District Six Band to perform in Hong Kong

It’s 8pm on a sultry Cape Tuesday evening and a motley crew of tangibly excited persons troops one by one into the District Six museum in Buitenkant Street.

It’s a band rehearsal. But if you have been around such gatherings for long enough, you would soon be sure that something else is at work here: perhaps the talk — off centre and not quite your normal muso rap; the line-up of the group — rather eccentric and borderline batty; or the upcoming gig itself — most strange but true.

Meet the District Six Band: Raakwys’s Valmont Layne, The Genuines’s Gerard “Mac” Mackenzie, Iconoclast’s Hilton Schilder, the kwela kid himself, Robert Sithole, Gramadoelas’s Alex van Heerden and veteran Cape vastrap-langarm band leader Willie Jales.

They fly to Hong Kong on October 30 where, billed as The Goema Captains, they will appear at a fund-raiser hosted by the South African Association of Hong Kong and will also be the resident band for South African Gourmet Week at the same destination.

There is some playful banter about the gig and just how District Six are to present themselves on stage (Van Heerden absolutely refuses to wear a white tux). But it soon becomes clear that there is an agenda in this gathering that far supersedes the curious and exotic gig in the Orient.

“I think they have had some Klopse visiting out there before,” says Jales. “The broader objectives of this band are academic. We’re talking about publishing books of music and composition, leaving a legacy for the young,” says Klopse and goema specialist Mac, who started as a resident playing mornings at the museum and is now a director of the District Six Composers’ Workshop.

And for the next half hour or so, sound bites like this pepper the conversation. There is hardly any reference to the repertoire. In fact you forget you are talking to musicians. But you become aware that these individuals have embraced a certain project that will for each of them become a special creative journey.

Layne, who is the museum’s head of research and institutional development and leader of this project,

explains how the band is an extension of the District Six Archive Project that was started in 1997.

At its inception the sound and music archive was seen as a key aspect of the museum’s approach to the restoration and preservation of heritage. The collection and archiving of sound and music proceeded as a counterpart to the museum’s work in recording the oral histories of former residents of District Six. Through these processes the museum has pioneered a new dialogue between the past and present by working with “living memories”.

The museum’s approach is that the restoration of cultural heritage acts as a reminder of cultural dispossession and is also a process of collective and individual healing. Gradually the museum’s programme has moved from archiving to developing spaces where artists work with the restoration and preservation of heritage.

“I’ve put this band together with an agenda. That is to take people who have a life-long association with Cape Town and are aware of its heritage not only to play music, but to document their life experiences with the assistance of the museum,” says Layne.

The oldest of the group, Jales, who was born in 1939, has been greatly influenced by the sounds of the Coon Carnival and the Christmas choirs. He learned jazz and dance music from one of Cape Town’s great bandleaders, Jimmy Adams, and still plays with his own dance band. Jales has an installation in the museum on District Six’s “forgotten heroes of ballroom”.

Mac’s composers’ workshop encourages young musicians to produce original work. His approach is influenced by his own background and abilities as a musician. It is not so much goema, but its spontaneity and “naive musicality” that he seeks to preserve in local music. “There are so many talented youngsters out there without any formal tutoring. In the workshop they will be encouraged to work with both that musical naivety and formal music training. This is a way to bring out original composers, true to their identity,” says Mac.

Penny whistler Sithole, rooted in kwela and mbaqanga, was born in District Six and has worked with jazz greats such as Chris McGregor and Art Blakey. After many years in the United Kingdom he has found a welcome cultural home in District Six. He is developing a penny-whistle teaching project with kids in Guguletu.

Van Heerden has been busying himself doing music and performance workshops with a cooperative farming community in the Koue Bokkeveldt. “Since these people have regained their own land, they have become interested in their own self-expression and folk stories. My interest in them is part of a broader project of piecing together Afrikaans culture before the Tweede Taal Movement and the key to that is in the rural areas.” Layne feels that there could be great exchange benefits in the District Six museum’s link with this project.

On the District Six Band project Layne says: “It is critical that the outcomes of this group’s work are linked to rigorous research and knowledge production that is documented with integrity.” This means the District Six Band’s body of work will include biographies, videos, music books, events and exhibitions.

Currently on sale is Mac’s latest album Cybergriot, Sithole has completed his African Images, Schilder is soon to launch his solo album, No Turning Back, and Van Heerden has completed Sagte Vlei with Derek Gripper.

“District Six is rather fashionable and sexy,” says Layne, explaining the Hong Kong date. “It speaks to a kind of nostalgia for a ‘golden era’ that is perceived to have been less complicated than current times.” Well, this time, it’s goema, Klopse, jazz, vastrap, langarm, kwela, mbaqanga, Khoisan and even a bit of boeremusiek in the mix. Our friends in Hong Kong might be in for a jolting surprise.