Thebe Mabanga
in your ear
South Africa badly needs a national music chart. One needs to be able to log on to the Internet or pick up a paper and be able see what song is flavour of the moment for the majority of entertainment consumers.
Radio, by definition, has a crucial role to play in the process. Sadly, given the strict definitions of tastes along colour lines in South Africa, the best method of compiling a chart depends on who you ask and what the purpose of your enquiry is.
The most conventional method is to use sales. A serious limitation is that the method uses CD sales. This means that in markets where CDs play little or no role at all – mainly traditional music markets – a comparison cannot be made.
Another problematic method is using listeners’ votes. The market cannot be allowed to operate without guidance.
Proof of this is the energy with which people have taken to Britney Spears’s Oops . I did it again. She’s right, she has just rerecorded her debut, Grammy Award-winning single, whatever it was called.
Various radio stations make decent attempts at trying to reflect their audiences’ preferences.
LesediFm (SeSotho) has a Local Top 30 on Saturdays (6pm to 9pm). They must be commended for attempting to capture idiosycracies in a market that has a notoriously seasonal erratic rate of release.
This leads to a situation where songs like Brenda Fassie’s Impundulu and Chiskop’s Abasazi – both released last December- are still in the top 10. This is inaccurate because Fassie’s single is downright flat and predictable whereas Chiskop have at least three other singles that deserve recognition.
The African language stations go a step further when compiling charts and classify by genre, most notably adult contemporary and gospel.
Kaya fm 95.9 have an interesting Top 20 (Saturdays, 10am to 2pm). The chart is as diverse as the station’s playlist, but has questionable inclusions.
Less than a month ago, they had Angie Stone’s Everyday. This is surprising when one considers that the single is from a 1998 soundtrack, Money Talks. What is more, the album Black Diamond has a number of gems that are currently in vogue.
The most popular method among the English commercial stations is to use the United States Billboard and United Kingdom charts and then modify these according to radio friendliness, suitability to format and maybe a few listeners’ whims.
The problem with such a method is that some stations – like our Metro fm – literally cut and paste in an unquestioning manner.
The result is that their Saturday morning Top 40 (9am to 12 noon) sounds too mainstream and unresponsive, laden with soppy R&B ballads, as happened at the beginning of this year. It is only with the recent advent of stars like Macy Gray, Maxwell and D’Angelo that one can bear to sit through the three hours.
Classical music fans are advised to keep their Sunday nights (9pm to 11pm) free. Throughout July ClassicFm 102.7 presents Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The operatic cycle was recorded in 1989 in Bayreuth.
It is presented by Mary Rorich and Classic’s recent acquisition, Rodney Trudgeon. Their presentation is very informative but the music is for the most discerning afficionados.
I must say that ClassicFm has slowly convinced me that the music they play is not for men dressed like penguins playing works written by dead men and used as call centre holding music.