…..post…post...city...late…./Post…post...city
late...post
‘put a blanket…over Soweto
they put a blanket…nowhere to go no
they put a blanket…over the news
they put a blanket…nothing to choose
The question that has been
plaguing my mind the last couple of months is this: What does music do? In 1981
an album was released in apartheid South Africa. The band who produced it was
an anomaly; a multi-racial marabi-punk band known as National Wake, a bands
whose roots are planted in reggae, funk 'n punk and inspired by The Clash, Malombo and Philip
Tabane. A band that still resonates with South African feel and political
potency.
The band that featured on the recording was comprised of Ivan Kadey
(rhythm guitar), Gary and Punka Khosa, brothers in rhythm on bass and drums
respectively, Steve Moni on Lead Guitar,
and Kelly Petlange on saxophone. The
band and the scene they created were described by Craig Duncan – Czech State
Radio’s alternitave music specialist - as “perhaps the most dissident music
scene of the 20th Century: a multi-racial punk-reggae band operating
in a fascist state” . The album “National Wake” was banned from the airwaves,
“gazetted” after over 700 copies had been sold. The digs which they inhabited
became subject to police searches, and under political pressure the band
disbanded, and the album lay dormant until 2009 when Keith Jones and Deon Maas
set out to make a documentary about punk in Apartheid and the role it played in
South Africa’s struggle for equal rights.
I feel the bomb yeh…it grows inside me
I feel the bomb yeh…blows up inside me,
I feel the bomb here
Is something wrong here?”
In the early months of 2012 I
started researching the band for my master’s thesis. It led me to Rosebank Mall
in Johannesburg to meet Ivan Kadey, rhythm guitarist of National Wake; one of
the three remaining members. My timing
was right, Kadey was visiting his home town after relocating to California in
the 80’s, and I was able to glean from him some of the magic that made National
Wake the musical force that brought a portion of a fractured society
together. For Kadey it was never about
being political. Out of the bowels of the commune in Parktown, where the band
resided - illegally because of the pass laws at the time - a sound started to emerge. It was lively, energetic, angsty and it spoke
of hope that the nation would wake out of dark times – “this is the wake of the nation/this is
national wake…we’re bubbling up with the new time people”; a musical account of
living in Apartheid South Africa under the release of punk, captured in a
moment of censorship.
I
feel the bomb
there’s
nothing wrong!
going
to the movies
what
do I see?
going
to the movies
what
are they throwing at…
what
are they throwing at me?
Skip forwards a week and a ten minute
drive from Rosebank to Yoeville, March 2012, once the hub of musical activity
in Johannesburg in the 80’s, the home of the now infamous Rocky Street. A place which I had been taught to fear, where
the stereotypes of Nigerian drug lords run free and the imagined crime rate is so high
you can’t even walk through the suburb. I park my car outside a block of flats
and Ivan lets me in, we walk up the stairs of the somewhat dilapidated
building, along the corridor and into a well-kept and homely flat, owned by Kadey’s sister-in-law.
My perception of Yoeville is immediately
altered. Growing up in the Northern suburbs the entire stigma that surrounds
Yoeville becomes nothing but the thought of those too scared to venture out of
their comfort zones. There must be some truth in their fear, but on the streets
during the day there is another culture – where people walk the suburbs, and
greet each other as they walk by, Bob Marley blares from a car radio – It is
only my imagination that is keeping me overly alert. The only thing to be
feared is thought, even though it has become a culture in Jozi to watch your back - it isn’t the worst advice.
they
sent the troops yeh…into Angola
they
sent the choppers…over the border
they
put a blanket…over the border
they
put a blanket…into Angola
My mission for the visit was to
receive a visual document taken of a National Wake gig held in an outdoor
square on Rocky Street in Yoeville in 1979. The video is something special. Having been born in 1987, and starting primary school in 1994, the first
year where multi-racial classes were taught together – a curriculum for the new
South Africa had barely been thought of, apartheid became a list of dates, and
a tribute to Mandela – although I do have a picture a drew of Brenda Fassie as
a raging cocaine addict in a tribal mask (age 13). I was never confronted with
the true and deeper realities of apartheid, we parroted the names of the laws
and the years they were implemented but we never really learned what they meant
- the theatre, music, and arts of the time left to academics and kids whose
parents were inclined to the arts. The history of separatism that occurred
during apartheid was never conveyed clearly in my younger years, even though
the roots apartheid planted still thrive in a negative light in the news,
thoughts and culture of the country today.
“I
feel the bomb yeah…
‘put
a blanket…over the blanket
and
then a blanket…over that blanket
they
put a blanket…to suffocate it
put
a blanket…suffocate!”
The high walled houses and
constant patrolling of private security vans in the suburbs hold testament to
“the fear”. The fear that many suburban upper -middle class whites feed off of that
keeps them locked behind closed doors and travelling safety in cars, public
transport out of the question. They rarely interact with the black domestic
workers walking on the streets, or the fruit sales men, or the bead artists – “hawkers”
in their eyes. Negative connotations shooting like daggers. The new language in
the country is to turn opposing heads in greeting, in shame, or fear of the
other, or perhaps just not knowing how to communicate? As if it were a crime to
nod and smile, say hello or perhaps, if the mood took you, stop and have a chat.
But this video footage which I was privy to in a Yoeville flat, on a Sunday
afternoon, gave me an insight into apartheid that is rarely seen – and probably
as uncommon in real time as it was then – in South Africa. People dancing, not
just white, or black, or coloured, but all of them together in a square in
Yoeville, smiling, happy, standing watching the music as the camera passes over
them – the atmosphere seems light, even a scene where Kadey is dealing with a
police officer – the tension is minimal. Well, as minimal as dealings with
police go.
The text book South Africa, the one we learnt about out of the books
was transformed, but more so than that the words “oppression” and, “racism”
were not present for that moment. National Wake became a door to a new universe
of thought. About stigma, about how we treat words with such great power.
Trevor Noah –South African comedian - offers a similar sentiment about the
nefarious “K” word. No not Kellog’s. Kafir. He then continues his act by desensitizing
the word – taking away it’s power. He offers the audience the original Arabic
definition of the root being “infidel”. He highlights the different between
saying Nigger in Xhosa and Nigger in America, the former meaning “to give” and
the latter being a derogatory term. He makes you feel the break down between
words and our given meanings for them. National Wake, the music, and the scene
they created conveys a feeling, a break down in meaning, that still exists in South Africa today – one of wanting a South
Africa united in its diversity.
So what can I say about what
music does? For now I will say this: different
styles of music convey different feelings, and people relate to those feelings,
those feelings bring different groupings of people together, sometimes in
extraordinary circumstances – National Wake was extraordinary, the feeling of
their music crossed colour boundaries, and brought people into a new space for
thought about a possible future of peaceful co-existence. I can only hope that
this story and this feeling is part of the history that is taught to future
generations – one that speaks to the new South Africa, not against it.
International news…international views…
International news…insanity!'
Excerpts from ‘International News’ by National Wake
