Remember Pop Shop: “Put your feet on the ground and reach for the stars”? What some poor monkeys like myself didn’t realise while flailing our arms at the heavens was that the Pop Shop galaxy was a ridiculously limited one. Beyond stars like Duran Duran and the Pet Shop Boys was a multitude of other bright shining lights. But, for all David Gresham could tell us, they might as well have been swallowed up by some gigantic black hole – black being the operative word.
Since then music programmes have come and gone, but none with the conceptual clout of Sprite Rush Hour, the funky melee of kwaito, hip hop, reggae, ragga, rap and drum ‘n bass subculture that will be pumping up the small screen for the first time on Friday night on SABC1 at 9pm.
It’s the first locally-produced youth music and entertainment show to place local music right up there with international sounds (or vice versa). Expect unprecedented moments like Mozambican rap band Baseball Track chatting to Malian musical genius Salif Keita or Jimmy B doing an interpretation of an old track by Mahlatini.
The new one-hour entertainment show is being produced by some of the hippest cats in town working out of Times Media Television’s renownedly hectic Rosebank offices. By the sounds of things they’ve spent a lot more time out of that office than in it. If they’re not at a kwaito club in Atteridgeville, they’re on a makeshift basketball court in Durban or at Puff Daddy’s restaurant in New York.
This can only count as a Noddy badge for a team (Teddy Mattera, Nhlanhla Hlongwane, Beathur Baker, Catherine Muller, Manase Motsepe and Mphulo Sebothoma) whose aspiration is to create hip, urban, streetwise television that’s true to the grit of the groove and burningly faithful to the passions of their youthful target audience.
“Lost generation” is not going to be a term in high circulation if these guys have anything to do with it.
Trying to get the team to verbalise what they’re actually on about makes me feel a bit like an anthropologist at a Boom Shaka gig. Elaborate explanations are clearly sub-cool, but I am assured by Hlongwane that the show’s: “really smoking” and, after a sneak preview of a couple of rushes, I’m smiling like a speed freak and wishing I was somewhere other than Monday morning.
Each show will feature seven inserts and the one I watch, directed by Mattera, is for a retro slot called Rapid Rewind. In this particular rush Mattera and company take a look back at Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse’s 1983 hit Burnout. Without turning it into an episode of Carte Blanche, they manage to give a documentary feel of the politics, the fashion, the underground life of the time.
The part when Hotstix speaks about his cool Grace Jones-style haircut has me in fits.
Apart from deriving almost fetishistic pleasure from the silly things we have all done in the name of trendiness, my breath can’t but be quickened by the energy of the insert with its fast cutting, fab archival material and vibey retro tune. The whole package takes me back in time to a scene I wasn’t part of, but relate to nonetheless.
Although it acknowledges pop cultural roots and histories, Sprite Rush Hour is deeply contemporary in feel. For starters, the studio is no dolled-up back room on the 17th floor of the SABC. Nope, the studio is the club – in this case Carfax in Newtown with its graffiti walls and industrial chic.
Each week the best of local music talent will be showcased with the backing of a full-house studio band, Don Laka and the Patriotic Groovers. Laka is an acclaimed vocalist, producer, musical arranger and promoter of young South African musicians.
Apart from in-studio action, the team has been hitting hot spots all around the country for live action footage which will be screened between regular music video exclusive playouts.
For the first time, I’m starting to think it might even be worth it to be 18 all over again.
Tune into Sprite Rush Hour at 9pm on Friday, October 2 on SABC1 and join the music revolution