The Yfm studio is hosting the cream of South African ragga. Charl Blignaut talks to two MCs who have become DJs
It’s a curious scene, no matter how far from a police state we might have come. It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon in a patently leafy Johannesburg suburb and we’re outside a building called the SADF Philatelic Hall for a photo shoot. Decked in shades of camo and standing on the top of a motley armed tank are Appleseed and the Admiral, the subject of our pictures and Johannesburg’s premier exponents of ragga music, reggae’s new school.
They’re surrounded by a cluster of smiling men in khaki safari suits, all visibly accessorised with handguns. If Appleseed wasn’t black and if a photographer wasn’t blocking the road, you might not even have noticed these two worlds colliding. The Admiral, who lives up the street, had decided the customised mini-tank was perfect for photos and had approached the owners earlier in the day.
“No problem,” they said. “And you ous must really also stop by for a beer some time . We’re around from 10 in the morning.”
So here they are, two of the city’s most vocal pacifists posing in the yard of what I can only assume are former fascist stamp collectors. “You must say if you know anyone interested in buying a tank,” says one. “This one’s sold but we have more. Only R45 000.”
The whole thing must be more than just a little ironic for the Admiral, also known as Andy Kasrils, former member of the African National Congress’s armed force Umkhonto weSizwe and son of South Africa’s current minister of water affairs and forestry. Born in exile in London into a stalwart resistance family, Kasrils was raised to consider any member of the old South African Defence Force – philatelist or not – as the enemy.
“You know,” he says to me later, “the struggle was really important to me and I was happy working for government when I returned, but I couldn’t have ignored my musical passion. In a way what I’m doing now is the same struggle stuff but it’s also what I dreamed about doing as a kid.”
Among other things, what the Admiral is doing is preparing to record his second CD. His first, Ragga Gong, sold more than 10 000 copies and is, he proudly informs me, “currently rumoured to be the most- stolen CD from Look & Listen in Hillbrow”.
Probably more important than their individual work, though, is what he and the Apple are doing to the local radio and club scenes. They have, for one, just secured a second weekly hour-long reggae/ragga slot on the insanely popular Gauteng youth station Yfm. It’s no mean feat, in an era of stringent computer playlisting, to be putting out the kind of uncompromising specialist programming they do. It’s hardly an understatement to say that, along with their jamming Thursday live session at Tandoor in Yeoville, the Admiral and Appleseed are in the process of spearheading an honest-to-goodness South African reggae revival.
“When I arrived here in 1994,” says Kasrils, “I realised most people only knew Seventies reggae. There was a huge gap between that and what Apple and I were seeing in other parts of the world.”
South Africans, it seems, had always rather enjoyed Bob Marley, a good spliff and the Roots vibe. Certainly the Rasta image was a viable prospect for a young Lucky Dube. In the early Eighties he defied his record company and switched from traditional mbaqanga sounds to reggae and is today the biggest-selling local artist in contemporary South African music.
But growing up in a Zimbabwean slum with a mother who eked out a living as a bar manager, Appleseed recalls the reggae scene was way bigger across the border. “I remember when I was 11 years old there was a sound system in the ghetto. The bigger guys would go to the dance and come back and tell me about it. I started collecting tapes.”
It’s on one of my Wednesday nights spent watching Kasrils and Apple do their Y show that Apple drops a Shabba Ranks tune and then proceeds to deftly chant over Shabba’s lyrics at the top of his voice, not missing as much as an inflection. You get a pretty clear picture of how he must have learned the skills that made him arguably the country’s most accomplished ragga MC.
For a ghetto boy who crossed the border in 1995 to come and study sound engineering, Appleseed is blossoming in his new climate. He arrives at the photo shoot in a big hat and shiny, brand-new car, and dashes off after our interview to get to the studio where he is recording a new album with his other musical crew, young pop legends Bongo Maffin.
Like fellow band member Speedy and like Junior from Boom Shaka and Teba from Skeem, Apple is the new voice of recorded Nineties ragga in South Africa. Yet it wasn’t until he met Kasrils – who had secured a reggae spot on Voice of Soweto a year after arriving home – that he began to develop a dedicated following and become more confident live on the mic, spitting out his views Jamaican style.
Behind him, spinning the tunes and tweaking the technical is the Admiral.
“In London I was a bit of a naughty teenager,” recalls Kasrils. “I took to hanging out with a bunch of Jamaicans and collecting vinyl wherever I could. I became known as the honky with the records, but it wasn’t until I moved here that I had the space to do this professionally.”
It is the mission of the Admiral and the Apple to cater to the whole of reggae’s now divergent audience – from the Roots ethos through to the freshest splintered beats and ferocious samplings of the ragga style. In between, of course, is where a massive new audience is emerging – in a style called Lovers where reggae meets R&B vocals; in the remixes orchestrated by the hip-hop kids; and on the tongues of MCs freestyling over dub.
‘Reggae is da oral history of da people struggle,” says Mutaburuka to Kasrils and Apple the following Wednesday during their show. The Jamaican reggae legend, decked in robes and cowries, is in town for Arts Alive and has come down to the studio.
Asked how he finds Johannesburg, he chuckles into his scraggly beard: “Fine, fine, jus’ like Jamaica – crack, murder, corruption and fast food, you know, business as usual.”
One story he relates is particularly telling when it comes to reggae’s indomitable spirit of political freedom and also its connection with rap lyrics.
A few weeks earlier in Jamaica, says Mutaburuka, the prime minister called him up and invited the band to put out an anti-violence tune. “We agree, but we don’t trust the politician, you know. All lies. So we go in da studio an’ record how we feel about da situation.”
He gets Kasrils to play the tune the prime minister paid for. Its opening lyrics are way beyond bold: “Without being sinister,” it goes, “first ting we need’s a new prime minister.”
The Admiral and Appleseed have never been to Jamaica, their musical home, and have not yet met reggae’s new gods like Sizzla and Buju, but back in the leafy suburb they do show me a video of Hotta Flex Crew recording new tracks in a Jamaican studio. Right up front they send a big-up to all their “niggas” in Zimbabwe and Johannesburg, to “Nelson Mandela, Appleseed and the Admiral .”
Early next year – soon after they have challenged Zimbabwe’s reggae supremo Jah B to a battle of the DJs, the duo will finally be winging their way to the island to play a bash. Until then, of course, they have some new CDs to put out and literally tens of thousands of militant new fans to appease.
Listen to the Admiral and Appleseed on Yfm every Wednesday from 9pm to 10pm