South Africa’s girl next door has swopped her down-to-earth image for something appealing to mortgage-laden post-30s Andrew Kay Sonja Herholdt is back with an exciting new image and album – one, in fact, that contains some of the most stunning new music to be heard on the contemporary pop scene in South Africa. Gone are the heart-rending and cheesy boereliedjies of old and in place is a confident and innovative sound that situates Sonja as an icon – sexy, sassy and mature. Her new sound is a confident and bold attempt to shed the naivety and all of its nauseating “old South Africa” associations) and contains some of the most intoxicating and mature songwriting I have come across on the Afrikaans scene for some time – a sort of Beatles/Lene Lovich Frankenstein-meets-an-alternative-Afrikaans pop/trance Creature from the Black Lagoon during a dark night of the soul. One of the songs currently receiving airplay – Winkelpoppe – has the same sense of urgency and reinvention that a band like Blur used so successfully on Parklife, but what is so fresh in Herholdt’s case, is that it comes free of the baggage of pretension. The discovery is new for her – she remains blissfully unaware of the pool of influences to which I would refer (Ultravox, Nina Hagen and so on), which is one of the reasons why there is a sense of rediscovery on behalf of the jaded palette of the “older” pop fan. For all her desire to communicate maturity and life experience, it’s still her innate sense of innocence and wide-eyed wonder that is so alluring. If Herholdt was in any way more knowing of the complex web of influences and social circumstances surrounding the birth of this album and indeed the complete overhaul of her public image that is Reconstructing Alice (other than her own life experiences and emotional makeup), the product would remain incomplete. It is the deep desire for honesty and the reaching for a more mature and whole self that infuses the album with excitement, even danger.
When I mentioned this to the album’s songwriters, Karel Boshoff and Cornel Cronje, they remained nonplussed. “Sonja? Dangerous? She’s about the most undangerous person you could ever hope to meet,” says Boshoff. -However, the danger quite clearly doesn’t reside in her person, but what she and her story represent – a story that includes tales of repression, manipulation, heartache and pain. -The fact that one of the icons of cultural apartheid – the fascist Aryan’s sweet-voiced dream of femininity (coy, submissive and utterly fuckable – I always got the feeling that there was the hand of a twisted uncle creeping up her skirt in those billowing photos of her youth) – could have the courage to liberate herself from the shackles of a repressive public image and patriarchal marriage, mirrors the story of her nation’s struggle to do the same. The truth of the matter is that Afrikanerdom has shed its backwater image. As Herholdt says: “The nation needs a soundtrack. We’ve lost our identity on the one hand, but on the other, we’ve moved on. We as a people tend to ignore things, but if we sing about our pain, we confront issues and that’s where the healing is.” Precisely, I nod. “This is a woman’s story,” she continues. “Lots of women are trapped. In Stellenbosch, a friend brought two friends to the show and they were inspired to begin their own process of reconstruction.”
I ask her about her religious convictions, as she has hinted at the repressive influence it exerted on her marriage (she was a member of the Rhema Church during the better part of her marriage in the 1980s and 1990s) and whether or not she retained any of the spirituality of the period. “Spirituality is for me a relationship with God the Father. I believe in Jesus Christ – that to me is all it’s about. At church, it becomes a social way of thinking, of doing. I ask myself now, ‘What does God want for me?’ I’m unique. I haven’t lost my relationship with God. In fact, I feel it’s deeper. I feel more free.” “Amen to that, sister,” I sagely concur. I ask her about the songs and what kind of music she likes listening to. “What I’m singing about is like talking to the listener’s heart. I like music that moves people. Sinad O’Connor is an artist whom I really admire. I want to sing about where I am now. I want to tell people who I am now. I’ve come to terms with myself and I’m not running away from my truth.” How did Boshoff and Cronje come to write songs for Herholdt? Boshoff says: “There was an article in De Kat on Sonja that Theunis Engelbrecht showed us in the hope that it would persuade us to meet her. As soon as we met I knew we had something happening. “The name of the album is Reconstructing Alice – Alice is like the lowest common denominator – Living Next Door to Alice, the ‘girl next door’. The title came about by a blues musician, Pierre van Staden, who was amused we were working with Sonja, thereby deconstructing an icon. However, when I thought about it, we weren’t deconstructing, we were reconstructing,” he says.
“I think we’re too sober for the industry. We’re not into cosmic mind expansion. We’re too reality-based. Our whole psychological/ emotional approach to music is confrontational rather than escapist. “Music by its nature tends to be honest. If you lied, people would find you out. We believe every generation tends to write and subscribe to its own soundtrack.”
Could this be a new wave for the heart-broken, mortgage-laden post-30s? Hell, why not? Sonja Herholdt is performing her show Reconstructing Alice at Unisa’s Little Theatre in Pretoria on Friday October 27. For more information, call Tel: (012) 3227676. Tickets at Computicket