Alex Sudheim was pleasantly surprised by musical developments at this year’s Splashy Fen festival
For the first time in the nine- year history of the music festival, Splashy Fen rocked. Resolutely folk-oriented until now, the event took on a radically enhanced contemporary element this year with the inclusion of bands that would have previously been unthought of in this pastoral enclave in the foothills of the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg.
With attendance numbers growing annually at a dramatic rate, it was only a matter of time before the festival’s hippy identity woke up, smelled the smart drink of popular culture and gave the kids the rush they’re after.
The new direction of Splashy Fen was irrevocably entrenched on the opening night with a devastating performance by Boo! One of the most incandescent live bands around to tease, tickle and taunt an audience, Boo! possess enough charisma and slippery sex appeal in frontman Chris Chameleon to lure a sloth into an ecstatic frenzy. Dressed in tight mini skirt and outrageous bejewelled bolero jacket, Chameleon managed to achieve the impossible by challenging the unsuspecting crowd and making them love it despite themselves.
Since my previous experiences of Splashy Fen involved listening to a folk band on a smallish stage and being told to go to bed at 11pm, being molested by the maniacal sexual terrorism of Boo! at maximum volume at 9pm on a Thursday night was a most welcome shock to the system.
Speaking of physical torture, waking up the next morning – in true outdoor music festival style – is an experience straight out of a medieval nightmare by Hieronymus Bosch. Given the fact that sleep is an impossibility – the nights are bone-chilling, there is a constant procession of wasted revellers vomiting, screeching or banging drums and the person you’re wedged next to in an egg-sized tent is snoring like a tractor.
The old morning-after-the-night-before is something of an ordeal out here. Nursing a throbbing headache in the glacial dawn, it doesn’t help in the least when the Amphitheatre Stage’s monster soundrig gets tested out with a trillion-decibel rendition of The Final Countdown. Brrr.
However the night is not without a surprising semiology lesson – while vainly attempting to wrest a square of sleeping bag from my neighbour in the nocturnal iciness, I hear two prospective campers scouting the terrain adjacent to our bivouac. “Hey man, what do you think of this spot?” drawls the one. “Man, I scheme this is an irie spot. Let’s pitch our tent here.” Someone actually used the word “irie” in a real sentence! A first for me – I felt like Jane Goodall when the silverbacks allowed her up close for the first time to study their communication habits. The traditional hippy/folk element of Splashy Fen remains strongly in evidence with a blaze of tie-dye, tepees, dreadlocks and didgeridoos spread across the valley, with most people getting into the pantheist spirit of things by splashing about in the freezing river that wends its way through the Drakensberg farm.
One brave soul executes an impressive swallow dive but is rewarded with the business end of a submerged rock for his efforts. A bit more dazed and confused than before, our hero departs intact though somewhat groggy, earning himself the distinction of being the festival’s only casualty.
The nights are a different story though, with the big-city party animals taking over the marquee to get down to some serious rock’n’roll in front of the main stage. Equipped with state of the art sound and lighting rigs, the stage allows the featured night-time acts to create stadium-like auras with relative ease.
Caffeine Substitute kick off Friday night’s proceedings and make The Cranberries sound like Little Sister. Impressively cool lead singer Meghan McCrae delivers a fine synthesis of folk melody and indie rock, and if that Irish lot can shift a billion units, then so should she be able to.
Some embarrassing corporate masturbation by East Coast Radio jock Gavin Meiring almost manages to spoil the mood, but the night is saved by the imperial Fetish, whose strangely elegant angst and visceral sensuality is a compelling, disturbing cauldron of tension and beauty. Singer Michelle Breeze’s emotionally naked performance is jaggedly juxtaposed with the almost minimal sonic texture of the music, creating a sense of someone squirming to break free from a straitjacket.
Again, the seminal nature of Fetish’s performance in the context of Splashy Fen’s history needs be mentioned – this time last year, most of the audience would have been yawning away to some anonymous folk-rock outfit, so seeing them getting turned on to one of the hottest alternative bands in South Africa is rewarding.
Though Amersham and Squeal get the 8 000-plus crowd juiced with their emphatic big rock sounds – with Amersham getting stuck into a jazzed-up version of the Pumpkin Patch theme – the night belongs to Fetish. Saturday breaks into another perfect stretch of sunshine and stillness, and wandering aimlessly in search of nothing in particular, I put in a few hours at the Free Stage. Also subjected to a major overhaul from last year’s rickety trellis, the stage is now endowed with a powerful sound system that allows even the misfits and wannabes to indulge their wistful stadium pretensions.
Ageing hippies warbling “bury my bones in the beautiful pass of Van Reenen” are followed by deranged thrash bands and whimsical fancies like Your Mother’s Stamp Collection. While I’m there a guitarist and a singer calling themselves Schuf produce some fractured beauty, and then it is time to explore the fascinating religio-culinary phenomenon of the Splashy Fen pizza: of the two stalls, one offers Christian pizza and the other Hare Krishna pizza. One is bad karma-free and the other is, uh, apple-free?
Strolling off to the amphitheatre stage nestled in the river’s curve, I again pass the one odious blight on the landscape that’s been there ever since I arrived – an old South African flag flying proudly in the centre of the main campsite. Although someone offers the sage opinion that its necessary to be reminded of our past, it still strikes me as offensive – given our past and the fact that the vast majority of the audience and bands are white, it comes across as some symbol of defiant racial supremacy that besmirches Splashy Fen’s politically neutral image.
Speaking of politics, shit-stirring songster Matthew van der Want is gearing up for his gig with co-conspirator Chris Letcher on the open-air stage. Coughing after seeming to inhale an entire cigarette in a single drag, Van der Want croaks “At least I have my health” by way of soundcheck. Way punk. The duo perform their raw, painfully honest songs of anger and despair with intensity and humour.
While the tribal trance of Azumah reverberates around the hills, I meet Thomas Brooman, founding partner (with Peter Gabriel) of Womad, the international festivals that were showcasing world music long before it became a clich. He is impressed by Splashy Fen, comparing its simple idyll with the style of music festivals in Britain in the Sixties before authorities became hyper-zealous about safety regulations. He is planning a Womad for South Africa in February next year.
On Saturday night crowd-pullers Henry Ate and Just Jinger do just that while all the “serious artists” shake their heads in disbelief. Then, after another night of tent-trauma and wired insomniacs carousing under the luminous sky leaving behind such immortal phrases as “I’m tuning you bru, it’s aliens”, it’s time to expel the mortal remains of Swamp Thing from my nostrils and head back to the comforting geometry of the city.