SA Rocks

This is the last of the SA Rocks Heritage posts. I know that I broke the mould for this weeks theme with a few posts, but they were unavoidable and topical.

Today’s post focuses on the proud, diverse and eclectic history of music in SA. I have tried to create as diverse a list as possible. But if there is something that you truly feel should be in this post please comment and let me know!

Here goes…

Early christian missionaries provided the first formal music training in SA. Enoch Sontonga, who wrote the national anthem Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika was one of the musicians that were successfully trained in this time.

We all know that music has close ties to politics in various ways and SA was no different. In the early 20th Century when government restrictions on blacks became more aggressive marabi was born:

Marabi was played on pianos with accompaniment from pebble-filled cans, often in shebeens, establishments that illegally served alcohol to blacks. By the 1930s, however, marabi had incorporated new instruments, guitars, concertinas and banjos, and new styles of marabi had sprung up. Among these were a marabi/swing fusion called African jazz and jive, a generic term for any popular marabi style.

A blog post about SA music would be incomplete without looking at Afrikaans music in the past and good old Seve Hofmeyer in the present (we love Steve!). Afrikaans music was quite obviously influenced by the Dutch. This progressively became more interesting as time passed Sokkie Sokkie became a firm Afrikaans favourite. From Wikipedia:

A sokkie is a social dance with a partner popular with some Afrikaners. It is also referred to in Afrikaans as “langarm”, a term used to describe the style of dance at a sokkie.

I am personally a big fan of the langarm. It is incredible to watch people that can do it properly. What a joy!

More recently we have seen the rap, RnB and Kwaito scenes pick up with force. I have found that SA rappers have tried a bit too hard to emulate the American rappers that are successful. This hasn’t really struck a note for me to be honest.

I absolutely love the Kwaito vibe that has taken off in SA. I love the feel, the approach and the groove that the Kwaito stars in SA.

Idols has recently created SA pop stars that the public support which I think is great!

And then my personal favourite is the fantastically South African approach to rock that has emerged of late in SA. Freshly Ground and Harris tweed are two of the bands that I associate with a new breed of distinctively SA rock music. The great oldies like Mango Groove cannot be forgotten.

Brilliant muso’s such as Johnny Klegg and the Soweto String Quartet are also unforgettable. Grammy award winners Ladysmith Black Mambazo partnered with Paul Simon over the years to create some phenomenal music.

OK, that’s it from me and my views/thoughts on the topic. Let me know what you think and if you have a better knowledge on the topic.

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I must apologise for my neglect and the lack of Cooksister post last week, dear readers. But allow me to explain and I hope you will forgive me.

As the rest of South Africa was settling down to watch the opening match of the Rugby World Cup, half a world away I was receiving a text message from one of my oldest friends in Joburg to say that her brother Peter, my first love back when I was a teenager, was in hospital for tests. He had a swollen lymph node in his neck and had been diagnosed as anaemic so they had done a biopsy on the lymph node and a lumbar puncture. I texted him immediately and he said not to worry – it was probably an infection of his lymphatic system. But when they had not allowed him to go home from the hospital almost a week later I did begin to worry. On 14 September Alison let me know that the test results were back – cancer. By 16 September Peter was allowed home for the night and I could finally call him and talk privately. He sounded so weak and unlike himself as he told me that he had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and that he was unlucky on two counts: the cancer had spread to lymph nodes on both sides of his diaphragm, and it was a particularly aggressive form of NHL. Still, the doctors seemed hopeful that it would respond well to chemotherapy and had decided to start Peter on a 6-month course as soon as possible.

During the next week, we exchanged text messages regularly as he was readmitted to hospital to prepare him for chemotherapy. He told me how emotional he was finding facing his own mortality and told me to be grateful for every morning that I woke up and could get out of bed with no problem. But the conversation still ended on a positive note and we both sent our love. My weekend was busy and I only got home again late on Sunday, when Alison called me out of the blue and in tears to say that Peter had become incoherent sometime between when she left him on Saturday evening and returned on Sunday. In desperation she had tracked down his doctor who told Alison as gently as possible that the cancer was marching on relentlessly and that Peter probably had days rather than weeks left to live.

Peter passed away peacefully on Monday evening, 24 September 2007, having spent his last day surrounded by his family and close friends.

My brain tells me quite cheerfully that this could not have happened. Obviously there must be some mistake! When the Rugby World Cup started on 6 September, he was having tests for some unspecified infection and worrying about getting his fourth years’ projects marked on time, and before we even got to the rugby quarter finals, he was dead? How the fuck does than even begin to happen?? Surely bright, cheerful, clever, funny Peter must be OK? Surely there was far too much life-force in that body and optimism in those eyes to fade so fast and so soon? But sadly this is not a nightmare from which I can wake. He is gone and an ocean of tears can’t change that.

One of the things that will always remind me of him is a recipe that he gve me probably abotu 10 years ago now, and which I still make with reasonable regularity. I will leave you with the recipe, and when you make it, please take a moment to remember Peter.

Having grown up in South Africa, I have never regarded the avocado pear as a great delicacy – I mean, in season you could buy bags containing ten (admittedly not enormous) avocados by the roadside for R10 (less than £!!). I remember my father scooping the flesh loose from the skin and then mashing the flesh together with salt and pepper to spread on his toast – what a treat that was, but not exactly gourmet fare. However, since landing here in London, I have become accustomed to the silly prices charged for avocados here and as a result we eat them only as a treat.

I have often seen recipes for chilled avocado soup, but I must admit that the idea of chilled soup has never appealed to me. I mean, soup is associated (in my mind, anyway) with chilly winter evenings and I don’t imagine chilled soup will bring you much pleasure there! (I suspect that the idea behind chilled avocado soup is the fact that avocado becomes bitter if you boil it, so by serving it chilled you avoid this problem.) Anyway, as a result of my dislike for cold soups I never really bothered with avocado soup until Peter made me dinner one night and served up a warm avocado soup – I was instantly hooked. It fulfilled all my criteria for a great recipe:

1. It’s easy.

2. It features a raw ingredient I really, really like.

3. It’s easy.

4. It’s something a bit out of the ordinary.

5. It’s easy.

I admit that Peter’s original recipe does not include the biltong, but biltong and avocado have a long tradition of being served together in South African cuisine (biltong and avo salad; steak with biltong and avo topping etc etc). The soup turned out to be absolutely delicious – even better than I remember. It was creamy to the point where I was tempted to describe it as an “avocado veloute”, but then I took a step back from the abyss of pretentiousness and stuck with plain old soup

PETER’S WARM AVOCADO SOUP WITH BILTONG

INGREDIENTS

2 large, ripe avocado pears, mashed
1T butter or margerine
1T flour
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups milk
A dash of Tabasco sauce (optional)
Diced biltong and chopped parsley to serve

METHOD:

Peel, stone and mash the avocados, adding a little lemon juice to stop them from going brown. Melt the butter in a large saucepan and when it is melted, stir in the flour to make a paste. Add the chicken stock bit by bit, stirring to prevent the paste from forming lumps. After the chicken stock, add the milk and stir. When the milk has been heated a bit, add the mashed avocado and stir well. Season to taste with salt, pepper and Tabasco. Do not let the avocado boil as this will make it taste bitter! At this stage, I also give the soup a quick whirl with my beloved Braun hand mixer to get it really smooth and creamy. Dice some biltong (about a tablespoon per serving of soup) into small blocks, chop some fresh parsley and sprinkle on each bowl of soup before serving. Serves 4 to 6 people.

NOTES:

If you add lemon juice to the avocado, go easy on it – you don’t want its taste to interfere with the soup. You can substitute vegetable stock for chicken stock if you are cooking for vegetarians. The Tabasco can also be replaced with a couple of chilli flakes, but both are entirely optional. If you can’t find biltong, you could also use crispy bacon bits for a similar effect. The most crucial thing is NOT to let the avocado boil!

Cooksister

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I am watching the Carte Blanche documentary about crime in SA. I have been told that this documentary was showed on British television last night.

My impression: The doc is sensationalist, just look at the title: South Africa, Murder Most Foul. The host is trying too hard to make SA appear to be a war zone all day every day for everyone in the entire country.

The documentary is effective, real, eye-opening, effective and true. It is not everyone’s truth.

Quotes like “Violence has always been a way of life in SA” are bullshit and misleading. The author only talks about guns, drugs, and gangs. This is all that he can go on about. It is more complicated than this man is letting on.

Desmond Tutu was interviewed, great move on the docs behalf. He adds humility and a softer face to the issue.

One of the focuses of the documentary is the murder of Brett Goldin and Richard Bloom. Their execution-style murder was horrific, shocking and unacceptable. This documentary has definitely done one thing right and that is share the exposure. I am extremely glad that Jon Blair chose to put a wide variety of people from various backgrounds in the documentary. Crime affects more people of colour in SA that whites. That is a fact without a doubt (I don’t have statistics) and I think that very often white people complain and the world believes that the violence in SA is black on white. But this is not true, it happens, but it is not the only kind of violence and is definitely not the most widely seen violence.

I am torn about this sort of documentary. On one hand I don’t want the world to see this sort of publicity. It is bad for our image, it is not entirely true and not entirely representative.

On the other hand I don’t want anyone in the world or in SA to say that they never knew that people were dying, being murdered, raped and molested. Let the world know that there is a crisis in our country and maybe they can make a difference because the issue is fast become (has become) too much for our systems to manage.

Did you see the documentary? What are your thoughts?

UPDATE: The documentary is almost over. I am moved I must admit. I am upset by what I have seen. Not because I wasn’t aware of the extend of the situation that our country finds itself, but because I have let myself forget much of it for whatever reason or not. I am not blind or ignorant and the documentary has made me feel that this blog and initiatives like it are necessary now more than ever. We need to stand up, expose the wrongdoings and make things right. Even if it is one person at a time or one mindset at a time we need to try.

One thing that I would like to do more of is hands on work. I want to get out in to the country and make a physical, visible difference. In that respect I think I am falling somewhat short considering my privileged position.

UPDATE: SA Murder Most Foul will be broadcast tonight (Sunday 7 October) at 9pm on DStv Channel 150.

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In case anyone noticed this evening I tried desperately to upgrade to WordPress v2.3. I was not successful and in fact I was pretty damn useless.

Thankfully Justin came to the rescue and helped me out with database backups and the like. Unfortunately I am a chop and neglected to backup up some very specific files that I have now lost. This includes some plugin code that I have now lost.

Plugins are quite a mission to get done and dusted with the new WP. You need to ensure that you DEACTIVATE ALL PLUGINS before installation of v2.3 as many plugins are not compatible. I was going to make use of Ultimate Tag Warrior but WP v2.3 has a built in tag generator. Again, unfortunately, I am being some what ridiculous and am struggling to get those to display.

I have almost replaced or upgraded all of my plugins as well as 98% of the code that i didn’t backup. Let me know what your take on the upgrade has been.

So now the installation has been completed, plugins done but I seem to be having issues with the theme for SA Rocks. Most of the people I have asked have given me the same answer to my problem. The problem: The SA Rocks theme doesn’t work particularly well in Internet Explorer. The answer from those I’ve asked for help: We use Mac, we don’t have Internet Explorer.

This is my problem too. I didn’t notice that the SA Rocks theme was screwy because at home and at work I run FireFox. I have been struggling desperately to sort out my IE problems but I think I have failed. If you are using IE and can see the problem (I can’t right now, no IE) then please let me know if you have a solution to my problem.

I hope I will get the problem sorted out as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.

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So Heritage Day rolled around recently, while I was 10 000kms away from my home, and left this Saffa-in-the-UK feeling more than a little homesick (which I guess is natural), and somewhat bewildered.

Firstly, “what was my heritage?” I pondered, and am still unable to find an answer that fits 100%. I am a white, English speaking South African. Technically, I am of European extraction (English, Dutch and French), but my family have been in the Eastern Cape of South Africa since around 1800. There’s even a book about them. It’s called The Frontier Family. I wish I could tell you where to find this book, but Google has failed me. My entire family tree, however, is in it [excluding me as it was published about five years before I was born] tracing my lineage back to a settler family called Miles.

Now if you’re an Eastern Cape local, you’ll understand if a Thompson, a Cloete or Miles says they couldn’t reproduce with anyone born in the Eastern Cape, but suffice to say there’re a lot of us about.

And here I am in the UK, never been closer to my ancestral home, and I feel no link, no attachment. This place and its people, and their ways, bear very little resemblance to my South African life and values. Is this my heritage? And if not, what is?

A friend said to me this weekend that it must be hard being Afrikaans in South Africa on Heritage Day, and when prompted went on to say that she sees a lot of people conflating proud Afrikaaners with racists. I think she has a point.

We are so keen to be PC and be recognised as “proudly South African”, but can you not be if you went to Stellenbosch Uni and count “De la Rey” among your favourite songs? Sometimes I think that is the message politicians are sending out. Surely, the best move forward for our country is to be as inclusive as possible now? No, we don’t want racist afro-pessimists, but you cannot label an entire group under that heading because the nationalist government of our ugly past was largely Afrikaans.

Moving on, I feel disconnected from my European heritage. It is too far removed from me and my experience and even my grandparents’ lives to have any daily significance. I feel that I am South African, and take offence when the implication is made that I am not because of the colour of my skin.

So what is heritage? I think it is the answer to this question: What of my past do I carry with me into the future? I carry knowledge, not just from my grandmother, but from news, history and friends. I carry hurt, for my once divided nation. I carry hope, to live in a safe, equal society with majority rule and minority protection. In this way, I claim a South African heritage – and one you cant take from me.

“It’s my home it’s where I’ll stay and where I belong
I didn’t choose to be here I was born I might seem out of place
but everything I hold dear is under the African sun”
-Hog Hoggidy Hog.

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I know that many people are going to criticise me for missing out a million local artists who have died, have become famous and who I simply have never heard of. But this is the best I can do, my favourite SA artist of all time, ever is William Kentridge.

I believe that he represents so much of our heritage in his art and his visions of SA. He has produced a music video for Mango Groove – one of the best SA music groups ever produced in our country – and has broadened his offerings on the stage with his productions around the world. What a phenomenal man and an incredibly successful South Africa. He puts the old belief to rest that artists are only successful when they die. This man is successful beyond any doubt.

Here is some of his work that I could find online:

Then in stark contrast of Kentridge’s success and art there has been a massive uprising of graffiti in SA and more specifically Johannesburg. I personally love the idea of graffiti and have the utmost respect for any graffiti artists who are trying their hand at succeeding.

I recently read an article in a magazine about a graffiti artist and was blown away at the dedication these guys have to themselves and their art (and their crews). I had to find a way to include graffiti in to this blog somehow and I feel that this is the perfect week to promote graffiti in SA.

The featured artist that I read about was Rasty – that’s his nickname – who runs with the PCP (pressure control projects) crew and operates out of JHB. This man is a genius and can without any shadow of a doubt be called an artist and a great one at that. His crew is pretty tight and they have begun to make a business out of their passion. They have opened up a store that supplies “Graf” artists with the necessary material to produce their street masterpieces.

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I am always reluctant to blog about Nelson Mandela in spite of the undoubted affect he has had not only on SA but on the world. I am reluctant because I personally feel that the exposure he constantly receives has desensitised South Africans to his incredible achievements.

In the name of heritage I am blogging this post that I found on thepropertymag.co.za.

It is always refreshing to see where our leaders, icons and heroes have come from. This is where Mandela started:

Madiba’s first home was a tiny ‘matchbox’ house in the older area of Soweto called Orlando West.

His first son was born in this house. I am sure that this makes the home even more special and holds fond memories for Mandela.

Heritage is what we make of it and the future is what we learn from our past and subsequently alter. Much has been learned from a man like Nelson Mandela and I am sure he is not done imparting knowledge on the world.

I am very interested to find out if South Africans have had their fill of the man? Not taking anything away from his astounding past and incredible presence, but do people rather want to learn things like this about the man or rehash the knowledge? I personally am more interested in the random facts and interesting historical tidbits regarding his past and his heritage. I have studied the struggles that he overcame and the history that he made, I want to know about the man, not the achievements.

What would you ask Mandela if you met him? Have you met him?

I have on a few occasions and I must say that his presence is quite overwhelming. His humble nature is grounding and his humour is extremely surprising!

photos and quotations courtesay of thepropertymag.co.za

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Our decorated, passionate and complicated past has left us with some very interesting personalities and characters. But have we separated them yet? Have we branded Zuma a clown and Mandela an eternal hero? Do we remember Biko and forget Verwoerd?

I believe that the struggles of the past have left SA with a very tricky political conundrum. How do we forget what some of the “clown” did for SA in the past if they are being clowns now? Let’s be honest, the likes of Zuma are riding the crest of collapsing wave that was the past’s freedom fight. That fight is done with and there are real and tangible issues that these leaders need to be dealing with.

We, as a nation, need to pull together and rid ourselves of the belief that we need to entertain the “struggle” leaders who invariably are, themselves, riding out our pseudo-guilt about the past. Enough already.

Heritage day is a fantastic idea and in my opinion should be used by everyone in SA to reflect on our past, our heritage and ourselves and make some decisions about our future here in SA. Let’s start with our mentality toward our leadership because I think that it might just be a joke sometimes. The struggle is over, apartheid is dead.

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