but Johnny Clegg is definitely no novelty act.
Revered in his native South Africa and abroad for his barrier-busting music,
this iconic singer-songwriter will soon be bringing his energetic stage show to
Australia and New Zealand.
Johnny Clegg will be heading to these shores in May and June 2009, playing at
a variety of concert venues with his knockout band of musicians and dancers.
Expatriate South Africans and locals alike are encouraged to come along and
experience these dynamic live performances by one of South Africa's most famous,
accomplished and award-winning sons.
He will be performing at the PCEC Riverside Theatre in Perth on 21 May; at the
Palais Theatre in Melbourne on 25 May; at the Sydney State Theatre on 26 May; at
the QPAC in Brisbane on 28 May; at the St James Opera Hall in Wellington on 30
May; and in the Auckland Town Hall on 1 June.
Born in the UK in 1953, he moved with his family to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia)
before settling in SA when he was nine. At age 14, the young Johnny befriended a
Zulu flat cleaner who taught him the basics of traditional Zulu music and dance.
The inquisitive teen would accompany his friend to Johannesburg's sprawling
black townships, but the young white boy's involvement with black musicians
often led to him being arrested by the apartheid authorities.
His growing reputation as a competent guitarist reached the ears of migrant Zulu
worker Sipho Mchunu, who challenged Johnny to a guitar competition – sparking
off a friendship and musical partnership that was destined to alter the face of
South African music. Their work together was often fraught with racial abuse,
threats of violence and police harassment, and the laws of the time meant that
the venues where a white and a black musician could perform side by side were
scarce. Nevertheless, they persevered, believing that music could break down
race barriers and forge common ground, melding English lyrics and Western
melodies with Zulu musical structures.
Their big break came in 1976 with the release of their first hit song, Woza
Friday, and soon the band Juluka – meaning “sweat” – was formed. Despite many
difficulties, including censorship and the banning of their music, they built up
a solid reputation thanks to extensive gigging, proving popular with South
African audiences across the colour spectrum.
In 1985, Mchunu returned to rural Zululand to farm, and Clegg formed a new band,
Savuka
(meaning “we have risen”), mixing African rhythms with Celtic folk music and
international rock sounds. This proved the golden ticket to overseas recognition,
particularly in the Francophone countries. By the late 1980s, Savuka were
selling millions of albums, playing to massive crowds, chalking up number one
hits and being named the biggest selling world music group in the world.
Prizes and accolades followed by the dozen, including a Grammy nomination. Clegg
was named a Knight of Arts and Letters by the Government of France – a rare
honour indeed.
Since those heady days of Asimbonanga, Great Heart and Scatterlings of Africa,
Clegg has continued making music rooted in the African soil but drawing from an
array of influences, as his musical curiosity persists to this day, aided no
doubt by his academic background in anthropology. He still tours extensively, in
South Africa and abroad – including his most recent visit to Australia and New
Zealand in 2005. He also lends his voice to former President Nelson Mandela's
46664 HIV and Aids campaign.
Throughout his more than three decades as a professional musician, Clegg has
stamped his mark not only on South African music, but world music in general.
Thanks largely to this trailblazer and his fellow musicians, and despite the
odds being stacked firmly against him, indigenous African music was made
accessible to the world – and the world gave it a firm thumbs-up.
Anyone who has seen Johnny Clegg live on stage will confirm that it's an
invigorating, uplifting experience, complete with familiar songs and
jaw-dropping Zulu dance routines. His melodies are bound to resonate strongly
with locals, expatriates and new converts alike, and hearing the first strains
of the stirring anthem “Impi” seldom fails to get the patriotic juices flowing!
WIN TICKETS TO JOHNNY CLEGG CONCERTS!
http://www.sabona.com.au/articles_detail.ews?articles_detail.ewdid=296
To book for Clegg's performances in the Antipodes, log onto
www.cleggdownunder.com and follow the link for any of the performances. Follow
an easy login process and proceed to book the required tickets. Don't miss out
on the chance to see this “Third World Child” live and in the flesh!
There are prizes on offer for every each of these events.
Grand Prize: A pair of tickets - PLUS A signed poster - PLUS you get to meet
Johnny Clegg in person!
Runner Up Prize: A pair of tickets
How to Enter: Tell us about your favourite Johnny Clegg moment or memory
by adding it as a comment in the comments section below. Make sure you supply a
valid email address otherwise we cannot contact you to notify you if you've won.
You provide multiple entries but only one entry per person/email will be
considered as a winner. Also make sure you specify which of the events you'll be
attending so people in Perth don't win tickets to the show in Brisbane!
Ian Cuthbertson | May 07, 2009 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25438932-5013575,00.html
SOUTH African crossover musician Johnny Clegg, known for the colourful Zulu
dance aspect of his music as much as his songwriting, has sold more than five
million albums over three decades.
His unique blend of Western pop, Celtic spirit and Zulu rhythms has proved
infectious globally, especially in France, where he is known affectionately as
Le Zoulou Blanc: the White Zulu. The world music pioneer, set to tour Australia
later this month, is also an anthropologist, with published academic papers to
his credit, and an activist.
Growing up with musical and academic interests in a racially divided country
made it more or less impossible not to become an anti-apartheid campaigner. No
surprise, then, that his hero is Nelson Mandela, whose harsh treatment at the
hands of the apartheid regime haunted and inspired Clegg.
VIDEO:
Johnny Clegg & Nelson Mandela in Frankfurt
Speaking
from South Africa, Clegg tells how Mandela's surprise appearance on stage during
a performance of Asimbonanga, perhaps his most identifiable song, was the
pinnacle of his life. The title means "we have not seen him" and it is, of
course, about Mandela. "In 1999 I was the entertainment for an international (non-governmental
organisation) conference on Africa in Germany, and Mandela was the guest speaker,"
he says.
"He had spoken the day before, and we were wrapping up the event. I had no idea
that he would walk onstage, singing the song with us, and it totally blew me
away."
It had a similar effect on the audience. The moment, captured on video, is
widely available on YouTube.
"I wrote that song in the state of emergency in 1986," Clegg says. "The army was
in the street, terrible things were happening in the country. At that time we
had no idea Mandela would be released four years later."
Born in England in 1953, Clegg lived in Zimbabwe until he was seven. At that
time his mother, a cabaret and jazz singer, married a South African crime
reporter, and the new family moved to Zambia for two years before returning to
South Africa. With life in three countries under his belt before he was 12,
Clegg was perhaps better prepared than most to see through the racial
smokescreen of apartheid in the South Africa of the late 1960s and early '70s.
At 13 he took to the guitar like a waterbird to the wetlands. It was also at
this time that he saw traditional Zulu Inhlangwini dancers for the first time.
Fascinated, and in the company of a new guitar-playing mate, a Zulu house
cleaner who played street music near Clegg's home, the young musician began
illegally hanging out, playing and learning in the black migrant labour haunts
around Johannesburg.
Though he was arrested several times for contravening the Group Areas Act, an
apartheid law forcing different races to keep to their own residential and
recreational areas, Clegg nevertheless developed a reputation as a competent
Zulu guitarist in the Masikande tradition. ("The thumb plays every beat in the
song on the lower three strings and the other four fingers pick against it. And
then you sing a different melody over the top.")
"The street musicians I admired all played a hardy, cello-shaped steel string
guitar called a Bellini," Clegg says.
"They were tinny little things, manufactured cheaply in Pinetown, south of
Durban. But they sounded great and were perfect for the unique finger-picking
style the Zulus had developed. So you had a Western instrument that had been
completely Africanised: restrung, retuned and reconceptualised."
A bit like Clegg himself. Though fascinated by the African musicians and dancers
around him, Clegg still listened to a lot of Celtic folk music. "I was listening
to Scottish, Irish and English folk music at a very early age", he says. "And
there were certain echoes of it that I heard in Zulu street guitar music."
Clegg also remembers being strongly influenced by Jethro Tull, learning from the
band's singer, Ian Anderson, that you could cross over styles - such as jazz,
folk and rock - in the same piece.
The Zulu street dancing Clegg fell in love with as a teenager remains an
important part of his live shows. "In any case I come from an African
entertainment aesthetic," he says. "In Africa, people don't come to listen to
your music, they come to see your music."
These live shows began in earnest when migrant Zulu worker Sipho Mchunu, who
considered himself a Zulu guitar whiz, not to mention a sensational dancer,
heard about this white kid who played guitar and danced like a native. The two
met, hit it off and in the mid-'70s formed the influential early world music
band Juluka, in contravention of the cultural segregation laws of the time.
"We were never played on the radio. So we had to develop a really killer show.
That was the way we built up a fan base," Clegg says.
Somehow, Clegg found the time to finish a degree in social anthropology. He
pursued an academic career for four years, publishing papers in journals and
lecturing at universities in Johannesburg and Durban. "Obviously, having a
multi-racial band in South Africa during apartheid wasn't really going to pay
the rent," he says.
But it was through his academic engagements that Clegg met South African
producer and label owner Hilton Rosenthal, who fell in love with Clegg's concept
of blending English lyrics and Western melodies with Zulu musical structures.
Rosenthal signed Juluka at a time a time when mixed-race bands were unprofitable
because of radio and performance bans.
His faith paid off. By the '80s, Savuka, the successor band to Juluka, was the
leading world music group touring Francophone countries. By the end of 1989,
Savuka had sold more than one million copies of its debut album, Third World
Child, and 700,000 of its second, Shadow Man, and the stage was set for an
enduring global musical career.
Johnny Clegg's Australian tour begins in Perth on May 21.
Johnny Clegg down under
May 13, 2009 10:00pm http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25480814-5005364,00.htmlClegg is one of SA’s most famous sons, and his music, rooted in the African
soil, resonates strongly with locals, expatriates and new converts alike. Four
years after he last toured Australia, he is returning for a series of
performances.
Clegg and his band will be performing at the PCEC Riverside Theatre in Perth on
21 May; at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne on 25 May; at the Sydney State
Theatre on 26 May; at the QPAC in Brisbane on 28 May; at the St James Opera Hall
in Wellington on 30 May; and in the Auckland Town Hall on 1 June.
Collectively, these venues can seat more than 10,000 people and it is hoped that
crowds will turn out in their numbers to see “the White Zulu” at full throttle.
Clegg enjoyed great success during his previous tour of the Antipodes in 2005.
This time around, he will be supported by as yet an unnamed opening act during
his performances, and audiences can expect a full 90 minutes of this iconic
singer-songwriter and his knockout live band.
High-energy Zulu dance routines and classic Clegg, Juluka and Savuka hits such
as Impi, Scatterlings of Africa and Asimbonanga will be interspersed with newer
material, resulting in a show that’s distinctly South African and immensely
entertaining.
During a career spanning more than 30 years, Clegg has had an indelible impact
on not only South African music, but world music in general, through his efforts
to foster an awareness and appreciation of indigenous sounds on the global stage.
He defied the segregation laws of the time to forge a hybrid of Western pop and
Zulu musical structures that, to this day, strikes a chord with audiences of all
hues.
Having penned several hits and received numerous awards – including being named
a Knight of Arts and Letters by the Government of France – Clegg continues to
make music and tour extensively, playing to rapturous crowds locally and abroad.
by Paul Cashmere - May 18 2009 http://www.undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=8346
Johnny Clegg is not only the most famous artist to come out of South Africa,
he also had academic writings to his name.
In 1981, Clegg wrote ‘Ukubuyisa Isidumbu’ (Bringing Back The Body). It was an
examination of the ideology of vengeance in the MSinga and Mpofana Rural
locations between 1822 and 1944.
Also that year he wrote ‘The Music of Zulu Immigrant Workers in Johannesburg: A
Focus on Concertina and Guitar”.
His final academic work was ‘Toward an Understanding of African Dance: The Zulu
Isishameni Style”.
The following year Clegg released his 4th album and the title track became his
biggest hit globally ‘Scatterlings of Africa’.
The Johnny Clegg Australian tour starts in Perth this Thursday.
by Paul Cashmere - May 26 2009 photo by Ros O'Gorman http://undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=8378
It was interesting watching who came along to the Johnny Clegg show in
Melbourne last night. It was not based on demographic, gender or nationality.
Johnny Clegg has built a fan base from across the community.
To describe the music of Johnny Clegg as “world music” is somewhat, if not
entirely, accurate. The Clegg sound is rooted in the sounds of Africa. After
all, he earned the name ‘The White Zulu’ when he was still in his teenage years.
However, Johnny Clegg has managed to mix Zulu rhythm with pop and rock to create
his own sound. It was this Clegg sound that Paul Simon discovered and based his
Graceland album on.
Clegg live is a interesting mix of music and culture. He connects with the head,
the heart and the feet when he performs. By watching Johnny Clegg live, you
learn a little about who he is and why he is along the way. You are also treated
to around 2 hours of a 30 year career.
Johnny Clegg was born in London but migrated to South Africa when he was 6
months old. He sings about what he knows and what he has learned and shares that
knowledge with his audience.
He played the concertina and explained its relevance to the African people. It
was a simple instrument to play as they moved from town to town.
The cultural experience includes Zulu dancing with Clegg and dancer Sabelo Qoma.
Sabelo is the son of Bafazana, Clegg’s stickfighting mentor. Sabelo showcases
the traditional dance of isishameni and umzansi in the show. With Sabelo, Clegg
demonstrated the art of the fightingstick by way of dance.
Andy Innes is a former member of Suvuka. He is Clegg’s musical director playing
guitar and mandolin as well as vocals. He has played more than 200 cities in 28
countries in his time with Johnny Clegg.
The gem of the show is the extremely talented Mandisa Dlanga. Mandisa has toured
and recorded with Clegg since 1986. She has also worked with Paul Simon, Simply
Red and Jennifer Rush as well as South African stars Hugh Masekela and Miriam
Makeba.
I’m not sure people were expecting to see such an energetic show. Clegg’s tribal
rhythms had them on their feet.
It has been nearly 4 years since Johnny Clegg last toured Australia. He promises
to return in 2010.
Here is the setlist from the Johnny Clegg show at the Palais Theatre, St
Kilda for May 25, 2009: Africa (from Universal Men, 1979), Giyani (from
Third World Child, 1987), Sky Blue (from African Litany, 1981), Shadillis,
December, Jongosi, Kilimanjaro (from Stand Your Ground, 1984), Maonjeni, Bullets,
The Crossing (from Heat, Dust and Dreams, 1993) - Interval - I Call Out Your
Name, Impi (from African Litany, 1981), Your Time Will Come, Tough Enough, Great
Heart (from Third World Child, 1987), Scatterlings of Africa (from Third World
Child, 1987), Cruel Crazy - Encore: Asimbonanga (from Third World Child, 1987),
Danse, Dela
by Paul Cashmere - May 1 2009 http://undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=8214
Jimmy Buffett covered a Johnny Clegg song back in 1988. For Johnny, it was an
introduction to the man.
“It was great. I’d didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know how big he was,” he
tells Undercover News. “Someone said ‘Jimmy Buffett is covering your song’ and
went ‘okay’. Then I went over there and saw him playing to 40 or 50,000 people
and thought ‘my word’”.
Jimmy Buffett recorded Clegg’s ‘Great Heart’, a song that was also featured in
the movies ‘George of the Jungle’ and ‘Whispers: An Elephant’s Tale”.
“Do you know that in 1990 he was the biggest touring artist in America.
Incredible” he says.
Buffett is huge in the USA, so big in fact that he also has two restaurant
chains named after him. Check out the Margaritaville bar next time you are in
Vegas.
Expect to hear the best of Johnny Clegg when he brings his show to Australia and
New Zealand in May for the first time in three years.
by Paul Cashmere - May 28 2009
http://www.undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=8386
South African superstar Johnny Clegg has been touring Australia for the first
time in more than 3 years but promises to tour more frequently.
At his show in Melbourne this week, Clegg announced that he would be back in
2010.
Johnny Clegg is a rare talent. He has taken the Zulu sounds of his homeland and
merged the rhythms with the contemporary pop sounds of the western world.
Clegg was such an innovator of the sound that it was soon noticed by artists
such as Paul Simon who likewise used his template. Simon developed the massive
‘Graceland’ album out of the format.
Johnny plays his final Australian show tonight (May 28) in Brisbane before
heading to New Zealand this weekend.
Published: 2011/04/13 http://www.relix.com/features/2011/04/13/johnny-clegg-get-up-stand-up by Tad Hendrickson
Long before Peter Gabriel or Paul Simon delved into their Afro-pop fusions,
Johnny Clegg fused his own unique sound. Clegg’s band Juluka—Zulu for “sweat”—formed
in 1979 and was the first multi-racial band in South Africa. Early on, the band—whose
very existence was an anti-apartheid manifesto—played illegal clubs, Black
townships and private homes. Juluka went on to achieve platinum and gold records
despite the fact that government controlled radio refused to play its music
because of the group’s racial make-up and its audacity to mix African and
European styles of music.
After the band broke up in 1985, Clegg reemerged the following year with Savuka
(Zulu for “we have risen”). The group had more of Western pop sound than Juluka
though essentially picked up where Clegg had left off until it broke up in 1993.
While the group has periodically reunited, Clegg primarily works as a solo act.
Clegg returns with a new album, Human —his first since 2006’s One Life. “I think
it’s a breakthrough work for me,” he says of his latest effort. “It’s the
beginning of a different kind of crossover. I’m trying to tell my audience that
I want the license to write any kind of music I want and say what I want to say.”
In the past he’s mixed Zulu rhythms with Western pop, and rock with lyrics in
English and Zulu, but Human has a more diverse sound—the anthemic pop of “Love
in a Time of Gaza,” the Latin-driven “Give Me the Wonder,” the reggae groove of
“Congo” or the traditional African vocals on “Asilazi.” To mark the release of
the new album, Clegg will lead his seven-piece band on a U.S. tour that runs
from March to May.
“We’ll be covering stuff from all points in my career, but at least half the
material will be stuff from the new album,” says Clegg, who has sold five
million records worldwide. “For me, it’s been an unexpected pleasure to hear
that people are excited to see this energetic band explode onstage. They leave
feeling happy and energized by what we do. And this is coming from cynical club
bookers who are tough to please because they’ve seen it all.”
Clegg is an animated wonder to behold onstage. Not only does he sing and play
guitar, but he also uses many of the dynamic gestures and movements from the
Zulu tribal dance tradition that he learned as a child. In between songs, he
also shares anecdotes and stories, inviting the crowd further into the music.
While he has performed high profile gigs in South Africa including a performance
for Nelson Mandela (who he’s known for many years) as well as a set at the
recent World Cup Final Draw celebration, Clegg’s 30th Anniversary in Music
concert in Johannesburg was a personal triumph. With 6,000 attendees, the
concert featured tributes to Savuka, the tribal dance tradition and even
included a reunion of Juluka.
“We had a week of rehearsals and it was like going to the dentist,” Clegg says
with a laugh, as he refers to playing with his old band. “The bass player hadn’t
played in 15 years and we hoped to do eight songs, but we managed five. We
played hits from the early days in the townships and people loved it. It was
incredible. The whole thing was a great celebration.”
South African National Orders 2012 - The Presidency
Dr Cassius Lubisi , 23 April 2012
Johnny Clegg, Scully Levine, Joe Thloloe, Cheeky Watson, Albert Luthuli to be honoured
Media statement by the Chancellor of the National Orders, Dr Cassius Lubisi
Programme Director
Ladies and gentlemen of the media
Good afternoon
On the 27th of April 2012, His Excellency, President Jacob Zuma will bestow the following National Orders: The Order of Mendi for Bravery, the Order of Ikhamanga, the Order of the Baobab, the Order of Luthuli, the Order of Mapungubwe and the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo.
It is usual at this time of the year, that the President of the Republic of South Africa bestows the highest accolades upon citizens and members of the international community who have made extraordinary contributions to our country and the world.
The National Orders are awarded to deserving citizens and eminent foreign nationals.
The President as the fount of honour in the country bestows these Orders.
The President in this regard is assisted by the Director-General in The Presidency, (who is the Chancellor of National Orders) and an Advisory Council on National Orders, in the execution of this responsibility.
At this 17th investiture ceremony, our country honours men and women for exceptional and outstanding contributions. These are women and men who have attuned their skills and knowledge so as to ameliorate human suffering and benefit human kind often at the expense of deserved emoluments for their effort.
The President will also honour posthumously Inkosi Albert Luthuli and Mr Oliver Tambo whose esteemed family names have been institutionalised in our National Orders because of the unique contributions they have made in the struggle for liberation. We are eternally grateful for their lives and the sacrifices they made to ensure that the people of South Africa are free.
Herewith then, the list of National Orders Nominees who will be admitted as Esteemed Members of our National Orders:
Nominees for the 2012 National Orders Awards ceremonyProgramme Director, Ladies and gentlemen of the media1. Order of Mendi for Bravery
....
2. Order of Ikhamanga ('"Ikhamanga' is the Xhosa name for the strelitzia flower.' - ... for achievements in arts, culture, literature, music, journalism, and sports)
2.1 Silver
....
2.1. 2. Jonathan "Johnny" Clegg
Awarded for his excellent contribution to and achievement in the field of bridging African traditional music with other music forms, promoting racial understanding among racially divided groups in South Africa under difficult apartheid conditions, working for a non-racial society and being an outstanding spokesperson for the release of political prisoners.
....
Issued by The Presidency, April 23 2012
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=294468&sn=Marketingweb+detail