Dror Eyal
The dust is blowing in from the east. Sand clouds that whip the air, flay my skin, sting in my eyes. Dust in each breath I swallow, grit grating between teeth, sticking in my throat. Dust in my food, dust in my beer. Winds blowing up a storm in front of the main stage, turning the area into a dust bowl. I’m hunched up inside my hooded top, just a nose and a pair of glasses staring as Dorp battle the elements, which by this stage include water blown down from the waterfalls in the area.
By the time day two rolled around, I was tired of standing in the wind, eating dust, breathing dust and watching the same bands I could’ve seen during a decent month in Cape Town. It’s late in the afternoon, and Juice are purveying their brand of surf-funk on the Pool Stage, when they are joined by the Blunt’s vocalists. The G-men come out kicking, fists pumping, yelling war cries, bumping into each other, head-bopping, rebel-rousing and generally showing the white kids with guitars how to work a stage. I’m caught totally unprepared, and remember the dangerous chaos of seeing Live Jimi Presley in a converted power station, dodging sparks from angle grinders while they trashed various metal objects. Yep, the new school is in the house. A hundred odd intense seconds later it’s over, and a 5fm presenter turns around and asks me, “Why aren’t Blunt here?”
Why? Because this is a rock festival presented by a rock label. Because hip-hop is still not seen as a viable music scene in a country that’s fixated by the so-called South African Rock Explosion. The Wingerdstok line-up is a tribute to the last two years of that explosion and the main stage is populated by the same bands we have seen everywhere. The Springbok Nude Girls, Battery 9, Wonderboom, Sons of Trout, Lithium. That’s what festivals are about, pulling in the kids and making the money to cover the enormous expense that it takes to put 50 bands on the same bill.
Wingerdstok ’98 however, did take it a step further, and the new school of South African music, the ones who are pushing the boundaries, were well represented. The highlight of the festival was indubitably Plum, who took the insane in their repertoire to a new level. After a disappointing performance at last year’s Oppikoppi festival, Plum has stripped down to a cleaner sound, leaving them enough room to work the stage. Tonight they kick the heaviest bass sounds since Bootsy Collins had his brain dewormed, fight the wind, and prove why they are the country’s foremost practitioners of cyberphunk.
Its past 2am when The Mud Ensemble, take to the stage. I was curious to see how The Mud Ensemble’s art rock would translate onto an outdoors stage. Luckily they chickened out, and the show was held on the indoors School Stage, a venue I am sure most of the bands wished they were in. Unfortunately, this is a festival, which means lots of drunk people who want to bang their heads and scream “take it off!” at anything wearing a dress, and The Mud Ensemble did not get the reception they deserved. This is sophisticated music, and this is a festival.
Lunchtime at the Pool Stage and Fetish are struggling against nature. On their debut CD, the overdubs create a lush sculpture of sound. Live, all the subtlety is translated to pure raw emotion; guitars straining against the wind, vocals twisting together to paint an altogether different picture. Michelle Breeze’s stage presence a strange mixture of awkward and sexy, defiant and inviting.
Next up are Boo!, another new band from Jo’burg who take the good-time jump-up-and-down formulae and turn it on its head. It’s never easy for a band to play outdoors during daytime, but Boo! manage to get the crowd aroused enough to get up and get down. Someone must have fiddled with something somewhere, because when Supernature took to the stage, the weak sound which had plagued the bands all day suddenly doubled. A riot of tortured guitars and syncopated beats, Supernature were the highlight of the festival for many, proving once again that the blood is real and the blues just get thicker.
The pool stage, a daytime stage, was were everything was happening, so we ignored the fact that Billygoat was playing at the same time on the main stage and stayed for Seed, a hardcore band out of Jo’burg. Seed’s vocalist, Graham, is one of those trance singers, the kind whose normal persona clicks off the moment he hits the stage. His dissonant rage is a blend of shouted vocals, and the kind of screams that aliens make just before they explode. While the rest of the band set up, a wall of sound penetrated by those deep bass beats that have the kids in front of the stage bobbing their heads like Cypress Hill never happened.
For a brief six hours this was what it was all about, new bands, pushing boundaries doing their twist on music that’s firmly based at the end of the millennium. Then it was back to the white-boy rawkers on the main stage. You see, despite the weather and the safe line-up, Wingerdstok ’98 managed to prove that there is a new school of music emerging. One that isn’t dependent on all the old formulae and clichs, and is bringing South African music up to date with the rest of the world, both in terms of styles and quality of music.
Maybe it’s time to put the new-generation terrorists on the main stage, with good lighting and a night-time audience.