After spending a Sunday with the Mud Ensemble, CHARL BLIGNAUT finds that Johannesburg’s musical underground is alive and rocking
TWO weeks ago I spun out,” says Juliana Venter, the singer with Mud Ensemble. “I never realised I had so much evil in me … So much power to hurt other people …”
“It’s been a bitch of a winter,” I suggest, knowing that what she’s really talking about is the nameless process of preparing 12 extremely ominous and lovely tunes for a one-off performance in Johannesburg this weekend. What will out will out.
“Why do you scream so?” I ask her. “Because I like it,” she says.
You have to hear her switch between soaring lyricism and terrible shrieks to believe how beautiful it sounds. Either way, she has reason to be a bit on edge. This is to be Mud Ensemble’s first show and it marks another phase in their existence.
Before now they were known as Ensemble. And Creed Ensemble, Flow Resistance Ensemble, Ensemble Ensemble and then Shaft 7c — after the mining town. It’s been a name-per-show process — largely because the show, and not just the music, is the thing.
Her long-time partner, the actor Marcel van Heerden, is also on vocals in Mud Ensemble. And he, along with guru artist Neil Goedhals, actor Gys de Villiers and actress Megan Kruskal, once formed the core of a little-known but seminally rude and literate band called Koos.
Between 1986 and 1990 Koos muttered and screamed their way through two states of emergency under PW Botha, taping songs with words like: “I saw a zebra in Paris/ Wish it was me/ Wish it was me/ Saw some boy scouts burning to death/ Wish it was me/ Wish it was me/ Dreamed of blowing up Parliament/ Wish it was me/ Wish it was me / Dreamed of coming on Rambo’s knee …”
I ask Van Heerden how much of Koos lives on in Mud Ensemble? “It’s very different,” he responds. “But it’s funny, the other day when I heard the beginning of one of our new songs, Tiger [as in William Blake], it sounded exactly like the intro to one Koos song. It took me by surprise, it was like calling up a spirit …”
When, to the shock of the local art community, Koos’s musical director Goedhals committed suicide in 1990, Koos disbanded. And the Ensemble has lived since then.
“Do you know that last week was the sixth anniversary of Neil’s death?” I ask Van Heerden. “Six years? Shit, it feels like yesterday. But it was this time of year, wasn’t it? I remember, I had laryngitis when he died …”
Winter in Johannesburg. And this year Van Heerden again speaks with a hoarse voice. He’s acting in The Crucible at the Market Theatre at night and working with the Ensemble whenever possible. He’s one of those people that keeps a band together and when, on doctor’s orders, he was told he wasn’t allowed to speak, he found himself having to communicate with the band in writing.
“I looked at those notes the other day and decided they’re really quite interesting. I think I’ll keep them.” Van Heerden’s always had a thing about recording stuff “so we can remember … And in case it never happens again.”
The first time I met him he was in Yeoville’s Harbour Caf, peddling Koos’s Shifty tape wrapped in brown paper bags. He also compiled The Walkman Tapes — a collection of Koos out-takes. The songs, a heady mix of political anarchy and vitriolic humour, were recorded during rehearsals on a Sony Walkman with a single stereo microphone. Today his tapes and writings are rare underground notes recording that time for posterity. That time when you could get arrested for saying the things Koos sang about.
[Y] et, in some ways, nothing much has really changed. He’s still at it. Van Heerden wants to record the upcoming show and then sell the tapes to the audience afterwards. And the band wants to put out a two-track CD as soon as possible. “I want to make a living on the fringe,” says Venter. “Surely that’s going to be possible at some point in this country.”
Later, lounging in a dentist’s chair at the back of Carfax trying to read the Sunday papers while the band go through their paces, I’m repeatedly distracted. Venter has the kind of range you don’t hear very often. At a thrilling point, between the bursts of spoofy Diamanda Galas opera and panting Patti Smith shrieks, she sounds just like Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon or Courtney Love of Hole — or any other uncompromising modern diva.
With Van Heerden joining her on vocals; Kenny Marshall of Live Jimmi Presley on bass guitar and samples; Libbi du Toit on violin; Tom Dry Barry on fire, highlights and spells; Manja Gittel on keyboards and Nicholas Hauser on drums, this is very much an ensemble kind of ensemble. That is, it’s difficult to keep the characters, performers and music together and then fine-tune them — to create the requisite nasty brew. They do it with big movie soundtrack slickness (the influence of local composer Graeme Feltham). But there is a rawness twisting through it that is compulsive. It’s like letting in the light, really, or calling up the spirits.
There’s a reason Aleister Crowley’s words form one of the band’s songs and it’s political. Like the origins of ritual magic and the rites of spring, the politics is life.
When Van Heerden had to cut off his beard for The Crucible, Barry made it into a wax talisman which now burns on stage during the performance. Barry also manipulates slides and video projections, shines torches on band members and produces a massive fanny that oozes during I Want You, one of the most shockingly wonderful duets I’ve ever heard from a local band. Du Toit’s violin spits out a happy little ditty. Hauser, last seen writing advertising copy, is as happy as a pixie on drums. Van Heerden looks perpetually sad and sexy. Venter grabs the song, trills it, squeaks it … and then gleefully rapes it.
The band members subtly act out petty domestic scenes throughout the show. I look for a deeper meaning, but they say it’s just because they rehearse at home. “One of us is always running out to look after Vincent [Venter and Van Heerden’s child], so we incorporated that into the performance,” Venter explains. Says Van Heerden: “I’ll be fixing Vincent’s bottle in the kitchen and hear this heavenly music coming from the other room. I love what I’m doing.” When I ask what it’s like having a baby, both Venter and Van Heerden say, separately, that it saved their lives.
It’s definitely a life thing, I think, as I interrupt them and ask for a lift home. Purgation. It’s no mean feat, giving birth to a whole show like this, but it’s the healthiest way of coping they know.
“I’m glad we’re doing this. I’m glad I’m putting myself on the line,” Van Heerden tells me while driving his noisy, battered beach buggy past Fontana in Hillbrow. We rattle past the African women in green and white church gear purposefully heading along the pavement. The door on the driver’s side of the buggy is missing. Van Heerden continues: “But after this, I said to Juliana, we’re going to take a holiday. I want to go to Mozambique.”
Picking up speed as we head through Hillbrow, Van Heerden spits vigorously on to the tar. “Sorry. That’s disgusting. It’s my throat.” There’s no need to apologise, I think. What’s the point of having no door if you can’t spit out?
The sole Mud Ensemble performance is this Saturday at Carfax in the Newtown Cultural Precinct