10.06.2010
A National Treasure Turns 21 (2000)
JOHNNY CLEGG IN DER SCHWEIZER
HITPARADEJohnny Clegg &Juluka by Annette C. Eshleman www.dirtylinen.com/linen/feature/67clegg.html
In South
Africa in 1969 the lines were clearly drawn. Blacks did not mix with whites, and
whites did not mix with blacks. But then, nothing is ever clear or easy or
straightforward where racism is concerned, a fact made even more potent by the
reality that racism was the law of the day. Apartheid cost countless lives and
destroyed many more; however, it could not prevent Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu
from forming a musical partnership which would result in the first ever South
African group to mix Zulu with European, traditional with rock, and black with
white. Now, after an eleven year separation, the pair have reunited to continue
on their musical journey.
Nineteen sixty-nine was the year Clegg and Mchunu met. Both were 17 and eager to experiment and share their cultures. They were not interested in changing the laws which sought to separate them. They wanted only to make music and to dance...together. Clegg's white middle class background differed greatly from that of Mchunu, a Zulu migrant worker who came to Johannesburg in search of employment. The two found their common ground musically and began performing together. They launched their groundbreaking group Juluka in 1979 with the debut album Universal Men.
In an interview conducted during this summer's reunion tour, Clegg recalled the difficulty the duo had in assembling and then keeping a group together. "Juluka was Sipho and me," he said. "Our band members changed all the time. We went through, like, eight drummers and five bass players. They couldn't understand what it was we were trying to do." Juluka's problem was twofold. "We had an outward battle with the media, with the radio, with the TV, with the government. There was an inward battle with the band members." For Clegg and Mchunu, mixing musical cultures seemed perfectly logical. "We had very strong ideas about what we wanted to do."
After two platinum and five gold albums, Juluka fell victim to the pressures of international success and Mchunu returned to a traditional life on his family's farm in Zululand. Political, business, and management demands had taken their toll. Around this time, Juluka's musical balance had begun to tip in favor of rock, and so, remembered Clegg, "...he (Mchunu) basically thought, the stuff that's going down internationally is not really the traditional stuff...It's not the stuff that's being put on the radio because it's in Zulu. So it's always going to ride second best to the mainstream of what Juluka was doing." In addition, other responsibilities weighed heavily on Mchunu. "You know," continued Clegg, "He has 29 kids and five wives. He didn't want to tour anymore internationally, and so the band broke up."
Mchunu became involved in development projects in his community and built a school with profits from Juluka. He also tried starting his own traditional band. Nama Bhubesi released two albums and toured South Africa, but the timing was wrong. "Traditional music in the late 80s was seen to be backward," explained Clegg, "(It) was seen to be politically retrogressive, reactionary. And the rise of Inkatha meant that traditional Zulu music was seen as aligned to tribalism. There's a very strong tension in South Africa between modernism and tribalism." The group disbanded.
Clegg's musical path after Juluka is well known. He continued on, launching his new group Savuka in 1986, just one month before South Africa declared a national state of emergency. Amid the climate of violence and censorship, Clegg wrote some of his most politically powerful work. Songs like "Asimbonanga" (a tribute to then-jailed Nelson Mandela, the song was banned from South African radio), "Human Rainbow," and "One Human One Vote" captured the mood of a desperate nation. Tragedy struck Clegg and the group as friends, colleagues, even band member Dudu Zulu, were killed in the dark years of apartheid.
Savuka is a Zulu term meaning "we have risen" or "we have awakened." Does Clegg feel he's accomplished that? "Yeah, we've done that," he said, proclaiming the end of the group. "The Savuka project is over." His focus now is set clearly on the future.
After concluding the summer tour, work will resume on a new studio album with Juluka to be completed early in 1997. Clegg is also involved in several other endeavors, including two South African radio stations, a concert promotions company, and MTV South Africa. His concern with promoting the music of his country goes well beyond making records. "I have a very broad interest in extending my musical experience into these areas which affect music," he said, referring to the business activities. "I think that music in South Africa has had a bad deal for a long time."
Two years ago Clegg started his own record company, Look South, in which Juluka will play a major role. "I'm hoping for Juluka to be the flagship of the record company. After which we'd like to sign just three acts; a traditional act, a dance act, and a rock act. Basically as the three major modes of music now current in South Africa." Despite his wish to "keep it small," Look South (along with the other music business opportunities) places Clegg in a unique situation. He has both the position and the ability to affect the course of popular music in South Africa.
And what of Juluka? The group conducted a 27 city summer tour of the U.S. and Canada in support of the compilation CD Putumayo Presents: A Johnny Clegg and Juluka Collection [Putumayo World Music]. It's quite different from 1991's The Best Of Juluka [Rhythm Safari]. None of the songs are duplicated and, according to Clegg, "We think the songs on the album are a very good reflection of the best of our songwriting."
The concert crowds were enthusiastic and populated with longtime fans as well as curious newcomers. The show typically opened with the band performing "Cruel Crazy Beautiful World" and a number of other well known Savuka favorites. During the song "Siyayilanda," each band member was featured with an extended solo before departing. Clegg remained on stage taking a few minutes to talk about and then introduce Sipho Mchunu. The audience reacted with shouts of "Welcome back, Sipho!"
Clegg and Mchunu began with "Thula 'Mtanami" (from the album Universal Men). Mchunu sang lead while Clegg took the unusual, but seemingly comfortable, supporting role. One by one the rest of the group reemerged to take their places on stage. Juluka had returned.
According to Clegg, each Juluka album was a different musical experiment. He expressed the group's desire to experiment even further. "The stuff that we're playing now is like, hiphop with Zulu guitar...Euro-dance rhythms, reggae, and Zulu guitar and concertina. It's very modern," he asserted, shrugging off concerns about offending old listeners. Clegg himself has been funding the studio project and appears content to "give the Juluka direction of songwriting a chance to breathe and develop and see how that works. We're both (himself and Mchunu) very relaxed about this. There's no pressure or urgency."
With a new album in the wings and so many other projects on his plate, Clegg is optimistic about the future. "Our coming together is in a way (a) very important reaffirmation that you can continue in the new South Africa as a culturally based group mixing music and mixing ideas."
While the new South Africa struggles to redefine itself, Clegg and Juluka continue to explore new possibilities of their own. The future for all South Africans is certain to be a challenge but, as Clegg himself wrote, "Gotta keep looking at the skyline, not at the hole in the road" (from "Your Time Will Come" [Heat, Dust & Dreams]).
Universal Men, the celebrated debut Juluka album, turns 21 this month. Richard Pithouse reports on an album that, despite being largely ignored at the time of its release, launched an inspirational career and become a national treasure.
Copyright Richard Pithouse
October 25 2000
Reprinted with permission of Mr Pithouse
http://www.talkingleaves.com/pithouse.html
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?10,24,10,15
In the mid 70's Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu started playing together as a duo under the name of Johnny and Sipho. Their infectious melodies and gentle presence didn't disguise the fact that this union between an illiterate gardener from rural Zululand and a Jo'burg academic was as radical a musical statement as it was possible to make at the height of apartheid repression. But Johnny and Sipho were a lot more than just Verwoed's worst nightmare. From the earliest days their music was infused with a remarkably perceptive engagement with their time and place that made it as timeless and universal as anything by Marley or Dylan.
Sipho Gumede, who was laying down bass grooves for the out-there jazz band Spirits Rejoice at the time, remembers that: "I saw Johnny and Sipho playing as a duo at the Market Cafe and I was excited by what I saw. It was the first time I'd seen a white guy playing African music and the music was very strong. We got talking and they invited us to join the recording project."
So Johnny and Sipho went into the studio with the country's best musicians - people of the calibre of Sipho Gumede; Mervyn Africa, who went on to play with Jazz Africa in London; Colin Pratley from the legendary Freedom's Children, who now runs a home for AIDS babies in Durban and Robbie Jansen, who, of course, remains the inimitable Robbie Jansen.
Their producer, Hilton Rosenthal, had a simple plan: "to avoid commercial pressures and to give the musicians a mandate to experiment and be spontaneous. I thought we'd just put them in a room and see what came out." And the gamble paid off, spectacularly. Johnny Clegg remembers that "The most incredible aspect of the recording process was that the jazz musicians from Spirits Rejoice managed to sound completely different to their normal sound. The whole project was, musically, completely new. No one had done this before - we were flying a kite and hoping to be struck by lightning."
21 years on Sipho Gumede enthuses that "Universal Men still sounds fresh. It's one of those albums that will be there for life. It was an innocent album. We went into the studio with the aim of making great music. No one was thinking about how many units we would sell. We just thought about the music." Hilton Rosenthal speaks for many when he says that "There've been other great moments - like Asimbonanga and Scatterlings - but Universal Men is my favourite album. I have a hard time thinking about Universal Men without the hair on my neck standing up."
The band believed, firmly, that they had produced something important but everyone in the industry told Rosenthal that it was "too black for whites and too white for blacks." No radio station under the jurisdiction of the apartheid state would play the album so Rosenthal took it to Capital Radio in the Transkei, who played the single, Africa, to an enthusiastic but tiny listenership and to Radio Swazi where Mesh Maphetla burst in to tears when he heard Africa.
The album duly hit the streets late in October 1979. The sleeve carried a picture of a two men - one white and the other black. They were dressed in paisley waistcoats, beads and car tyre sandals. But they weren't hippies. Sipho Mchunu looked into the camera with all the resoluteness of a revolutionary Johnny Clegg gazed into the distance with a questioning intensity.
The name of the band appeared as an engraving on a gold bar. It's shimmering glitz clashed, pointedly, with the more organic colours of the sky, the rocks, the men and their clothes. Juluka means sweat in Zulu and the message couldn't have been clearer: Johannesburg's wealth and glamour is built not just on gold but also on the sweat of the men, the migrant labourers, who mined that gold. But Universal Men was a world away from the abstract sterility of Marxist dogma. On the contrary it was more like the words of an African Pablo Neruda had been set to the most sublime music - a very human response to an inhuman society.
Johnny Clegg explains that "Universal Men is about bridging two worlds. Going and coming. While the worker is on route, on a bus or a train, he is given the time to look over the distances, geographic and otherwise, in his life. Migrant labourers, in Africa, Europe, everywhere, are like universal joints. They are this incredible human resource who are just sucked up by the capitalist system and used anywhere. The system makes no concessions and so the workers have to create a whole new universe of meaning."
The album is a largely acoustic mixture of Anglophone and rural Zulu folk. Clegg's lyrics have an extraordinary rhythm, depth and emotive power and are, at times, a little otherworldly or perhaps old fashioned. Clegg explains that "There was so much hardness in the migrant life and yet I experienced incredibly human moments with my buddies. They lived such a rich and full life with a highly developed sense of humour and understanding of human nature. For me there was something magical and mystical in this bleak life and I felt that I needed another language to capture it and to humanize the suffering ."
The album opens with Sky People. The title refers directly to the amaZulu - the people of the sky (iZulu). One man's story rolls, like a wave on the ocean, across the larger story of his people - their past and their hopes for the future. He asks
Where did the time, time, time go ?
My old eyes can hardly see the green fields leaving me behind
I worked the earth and turned the blade with a strong heart and steady hand
Seasons wheeled across the sky
I turned around and found that I was old
Trembling heart body cold
Wind and rain take their toll
The album was recorded just months before Zimbabwe won independence and Clegg remembers that "there was a huge fight in the studio. "I wanted to use the line 'The drums of Zimbabwe speak/They roll across the great divide' but everyone was convinced that would lead to the album being banned so we eventually changed it to 'The drums of Zambezi speak' " But the next lines remained: 'Smiling spear with teeth of white/Give me strength to face the night/Ancient Song Bless My Life/See me through to see the morning light.' This was a world away from the 'happy native' crap of IpiTombi.
Many of the themes in Sky People were developed further on later albums and this is also true of the second track, Universal Men. Clegg explains that the title track is the pivot on which the whole album turns. It pays respect to the workers with whose sweat prosperity was built:
From their hands leap the buildings
From their shoulders bridges fall
And they stand astride the mountains and they pull out all the gold
The songs of their fathers raise strange cities to the sky
And the chorus is a meditation on separation and home coming.
I have undone this distance so many time before
That it seems as if this life of mine is trapped between two shores
As the little ones grow older on the station platform
I shall undo this distance just once more
My brother and my sisters have been scattered in the wind
Dressed in cheap horizons which have never quite fitted
And for centuries they've traveled on that pale phantom ship
Sailing for that shore which has no other shore
For a while the vision seems bleak.
The rivers of their homelands murmur in their dreams
They're shackled to that distance till heaven lets them in
But then Clegg finds a way to defend hope.
Well they could not read
and they could not write
and they could not spell their names
But they took this world in both hands and they changed it all the same
And from whence they came and where they went nobody knows or cares
Cast adrift between two worlds they could still be heard to sing
The third song, Thula 'Mtanami (Hush My Child), has all the evocative power of an archetypal lullaby. It is beautifully sung by Sipho Mchunu and was included on the album because, according to Clegg, "Sipho knew that his wife would be singing it to their child back home." One can't help but wonder if migrant workers don't also sing lullabies to parts of themselves.
The fourth track, Deliwe, was overlooked for years but it was taken to a large new audience when it featured on the carefully put together Putumayo compilation, A Johnny Clegg and Juluka Collection. It has recently been worked into the Juluka set list and many now rate it as their favourite Juluka song. It's the only song on the album which doesn't deal directly with the migrant labourer experience but it is part of the broader theme of movement and separation in that its about a person, Deliwe, deciding whether or not to leave South Africa. It warns that not all waters wash us on the inside and that, in a foreign land, Deliwe will be haunted by the melodies of Africa and, eventually, judged by the north winds (a metaphor for the winds of change sweeping down from the north).The song 's simple prayer has haunted more than a few expatriate South Africans and persuaded just as many to return home and live in hope:
Oh, Bless this water
Bless this land
Give us food to eat
Let our herds span the hills
Let them graze in peace
If soldiers march across our fields give them eyes to see
The children singing in the sand
Songs in the north wind
The next song, Unkosibomvu (The Red King), begins with a sound that is somewhere between Malombo and Amampondo, and develops a slightly ominous tone - as though there's danger beneath the surface. Clegg explains that it deals with the martial psyche which is able to generate enormous power but also has a dark side. The Red King refers to "a romantic iconography of a mythological bloody king whose ability to force his will on others is admired."
Africa, which was Capital Radio's first ever number No. 1, remains a live favourite. Its sing along chorus, means, in translation, "in Africa the innocent are always crying." Clegg describes it as a cryptic song which refers to the strong rural belief that good is limited while evil is pervasive and so the good suffer while the bad prosper.
Uthando Luphelile (Love has Gone), the 7th track, has a much harder edge than anything else on the album and, musically, it anticipates the Juluka inspired African rock movement of the late 80's led by the likes of Via Afrika and éVoid. The lyrics have a tight, edgy, urban feel. Clegg describes it as "a very weird song" and explains that "I was trying to look at the problem of prostitution at the migrant hostels - at the power of the slick city girls and to make the point that bourgeois men are also trapped by the same illusions about fantasy women." The songs warns that once you've "seen her in the disco club busting out all over" she "infiltrates your desire and makes you open wide/ She walks down the convolutions of your cerebellum/And tickles the right hemisphere with an electric tongue...You will persround her like a fly" but "you will never get to hold that woman because she's a phantom in your mind."
The profoundly moving Old Eyes is about homecoming. Clegg explains that, for the migrant labourer "home coming is everything - you're carrying presents and it's the moment when you reveal yourself to your community as a successful person. You become a source of abundance; it's an elevated and life giving moment in the migrant universe. There is redemption. All the degradation and alienation which you've endured is redeemed and transformed into a hugely meaningful event when you arrive home.
But in this song, the longed for redemption is out of reach - shattered between the anvil and hammer of apartheid. The returning worker finds that he is the "only one to witness my homecoming" and reflects that:
When I left that mountain land so gold and green
I was a sturdy 16 years
The work was hard and the wage was low
And the seasons past me by one by one
And I dreamed Maria you would wait for my return
We'd build a home upon the rock beneath the smiling sun
He finds an old man who remembers from his youth who tells him that:
Son I'll be old until I die now
And then I will join our people in the sky
I am not the one to ask why our people have been scatted in the wind
Yyou've got old eyes - amehlo madala - you've seen much too much for one so
young
The album ends with Inkunzi Ayihlabi Ngokumisa which is a reworking of an ancient war song sung by Mchunu and adapted to the evocative sounds of the Clegg's mouthbow. The title refers to a traditional idiomatic expression which means, in translation, "A bull doesn't stab by means of the way in which its horns have grown." It's an exceptionally beautiful piece of music and their gentle, meditative interpretation speaks of a softness - an openness to new ways of being. It was an inspired way to end the album.
There is a long list of South African artists who have made great albums. It includes, amongst many others, the likes of Philip Tabane, Winston Mankunku, the Malopoets, Bright Blue, Sakhile, Jennifer Ferguson, the Gereformede Blues Band, Plum and Prophets of Da City. But there's always something a little tragic about a great album, like Bright Blue's The Rising Tide, that's not followed up adequately or at all. The list of artists who have developed a substantial body of superb work is small and doesn't extend much beyond the likes of Abdullah Ibrahim, Tananas, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masakela, Miriam Makeba and Johnny Clegg.
Part of the magic of Universal Men is that it was the start of an incredible career for Juluka. Two years after its release they put out African Litany with the irresistible Thandiwe, the massive cross over hit and enduring cult classic Impi and the lyrical African Sky Blue which goes, in part,
The warrior's now a worker
And his war is Underground
With Cordite in the darkness
He milks the bleeding veins of gold
When the smoking rockface murmurs he always things of you
African Sky Blue
Will you see me through?
Radio stations on both sides of apartheid's colour line had to give in to a ground swell of popular demand and Impi became a massive hit and broke the album nationally. Hilton Rosenthal remembers, rather ruefully, that "suddenly Universal Men was the great first album." It had only sold 4000 copies when it was first released but it now went gold.
The following year Juluka released Ubuhle Bemvelo which included reworkings of some of the favourite songs from the Johnny and Sipho days including the infectious Woza Friday and Umfazi Omdlala. In the same year they released Scatterlings, an album which had a harder edge, musically and politically, than anything they'd done before. The justly famous title track charted in the UK at the time and, when it was rerecorded with Savuka, went to No.1 across Europe. The album was packed with superb songs which included Siyayilanda, dedicated to murdered trade unionist Niel Aggett, as well as Simple Things and Spirit is the Journey. It's the most spiritual of all the Juluka albums but it never goes anywhere near sentimentality. It's more Heidegger than Oprah. In 1983 Scatterlings was followed up by Work for All an album which, again, was harder and more militant than anything they'd done before. The first track, December African Rain, remains a sing along live favourite and Gunship Ghetto and Mdatsane (Mud Coloured Dusty Blood) engaged, directly, with the violence of oppression and resistance. And of course the title track is as relevant today as it was 17 years ago:
Hear them sing in the streets now
Hear the sound of marching feet now
Sifun'umsebenzi - work for all - we need to work to be
Sifun'umsebenzi - work for all - there's a joblesss army in the streets
Sifun'umsebenzi - work for all - in a wage a hidden war
Sifun'umsebenzi - work for all - there's a jobless army at my door
Sifun'umsebenzi - funumsebenzi
Work for All was followed, in 1984, with Musa Ukungilandela, an all Zulu album with a tight, hard, urban feel. The big hit was Ibhola Lethu, written for the Mainstay Cup. Later that year they released a mini-album of tracks especially recorded for the European and American markets. Each of their increasingly militant 7 studio albums is a coherent and powerful statement and there's not a single song that doesn't make for a captivating listening experience today. It was a remarkable achievement.
In 1985 Mchunu left the band and recorded, amaBubhesi a solid but overlooked maskanda album in the shameni style while Clegg returned as a solo artist with Third World Child. It's heavy reliance on synthesizers makes it sound very 80's today but it was a taught and powerful response to the dark days of the state of emergency which, somehow, managed to hold on to hope in the midst of barbarism. Clegg then formed Savuka and released and EP and four albums all of which made direct political statements. Crazy Beautiful World began with a song One (Hu)Man One Vote the first words of which were, translated from the Zulu, "The young boys are coming, the young boys are coming, They carry homemade weapons and a bazooka. They say 'We have agreed to enter a place that has never been entered before by our parents or our ancestors and they cry for us, for we do not have the right to vote.' " With the exception of the incandescent Heat, Dust and Dreams none of the Savuka albums was as portent an artistic statement as any of the Juluka albums. The lyrics were always well crafted, intelligent and important and there were fragments of transcendent insight. But the records tended to sound like collections of songs rather than albums and their engagement with the pop sounds of the time give them a slightly ephemeral feel. The Savuka period did produce one astonishingly good song though - Asimbonanga: a soaring tribute to the then imprisoned Nelson Mandela. It was on the first ever Savuka release, a 4 track ep, and is clearly up there with Mannenberg and Weeping as one of the greatest South African songs ever.
But the poppier Savuka material did win major international success which, in turn, won the band, their vision of transcendence and their back catalogue, major respect in white South Africa. In a Durban they suddenly went from playing to 3000 people in the University Hall to playing for 25 000 people, and a few extras who'd scaled the walls, at the Village Green. When Europe said that it was cool to be into Johnny Clegg he suddenly became a national icon and was able to reach out to many more people. Such are the sad ironies of colonial culture.
Juluka reformed in the late 90's and released the forgettable Ya Vuka Inkunzi in 1997 which was later rereleased as Crocodile Love. They are set to release another album shortly and they remain, through their live performances, a vital force in South African culture. Clegg and Mchunu are still passionate people and they may well make great music again. Perhaps, as with Bruce Springsteen's Ghost of Tom Joad, they may reinvent themselves by returning to their acoustic roots and record another album with the gentle potency of Universal Men.
The world has changed in the last 21 years but lives are still being shattered by the machinations of inhuman powers. A new vision of hope and humanity from Juluka would be rain in the desert.
*Sipho Mchunu was not available to be interviewed for this article as he was on holiday in Paris
http://www.freemuse.org/04artist/johnny01.html
|
JOHNNY CLEGG |
•
RealAudio sound file:
"Censorship is based
on fear. It is conservative and wants to preserve a particular set of values,"
says Johnny Clegg who discusses censorship in a larger context:
"Censorship is a brute blind reaction to a brute blind recognition that
information is not neutral..."
Sound file duration: 5:50 minutes.
Hi
| Low (Interviewed
in South Africa in 1998 by Mr. Ole Reitov)
National Public Radio – The W orld Café, Musician’s Day, 18 June
1993
06-18-93 interview.pdf
JC as guest DJ, World Cafe, 18 June 1993
by Chris Heim Chicago Tribune, April 19, 1991 http://www.talkingleaves.com/articles/rosenthal.html
Hilton Rosenthal (Johnny Clegg's ex-manager) and Sipho Mchunu Zululand, Christmas 1987
Rosenthal on the connectivity of music: "...it doesn`t matter where music comes from. It`s something that can touch the heart no matter where it emanates from."
"I had a call from the president of Warner Bros. (Records)," South African record producer Hilton Rosenthal says. "And he said, 'Paul Simon`s found this song that`s on a cassette someone gave him. We know the cassette`s called Gumboots. We don`t know any of the song titles Can you find out more about it?'
"At that stage, I don`t think either of us dreamed that this was Graceland. It was just, 'Let`s do some music and see what happens.' The rest is history, I guess."
It is, in fact, some of the more significant pop music history of recent times. Paul Simon`s Graceland album almost single-handedly introduced South African mbaqanga music to the U.S. and played a major role in drawing attention to the phenomenon of world music.
Other things helped. Johnny Clegg, leader of the interracial South African pop-mbaqanga bands Juluka and Savuka, broke through internationally, selling millions of albums around the world. Harry Belafonte recorded Paradise in Gazankulu, an album of South African influenced-music done with South African musicians. Some of the originators of South African mbaqanga Mahlathini, the Mahotella Queens and the Makgona Tshole Band reunited for the first time in years and became international favorites.
Working behind the scenes in every case was Rosenthal, the crucial catalyst for world music. Now he hopes to take his vision a step further with the start of his own American-based label, Rhythm Safari Records.
Rosenthal grew up in white, middle-class surroundings in segregated South Africa. He liked the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but never listened to black South African music. He played in a band but had no plans to make a career in music.
"I`d worked for my father`s firm, they were auditors and got bored out of my skull in the first few days. A couple of days later, my agent called and said, 'I`ve got this gig for you playing on a boat going to Madagascar, the Seychelles, this whole Indian Ocean cruise.' And I said, 'Well, that`s the end of my accounting career.'"
After college, Rosenthal went to work for the Gramophone Record Co., the South African affiliate of CBS Records. About a year later he was put in charge of the black music division. South African music then was strictly segregated by race.
This didn`t make sense to Rosenthal, who, in 1978, persuaded CBS International to give him a small budget for musical experiments. He began working with Clegg and black musician Sipho Mchunu, who were performing traditional acoustic Zulu music together. He encouraged them to work with a band (that became Juluka), add some electronics and English, and combine Zulu music with Western pop.
"When we made the first Juluka record, people looked at us as if we were nuts, "Rosenthal says. "The comments from the record company, from everyone were, 'This is too black for whites and too white for blacks.'"
Rosenthal went on to create (and eventually sell) Music Inc., one of the largest independent record companies in South Africa; produce every album Clegg did with Juluka and his current band, Savuka; and assist Simon and produce Belafonte. In 1987 he relocated to America, and at the start of 1991 he launched Rhythm Safari Records.
The label debuted with four titles. Like his past productions, they offer a highly accessible merger of pop and ethnic music presented with crisp, modern production values. The music is glossy and filled with catchy hooks, yet still connected to the traditions from which it springs.
The Best of World Music is a sampler of pop-worldbeat hits of recent years. The Best of Juluka highlights material (over half previously unreleased in America) from that groundbreaking South African band led by Clegg and Mchunu. LAtino LAtino: Music from the Streets of L.A showcases what Rosenthal says is a largely neglected but exciting salsa and Latin jazz scene in Los Angeles. The fourth release is An African Tapestry, worldbeat influenced New Age/light fusion from classical guitarist David Hewitt backed by a group of South African musicians.
"I thought personally the four releases represented pretty clearly most of what I`m going to be doing," says Rosenthal. "It`s very difficult to define (what connects all these artists), but I know there`s a common thread there. That`s one of the things I really want to put across with the label. That it doesn`t matter where music comes from. It`s something that can touch the heart no matter where it emanates from."
Hilton
Rosenthalartists (H) - http://reggae.discogs.com/artist/Hilton+Rosenthal
Profile:Accountant, musician, producer, and businessman Hilton
Rosenthal grew up in typical white, middle-class surroundings of a segregated
South Africa. He liked the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but had never listened
to black South African music. An accountant with his father's firm, he played in
a band but had no plans to make a career in music.
After college though, Rosenthal went to work for the Gramophone Record Co.,
the South African affiliate of CBS Records. About a year later he was put in
charge of the black music division (music then was strictly segregated by race).
Despite this, in 1978 he persuaded CBS International to give him a small budget
for musical experiments, and he began working with
Johnny
Clegg and Sipho Mchunu who were performing traditional acoustic
Zulu music together. He encouraged them to work with a band (that eventually
became Juluka),
add some electronics and English, and combine Zulu music with Western pop -
although the music was initially considered "too black for whites and too white
for blacks". Subsequently, he produced every Juluka and Savuka
album.
Rosenthal then went on to form (and eventually sell to EMI before his 1985 move
to the USA) Music Inc., one of the largest independent record companies
in South Africa.
In 1990 he launched Rhythm Safari Records, with
Rhythm Safari (Australia) following in 1997.
Rhythm Safari was
formed in Los Angeles in 1990 by veteran music producer/executive, Hilton
Rosenthal, with the aim of bringing a variety of quality music to the
marketplace. The label initially concentrated on world music, but later
developed to have success with releases by Carole King, Foreigner, Christopher
Cross and Boyz Of Paradize.
The Australian label was formed in 1997 and is distributed by Universal Music
Australia & New Zealand.
courtesy of Rhythm Safari +
http://www.amo.org.au/label.asp?id=208
Rhythm Safari was formed in Los Angeles in 1990 by veteran music producer/executive, Hilton Rosenthal, with the aim of bringing a variety of quality music to the marketplace. The label initially concentrated on world music, but later developed to have success with releases by Carole King, Foreigner, Christopher Cross and Boyz Of Paradize.
The Australian label was formed in 1997 and is distributed by Universal Music Australia & New Zealand.
Hilton's credits include: Producer of all Johnny Clegg (Juluka & Savuka) albums from 1979 - 1993. Other productions include Teddy Pendergrass, Tone Loc, The Horse Flies, Harry Belafonte, Raffi, and music for the films "Power Of One" & ‘FernGully’. Hilton also helped conceive & coordinate the recordings for Paul Simon's Grammy Award winning ‘Graceland’ album .
In the late 1970's Hilton was General Manager of Gramophone Record Company - CBS' joint venture in South Africa. Later he formed Music Incorporated, which became one of the largest independent record labels in South Africa. The company was sold to EMI in 1985 before Hilton's move to the USA.
More recently, Hilton was co-founder and executive of Global Music One/Yourmobile.com, an LA based mobile entertainment company that was acquired by Vivendi Universal's VU Net at the beginning of 2002 and renamed Moviso. Moviso has since been acquired by InfoSpace to become the nucleus of InfoSpace Mobile. http://www.rhythmsafari.com/MintDigital.NET/RhythmSafari.aspx?XmlNode=/About+Us
Johnny
Clegg artists (J) - http://reggae.discogs.com/artist/Johnny+Clegg n
Profile:
"Songwriter, dancer, guitarist and vocalist - in that order."
Johnny Clegg was born on 7th June 1953 in Rochedale, Lancashire, England
and raised in Israel, Zambia, South Africa, and Rhodesia before finally settling
in Johannesburg in 1965.
Young Johnny, who had been learning to play Spanish guitar, was 14 when he met a
Zulu gardener, Charlie Mzila, playing street music near Clegg’s home. For two
years he learned the fundamentals of Zulu culture and traditional "inhlangwini"
dancing as he accompanied Mzila to the migrant labour haunts - from hostels to
rooftop shebeens. It was the height of apartheid, and Johnny Clegg’s involvement
with black musicians and his love for the music often led to him being arrested
for trespassing on government property and contravening the Group Areas Act.
Johnny Clegg’s fast-growing reputation finally reached the ears of Sipho
Mchunu (born 1951), a migrant Zulu worker who had come to Johannesburg
looking for work. Intrigued, Mchunu tracked Johnny down and challenged him to a
guitar playing competition, sparking off a friendship and musical partnership
that helped transform the face of South African music. That was 1969.
After Clegg completed his education, graduating with a BA (Hons) in Social
Anthropology and Political Science from the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg, he spent four years as a lecturer.
Their
musical breakthrough came in 1976 when, as "Johnny and Sipho", they
secured a major recording deal and produced their first hit, "Woza Albert".
Under the guide of producer
Hilton Rosenthal, the band
Juluka was
formed around these two core members. However, because their music was in total
contravention of the cultural segregation laws of the time, it was subjected to
censorship and banning, and their only way to access an audience was through
touring. In late 1979 their first album, "Universal Men", was released.
It received no airplay but became a word-of-mouth hit. They were able to tour in
Europe and had two platinum and five gold albums, becoming an international
success. Juluka was finally disbanded in 1985 as Mchunu returned to his roots in
Zululand to become a livestock farmer.
Later that year, Johnny Clegg released his first solo album "Third World
Child".
He also forms
Savuka, another inter-racial crossover band in 1986, blending African
music with European (especially Celtic) influences. One EP and four albums were
released between 1986 and 1993 before that band was terminated.
Since then, Johnny has recorded solo (briefly reforming Juluka for one
album and a tour), including his latest studio album "New World Survivor"
in 2002 and continues to perform live with resounding success, including his
support of Nelson Mandela’s "46664 AIDS Awareness Concerts" in South Africa and
Norway during 2004 and 2005.
In France he is affectionately known as "le Zoulou blanc", the white Zulu.
Julukaartists (J) - http://reggae.discogs.com/artist/Juluka
Profile:
Johnny Clegg (who went to six different schools in three different countries in five years and was learning to play classical Spanish guitar) was 14 years old when he heard a garden boy by the name of Charlie Mzila play guitar at a corner cafe in Yeoville, Johannesburg. The sound of the Bellini guitar intruiged little Johnny, and over the next few years he learnt fundamentals of the Zulu culture and traditional "inhlangwini" dancing and stick fighting as he accompanied Mzila to the migrant labour haunts.
Their
first musical breakthrough came in 1976 when, as "Johnny and Sipho", they
secured a major recording deal and produced their first hit, "Woza Albert".
Under the guide of producer
Hilton Rosenthal, the band Juluka (meaning "sweat that comes from
dancing" in Zulu and named after Sipho's head bull!) was formed around these two
core members.
http://inmyafricandream.free.fr/
Members:
Johnny Clegg & Savukaartists (J) - http://www.discogs.com/artist/Johnny+Clegg+%26+Savuka
Profile:
Savuka
(based on the Zulu word for the phrase "we have arisen") was formed by
Johnny
Clegg in 1986 after the demise of his musical partnership with Sipho Mchunu
as Juluka.
Whereas Juluka were more of a local cultural curiosity and crossover project
during the height of apartheid and the pair’s musical relationship was often
subjected to racial abuse, threats of violence and police harassment, Savuka
went one bold step further: multi-racial, of course, but they also had a
political agenda. The issue of racial and social injustice, which has been at
the core of so much of Johnny Clegg’s work over the years, was more prominent.
Says Clegg: "Savuka was launched in the State of Emergency, 1986. The entire
album was hard-hitting, it was directly political and it had very strong
political metaphors. That’s the album I wrote the song for Mandela and released
it commercially inside South Africa, that’s the album which was also restricted
and banned, the video was heavily banned."
"Musically, Savuka tended to be more of an international melange, it was more
rock, it was more hard, it was a harder edge sound and we were not drawing just
on Zulu guitar. I drew on many other influences. I drew on Zimbabwean guitar
music, I drew on Zairian music, I drew on Latin-American rhythms and even in the
last album I drew on a traditional Hindu prayer song."
The breakthrough album was "Third World Child" in 1987 but their success
reached its zenith with "Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World" (1989) which was
followed by "Heat, Dust & Dreams" (nominated for a Grammy) in 1993.
Also in 1993, percussionist Dudu "Zulu" Ndlovu was assassinated in a conspiracy
relating to a taxi war, and Savuka was terminated that same year.
Johnny Clegg - Lead vocals, Guitars, Concertina, Mouth Bow, Jaw Harp
Steve Mavuso - Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Derek de Beer - Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Keith Hutchinson - Keyboards, Saxophone, Flute, Backing Vocals.
Dudu "Zulu" Ndlovu - Live Percussion and Dancing, Backing Vocals.
Solly Letwaba - Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals.
Mandisa Dlanga - Additional Backing Vocals.
URLs:
http://inmyafricandream.free.fr/Members:
Johnny Clegg
This
South African documentary takes a look at the traditional Nguni cattle and the
people who care for them. Focusing mainly on the Zulu nation, we look at an
assortment of people and how their lives are related to and influenced by their
cattle. 75 minutes, Parental Guidance
Documentary, Drama, On the art circuit
July 28, 2006
http://www.tonight.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3360481&fSectionId=358&fSetId=251
Director: James Hersov
Cast: Mkombiseni Majola, Ningi Mahlaba, Sipho Mchunu, Sibuyisile Sibiya, Pitika
Ntuli (narrator)
Running time: 75 minutes
Classification: PG
With Heaven's Herds, documentary maker James Hersov has focused on the
obsessive, intimate and often quirky relationship forged over hundreds of years
between the Nguni people and their indigenous Nguni cattle.
It is narrated by Professor Pitika Ntuli who weaves in his own personal story
with that of the Nguni breed, and introduces the viewer to a cast of Zulu
characters at specific points in their lives which, traditionally, incorporate
the cattle.
Colonial prejudice over the past hundreds of years in South Africa robbed the
indigenous people not only of their traditions but also their cattle.
After the Zulu War, the British slaughtered thousands of cattle and confiscated
the royal herd as a way of saying "what is important to you is inferior to us",
which struck at the very heart of the Zulu nation.
The authorities regarded Nguni cattle as worthless, scrub cattle and during
apartheid people were forbidden to breed them
The pure Nguni strain almost became extinct but a small group of breeders
kept them going and now they are finally being recognised for their hardiness,
adaptability, economic and heritage value.
The filmmaker didn't concentrate on KwaZulu-Natal only, since there are pockets
of Nguni cattle found all over the country.
The film is actually strongly character-driven, despite the topic being animals.
It follows individuals who are either undergoing specific rituals which
incorporate the cattle in some way, or whose lives are intimately bound up with
the cattle.
Such as cattle-whisperer Mkombiseni Majola, who refuses to slaughter his cattle
because they are like family to him and, when he dies, wishes to be wrapped in
the hide of his Nguni bull.
Or Subuyisile Sibiya who has waited for seven years for her fiancé to raise
enough money to buy the 11 cattle needed for her lobola (bride wealth).
Nguni poetry and prose reflects a deep respect for their cattle, which is
evocatively expressed in the praising and naming of cattle. - Synopsis
| Credits | |
|---|---|
| Cast | Mkombiseni Majola, Ningi Mahlaba, Sipho Mchunu, Subuyisile Sibiya, Shiphomandla Zungu. Narrated by Pitika Ntuli. |
| Director | James Hersov, Sofia de Fay |
| Screenplay | James Hersov, Sofia de Fay |
| Music | Sea Grealy |
| Cinematography | Efpe Senekal, Mark Rowlston |
| Editing | Robert Haynes |
| Sound formats | Dolby Digital, Sony Dynamic Digital Sound, DTS |
| Soundtrack | Not available |
| Made in | 2006 |
| Produced by | Flying Fox Productions |
| SA Distributor | Ster-Kinekor |
He's a good man, Dave Ornellas. But then he's always been good; rising like a
colourful prophet of old from the smoking stage, with a voice Joe Cocker might
have envied. Wild black hair and flowing beard, he chose - in the early years -
the complex simplicity of making music the African way.
No, not fusion. But earthy stuff - the virile, extraordinary, substance concept
albums are made of.
Strange to write that now, thirty-something years on.
The "concept album", with its long, interwoven tracks, telling a musical story,
was the avant-garde pop symphony of the 1970s. It is also long dead. Everyone
did concept albums - Pink Floyd with Umma Gumma, Genesis (the original Genesis,
that is, when Phil Collins was a drummer, not a weasel-voiced vocalist) produced
them with Trespass and Foxtrot (and at a push The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway).
Deep Purple went even further, seconding the entire Royal Philharmonic and
Malcolm Arnold in the Royal Albert Hall to do their seminal Concerto for Group
and Orchestra and equally impressive, but not as melodic Gemini Suite. Add Uriah
Heep and Free, who fringed - and Keith Emerson (as the Nice and later with ELP)
who turned classical themes - like Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite - into
mind-numbing extravaganzas, sometimes stabbing the keyboard with a knife to hold
the note. It was the age of course, resurrecting itself from the post-World War
2 How Much Is That Doggie in the Window? Mocking Bird Hill syndrome; the
hysterical - but musically brilliant - pop culture of The Beatles and the
raunchy y'all R&B of the Rolling Stones. And who can forget The Who?
In Johannesburg, bursting, like Durban, with musicians aeons ahead of their
time, Ornellas added the sunburnt, brown prairies of Africa to the genre of the
concept album - the heady, steady beat of drums, and enough cross-rhythms to
make you dizzy.
Add the mesmerising voices - and the telling story.
Tuck in the ranging flute, the saxophone. The deep bass buzz. And the
mesmerising, talking drums.
African Day, all 17-plus minutes of it, was the birth of a home-grown concept
later taken up by Jon Clegg and Sipho Mchunu, and the other rising sons of South
African music.
"John used to sit at the foot of the stage with 'smoke' from the ice machine
curling down, when we performed," says Ornellas. "He was about 15 years old -
sometimes Sipho was with him. Sometimes they danced."
African Day took up the entire side one of the album of the same name, something
never quite before seen, or heard, in a country alive with indigenous sounds
no-one had worried to emulate, because the "culture" was foreign. In other
words, not "white." And everyone knew, in a society insanely paranoid with
Apartheid-speak, that only "white people" could, well, make music.
The others could develop separately.
Hawk changed - and challenged - that immediately.
In the off stage darkness a voice intoned:
It's dark and still in the chief's village protected by the mountains of the
great southern regions of Africa . . .
Drums echo through the village as the first fingers of light paint the sky with
the fresh colours of morning, and so the days begins . . .
And so, too, the lights came up. It was the prelude to a unique, colourful,
performance, and once caught live, and the story dramatically revealed, was
never forgotten.
It was music theatre on a grand, unique, stage.
One day in the Kraal of Taka,
All the peoples' hearts were filled with fear,
Three men had died and the village waited
For the maddened beast to re-appear.
An African story, this. Of a killer, rogue, elephant, a rampaging, out of
control beast. A story culled from the heat and dust of Africa, a
fast-disappearing natural world around us. An avant garde tone poem.
Ornellas, diminutive now, with craggy face and short, off-black hair, sips
orange juice. We are in the lounge of his Cape Town home, with his young son,
Caleb. His dogs huff and puff in the heat.
At my feet, the instrument of his profession and his success - a guitar. New
strings, in a box, lie on the table.
It is a good meeting.
I last saw him around 1970-71 in Durban. Whatever the year, Hawk headlined at
the Battle of the Bands - an annual bash put on by the music magazine I edited,
Trend, and Durban councillor Peter Breytenbach, who organised the City Hall and
the anti-riot-drug squad. It was a good year for music. On the show were Otis
Waygood Blues Band, Abstract Truth, Scratby Hud, and a collection of good local
bands. Voting was by four judges - I was not one, but my colleague Carl Coleman
was.
Hawk, in full flight tore the house down with a storming set, a beaming
Ornellas, dressed in flowing African-style full-length robes shaking the
perspiration from his oval of deep black hair.
Not bad for a lad who grew up in Cape Town's southern suburbs and went to
Plumstead High School. And learned to play the acoustic guitar.
Ornellas says: "I wanted to go to university, but didn't make it. That was bad
news, because I was pretty keen. Instead, in 1967, I headed north to
Johannesburg and the school of mines. I wanted my future to be in the science of
metallurgy, and eventually landed up on the Kloof gold mine."
It was dismal, and not what Ornellas wanted. But his next move was the nudge
into an entirely new career.
"I went to art school - in the centre of the city. There I met a fellow student
who was very neat on the guitar. His name was Mark Kahn - better known as
'Spook'. He could really play lead, while I tucked myself in on rhythm. Soon we
a pretty tight duo and called ourselves The Buskers and got regular work at that
music hangout, the Troubadour in Johannesburg."
Kahn says: "It was amazing how it all came together. This dude Ornellas could
make things happen. Hey, it was a pretty exciting thing. We kind of rolled up at
these places, you know. Kind of casing the scene. What we really wanted to do
was play with some people - you know, people with drums and keyboard and sax -
that kind of stuff."
Extraordinary things began to slot into place.
Ornellas believes in extraordinary things - like meeting "his hero" for the
first time.
"It was Mike Dickman - he had been playing electric guitar with a group called
Flood which also included Pete Measroch, Rod Clarke and Richard Johnson.Well, I
spent hours listening to Mike, so laid back, so cool, so collected. The man was
a guitar wizard. When he hit the strings, the wood talked."
Richard remembers "Flood was playing a weekly gig at the Troubadour Dave and
Spook would drop by to do a set or two and as most musos do we checked each
other out. In the same block as the Troubadour Keith and Braam were playing in a
group called Toad then as if by fate both bands folded virtually at the same
time; Mike and Pete went on to Abstract Truth and I, together with Keith and
Braam teamed up with Dave and Spook to form Hawk"
Spook says: "This coming together seemed some kind of destiny. Here were these
fellows - just what we were looking for, Dave and I. I suppose we sniffed around
for a while - they could hear what we could do; we could see what they could do.
"They went so far as to let us use their instruments, too.
"We found a togetherness, a synergy. And we found the farm."
Paddock Farm, to be exact. In Morningside, Rivonia, on the outskirts of
Johannesburg.
Says Ornellas: "We had no money; so we grew our own stuff - someone gave us a
huge jar of mayonnaise once, and we ate it for weeks with home grown salads. We
played the Troubadour; we played here and there. We wrote music. We did our own
cover versions. And for a while had a female singer - Maureen England, who made
a name for herself later in folk.
"And we called ourselves Hawk - after a hawk that lived on the farm. We were
beginning to fly, and formulate the direction our music was going to take. We
were listening to a lot of Hugh Tracey tapes - the expert Afro-musicologist who
had travelled Africa placing sounds and music on tape for posterity.
"We went to Swaziland and came back with our own sounds, drums and a burning
desire to make our own brand of African music. From all of this came African
Day."
There is a touch of wistfullness as Ornellas says: "We told a story. It was a
simple one. And we put everything into it - just listen to Keith's sax; the pain
of the elephant is there.
"We produced a spectacle - spears on stage and the like."
It is an understatement of considerable proportions. Hawk's stage spectacular
was a masterpiece of the time - not only on stage, but also in the huge,
open-air concerts that became the rage of the 1970s, rain notwithstanding.
The real miracle was that no-one was electrocuted.
Spook says: "Sometimes I look back - I mean there we were, running around in
leopard skins. Perhaps in hindsight it was just too pretentious. Too much. But
it worked."
Richard says: "Here's something most people have already forgotten - when we
went on stage, we were the first live group to have their own permanent sound
engineers out there among the audience.
"One was Don Williamson, the other Trevor Pitout. We called him Snake - I don't
think anyone ever called him Trevor. Anyway, there they were out there, at their
huge sound desk. Now this was a major technological advance, because we had the
most amazing sound equipment you could imagine.
"So much so that the British group Barclay James Harvest, who were here at the
time, couldn't believe their ears. They had never heard anything like it. I was
later tour manager with them - I know what they thought.
"Anyway, this gave Hawk a unique sound - like it was another dimension. It was
raw. Vital stuff."
As is Johnson's bass, throughout the various movements of African Day.
With Hawk flying high, a manager had appeared on the scene - smart-talking Geoff
Lonstein - and a record deal had been struck with EMI-Parlophone.
It was a dream come true.
But Lonstein caused problems.
Keith Hutchinson recalls: "I went to war with Lonstein. We were playing to
packed houses everywhere. The show was massive. We were successful. People liked
us. But we weren't getting what we deserved.
"Money came in, but not to us.
"There were times when I had to hitch from the farm to Highlands North because I
didn't have money. Sometimes I walked - and that was pretty far. We came away
with virtually nothing in our pockets.
"Then one day I'd had enough.
"We were in the middle of a rehearsal. I stopped it - That's it, guys, I said.
No more. We are not going to do this any more. It's enough.
"Someone must have called Lonstein - half an hour later he arrived to try and
sort it all out.
"For a while it seemed okay. But then three months later, I quit."
I hear this graduate of the Royal School of Music chuckle over the telephone:
"One thing - I learned how to play a saxophone and flute. African Day was a good
concept - it was fun at the time."
Apart from African Day, as the side one concept, Hawk began writing more tracks
- Richard Johnson with Happy Man, Ornellas with Look Up Brother, Keith with Love
Song, Ornellas and Spook with Kissed by the Sun - and an evocative cover version
of George Harrison's Here Comes the Sun.
Look Up Brother, with its evocative solo acoustic lines, supplemented suddenly
by a second guitar, and building up to a vocal climax, is one of the most
beautiful songs penned.
Kissed by the Sun - "I wrote it in the swimming pool" says Ornellas, is another
gem, with Spook providing the melody.
Another version of the song is included in this reissue of the album. It is one
of four bonus live tracks recorded at a Concert for Hugh Tracey's International
Library of African Music on 10th June 1971, at the Selbourne Hall, in
Johannesburg (courtesy of Dave Marks' 3rd Ear Music)
The other three tracks are a previously unrecorded African Rondo, a spectacular
run through The Hunt and another version of Look Up Brother.
Ornellas says: "The album was simple really - kind of contemporary folk-rock. It
came out, we were happy. Then Lonstein turned us into a multi-voiced, huge
ensemble that destroyed the simplicity" - Ornellas uses that word often - "we
had strived so hard for, and which had become part of us.
"It was a disappointment."
Kahn says: "The other day Richard and I were talking - we see quite a lot of
each other. We kind of both came up with the same thought. Someone had been
talking about Clive Calder and the major success he had become - he is perhaps
the biggest record company executive in the United States today.
"Not bad for someone who had this little downtown Johannesburg office and a
company called CCP - Clive Calder Productions. You remember - had artists like
Richard John Smith?
"Well, Hawk at one time had this choice - either go with Lonstein, or sign with
Calder.
"We went the wrong way. We signed with Lonstein. Someone said, Better the devil
you know than . . . well, you know the rest. What would have happened to us
today? I guess it's a question that has no answer . . ."
We talk briefly about another former South African, regarded today as perhaps
the world's greatest record producer - the reclusive Robert John "Mutt" Lange.
But the talk is wishful.
Johnson just says: "Lonstein took the magic out of the band . . ."
But Braam Malherbe talks of magic - and indeed without his drum work, African
Day would not have been the barnstorming success it became.
He says: "They were magic years. This was jungle music."
But then Braam was brought up on the likes of Jon Bonham (Led Zeppelin) and
Keith Moon (The Who). "I learned those solo pieces," he says, "I could play
them. I'm a rock and roller.
"Jungle music is close to my heart - and no-one today can do it, other than
musicians from the Congo. It's alive and well there. Colin Pratley" (former
drummer with Freedom's Children) "feels the same way. He has that excitement
too. It's in his work."
Malherbe adds another dimension, however, to the Hawk story.
"It was political, you know. I mean there's that elephant destroying things
left, right and centre - driving people from their land. We were making a huge
comparison - if anyone had analysed the words then, they'd have realised what we
were on about.
"But when we played the small centres, people jeered and mocked us for wearing
long hair, while they walked around in safari suits with combs stuck in their
socks."
Braam says: "Perhaps the problem was that we didn't write hit parade stuff. It
was far too complex and deep for that - hey, no DJ would play the entire album."
There is another consideration. Radio play was strictly monitored - words had to
be supplied with the albums touted by recording company representatives, seeking
air time. Too often records were banned.
Malherbe says: "I enjoyed that time. It was magic."
Ornellas says: "Suddenly, in 1972, we had that unsung giant of South African
music, Ramsay McKay with us. Les 'Jet' Goode, who had been playing with the
British group Jericho, joined us in the place of Richard Johnson. The
extraordinary Julian Laxton, who had been flirting with Freedom's Children and
drummer Ivor Back was taken on.
"In a flash, we had a whole lot of Black musicians too - Alfred 'Ali' Lerefolo
came in on African drums and vocals, as did Billy 'Knight' Mashigo, who also
handled percussion. There was Audrey Motaung on vocals with Peter Kubheka."
Instead of a group, they had become a collective. A marketing proposition, with
prospects of becoming a commercial giant. For Lonstein.
Richard remembers the split of the original lineup with a touch of sadness "This
was heavy stuff. Both Braam and I lost our places in the band which had nothing
to do with the music. It was the machinations and scheming of the management.
"Leaving the band in this way hurt really badly as we were a few weeks away from
recording the second album."
Although the new lineup went on to record the Africa, She Too Can Cry album and
toured Europe to critical acclaim the long awaited breakthrough failed to
materialise and the group splintered in a blaze of publicity and recriminations
but that, as they say, is another story sometime to be told.
The original band reformed a couple of years later.
But things had changed.
Today the Hawks are active in many fields:
· Dave is a committed Christian pastor whose children have the Ornellas musical
genes;
· Richard is a successful businessman in Johannesburg;
· Keith was an integral part of Johnny Clegg's Savuka and now runs a recording
studio as does Mark "Spook " Kahn
· and Braam Malherbe is deeply involved in his other passion, training horses.
Now, over thirty years later, the reissue of African Day stands as a testament
to the collective magic of five musicians who drew inspiration from the red dust
of Africa and created a musical epic that surely must rank with some of the
greatest rock debut albums of all time.
Owen Coetzer, Cape Town 2001/2001
Janine Erasmus - 19 August 2008 http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=635:johnny-clegg-190808&catid=43:culture_news&Itemid=53
Ubuhle Bemvelo (beauty of nature) was
released in 1982.
Clegg receives his honorary doctorate
in music from Wits University.
A poster for a concert in the UK shows
Clegg in full indlamu flight.
Clegg demonstrates a dance move during
a visit to Dartmouth College, US, where he
delivered a lecture on Zulu culture in 2004.
An early picture of Juluka. Sipho Mchunu stands at the back, while Clegg is front left.
South African music icon Johnny Clegg takes to the local stage again in September, in a new production titled Heart of the Dancer. Clegg is a trailblazer in South Africa’s music industry, having cofounded Juluka, the country’s first racially mixed group, with Sipho Mchunu in 1979, and thereby changing the face of South African music.
After a successful run in Johannesburg, Heart of the Dancer is set to take Cape Town by storm, playing two shows in September 2008 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. The show takes a look at Clegg’s career, and particularly the role that dance has played in his music and live performances.
Clegg has used various styles of traditional dance in his songs, each style imbuing his live shows with excitement and energy. Today, at 55 years of age he still dances as enthusiastically as ever, although he jokes that the muscles “get a little sore”.
As a solo artist, with his Juluka (isiZulu for "sweat") collaboration with Mchunu and his later group Savuka (isiZulu for "we have awakened"), Clegg combined traditional African musical structures with folksy Celtic lilts and rock music to create an accessible and hugely successful world music sound. At the same time he managed to encourage deeper respect for Zulu culture.
In the liner notes for the 1992 recording of Juluka’s performance with Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Cologne Zulu Festival, Clegg was described as “symbolising the positive utopia of a freely integrated society”. In 2007 he received an honorary doctorate of music from his alma mater Wits University. The citation read, “Johnny Clegg's life and productions give meaning to the multiculturalism and social integration South Africans yearn for.”
The indlamu is a Zulu dance performed traditionally at celebrations such as weddings. Derived from the war dance of Zulu warriors, it is danced by men and calls for full traditional dress and the accompaniment of drums.
The dance is characterised by dancers lifting one foot high above the head, and bringing it crashing down to the ground. Clegg and Mchunu would perform this dramatic movement to enthusiastic acclaim from audiences worldwide in songs such as Impi, which tells the story of the battle of Isandlwana. In KwaZulu-Natal on 22 January 1879 British forces were slaughtered by Zulu warriors in the largest single military defeat of the British Empire ever, although it was a Pyrrhic victory for the Zulus. An impi is a body of armed men - not necessarily Zulus.
Other dance styles used widely by Clegg include the ibhampi, a lighter form of the indlamu where the dancer lightly bumps his foot down, and the inqo-nqo, which evolved in the crowded hostel environment. Here the dancer lifts his foot only a little way off the ground, brings it down hard enough to make an audible sound, and then throws himself backwards to land on his bottom.
Clegg, a social anthropologist who completed an honours degree at Wits University, was born in 1953 in Rochdale, near Manchester, England. When he was a year old his father left home and was never seen again. His mother moved to then-Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, her homeland, before moving to Johannesburg. Clegg was seven at the time.
While still in his teens he encountered the culture of the Zulu migrant workers who lived in Johannesburg hostels. Mentored by Charlie Mzila, a flat cleaner by day who played music in the street near Clegg’s home in the evenings, the youngster became fluent in isiZulu, the Zulu language, and mastered the maskandi style of guitar-playing. He also gained a deep understanding of and respect for Zulu culture, later earning the nickname White Zulu.
So interested was the young Clegg in the hostel musical culture that he often entered such premises illegally, as the Group Areas Act was still in force, and even took part in dance competitions.
Around this time Clegg met gardener and musician Sipho Mchunu, a migrant labourer from Kranskop in KwaZulu-Natal. The two formed an acoustic musical duo which later grew into the successful group Juluka, named after a bull owned by Mchunu – but which also implied that much of South Africa’s wealth was built on the sweat of migrant labourers. The group’s first release was Universal Men in 1979.
“Universal Men still sounds fresh,” said the late bass guitarist Sipho Gumede, who performed on the album, in 2000. “It's one of those albums that will be there for life. It was an innocent album. We went into the studio with the aim of making great music. No one was thinking about how many units we would sell. We just thought about the music.”
Juluka contravened the apartheid laws of the time and the authorities took a dim view of the group. Clegg and Mchunu were arrested on a regular basis and their music was censored and banned, but they pressed on regardless, fighting against the system in their own way. Their music was a statement of political defiance. Songs like Asimbonanga from the 1987 album Third World Child and One (Hu)Man, One Vote from 1990’s Cruel Crazy Beautiful World carried profound messages, as did many of Clegg’s songs of the time.
The iconic song Asimbonanga ("we cannot see you") was a call for the release of Nelson Mandela and paid tribute to other heroes of the liberation struggle such as Steve Biko, Victoria Mxenge, and Neil Aggett.
Released in 1990, One (Hu)Man, One Vote was Clegg’s reminder that voting is a basic human right that was denied for so long to millions of South Africans. "The right to vote has become a hassle for a lot of people in the West, it’s taken for granted," Clegg said of the song. "With One Man, I tried to emphasise that this is a universal right that people fight and die for in other parts of the world."
Juluka disbanded in 1985. Clegg immediately formed another band, Savuka, which was a direct response to the tense situation in South Africa at the time and featured a more conventional pop-rock sound as well as more explicitly anti-apartheid songs. Savuka was launched just one month before South Africa declared a national state of emergency in 1985. The group began touring abroad extensively and by the end of 1987 was the leading world music group touring the francophone countries.
Savuka broke up in 1994 after great international success, including a 1993 Grammy nomination for best world music album for its final release Heat, Dust and Dreams. Clegg felt that the group had lived up to its name. "The Savuka project is over," he said in 1996.
Juluka reformed for a short time, and Clegg and Mchunu released their last album as Juluka, Ya Vuka Inkunzi (The Bull has Risen) in 1997.
Clegg then embarked on a solo career, releasing albums such as New World Survivor and One Life. The latter, released in 2006, features the singer’s first-ever Zulu/Afrikaans tune, Thamela. The album also included the anti-Mugabe statement The Revolution Will Eat Its Children (Anthem for Uncle Bob).
“The private and political choices we make affect how our one life influences the greater whole,” said Clegg of the album, ”and so the songs look at the politics of betrayal, love, power, masculinity, the feminine, survival and work. We each have a story to tell and many of the songs take on a narrative structure to emphasise the story telling nature of how we make meaning in the world.”
In spite of the political nature of many of his songs, Clegg has never viewed himself as political. "It’s very important to understand that I’m not a spokesman for South Africa,” he said in 1990. “All I’m doing is describing the South African experience. There are already too many politicians in South Africa; it doesn’t need another."
Clegg is a published academic, with papers such as “The Music of Zulu Immigrant Workers in Johannesburg: A Focus on Concertina and Guitar” and “Towards an understanding of African Dance: The Zulu Isishameni Style”, published in 1981 and 1982 respectively.
He was honoured by the French government with its Chevalier des Arts et Lettres (Knight of Arts and Letters) in 1991, and in 2007 received an honorary doctorate in music from Wits University.
Marie-Line, marquée
à vie par le concert de Johnny CleggInauguré en décembre 1985, le stade couvert régional de Liévin s'est fait un nom avec le meeting international d'athlétisme, mais il est loin de ne se résumer qu'à ça. Les souvenirs de Marie-Line, mémoire des lieux, en témoignent....
Embauchée à l'ouverture du stade en 1985, Marie-Line a tour à tour géré le
secrétariat, la paie et la comptabilité. Aujourd'hui, à 51 ans seulement, elle
est la mémoire des lieux, « l'ancêtre » comme disent ses collègues. L'histoire
du stade n'a pas de secret pour elle.
Marie-Line peut quasiment retrouver le mois et l'année de tous les gros concerts
qui ont fait vibrer la scène liévinoise. Enfermée dans son bureau la journée,
l'employée, aux premières loges, applaudissait le soir les artistes. « Jusqu'à
la naissance de ma fille en 1995, j'ai assisté à tous les concerts. J'ai juste
raté Peter Gabriel car j'étais en vacances. Miles Davis, à l'automne 86, a été
le tout premier », raconte-t-elle. Mais spontanément, avant de lister tous les
chanteurs qui ont foulé la scène du stade couvert, elle évoque Johnny Clegg, en
juin 1988. « C'est le concert qui m'a le plus marquée. C'était fou. On voyait
encore arriver des marées humaines alors que le stade était déjà complet. Les
pompiers, le commissaire, le maire, tout le monde avait peur qu'il y ait un
drame. Mais heureusement tout s'est bien passé. Le maire a soufflé quand le
dernier spectateur a quitté les lieux. » Fan de Sardou, Marie-Line l'a vu trois
fois, comme elle a vu aussi Goldman, Julien Clerc, Johnny, The Cure ou
Starmania. Son rêve maintenant que le stade s'est refait une beauté et que ses
filles ont grandi ? Barbra Streisand.
G.C.
Johnny Clegg
Johnny Clegg s'initie à la guitare à quinze ans mais c'est sa rencontre avec un musicien de rue zoulou qui lui permet d'apprendre les rudiments de la musique africaine et le Ihhlangwini. Il n'hésite pas à braver l'interdit en accompagnant son ami dans les différents centres de travailleurs immigrants réservés aux noirs. C'est là qu'il se forge une solide réputation et qu'il prend conscience du fossé creusé par l'apartheid.
Portrait
Johnny Clegg, né
en 1953 à Bacup au Royaume-Uni dans une famille aisée, déménage en 1960 dans les
banlieues de la bourgeoisie blanche du Johannesburg de l’Apartheid. A 14 ans, il
s’initie à la guitare et rencontre Mntonganazo Mzila, concierge et musicien
zoulou qui l’initie au dialecte, à la danse Ishishameni et au Ihhlangwini. Il
se lie d’amitié avec Sipho Mchunu, membre des tribus zoulous et musicien
autodidacte venu travailler en ville comme jardinier.
Johnny Clegg se passionne pour la culture de Sipho. Tout d’abord stimulés par l’envie de comparer leur talent, les deux guitaristes s’associent : alors que Sipho aide Johnny à parfaire sa technique de guitariste et lui enseigne la langue et la danse zoulou, le jeune blanc initie Sipho au rock et à la musique celte qui lui étaient totalement étrangers. Ils connaissent un succès foudroyant en Afrique du Sud. Ils se rendent dans les « hostels », les centres de travailleurs immigrants réservés au noirs et interdits aux blancs, poussent les lits et se produisent en public, encourageant les locataires à se mesurer à eux avec leurs guitares. Johnny Clegg prend alors conscience du fossé qu’a crée l’apartheid. Dans les années soixante-dix, l’association du jeune blanc avec un zoulou provoque une forte agitation politique et artistique.
En 1976, les deux hommes décrochent leur premier contrat majeur et créent le groupe Juluka avec lequel ils mélangent les chansons traditionnelles zoulous à la musique occidentale et aux paroles anglaises. Leur premier album, « Universal Men » rencontre un franc succès mais est censuré en Afrique du Sud. Avec « Scatterlings », Juluka fait son entrée sur la scène internationale.
En 1985, alors que Sipho retourne au sein de la communauté zoulou pour y apporter son aide, Johnny Clegg crée Savuka et radicalise son discours politique. Le deuxième groupe du « zoulou blanc » est une réussite et fait connaître la musique africaine au monde. « Third world child » est un très gros succès et plus de deux millions d’exemplaires sont vendus. Johnny Clegg signe les titres phares « Scatterlings of Africa » et « Asimbonanga », chanson dédiée à Nelson Mandela alors emprisonné. Le quatrième album de Savuka, « Heat, Dust and Dreams » est nominé dans la catégorie meilleure musique du monde et remporte le Billboard Music Award en 1993.
En 1997, Clegg et Mchunu sont retournés en
studio après dix ans sans travailler ensemble et ont présenté un nouvel album,
« Ya Vuka Inkunzi (The Bull Has Risen)/Crocodile love ». Après cette parenthèse,
Johnny Clegg a repris le chemin de la scène en solo et poursuit aujourd’hui sa
carrière de façon sereine.
Kim Biegatch
Son
nom ne vous est certainement pas étranger : Johnny Clegg est l’une des figures
de la scène musicale internationale les plus admirées et réputées depuis plus de
30 ans.
Sa sensibilité d’enfant blanc exposé à la culture et à la ségrégation sud-africaine fera de lui un individu unique, un véritable métissage, culturel et intellectuel, fait homme.
Il faut dire que son histoire est surprenante, depuis sa naissance près de Manchester au Royaume-Uni, le retour, avec sa mère divorcée, dans la ferme familiale d’Afrique du Sud, et son expérience de la liberté et de la multiculturalité en Zambie, où il sera scolarisé dans une école mixte au cours de deux années. Le remariage de sa mère, chanteuse, avec le journaliste sud-africain Dan Pienaar sera également un évènement majeur pour le développement de la personnalité du jeune Johnatan Clegg. Cet homme, écrivain et poète afrikaner en lutte avec ses origines, lui transmettra en effet sa passion pour l’Afrique et ses habitants, et lui apprendra à regarder en face la misère des townships de Johannesbourg.
Cependant, deux autres rencontres furent tout autant déterminantes dans la vie et la carrière de Johnny Clegg (difficile de différencier les deux tant le personnage est entier) : Mntonganazo Mzila, puis Sipho Mchunu.
Le
premier est un musicien de rue d’origine Zoulou, que Clegg rencontra par hasard
dans la rue autour de ses 15 ans. Mzila fut son premier professeur de musique,
et lui permit de le suivre dans les “Hostels” les plus reculés de Johannesbourg
(les centres de travailleurs migrants). C’est là que le jeune homme put
approcher puis apprivoiser la culture Zoulou, qui deviendra un part importante
de son identité.
Le second est celui par qui tout devint possible. Sipho Mchunu était un jardinier travaillant dans le quartier bourgeois blanc où Clegg habitait avec sa famille ; mais il était surtout un guitariste zoulou de grand talent. Le hasard mit ces deux individus sur le même chemin, et une amitié immense naquit entre-eux, portée par leur passion commune de la musique et du partage. Mchunu permit à Johnny de parfaire ses techniques de guitare, de danse, de langue et de combat au bâton zoulou ; Clegg permit à Sipho de connaitre la musique celte et le rock américain.
Ensemble,
il sortirent un premier album prometteur, “Woza Friday” (arrive vendredi), et
inventèrent un nouveau style musical prêt à révolutionner la scène artistique
sud-africaine. Mêlant musique et danse campagnarde zouloues, mbaqanga et folk
music occidentale pour guitare, ils bousculèrent les normes et donnèrent une
identité musicale unique à leur groupe, Juluka, formé en 1979. Le duo inattendu
et impensable qu’ils composaient alors, un Blanc et un Noir, suffisait à lui
seul à faire trembler alors les esprits libertaires comme les plus puritains… Un
changement se profilait à l’horizon.
Après la censure de leur premier album “Universal Men” du fait de l’apartheid, et malgré une vraie reconnaissance accordée par la critique, ils proposèrent “African Litany” et obtinrent leur premier hit avec “Impi”. Le succès national était alors assuré, et c’est avec leur quatrième album, “Scatterlings”, qu’ils s’imposèrent définitivement sur la scène internationale.
Juluka
connut un succès continu jusqu’au départ de Mchunu en 1985, qui entraina la
dissolution du groupe.
Suite à cette séparation forcée (Mchunu partait aider sa communauté dans les quartiers pauvres), Johnny Clegg forma un second groupe, Savuka, dont nous reparlerons ; cependant, Clegg et Mchunu décideront dans les années 1990 de se retrouver le temps d’une tournée et d’un nouvel album.
Nous retiendrons le groupe Juluka comme l’un des principaux vecteurs de la pensée contestataire anti-apartheid des années 1970-80. Les paroles des chansons de leurs albums restent dans les mémoires comme de véritables hymnes à une Afrique du Sud malmenée ; comme d’inimaginables messages de paix et d’espoir lancés dans les airs, capables de toucher les cœurs et de frapper les consciences…
Paroles de chansons (traduction française) :
Extraits de l’album “African Litany” | 1981
African Litany
Pris au piège dans un moment de l’histoire
Tu as changé le monde, tu faisais la pluie et le beau temps
Riant, un soleil éclatant sur ton sourire
Ton corps bronzé par des bains de soleil et tendu contre le vent
Mais tu avais oublié que la roue continuait à tourner
Et, un beau jour, l’aurore t’a abandonné
Ce n’est pas faute d’avoir essayé de t’aimer
Mais il faut vraiment que je parte
Car le monde t’abandonne
Le monde t’abandonne
Le monde t’abandonne
Refrain
Je chanterai une litanie d’Afrique pour toi
Je la chanterai pour moi
Je la chanterai pour toi
Et j’espère que nous connaitrons la fin de ce temps-là.
Je pense que ce rêve va cesser
Le passé n’est plus ton ami
Chaque souvenir qui s’amoncelle
Te lie dans une toile éternelle Car tu avais oublié que la roue continuait à
tourner
Et, un beau jour, l’aurore t’a abandonné
Et maintenant te voilà piégé à jamais
Jusqu’à ce que les tisons de ce jour rougeoyant se soient éteints
Jusqu’à ce que les tisons de ce jour rougeoyant se soient éteints
Jusqu’à ce que les tisons de ce jour rougeoyant se soient éteints
Litanie africaine!
Litanie africaine!
Je chanterai une litanie d’Afrique pour toi
Adieu, tendres adieux
Une litanie d’Afrique pour moi
J’espère que nous connaitrons la fin de ce temps-là.
African Sky Blue
Tes enfants attendent l’aurore
Bleu du ciel d’Afrique
Bientôt un jour nouveau va naître
Bleu du ciel d’Afrique
Bleu du ciel d’Afrique
Béniras-tu ma vie?
Soleil d’Afrique
Bientôt tu réchaufferas les yeux de tes enfants
La rivière africaine dansera
Et bondira dans ta lumière du matin
Soleil africain
Eau de la rivière africaine
Béniras-tu ma vie?
Béniras-tu ma vie?
Refrain
Comment savoir?
Comment rêver?
Comment espérer?
Qu’apportera l’avenir?
Tu passes à travers moi
Mais puis-je compter sur toi?
Bleu du ciel d’Afrique…
Orage africain
Tes soldats s’ébranlent dans les airs
La pluie africaine va tomber
Et me laver de mes larmes
Pluie africaine qui tombe
Pluie africaine qui tombe
Béniras-tu ma vie?
Refrain
Aujourd’hui, le guerrier est un travailleur
Et sa guerre est souterraine
Avec de la cordite, dans le noir,
Il trait les veines saignantes d’or
Et quand la paroi rocheuse fumante soupire
Chaque fois
Il pense à toi
Bleu du ciel d’Afrique
Puis-je compter sur toi?
Heart of the Dancer
Bleu du ciel d’Afrique
Je voudrais savoir ce qu’il y a dans le coeur du danseur
Ses mouvements ont une magie mystérieuse
Ils doivent avoir un message, une signification
Ca me fait quelque chose
Alors, que le tambour ne se taise pas
Il faut que je comprenne
Comment il danse notre futur et notre destiné
Et comment nous appartenons à cette terre
Chorus
Sizodlala ! nani’mabungu !
Sizodlala ! nani’mabungu, helele !
(repeat)
Dlala wemadlalingo…
Dlala wemadlalingoma (repeat)
Dlala wemadlalingo-yo-yo-yo
Dlala wemadlalingoma (repeat)
Quand tu n’étais encore qu’un enfant qui s’émerveille
Le danseur t’as montré la gloire de son passé
Il à tissé (ou dansé) pour toi la danse du tonnerre
Qui a fait trembler les montagnes et les crevasses
Il a dansé les enfants qui jouent dans les ruisseaux
Il a dansé les victoires creuses
Il a dansé les peuples puissants que l’histoire a embusqués
Chorus
C’est la danse qui fait danser le danseur
Mais c’est le danseur qui veut la danse
C’est la guerre entre le pantin et le maître
Entre celui qui tire les ficelles et son cœur
As tu vu les tires dans la nuit ?
As tu vu la scène de la chambre du ballet ?
Où le danseur ours ne peut plus danser plus longtemps
Et bientôt, c’est le pantin qui sera le maître de la danse
Où bientôt, il sera le maître de la danse.
Wemagith’ingoma !
Wemagith’ingoma !
Extrait de l’album “Work for All” | 1983
Work for All
Laisse allumés les feux de la maison
Pendant que papa gagne la maigre pitance qu’il appelle son salaire
On doit se lever si tôt le matin
Pour conserver son travail, qui plus est en trouver un
Entends-les qui chantent dans les rues
Entends le bruit de leurs pas.
Refrain
Du travail pour tous - nous avons besoin de travail pour exister
Du travail pour tous - il y a une armée de chômeurs dans les rues
Du travail pour tous - dans un salaire, une guerre larvée
Du travail pour tous - il y a une armée de chômeurs à ma porte
Papa s’assoit, tout seul, dans la cuisine
Trente ans qu‘il est mineur
Il doit toujours se battre pour le droit au travail
Que les temps soient bons ou mauvais
Entends-les qui chantent dans les rues
Entends le bruit de leurs pas
Refrain
Du travail pour tous - nous avons besoin de travail pour exister
Du travail pour tous - tant de bouches à nourrir à la maison
Du travail pour tous - dans un salaire, une guerre larvée
Du travail pour tous - oh, une armée de chômeurs à ma porte
Nous avons tous besoin de travail
Nous voulons du travail pour tous
Nous avons besoin de travail pour exister
Donnez-nous du travail à tous
Donnez du travail afin que nous existions.
Under wet, grey skies a park in Troyeville was renamed in honour of the late academic and anti-apartheid activist who lived and was murdered in the suburb.
DAVID WEBSTER'S memory will live on in his home
suburb, Troyeville - Bloemenhof Park is now David Webster Park.
"Long live the spirit of the late Dr David Webster! Long live! Amandla!" said the member of the mayoral committee for community development, Nandi Mayathula-Khoza, at the renaming on Friday, 1 May.
Webster, in the prime of his life at 44, was shot dead outside his home in the suburb 20 years ago, on Workers' Day, 1 May 1989. A mosaic plaque, reading "David Webster 1945-1989 Assassinated in Troyeville for his fight against apartheid - lived for justice, peace and friendship", was unveiled at the renaming.
Tribute
Eddie Webster, professor of sociology at Wits, paid tribute to David Webster at his funeral in 1989.
"From time to time in the history of opposition to apartheid in our open universities, there has arisen from within our ranks men and women who have had the courage to transcend the narrow confines of the established role of university teacher," he said.
"By their combination of theory and practice they have been able to go beyond the 'ivory tower' and engage directly with the struggle of the majority for democracy. By challenging racist practices they threatened the apartheid system. David Webster was such a man."
Under grey skies and spitting rain – considered a blessing in Africa – a distinguished crowd of about 100 people gathered in memory of the University of the Witwatersrand academic and anti-apartheid activist, in a ceremony organised by Johannesburg City Parks.
Executive Mayor Amos Masondo; Minister of Health Barbara Hogan; Robben Island inmate and great friend of Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada; the provincial MEC for safety and security, Firoz Cachalia; and City councillors of transport and the environment, Rehana Moosajee and Prema Naidoo, all took their seats under large canvas umbrellas.
Students and colleaguesTwo former students of Webster, singer Johnny Clegg and runner Bruce Fordyce, and his partner, Maggie Friedman, were there too. Members of the Detainees' Parents Support Committee (DPSC) and the United Democratic Front also attended the function. Webster was a member of both organisations.
Mayathula-Khoza
said that at the beginning of the year Naidoo had suggested that the park be
dedicated to Webster, a suggestion that was warmly welcomed by the mayoral
committee.
"We dedicate this park with sports facilities to the late stalwart, a brother, a son of the soil, a tea party host, and a great lecturer," said Mayathula-Khoza, "We want to remember a great life."
Webster used to pour tea at the monthly DPSC gatherings. He monitored patterns of repression through the committee, and gave advice and comfort to parents of detainees. He also worked to ease the discomfort of detainees by sending them educational material and track suits.
He worked, too, on the Free the Children campaign, calling on the apartheid government to stop detaining children. He also initiated a "running shoes campaign" in which well-known figures like Fordyce and Clegg would sign their running shoes and donate them to political detainees.
"He worked relentlessly against human rights abuses. He lived his respect for human dignity," wrote Terry Sacco of the DPSC in the programme brochure. "He had a depth of understanding and a nobility of mind. He had wisdom and integrity, an infectious sense of fun and humour and loved peace."
Moving tribute
Clegg took the podium and gave a moving tribute. First a student of Webster's, he became a colleague, eventually teaching alongside Webster at Wits for three years. Clegg spoke of Webster's "strong sense of conviction" and "his persuasive powers" – he would corner you and gently but firmly tell you he would see you at a book launch.
"He
loved all forms of culture – a play at the Market Theatre, an exhibition. And he
would make sure all the key people would be there."
A dancer as well as a singer, Clegg said he took Webster to the Jeppe Hostel and
introduced him to the dance culture among migrant workers. "In two to three
months he started telling me things about them."
Webster was a multi-layered person and a gentle soul. "He was on a lone path to
facilitate and bring people together. He was an incredibly generous person."
Caroline Taylor, a lecturer at the anthropology department at Wits, read several letters from Webster's former colleagues. She said that she had been in the department for 19 years and his influence is ongoing at the university.
Honoured and humbled
Masondo gave the keynote address. "In the council we feel humbled by the fact that the Webster family has agreed to have their prestigious name associated with that of the City of Johannesburg."
He said he was proud to be part of the ceremony in honouring Webster. "Comrade David Webster's great strength was seeing himself beyond his membership of a particular organisation. His vision was always broad. For him dedication to a new, transformed South Africa meant all progressive organisations and individuals were important."
While
the mayor spoke, the gentle whine of a solitary swing moving back and forth
could be heard. A child, oblivious to the solemn occasion, was enjoying a ride
on the park's refurbished play equipment. The clouds had begun to clear and blue
sky was visible. Throughout the ceremony local children had been playing
volleyball and basketball on the courts behind the podium and their occasional
shouts could be heard.
In between the speeches dancers from Moving Into Dance Mophatong took to the small stage. They were dressed in 1950s two-tone shoes and waistcoats, and jived happily on the stage. The crowd were briefly lifted out of the sombre tone of the morning by the music. Friedman said that Webster had loved to jive.
After the formal speeches, she recounted a story about life with Webster, telling of the distressing 2am phone calls, where nothing was said; of taking in anti-apartheid activists; of living with strangers and making them feel welcome; of accommodating yourself to people living in your home who were traumatised after spending time in jail.
She spoke of how the first 10 years after his death were intensely stressful. "I came to know many wonderful people who I wouldn't have known if it weren't for this disaster," she said. "I want to thank my close friends who live around here."
The sun had broken through the clouds and the cluster of jacarandas under which the ceremony had taken place offered shade. The mood was restful - the formalities were over, but people lingered, reluctant to leave a place that had taken on special significance, a place of commemoration of Webster.
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By Suzy Bernstein: On Sunday a city park was dedicated to murdered activist
David Webster; it is time to remember ...
Pic by Suzy BernsteinTwenty years ago, David Webster was brutally murdered
outside his home in Eleanor Street, Troyeville. On Sunday, a community, grown in
time, filtered through events and percolated into a rich viscous substance, came
together to weave together this tapestry as an attempt to make sense of the
events of that day.
In the 80’s there were many more of us. To be gathered together with some of
those that have remained in the country, is both informative and healing.
People’s eyes search and scan the crowd and there is a deep resonance and
acknowledgment within on seeing someone from that time. Some of us have
maintained contact, but the joint nature puts a specific meaning on this
“gathering” that in 2009 is not illegal. It has taken 20 years before this past
can be revisited.
Johnny Clegg comes forward to talk of his anthropological association
with David Webster. The rain comes down, just a light shower; causing us to
twitter and regroup, huddle closer together. A young poet stands up and in
trying to describe himself he cannot. He tells us how he is many things, a poet,
a skate-boarder and begins to recite a poem about David Webster. Maggie Friedman
(the then partner of David Webster) plants a tree. People use this opportunity
to disperse, needing to connect, to hug, to touch, to smile, to give rise to
tears and voices from the past. There are many speakers. Max Coleman, (a former
member of the Detainees Parents Support Committee) and other speakers transport
us back to a time when words like “Suppression of Communism”, Defiance Campaign,
Security Police, Military Intelligence, State of Emergency etc were ominous, but
well known words in our vocabulary.
..............
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.
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.
By Tom Geoghegan last updated at 10:50 GMT, Monday, 3
August 2009 11:50 UK
BBC News Magazine
It's 200 years since Lord Byron quit the UK to make his name abroad -
becoming a national hero in Greece. The poet also achieved fame in his homeland,
but there is a select band of Britons whose talents today are most warmly
appreciated outside their home country.
................
The Rochdale-born musician has a career spanning more than 30 years and his political activism combined with his commercial success has made him a very significant figure in African music.
He says his band of black and white musicians, Juluka, broke the law by performing during the apartheid era, and annoyed the authorities with its mixture of Zulu and English influences.
The man nicknamed the "White Zulu" wrote election anthems for the ANC and performed at Nelson Mandela's inauguration in 1994.
He has enjoyed international success, with a Grammy nomination for his band Savuka, and a million-selling album in France.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8172542.stm+++++++++++++++++++++++
Johnny Clegg, the famous British singer http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmith/2009/08/04/johnny-clegg-the-famous-british-singer/
Hold the phone! That’s not true. Or is it? I read today the Brits are trying
to claim Johnny Clegg from us. The BBC had an article titled: “Ten famous
Britons you’ve probably never heard of”. And there he was, number ten on the
list.
Ok, granted, he was born in the UK. But does that make him British? Not in my
book. He’s a true blue South African. The real deal. Mr Clegg has a very unique
South African story. Musician, anthropologist and Zulu dancer. In 2004, South
Africa voted him number 23 on SABC’s Great South Africans. They also voted in
Verwoerd at number 19 but let’s not go there. Johnny Clegg is South African.
Finish and klaar.
This is not the first time Britain has laid claim to one of our most gifted sons
and daughters. They seem to have a habit of it.
The fact is there has always been a bit shortage of great Britons in Great
Britain. Which is why they had to go everywhere in the world looking for some.
Take cricket for instance. ..... I’m sure there must be other important people
to add to that list. Like a scientist or ten. But we don’t need to carry on. The
point is proven. We’ll just add them to the other 140 000 South Africans who are
walking the streets of London.
It’s late now, but tomorrow I am going to drop a note to Gordon Brown to find
out what they are playing at. They can’t possibly expect us to give back Johnny
Clegg, not after all these years.
And yes, before the cynics ask, I do have a British-sounding name. Yes, my dad
is English. Yes, I do have the passport. But there is no bloody way, Britain is
claiming Johnny Clegg!
..................It’s late now, but tomorrow I am going to drop a note to
Gordon Brown to find out what they are playing at. They can’t possibly expect us
to give back Johnny Clegg, not after all these years.
And yes, before the cynics ask, I do have a British-sounding name. Yes, my dad
is English. Yes, I do have the passport. But there is no bloody way, Britain is
claiming Johnny Clegg!
WHEN Johnny Clegg came to perform in the country at the Bush Fire Festival,
there were again mild protests from the local media about restrictions
concerning taking photographs.
Before Johnny Clegg went on stage the MC announced that photojournalists and
individuals were not allowed to take pictures.
It has transpired though that this was not a case of the promoters being
hell-bent to frustrate the work of photojournalists.
It was said that this was an international trend for most live performances,
which had everything to do with image control, a clampdown on piracy and to
minimise disturbances during the performances.
House on Fire Director Jigg's Thorne, explained during Johnnny Clegg's last
performance that such restrictions were found all over the world in such shows.
"It's for security as much as preventing piracy and also protecting the image of
the artist. This also speaks to issues of freedom and to allow the artist to
give out the best, express themselves without hindrance and kick up a storm on
stage without fearing an unflattering picture on the front pages the next day".
On the issue of piracy, Thorne said though it was hard to completely eradicate
piracy of music and films, such restriction were also based on efforts to
control it.
Estelle Sinkins - 19 Sep 2009 http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=28208
IN a career that has included numerous awards and accolades, it is something
much more human that legendary South African singer Johnny Clegg considers one
of the highlights of his life.“Growing up, learning to dance in the hostels will always be a magical, very special thing in my life,” he says, although having former president Nelson Mandela come and see him on stage at a concert in Frankfurt in 1997 comes a pretty close second.
It’s an interesting comment, considering that South Africa at that time was a very different place. The Group Areas Act made it illegal for Clegg to go to black areas without the express permission of a magistrate.
But Clegg, then 14 years old, didn’t let it stop him: “I got arrested for entering a black area without permission, but I used the fact that I was a child to get round it.
“I just said I didn’t know, that I was a child and just wanted to play music.”
It was during his visits to the Johannesburg hostels that Clegg first encountered his Juluka partner, Sipho Mchunu, an 18-year-old migrant worker who had come to Johannesburg from Kranskop in 1969. He challenged Clegg to a guitar competition, kickstarting a friendship that would lead to one of the most creative collaborations in South African music.
Those early years were tough. “When it came to public performances, there were laws in place which made it illegal for us to perform as a mixed band to a mixed audience,” he said. “So, we would go to churches, school halls, some university halls, some embassies, even people’s lounges — I remember we played in Des and Dawn Lindberg’s lounge at one of their soiree evenings.”
And even once the band was established, its music was subjected to censorship and banning. Between 20% and 30% of Juluka’s concerts in the townships were closed down at the height of the band’s fame.
To try to prevent this happening, promoters would drive around with a megaphone to announce that Juluka were performing that day. “So long as people saw the sound truck outside the hall, they were willing to buy tickets,” Clegg said.
Given the importance of radio play to bands, it’s also astonishing to think that for many years Juluka couldn’t get their songs played on air. “We were ostracised because we were mixing the language,” Clegg explained.
When Juluka split in 1985, Clegg went on to form Savuka (meaning “We have risen”), and later embarked on a successful solo career.
Looking back, he says that while it was tough, the trade-off was the generosity and help he received from migrant Zulu workers who were happy to share their music and culture with him.
When I spoke to him last week, he was just about to fly off to Belgium to record a new album, ahead of his performance at Mmino MusicMix: A Boundless Experience, a two-day festival at Durban’s Inkosi Albert Lithuli International Convention Centre on September 24 and 25.
Fans can look forward to a collaboration between Clegg and Zimbabwe’s Oliver Mtukudzi, performances by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Ray Phiri, Hugh Masekela, gospel soloist Tsepo “The Village Pope” Tshola, and violinist Tsepo Mngoma.
Asked what he thought the secret of his success was, he said: “Hard work. As a world musician, my music isn’t really played on mainstream radio. That has forced me to fight hard for every cultural space that I have opened up overseas. I have gone to France every year since 1988 and I regularly go to Canada, Switzerland, all the countries in fact where I created a bridgehead.
“It’s really important to remember in this business that you never really arrive. You’re only as good as your last hit, your last interview. And you need a killer live show because that’s what helps keep long-term supporters.”
• Tickets to see Johnny Clegg playing live at the Mmino Music Festival, are available from Computicket at 083 915 8000.
• He was born in Rochdale, England, in 1953 and raised in Zimbabwe before coming to South Africa aged nine.
• He was taught the fundamentals of traditional Zulu music and inhlangwini dancing by Charlie Mzila, a Zulu man who cleaned the flats where he lived.
• He has a BA (hons) in social anthropology and taught at both Wits and the then University of Natal.
• Among his favourite songs from the past 30 years are Circle of Light, Third World Child, Scatterlings and Wanderers and Nomads.
• He is working on music for an animated version of Jock of the Bushveld.
The Story behind
Sendung vom 04. Februar 2010 http://www.funkhaus-europa.de/sendungen/suepermercado/suepermusik/2010/story_behind_100204.phtml
Johnny Clegg, genannt der "weiße Zulu", hat jahrzehntelang seine Stimme gegen die Apartheid erhoben. Anfang der 80er hatte er seinen größten Hit mit "Scatterlings of Africa", der sich indirekt bereits damit auseinandersetzte. Luigi Lauer hat Johnny Clegg zur Story Behind befragt, zur Geschichte hinter den "Emigranten Afrikas", den "Scatterlings of Africa".
Emigranten, Wanderer, Verstreute, Flüchtlinge - das Wort Scatterlings lässt sich vielfach übersetzen, aber auf einen konkreten Aspekt kam es Johnny Clegg am meisten an: Alle Menschen stammen ursprünglich aus Afrika. Und davon weiß Johnny Clegg ein Lied zu singen, ausgerechnet er, der 1953 in Manchester zur Welt kam und erst 1960 mit seiner Mutter nach Johannesburg gelangte. Scatterlings of Africa spiegelt nicht nur die Sichtweise eines weißen Musikers in Südafrika, der sich der Apartheid widersetzt, sondern auch die eines Wissenschaftlers.
Johnny Clegg erzählt: "Ich war angehender Anthropologe. Vier Jahre habe ich an der Witwatersrand-Universität Sozial-Anthropologie unterrichtet als zeitlich begrenzter Junior-Assistenz-Dozent auf Probe, so hieß das tatsächlich. Je länger du dabei warst, desto kürzer wurde zum Glück die Berufsbezeichnung. Ehe ich den Top-40-Hit in England hatte, gab ich tagsüber Unterricht und spielte nachts. Scatterlings war das Lied, das mich richtig ins Musikgeschäft brachte, 1982. Und ich beendete damit meine Karriere als Hochschullehrer.
Womit wir ständig zu kämpfen hatten war, dass wir damit argumentierten, dass
genetisch gesehen alle Menschen aus Afrika stammen. Die ältesten menschlichen
Gene stammen aus Afrika, und vor 70.000 Jahren machten sich die ersten Exemplare
des Homo Sapiens auf den Weg in ein großes Abenteuer, sie verließen das Great
Rift Valley und bevölkerten den Planeten. Das war aber 1981, und Humangenetik
gab es in dem Sinne noch gar nicht, auch wenn die Ergebnisse weitgehend
anerkannt waren - außer in Südafrika natürlich. Inzwischen gibt es hervorragende
Dokumentationen wie die von der BBC, die zeigen, Afrika war die Wiege. Das Lied
Scatterlings of Africa meint genau das, wir sind alle Emigranten Afrikas, alle
unsere genetischen Vorfahren kommen aus Afrika. Wir sind alle Afrikaner."
Eine echte Karriere als Musiker war für Johnny Clegg mit seinem Hit allerdings noch nicht gesichert. Die Regierung Südafrikas legte ihm Steine in den Weg, wo sie nur konnte. Sie behinderte seine Reisen, sperrte ihn auch schon mal ein, das Lied Scatterlings wurde verboten, und öffentliche Auftritte für "gemischte" Bands waren es ohnehin. Dabei lehrte Clegg längst an der Uni, was er auf der Bühne sang. Und das in Südafrika. Doch dort wollte man den eigenen Wissenschaftlern nicht zuhören, egal, ob sie nun sangen oder dozierten.
"Die Ironie des Ganzen liegt darin, dass Scatterlings von einem Thema handelte, das ich damals als Anthropologe unterrichtete. Ich bekam als Junior-Dozent die Aufgabe, in nur 6 Wochen den weißen Studenten ihre rassistischen Verhaltensweisen auszutreiben, jungen Menschen, die aus einer Apartheids-Schule kamen, einer Apartheids-Kirche, nicht selten auch aus Apartheids-Familien. Ich musste ihnen klar machen, dass sie nicht zugleich Rassisten und Anthropologen sein konnten."
AutorIn: Luigi Lauer
Der weiße südafrikanische Rock- und Weltmusiker Johnny Clegg spricht über Fußball und geheime Konzerte gegen die Apartheid
Johnny Clegg hat wie kaum ein anderer Weißer den Begriff Weltmusik geprägt. Der 1953 im englischen Manchester geborene Sänger, Gitarrist und Songschreiber lebt seit 1960 in Südafrika. Trotz der Rassentrennung kam er früh mit schwarzafrikanischer Kultur in Berührung, studierte die Musik und Tänze der Zulu und gründete mit Juluka (Zulu-Wort für Schweiß) die erste gemischtrassige Band am Kap. Im Interview spricht er über die Zulu-Kultur, seinen Kampf gegen die Apartheid, nationale Versöhnung und die Auswirkungen des Mauerfalls auf Südafrika.
frage: Wie sind Sie als Weißer – Sohn eines Engländers und einer Simbabwerin – zur Straßenmusik der südafrikanischen Zulu gekommen? Johnny Clegg:Meine Eltern gingen mit mir nach Afrika, als ich noch ein Baby war. Unsere Stationen waren Simbabwe, Sambia und schließlich Südafrika. Meine Mutter war Jazz-Sängerin, mein Stiefvater Kriminalreporter. Während der Apartheid durfte ich ihn in die Townships von Johannesburg begleiten. Ich interessierte mich für keltischen Folk und war auf der Suche nach meiner Identität. Mit 14 sah ich auf der Straße einen Zulu-Gitarristen. Hier wurde ein europäisches Instrument auf verblüffende Weise afrikanisiert. Ich bat diesen Mann, mich in traditioneller Zulu-Musik zu unterrichten. Ich wollte selbst ein Zulu werden, in meiner romantischen Vorstellung waren das faszinierende Krieger. Heute ist Zulu meine zweite Sprache.
Die weißen Südafrikaner sahen sich als „Herrenrasse“. Wurden Sie als Weißer von den Schwarzen sofort akzeptiert? Clegg:Ich war jung, naiv und besessen von der afrikanischen Kultur. Man konnte mir ansehen, dass ich mit der Apartheid nichts am Hut hatte. Die Zulu-Gastarbeiter in Johannesburg waren sehr offen. Sie brachten mir ihre traditionellen Tänze bei, und im Lauf der Zeit wurde ich in vier verschiedene Stämme aufgenommen.
Während der Apartheid war es den verschiedenen Ethnien untersagt, sich untereinander zu treffen. Wie haben Sie einen Weg gefunden, die strengen Rassengesetze zu umgehen? Clegg:Ich habe sie einfach ignoriert und bin in die Unterkünfte der Zulu-Gastarbeiter gegangen. Dafür wurde ich oft von der Polizei einkassiert. Aufgrund meiner Jugend kam ich aber nicht ins Gefängnis, sondern erhielt eine Standpauke und wurde nach Hause gebracht. Später wurde es jedoch schwieriger. Da ich glaubhaft vermitteln konnte, dass es mir um Musik und nicht um ANC-Politik ging, fielen die Strafen meist glimpflich aus. Ich habe einfach vor dem Richter Zulu-Lieder gesungen, und so wurde ich zum Idioten erklärt.
Mit der Zeit erlangten Sie in Südafrika immer größere Popularität bis hin zum Superstar-Status. Wie ist das Apartheid-Regime damit umgegangen? Clegg:Die Polizei hat damals rund ein Drittel der Konzerte meiner gemischtrassigen Band Juluka verhindert. Zuerst erlaubten sie den Leuten in den Townships, sich Tickets zu kaufen, aber die Show wurde nach drei Songs gewaltsam beendet. Um das zu umgehen, haben wir unsere Auftritte in die weniger bewachten Vororte von Johannesburg verlegt oder sie kurzfristig per Megafon angekündigt. Außerdem nutzten wir eine Lücke im Rassentrennungsgesetz aus, indem wir offiziell an privaten Orten wie Kirchen, Schulen und Universitäten spielten. Unsere ersten Fans waren Township-Bewohner und Studenten.
Ikone der Befreiung:
Nelson Mandela (rechts) mit Johnny Clegg (Mitte) 1999 bei einem Konzert.Einer Ihrer explizit politischen Songs hieß „Asimbonanga (Mandela)“, was so viel bedeutet wie „Wir haben Mandela nicht gesehen“. Was gelangte über den inhaftierten ANC-Führer an die Öffentlichkeit? Clegg:
Nicht eben viel. Als Student der Politikwissenschaften hatte ich aber Zugang zur Universitätsbibliothek. Also zu Nelson Mandelas Gerichtsprotokollen und Reden sowie der ebenfalls verbotenen Freiheits-Charta von 1955. Mandela war in den 70er und 80er Jahren eine mystische Person. Man kannte ihn nur von Fotos und seinen Schriften. Was mich an Mandela beeindruckte, war seine Aussage „Ich bin gegen weiße Vorherrschaft und schwarze Vorherrschaft. Ich kämpfe für eine demokratische, nicht-rassistische Nation, in der eine Gruppe nicht die andere dominiert, in der die Rechte der Minderheiten in der Verfassung festgeschrieben sind“. Mandela hat instinktiv verstanden, wie die Leute denken und fühlen. Heute hat jeder Bürger Südafrikas unabhängig von Herkunft und Hautfarbe qua Verfassung dieselben Rechte. Das ist ein radikaler Schritt weg von der Apartheid.
Welche Rolle spielten Künstler bei Mandelas Freilassung? Clegg:Ich habe 1988 auf Mandelas Geburtstagkonzert in London gespielt und war Vizepräsident der südafrikanischen Musikerallianz, die sich 1986 gründete als kulturelle Brücke zwischen dem ANC und der vereinten demokratischen Bewegung. Wir forderten Bewegungsfreiheit, Rede- und Versammlungsfreiheit. Unsere Konzerte wurden verboten und Musiker verhaftet, aber wir haben auch viel erreicht. Mein Song „Asimbonanga (Mandela)“ wurde ein Nummer-1-Hit in vielen europäischen Ländern. Das Video war gestaltet wie eine Reportage aus den Townships. Kraftvolle Protestsongs haben bei uns eine lange Tradition. Sie wurden bei Beerdigungen von Opfern des Regimes gesungen. Das waren wichtige Veranstaltungen für die Freiheitsbewegung.
Im Booklet ihres Albums „Spirit Is The Journey“ schreiben Sie über den Fall der Berliner Mauer. Welchen Effekt hatte er auf das Apartheidsystem? Clegg:Für die regierende National Party war Kommunismus ein Schimpfwort. Dieser Begriff wurde sehr weitläufig definiert und richtete sich gegen jegliche kritische und oppositionelle Haltung im Apartheidsystem. Einige europäische Länder unterstützten die südafrikanische Regierung mit dem Argument, das antikommunistische Bollwerk am Kap müsse erhalten bleiben. Aber mit dem Beginn von Perestroika und Glasnost in der Sowjetunion geriet auch das Apartheidsystem ins Wanken. Am 9. November 1989 fiel die Berliner Mauer. Bereits drei Monate später war Mandela frei.
Im April wurde der Führer der rechtsextremen südafrikanischen Burengruppierung „Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging“ (AWB) von zwei Schwarzen ermordet. Befürchten Sie neue Rassenunruhen? Clegg:Nein. Bei uns wird es immer weiße Extremisten geben. Aber sie sind nur eine Minderheit ohne politische Macht. Heute argumentieren die Rechten nicht mehr aus ethnischer Perspektive heraus, sondern aus kultureller. Sie behaupten, die südafrikanische Kultur sei nicht ausgewogen im Radio oder im Parlament repräsentiert. Ein anderes Problem ist die wachsende Fremdenfeindlichkeit unter der schwarzen Bevölkerung.
Südafrika trägt die Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft aus. Kann der Fußball die gespaltene Gesellschaft heilen? Clegg:Ach wissen Sie, es gibt doch in jeder Industrienation ethnische Spannungen. In Amerika sind es die Mexikaner, in Deutschland die Türken. Es gibt dafür keine Pauschallösungen. Politik ist ein fortlaufender Prozess. Sie hat die Aufgabe, einen Dialog zu moderieren, an dem jeder teilhaben kann.
Fragen: Olaf Neumann, Johnny Clegg: Spirit Is The Journey. The Best Of (2CD, EMI)
