MUSIC
The inaugural Splashy Fen fiddling competition strives to boost appreciation for the fiddle, writes ALEX SUDHEIM
IT is a beautiful late autumn evening in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains — the moon at its fullest bathes the valley in alabaster and scented woodsmoke rises from a multitude of campfires.
Groups huddle about pots of lentil stew, draped in a palette of Himalayan wardrobe, discussing techniques of mind alteration while engaging with the cosmic rhythm through bongo drums and battered guitars. I offer the girl next to me some cheap whisky but she is meditating. Apart from a few boneheads howling at the moon, the aura is soporifically peaceful
Despite having driven through wide open spaces and fresh mountain air to encounter claustrophobia and frost-pocketed smoke, I get with the programme. The Jesus people make an excellent pizza, and on stage is a beautiful woman in leather trousers with a violin. She is sex on a bow, serious eye-candy, and plays the fiddle like a Cossack princess. Several thousand people in the marquee are spellbound and applaud as if they’ve just seen Pearl Jam; its strangely elating to see a solo fiddler get stadium-rock treatment from an enormous, enthusiastic crowd.
Kate O’Hanlon (see picture – Fiery fiddler: Kate O’Hanlon plays the fiddle like a Cossack princess) is one of the finalists in the inaugural Splashy Fen Famous Fiddling Competition, brainchild of farm owner Peter Ferraz, whose nurturing love for local fiddling talent is surpassed only by his willingness to have 7 000 people trample all over his farm for five days. The competition strives to boost the image and appreciation of the fiddle, a rather lowly contender in the conventional sexy rock-instrument stakes.
Somewhat disappointingly only three people enter, all from established bands, thereby putting a damper on the hope that the competition will reveal a depth and breadth of the unsung talent out there. Nevertheless the finals on Saturday night are one of the highlights of the festival, receiving massive audience interest. After Kate does for the violin what Polly Jean Harvey did for the guitar, it is the turn of Landscape Prayers fiddler Anton Cawchorn’Blazeby.
In case you didn’t know, the fiddle is in fact a violin, differing from the latter only in the manner in which it is played: while the violin’s function is strictly classical, the fiddle is used for bluegrass, rock ‘n’ roll and whatever other form of free popular expression takes its fancy.
“The fiddle is the closest intrument to the voice,” says Anton, and to see him play bears this out — he treats his instrument as if it were as organ of his body, viscerally inseparable from the rest of it. On four strings he is shaking out melodies and hooks that have the crowd emphatically clapping along, and when he reaches his nadir, savagely sawing away on a progressive chord, few people are untouched by the sensuous passion this apparently delicate little instrument can produce.
The third finalist, Mark Schonau from The Hairy-Legged Lentil-Eaters, is also eminently equal to the task of producing a rapturous ode to the modest fiddle. Having once lived with a violin teacher, I know how the thing can sound like a tortured cat in the wrong hands. But Mark makes it purr like a full-bellied cheetah, adroitly blending from tune to tune in an extended solo.
After some spontaneity-deadening blather from the compere and a breathtaking set from wandering Angolan minstrel Adamu, the results are announced: the sheer passion and accomplishment of Anton Cawchorn’Blazeby steal the show and net him the R1 500 prize, while Kate O’Hanlon and Mark Schonau take second- place honours and R750 each.
In years to come and with some more support, the initiative will hopefully draw a larger contingent of entrants, further popularising the instrument and unearthing the raw genius presently busking away on an anonymous roadside.
CINEMA:
Reviewed by: Andrew Worsdale
AT last week’s chaotic premiere of Jean-Claude Van Dame’s directorial debut, The Quest, teenage girls and their younger brothers leaned over the railings at Sandton City and screamed deliriously as the Belgian arrived. He’s not that short, actually – just very, very broad. The glitterati in black tie all peered around: “Is that him?” “I don’t know.” “Tell me if you see him!” What followed was a hazardous crush to get into the cinema to view the kind of movie you might enjoy in slip- slops and baggies next to your eight-year old kid … though, even then, I doubt it.
The movie opens on an elderly but still agile Christopher du Bois (Van Damme) as he recounts his life to a barman, then it flashes back to New York City circa 1923 where he is working the streets as a trapeze artist with a bunch of kids, rather like a kind of Fagin. He is forced to leave the country by the mob and stows away on a pirate ship, is rescued by British scoundrel Lord Dobbs (Roger Moore), and together they venture to China and the Lost City where Du Bois enters a century-old competition between the world’s greatest fighters. The last 40 minutes of the film play like a martial-arts version of the TV show Gladiators as Muy Thai kickboxing faces Sumo wrestling or Brazilian Capoeirista fighting comes head to head with Tae Kwon Do.
Despite the well-filmed fight sequences, in which Van Damme and cinematographer David Gribble move the camera a great deal, managing to cut inside the action at times, really capturing the intensity of the body blows, the movie is a big yawn. The script by Paul Mones and Gene Qunitano (King Solomon’s Mines) reeks of matinée cliché, the dialogue is risible (at one point all it consists of are pleas from Van Damme’s gang of friends: “Chris! Chris! Chris! Go for it, Chris!” and so on, ad nauseam.)
The casting of Roger Moore, evidently one of
Jean-Claude’s idols, in the main supporting role gives you an inkling of the style of acting – it has the charisma of a used tea- bag. The use of stock shots to place the locales – New York, Bangkok, etc, makes the supposed epic scale seem tacky and the forced inclsuion of a babe, Janet Gunn, as naive, wealthy journalist Carrie Newton is not only useless, it’s almost nauseating.
That said, it must be noted that The Quest is cleaning up at the box-office in the States. It has a couple of half-decent action scenes but the macho posturing, added to a completely boring scenario littered with sentiment and kitschy, crappy, half-baked philosophy, make this a distinctly inferior action adventure. Rent the kids Timecop, instead – at least with that one Jean-Claude had a semi-decent storyline to get his biceps tuned into.