Playing his own song in a huge American stadium is one of the highlights of Big Voice Jack life – and there’s a documentary film to prove it, writes Brendan Cooper
Eighty thousand people can make a lot of noise, and when Dave Matthews leans in to his mic and says to the crowd, “Give it up for a friend of ours from South Africa who has come all the way here to play for you all”, the roar rises to a crescendo. Big Voice Jack Lerole, South Africa’s foremost pennywhistle player, walks onto the stage at Boston’s Foxboro stadium. He takes his position at a mic, lifts his whistle and starts to dance with surprising agility and commitment for someone in his late sixties.
Lerole, who only practised with the band for the first time earlier that day, slots straight into the groove, giving the band an extra, jivey edge that soars high into the grandstands.
The footage of this memorable scene comes from a documentary directed by Johnathan Dorfman of Wireless Pictures, called Back to Alexandra. It is a brilliant piece of South African filmmaking that traces the history of this legend of South African music from the dusty streets of Alexandra where he first learnt to play the pennywhistle, to his live gigs with The Dave Matthews Band, arguably the biggest rock act in the United States at the moment.
Dorfman, who returned last week from MIP-TV 1999, the massive film market held in Cannes every year, is confident of international sales for his documentary. “There seems to be a lot of interest in South African stories,” says Dorfman. “There is a need for more international co-operation in the making of South African films.”
“I’m a drinker, but not a drunkard,” is the first thing that Big Voice Jack says as he walks into the Bassline, Johannesburg’s premiere live jazz venue, for our interview. He is clutching a Black Label as if his life depended on it. “I had a bit too much last night,” he says. “Now I need a beer to get the blood flowing again.” It’s a hot afternoon in Johannesburg and Lerole slumps into a chair and begins to tell me the story of how he came to play with America’s hottest rock act.
By the end of the Fifties, Aaron Jack Lerole (his real name) had already recorded many singles and was starting to break into the limelight. “People used to follow me around like I was a preacher.” The pennywhistle started to gain popularity and in the early Sixties Lerole began his successful solo career, which lasted through the Sixties and Seventies and took him and his whistles all over the world. In the early Nineties Lerole was in huge demand both locally and internationally.
But it was at the Bassline in Johannesburg that Lerole’s biggest moment was set in motion. It was during one of Dave Matthews’s frequent visits to Johannesburg, the city where he grew up, that Lerole met him.
Matthews’s saxophonist, Leroi Moore, had asked him to find him some pennywhistles. “Ironically,” says Matthews, “pennywhistles are easier to get in the States than they are in South Africa, but Leroi wanted whistles that came from South Africa.”
Matthews was at Lerole’s gig at the Bassline, and he asked him where he could find some whistles. “I said to him, `take my whistles’,” Lerole recalls. “I wanted him to have my whistles because I thought I would never play in a big stadium in America, and I wanted them to play my whistles there, so I gave them to him.”
“When I gave them to Leroi and told him the story,” says Matthews, “he was touched and he said, `Fuck it. Why don’t we get him to come over and play with us.’ So we did.”
“This trip was a blessing to me,” says Lerole in a voiceover to visuals of the band travelling from Boston to New York’s Giants Stadium for their second gig together. The documentary shows footage of Lerole teaching the band to play his song Back to Alexandra at the sound check.
At the end of a take, Jack walks over to
sax player Moore, who will be in charge of playing the pennywhistles while Jacks sings his song, and good naturedly tells him: “I don’t want your silly fumbling”. It’s a moment that pays tribute to the lasting contribution Big Voice Jack has made to South African music, and you can see the emotion on his sixtysomething-year-old face.
For the old man of the pennywhistle, playing his own song in an American stadium was the highlight of his career. “That moment made me decide that I will keep on playing until I am 90 or 100 years old. As long as God can spare me, I will keep on making music.”
Big Voice Jack’s latest album, Colours and Moods, is out now