/ 8 January 1999

Wild(ebeest) thing

Preview of the week: Alex Sudheim

In the 1980s, the two-headed beast of church and state had the country in a stranglehold of puritanical dogma and racist ideology. Many young Afrikaners attempted to shake themselves free by writing heretical songs and living subversive lifestyles.

This growing deviant energy was epitomised in the famous Volvry tour of 1989. It was a time when the main manne of the scene kicked the establishment in the teeth, proving to young Afrikaners that a new identity, free from the stigmas their fathers and forefathers had wrought, was possible – with enough courage and imagination. A decisive moral victory for alternative Afrikaans culture, Volvry cast the young upstarts as fearless resistance fighters battling the evil establishment.

By 1994, however, the heady days of poetic rebellion were over, and, with no foe to fight, a weary sense of “where to now?” crept through the scene. This culminated with the death of James Phillips in 1996, coincidentally the same year in which Pretoria music buff Eckard Potgieter began unwittingly picking up the pieces.

Unimpressed with the notion that alternative Afrikaans music had had its day, Potgieter ran a low-key flea-market stall specialising in original South African music. Due to intense public demand, this modest venture rapidly morphed into CD retail chain and then recording label.

In mid-1996 Wildebeest Records was born with the release of Valiant Swart’s Dorp Straat Revisited and Piet Botha’s Death of a Gypsy. Both releases were sold out within two weeks, and with extra pressings came a flood of demos from aspiring acts all over the country.

Then, when heavyweight legends Koos Kombuis and Anton Goosen approached Wildebeest for deals, Potgieter realised the little molehill he stood on had suddenly risen up into an enormous koppie. Now, a scant two years later, Wildebeest stands proud as one of the few independent labels in the country. This edifice now houses over 20 South African artists and groups.

The Wildebeest initiative is by no means a patronising act of charity – Potgieter believes in the value of these acts and releases them with the dignity they deserve. No way would anyone else have released Gert Vlok Nel’s quiet, narrative melancholia, and even if it doesn’t shift a million units it’s just good to know that stuff like that is being put out and not rotting in the badlands of impossible dreams.

The Wildebeest catalogue exhibits a vertiginous scope, ranging from the way-out conceptual daring of Koertz Kotze en die Vrouekolonnie – a demented fotoroman with an accompanying CD soundtrack featuring warped sonic experiments from the likes of Paul Riekert, Archie Pelago, Theo Crous and Arno Carstens – to the elegant jazz deconstructions of Paul Hanmer and Ian Herman’s band Unofficial Language.

As the law of averages will dictate, there’s also some kak being released on the label. Nonetheless, there’s more than enough good amongst the dubious to sustain the overall picture of burgeoning promise.

There is of course an emphasis upon the Afrikaans musical idiom, but this too is represented between wide horizons: Koos Kombuis and Anton Goosen provide some beautiful and subtly subversive folk rock while Akkedis, Valiant Swart and Dorp give it stick on the harder front.

One of the most beautiful aspects of this music is the semiological wonder of the unique South African patois born of the incongruous collision of English and Afrikaans: “Hulle ken van classics en Jaques Brel/ hulle weet hoe om `boudoir’ te spel/ hulle lees boeke soos Een Vir Azazel en gesels oor Sartre se private hell” sings Koos Kombuis on Lady van die Bodorp.

Anton Goosen’s brilliant Dik Zol contains the same black-humoured social commentary as Lou Reed’s Romeo and Juliet — “Toe zol ‘n teenage laaitie was, toe soek hy dringend vrou/ ‘n lat moet mos ‘n goosie h om sawens vas te hou”, sings Goosen.

A similar irreverent glee is shared by Valiant Swart on his latest release, Roekeloos -“Haar boetie was die baas van ‘n brannewynplaas daar onner in die Boland so blou/ sy was ‘n bad stukkie Hollywood met mags op haar bakkie/ en ‘n cute klein sakkie om haar secrets in te hou”.

In providing a certain portion of the country with a cracked mirror within which to inspect its own deformed, crooked-toothed visage, Wildebeest Records has stepped into the breach at exactly the right time to allow the old counter-cultural gattling gun to take aim at new targets with newfound vigour.