MARIA McCLOY talks to Skeem, a bright new South African group who are mixin= g s tyles and doing their own musical thing
SKEEM broke on to the local music scene in September last year with the rel= eas
e of their song Waar Was Jy? In terms of both lyrics and style they were a = bre
ath of fresh air after a period when things on the South African dance edge= we
re threatening to become repetitive. Though rooted in a mixture of today’s = pum
ping house beats, ragga and rap, the song took people back to the Eighties = – a time when
, as band member Ishmael says: “Brenda Fassie was running things.” Her Week= end
Special and Mercy Pakela’s Aya Shisa amaTekkie were the radio staples.
“Where were you,” they ask, back in the days of Lapologa on TV3? The weekly= do
se of pantsula dancers, ballroom dancers and anxious folk miming along to s= ome
or other Michael Jackson song? Waar Was Jy? refers to the things that were=
a=20
part of the four group members’ lives when they were kids; Jomo Sono’s Pira= tes
and Spiderman make it into the mix, as do references to the hits Chaklas C=
hak
las, Skoro -Skoro, Chicco’s Soldier, perms, pantsulas and breakdance.
Lucky, Jacob and Ishmael grew up together in Rustenberg. In 1991 they creat= ed=20
Brown Bread Connection with Boom Shaka’s Junior, in 1992 Junior and Ishmael= jo
ined Prophets of da City. Lucky and Jacob’s Bass Tribe faded and they ended= up
as dancers for Jimmy B and then moved to DJing in Rockey Street clubs. Las=
t y ear the three guys were joined by Teba and Skeem was formed.
For the past seven years independent label Ku Shu Shu Music has been workin= g o n Cape Town rap group Prophets of da City. The Prophets returned from Europ= e a nd, as the press release has it, “decided to work on some beats for Lucky a= nd=20
Jacob. Jacob flew down to Cape Town with Ishmael to hook up with Ready D an= d S haheen from POC … then it was back to Johannesburg to lay the voices down= .”=20
The first=20 product that Ku Shu Shu’s sub-label Ghetto Ruff released was Skeem’s.
Ishmael is still with Prophets, but as a member of Skeem he’s not on a ragg= a o r rap tip, instead he sings – and not about anything political. Just lookin= g a t him you can tell he does his own thing; funky ripped army trousers, yello= w N ike sports shoes and, resting on his blondish tinted hair, a pair of trendy= si
lver shades. Dreadlocked Jacob barely says a word. Teba who does the ragga = bit
s is not t here and Lucky, who seems to be the joker of the crew, explains the “meanin= g”=20
of some of the tracks.
The way Ishmael sees it the band, aged between 21 and 25, started out in or= der
to “do something different … we’ve always been doing hip-hop … never a=
nyt
hing 100% local.” Also, they wanted to bring something different to the lo= cal
scene: they say they will never use dancing girls or wear matching uniform=
s w hile doing synchronised moves as a gimmick to attract crowds, They say they= ju
st want to be themselves. “We’re roughnecks us … we don’t do the routine. You have =
too
feel the music,” says Lucky before Ishmael chips in: “We don’t dance. We w=
ant
the crowd to dance; we deliver the message.”
Skeem is “definitely not hip-hop. Hip hop is rap music, graffiti, breakdanc= e,=20
” says Ishmael, though he acknowledges the influence of hip-hop and ragga i= n t heir sound. So what is it? “Gong.” Some use the words kwaito and degong to= re
fer to the same thing (township dance music). Lucky thinks their music is s= low
er; slow enough to nod your head to. Ishmael says: “‘It’s like kwaito is li= ke=20
yesterday=20
and gong is like today.” According to them Bongo Maffin, Alaska and Trompie= s a re proponents of gong too.
Zumba is the name Lucky uses to describe the mixture of South African langu= age
s they use in their music. He calls it a “broken language to accommodate al= l.”
It’s words and tones from a variety of languages being spliced and put tog=
eth
er. Ishmael wishes there was space made in the music business for “ragga in= Zu
lu or hip-hop in Zulu or Sotho … even jungle”.
The difficulties Prophets of da City experienced in the South African music= sc
ene are well known – lack of radio play and banning of their records and vi= deo
s. Ishmael believes many hip-hop groups are still underground and battling = to=20
get signed because record companies “don’t believe that hip-hop will make i= t b ig locally”. This contrasts with the kwaito sounds that pump from every rad= io,
taxi and=20
club, and the fact that a debut tune like Waar Was Jy? sold 35 000 copies.
So Skeem’s creation might just have been an economic decision. Ishmael poin= ts=20
out that it is, after all, a business: “We’re doing this music to pay the r= ent
, and for the love of it.” All members of the group are critical of the lac= k o f creativity in kwaito/degong, they diss the South African record industry = for
stifling talent and ideas by making emerging artists make kwaito tracks th=
ey=20
think will sell.
Skeem say they haven’t been in such a situation because they have been work= ing
with and promoted by people who have known them for years. Either way the =
oth
er five tracks on Skeem’s Waar Was Jy? album are nowhere near as good as th= e t itle track.
Skeem criticise distributors for not making their music available to other = Afr
ican countries while the huge pirating industry is doing the job for them. = The
y’re critical of company representatives who don’t make music available at = tow
nship outlets, though they won’t mention names. Kwaito artists also come in= fo
r a major diss because they copy overseas acts and ideas. There are British= gr
oups calle d Boom Shanka and Abashanti; some songs sound eerily like they got their be= ats
from the US. “There’s no originality, so stop saying you’re original,” say=
s L ucky. The way Skeem see it, “biting” (criticising) has now also become an i= nte
r-state thing, they won’t mention names again, but have had enough of the = “ch
ain reaction”of one person having a hit single and the next thing a new gro= up=20
arrives an d has named itself after that hit.
The content and beats of the album concentrate on making people dance and l= aug
h, but they claim that in their new album they’d like to talk about things = lik
e police corruption and how freely available guns are – but in an entertain= ing
way.=20
More intriguing is the upcoming Waar Was Jy jungle remix . Things should go= we
ll if they stay true to their stated desire for originality and creativity= , b ecause like one of Skeem’s friends told me: “local music could do with some= so
ul.”