Last week, Matthew van der Want argued that we should be ashamed of the success of `clichd’ band Just Jinger. Diane Coetzer disagrees
At least Matthew van der Want has the one characteristic always admired in the surfers who took to Umhlanga’s most lethal waves: pluck. But, in this case, the word applies less to the singer-songwriter’s physical courage than to his strongly held opinions about the South African music industry and, specifically, his dim view of what is undeniably South Africa’s most successful rock group in decades, Just Jinger.
Van der Want’s argument turns on his belief that it should be him and his mate Chris Letcher who introduce “local white-boy rock to the world” and not Just Jinger. Why? Because the latter is “uninteresting and uninspiring” and full of “rock clichs” while Van der Want and Letcher produce work that “has the capacity to move a lot of people”.
Understanding what motivates individuals to buy music in large numbers is a complex business. If it were simply about the talent to enter people’s varied lives in a way that leaves them astonished at what they’ve heard, then artists like Nick Drake, Tim Buckley or The Go-Betweens would have been supernovas in the world’s musical sky.
Van der Want fails to examine just what it is that has made over 50 000 (that’s platinum here) young South Africans walk away from a music shop clutching a copy of Just Jinger’s All Comes Round. Surely these are not all (as he downright patronisingly implies) people with a vacuum where their brain should be?
In Just Jinger, young white South Africans have found a group that provides them with accessible songs that are easy to hook into. And for the first time these young people have real pin-ups, real stars whose autographs they can get, whose shows they can see (and, drums solos aside, Just Jingers shows are consumately professional) and lives they can feel part of.
Also, what Van der Want fails to mention is that Just Jinger is not the only rock band enjoying significant success at present. The Springbok Nude Girls, a band that can hardly be accused of relying on rock clichs, have sold well over 20 000 copies of their latest release, Afterlifesatisfaction. The group recently took their intriguing, dense and fresh brand of South African rock to London, where they played before a good number of international Sony A&R people. Amersham (another Van der Want pet hate?) are also due in London soon.
None – or all – of these three might break into the international arena. Or it may be a completely different band or songwriter further down the line. The chances of it being a Van der Want/Letcher combination, however, are slim. Both these “white boys” are undeniably talented songwriters and performers, but a look at the rock bands currently breaking on the world stage should be a pointer. Take Matchbox 20, whose album, Yourself or Someone Like You, is huge in the United States but which sounds like everything you’ve heard before in American rock.
If Van der Want’s view is to be consistent, we must admit we’re immersed in an international music culture of clich-sodden floating shit. Sure there are artists (he names Bjrk, Beck and Pavement) who are “achieving substantial commercial success despite their unusual sound”, but South Africa’s infant rock/pop audience is not yet large enough to sustain such artists here -and Bjrk et al are much, much further from the mainstream than Van der Want and Letcher are from Just Jinger.
There is much greater musical literacy in places like England and the US, a musical intelligence that has taken decades to evolve and one which this country does not yet enjoy. Sure it would be nice if the South African majors were to “invest in unusual and thought-provoking local music”, but they’re acting in a way that’s consistent with the policies of their holding companies worldwide (though Van der Want’s point about A&R people’s lack of imagination does hold true).
Still, the South African musical field is far more exciting now than in Shifty Records’s heyday, for instance. That we can even debate which artists will crack the overseas Holy Grail shows this. South African rock now runs the gamut from Battery 9’s hardcore industrial to Henry Ate’s sublime folk-pop-rock with hundreds of variations in between.
If Van der Want could take the wider view he might see that Just Jinger’s platinum sales, Art Matthews’s face on the cover of Billboard, and the growing perception internationally that there’s more to our music than the great Lucky Dube or Ladysmith Black Mambazo is good for all musicians here.