Female rappers are slowly showing that a woman’s place is behind the microphone, writes Erika Schutze
Open microphone sessions are cropping up all over Cape Town. By encouraging audience participation, events such as this have the potential to invigorate discussions and debates around controversial issues that have been silenced or ignored. When women seize the microphone, it’s the perfect platform to make the personal political.
Except for two feisty performances, the “Women’s Open Mic” session organised by the DC Art Gallery and the University of the Western Cape gender equity unit on July 23 was a disappointment. The poster promised an evening of “controversy, music, dance and poetry”. There was music and poetry but little of the call-and-response duels and audience affirmations pivotal to an open mic assembly.
The women were self-effacing, a condition compounded by the MC’s repeated lame jokes about the microphone resembling a “phallic object”.
MC for the night Anthea Carolus opened the event, saying: “Tonight women can mention anything on their minds, reveal themselves to strangers or even strip.” Little of this expression actually happened despite the fact that most of the 50-odd, female-strong crowd seemed to know each other and the ethos was supportive and convivial. Neither the rhetoric nor the red wine gave way to any real controversy or excitement.
The highlight of the evening was medical student and embryonic jazz singer Bongi Mhlongo who languidly and soulfully sang a few covers and original material with an ease that could quite possibly have been “singing in the bath”, as she put it. Tracey Wentworth’s reading of her poignant poems was also strong.
A few faltering songs followed, and a Barbara Streisand number was aborted mid-way when the singers forgot the lyrics. It was beginning to resemble kareoke. A short play by Carolus and Shelley Barry called Insignificant Others, criticising the role of the media in knocking women’s self esteem, offered brief respite.
Most of the women present tittered, declined or made references to the microphone’s phallic appearance when they finally got on stage. In hip-hop culture, however, using a microphone is virtually a rite of passage. Ten-to-15 year olds hold regular Saturday afternoon workshops and interactive seminars on everything from how to hold a microphone, to demonstrations of “free-styling” – literally talking off the top of their heads. Battles between MCs to outwit each other form part of the call-and- response vibrancy of an audience getting in on the ceremony, and having their two cents’ worth. It’s an atmosphere that is both competitive and socially binding and one that, until recently, was dominated by men.
As more female crews colonise the microphone the new message is: “Don’t just sit around, we can do this too.” All-girl collectives like the Ladybugs, Femme Fatale and Four Feet Deep, soon to tour with Prophets of da City, are carrying the messages of social unity, peace and anti- drugs.
It’s a tough job made tougher by the fact that hip-hop has traditionally been a male stronghold; there has never been a recorded female rap artist in South Africa’s history. According to Liesel Pretorius, a UWC psychology masters student researching the role of women in hip-hop culture, “After initially ignoring and denigrating women on the mic men are being forced to sit up and take notice. At first women were shy and intimidated but as they come out they’re inspiring others and giving them more confidence.”
The biggest obstacle for these women is their lack of technical sound engineering skills. Pretorius has organised a “drum and lyric” evening at the Jam in De Villiers Street on Women’s Day to raise funds to set up a music and resource centre to stimulate this culture further.
A week of open mic sessions and poetry recitals has been scheduled in September as part of its “One City, Many Cultures” Festival. According to the organiser, Wendy Tennant, “As part of an attempt to rejuvenate Cape Town culturally we’ve organised open mic sessions at existing poetry venues. We’re asking various known and unknown poets to book a spot and after roughly a 20-minute reading the microphone will be open.”
A few prominent poets, including Kelwyn Sole, Gus Ferguson and Ken Bariso, have confirmed. But at the time of going to press, no women had been booked!