Peter Makurube
You would need to be an incurable optimist to believe you’d ever see Philippe Troussier smile. But he did, when Bafana Bafana played Denmark. If you blinked you probably missed it. You’d have to be as much of an optimist to have believed that Tananas, one of South Africa’s best and most successful bands, would reunite. For a while, the group’s members were talking only through lawyers.
But this superb band is now back together. Drummer Ian Herman flew out from the United States for gigs in Johannesburg last week, and he, guitarist Steve Newman and bassist Gito Baloi are planning a new Tananas album.
Tananas first got together in 1987, while South Africa was in the throes of political upheaval and deep in commercial musical rot. The local music industry was firmly focused on its cash cow, “bubblegum” township pop. There was more challenging music around, but very little of it received mainstream record industry support.
Many of those cold-shouldered by the majors found a home at Lloyd Ross’s independent company, Shifty, and Tananas was one of them. It was led by guitar wizard Newman, well known for years of gigs alone and with fellow-guitarist Tony Cox. Baloi, a Mozambican, had been playing with Pongola and Herman had been drumming with Cape rockers The Genuines. Their first album was released in 1988.
It was a revelation – and a revolution. It mixed various streams of indigenous music, from Kaapse klopse to Maputo salsa, and the band developed a strong local following, playing all over South Africa. Later taken up by Gallo, they recorded all their subsequent albums for that major label.
Their joint sound lingers, but the three original members of the band haven’t in fact performed together since 1994. After a couple of Gallo albums, Tananas began to dissolve. Baloi recorded a pair of solo albums, while Newman and Herman recorded two Tananas albums without him – Unamunacua and its predecessor, Tananas Wide Ensemble, an expanded version of the group that featured 14 of South Africa’s most gifted musicians.
Long regarded as South Africa’s most gifted drummer, Herman took up the offer of work in the United States. In New York he worked with luminaries such as Paul Simon and George Duke, later settling in San Francisco. He returned only briefly, to record with Peter Sklair and Paul Hanmer’s band, Unofficial Language.
But a couple of months ago he got a call from from Newman and longtime Tananas manager Kerry Friedman, imploring him to come home and make a new start with Tananas.
“At first I was scared and nervous,” says Herman. “But I felt this would be an opportunity to go home, face this problem, talk to each other and play with the guys again. So I thought, why not? This time we want to do everything right.”
Baloi says: “I am very happy that we are back together again, even if we had problems that separated us.” Like his fellow Tananas members, Baloi will also pursue his solo career. “I like doing different things other than Tananas. It is important to grow in other directions and since the band has a culture of individual members working in different projects, I can continue with my solo career.”
Meanwhile, Tananas is planning a national tour that will take in the Standard Bank National Arts Festival as well as a tour of Namibia.
“I always knew we’d be back together again,” says Newman, “and I am playing with my favourite band.”