found Benoni
Charles Leonard
`This is it! This is the site!” South Africans Roddy Quinn and Dan Chirboli looked at each other. “He must be mad,” Chirboli said to Quinn over the noise of the helicopter. “It’s just mine dumps … and it’s Benoni!”
But Womad’s United Kingdom-based artistic director Thomas Brooman was convinced. Two minutes flat and he knew this was it: the Bluegum Creek Estate.
Brooman has been with Womad since the first festival in 1982, and with Womad having travelled to 18 countries on four continents he should know by now.
For him it all started when he did an interview with Peter Gabriel in 1981 for a music magazine, The Bristol Recorder. Not long after the interview, Gabriel phoned. He’d been listening to some African rhythms and didn’t Brooman want to help get them on stage in England. That’s how Womad started.
It was a pioneering and difficult five years until 1987 when the term “world music” caught on and Womad finally became a story to peg it on.
“You know wherever we’ve staged Womad there’s always been one person with a mission and here it’s Dan,” says Brooman.
Durban-based Chirboli is percussionist for the African Gypsies, with Ray Phiri and Gito Baloi. “Two-and-a-half years ago I was in England and my wife said: `Why don’t you go and see Womad. I met Thomas and we got along like a house on fire. He’s a visionary. He told me that they’d tried other places (to present Womad) in Africa: Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, but with no success.
“Soon afterwards, Thomas came out to Durban and loved it because of the multicultural nature of the city. We pursued it and pursued it. A friend, Albert Swanepoel, who was marketing manager of Durban’s tourism department, got fed up. After eight months of procrastination by the politicians, Albert left.
“It’s extremely difficult to take anything forward on the cultural scene without the politicians trying to hijack it, either for the African National Congress or Inkatha. And then it gets fucked up by their hidden agendas.”
Everyone just got on with their lives until a chance meeting. “I bumped into Albert at the Johannesburg Airport,” said Chirboli. “He asked me about Womad and I said we hadn’t moved an inch forward.”
“Why not Benoni?” he asked. “Benoni’s got a forward-looking council. I know the reaction is: `Where the fuck is Benoni’, but I thought why not give them a chance. It took them only two weeks to come up with the money.”
Swanepoel says: “As Benoni’s marketing manager, my aim is to change the conventional perceptions of Benoni and the East Rand. So we decided to secure an event of international stature.”
Why not something more conventional? Swanepoel roars with laughter: “Like the Three Tenors? Womad aims to bring inter-cultural understanding – that’s exactly what we wanted.”
“Womad has been looking for an African venue – we were the most persistent I guess. Peter Gabriel said that the Womad events help to prove the stupidity of racism. Spot on for Benoni.”
So then there was the small matter of convincing the mothers and fathers of Benoni. On December 4 last year, the Greater Benoni City Council had its final meeting of the year. There they had to decide if they would spend R750 000 of taxpayers’ money on a marketing project.
“I never thought I’d see the day that we pay money for the communists (referring to Terem Quartet from Russia) to come and play here in Benoni!” says one New National Party councillor. “But I still take my hat off for the initiative and I support it!”
Only four out of the 30 councillors objected – the rest said let’s go for it.
“They have guts,” says Albert. “It took a leap of faith from them. Afterwards the chairperson, Naweed Hassan, said to me: `It’s like the story of the dog that chased the bus. Now you’ve caught the bus, let’s see what you do with it.'” Benoni now has the bus for the next two years.
In the depressingly conservative South African music industry, Quinn is the odd man out. About two years ago, he was waiting in a lobby of a music company watching MTV, and Skunk Anansie came up.
“We must get them out here,” he said to himself. Everyone said he was crazy because, at the time, their album had sold only 2 000 copies in South Africa. But he persisted. Not only did they sell out all their concerts, but their album has gone gold (25 000 albums) in South Africa.
Chirboli knew exactly who to call when Womad gave the go-ahead for a South African festival. Quinn said: “Cool! I trust you. When?”
Ever the pragmatist, it was Quinn’s idea to get 5FM involved, and to get white rock and kwaito acts to appear alongside each other at Womad.
“We expect local kids who come for the Springbok Nude Girls will also see, say, the Drummers of Burundi. It’s part of the spirit of Womad – full of little surprises. As Dan says: `This time we have to turn the turnstiles and hope to get more people converted – people who wouldn’t have normally been exposed to such an event.'”
The toughest has been explaining to the public what Womad is. “`Womad and Womad? Nomad? Jou wat? (Your what?),’ have been some of the responses I’ve got,” says Quinn. “But in the last fortnight it seems people are beginning to catch on. People who know now are very excited. Hopefully next year will be easier.”
One of the great appeals of Womad has been the absence of superstars. There will be no limos with shaded windows rushing through special gates. The artists make themselves available to the people. They’ll stand in the same queue as you and me to buy hotdogs.
@No stranger to
top musicians
Peter Makurube
For decades, the white side of Benoni has been the last place many black people would ever dream of visiting by choice. Until recently, blacks had to make way for whites on the streets. Apart from music, the place was known only for being home to the notorious Modderbee prison.
Womad could go a long way towards changing attitudes in this enclave of conservatism. For the first time in its history, Benoni will be faced with global attitudes and cultures – a moment for its more conservative residents to come out and party with the world.
But there’s more to the aptness of the venue than timeous transformation. Despite its grim past, Benoni has a rich musical history, one that seems to include every major name in black South African jazz.
The last time pennywhistle wizard Spokes Mashiane played live was at the Benoni City Hall in 1959. Mashiane had a huge following on both sides of the apartheid divide and had been performing for an all-white crowd when a fight suddenly broke out. A rowdy bunch of drunks in the audience were causing trouble and his fans stood up to defend him. All hell broke loose, and the band scattered in all directions. Mashiane ran through the streets all night until he found a good Samaritan – a night watchman who hid him in his makeshift hut. From that day on, Mashiane vowed never to perform live again.
A deeper look into its past reveals that greater Benoni has played host to many other great musicians – mainly in the townships of Wattville, Daveyton and Tsakane. It was here, in the mid-Fifties that the No Name band, featuring alto saxophonist Mario Conceiceo, distinguished itself. Today, Conceiceo is one of the oldest musicians living in Benoni.
In their heyday the No Names recorded hits like Etwatwa Twist, and were the first group to introduce guitar to the popular music style marabi. Later, some of the members left to form the Elite Swingsters. These bands also played regularly at “whites only” events at the local city hall. However, they were forbidden from mingling with the audience.
In the townships, venues like the Davey Social Centre and the Lionel Kent Centre were the main focus of the arts. Here, local bands and visiting stars would invade with musical scud missiles.
In Daveyton the Jazz Ministers ruled supreme. Led by one of the best composers in the land, Victor Ndlazilwana, the band dazzled thousands around the country for many years. Their best known hit, Zandile, featured Ndlazilwana’s 11- year-old daughter, after whom the song was named. She is now married to international jazz pianist, Bheki Mseleku.
One of the original members of The Jazz Ministers was Johnny Mekoa who, after Ndlazilwana’s death, took over the leadership of the band for many years. These days Mekoa teaches music, and his Gauteng Youth Jazz Orchestra is highly regarded. They happen to be on the Womad bill – the only outfit from the East Rand to be so honoured. Recently, they travelled abroad to perform and take part in jazz workshops with top musicians in the United States.
Yet another artist from the area is Ray Phiri, a long term resident of Daveyton who’ll appear at Womad with the African Gypsies. Presently, Daveyton’s hottest band is Four Forty, an outfit currently riding high in the jazz stakes. Individual members of Four Forty teach in Daveyton, and have often teamed up with musicians from Mekoa’s Gauteng Youth Jazz band. Four Forty is currently cutting an album after signing a deal with Sony, South Africa.
Other well known East Rand artists on the Womad programme include Benoni’s Sibikwa Players and Pops Mohamed, a native of neighbouring Boksburg.
This weekend’s celebration of world culture may open many eyes in the industrial enclave. But the fact that these major proponents of African jazz originated here indicates that the area is no stranger to musical achievement.
@Workers don’t like the work
With its corporate collection, MTN has made an impressive contribution to the arts in South Africa, but the company’s employees are not impressed by the work on display, writes Brenda Atkinson
Towards the end of last year, cellular communications giant MTN launched a corporate art collection. Reviewing the event at the time, I wrote that, “where corporate art collections are concerned, not all attempts are equal, and many collections languish unnoticed and unadvertised to the wider public … So it’s to the relief of many that a new art collection emerges, marked by careful thought, cultural savvy, and the kind of historically grounded, forward-looking approach unheard of since Gencor’s brave move in a visually challenged, sport-obsessed society.”
It’s a symptom of the indifference with which visual art in South Africa is regarded by both government and the private sector that, a full five years after Gencor was divided over the art in its offices, the MTN collection is now subject to the same hostility by the ranks of its employees.
Opposition to MTN’s six-figure investment – including an unprecedented educational component aimed at schools and the public at large – has surfaced and settled on the largest, most visible, most expensive acquisition: a sculpture installation by Andries Botha.
Botha’s work dominates some three floors of vertical space in the atrium of MTN’s Sandton headquarters. A radical departure from his earlier style, and constructed after months of experimentation and research, the stainless steel “mobile” is one of the more innovative corporate commissions to see the light in recent years. Speakers in perspex boxes are attached to the ends of its elegant arms, and when the structure rotates every 15 minutes, they emit sound: conversations, the cellular ringing so dear to Jo’burgers, and so on.
A cunning interactive design element allows people to “call” the sculpture: the eighth person to phone in activates the mobile, which then enters its aurally busy rotation.
As Botha describes it, the work “aims to project MTN as a top-end communicating agency: it represents what they have achieved, constructed in a very difficult space. It’s interactive, it functions vertically and is horizontally dispersed; it’s quite playful, rather than stoic and stolid, because it’s designed to capture the dynamic, highly mobile nature of the company. It is not an inconsequential piece, and I’ve worked on it with a great amount of excitement and passion.”
Sounds like just the kind of half-baked drivel that would put any right-minded South African off her lunch, and MTN employees, from top floor to reception, are, with the odd exception, practically riven with ulcers.
While the black security guard in reception enthused over Botha’s work and explained its mechanism and intent to me in detail, the rank and file ranged from tolerantly bemused (secretaries) to contructively critical (finance) to shirt-busting belligerent (engineers). Those who described “that thing” as “a piece of crap” fumed that the money could have been “better spent paying wages to two more staff members”.
“We’re disgusted, and so are our clients,” said one engineer, who, with his colleague, claimed that the collection was “overindulgent”, and “without artistic value”. These were the adult men who had tried to petition to have the photographic exhibition on their floor removed (was this, I wondered, because the photographs – of black South Africans – offended their white male sensibilities?)
At executive level, the worst of these opinions was confirmed by finance and admin group executive, Rob Nisbet: It’s a shocker. In a culture of frugality, which we try to encourage, it just gives the wrong impression. It’s embarrassing and should never have been put there. It’s not bringing clients our way.”
It’s ironic that the many, many more millions MTN spends on sport are not considered inappropriate to the suddenly much-touted corporate “culture of frugality”, but then marketing and sales are the bottom line, and it’s too soon to tell whether MTN’s visual arts and heritage association will do the trick.
Corporate relations group executive Jacques Sellschop, the smooth-as-fois-gras spin-doctor of the MTN operation, says his opinion of the piece has changed. “My personal response was initially one of astonishment and incredulity, but its persistent presence, movement and sound stimulated a closer awareness, which tempts one to lean in the direction of affection for it. Of great interest to me was the mental activity it stimulated in a group of 30 visiting matric students last week. It clearly has the properties of being a conversation piece, which is more than many more easily acceptable pieces of art can claim.”
As Sellschop puts it, art that charms some might well offend others, but the “subjective” appreciation of visual art can be assisted by art historical education – something which consultants Ronel Loukakis, Skye Holland and Phillippa Hobbs have gone out of their way to achieve at MTN.
The rub is that both sides have to come to the party: one artist who was invited to discuss her works in the collection claims that only one or two MTN people bothered to attend the scheduled talk. Which makes it especially annoying that corporate professionals who would never tolerate interference from others outside their specialist fields see themselves as authorities on what is and isn’t art.
What MTN has to realise – and probably thought it had – is that commitment to an art collection is a commitment both to creativity and controversy. It is a financial investment, part of which is crucially social: it should educate through lively, progressive and generous debate. What it should not do is put artists in a position where they become apologists for their own professions.
Artists do not set out to humiliate businesses that commission them, and should not suffer because of the self-imposed intellectual limitations of professionals who really should know better. As Dave Beasley, MTN’s chair of the collections committee, puts it, the issue is not that anyone be forced to “like” Botha’s work, but rather that a spirit of debate be encouraged regarding the piece, and the collection as a whole.
In the end the great achievement of the MTN collection is that, not only will the thousands of students who debate its content and write about Botha’s work in their matric papers probably end up subscribing to MTN; they will also enter their twenties knowing what art is, and why its presence in our lives is not the end, but the beginning, of civilised and democratic society.