In his magnificent (and largely uncelebrated) jazz suite, A Drum is a Woman, Duke Ellington lets go with both barrels by telling us that ‘rhythm came to America from Africa”.
It is a bold and uncompromising statement his historical argument being that black Africans, transported to the New World in chains, nevertheless managed to offload with their bruised and broken bodies (those that made it through the treacherous transatlantic crossing, that is) the sophistication and syncopation of various African cultures and languages transcribed into the idiom that was underpinned by the heart-beat-like rhythm of the drum. And from the drum and the soaring melodies that accompanied it came the blues (who wouldn’t be blue after all that?) and out of the blues, jazz and many of the other tangible symbols of modern American culture.
Michael Jackson probably doesn’t make the direct connection, but it is unavoidably there in every musical breath he takes and every eloquent dance step he makes (or fakes). The same is true of the O’Jays, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Wynton Marsalis and so on, and also the Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson, Frank Sinatra, Madonna and Elvis Presley, if they would only admit it. ‘Acknowledge your debt to Africa,” is the word.
The beleaguered Professor Malegapuru ‘Willie” Makgoba subliminally follows through Ellington’s argument with his now notorious diatribe against the phenomenon of the unreconstructed, ageing, cornered white baboon adrift in the new South Africa by advising him to get with the programme and learn to dance like Lebo Mathosa.
‘Africanise your ass if you want to look like you belong in Africa” is what he is basically saying. And the African ass, if you will pardon the metaphor, goes a long, long way back — which makes catching up with it a particularly tall order. (Hence the undeclared pain and bewilderment of those among our white brethren and sistren who feel themselves directly addressed by his provocative commandment.)
Seeing writhing white bodies attempting to emulate Lebo’s licks is in itself a sight for sore eyes, and Professor Makgoba, among all his other misdemeanours, might well be taken to task for encouraging unacceptable displays of public indecency. But there are certain areas where his strategy for Africanising non-African Africans has already not only been taken to heart, but is in the full flood of autonomous implementation.
I am talking about the phenomenon of the ‘Drum Café”, a local invention for getting white people in tune with the African heartbeat that has taken off to become a multimillion-dollar industry across the civilised world.
Now, the drum, for all its seeming simplicity, even crudity of form and conception, is a misleadingly complex instrument. It might not boast all the engineering complexity of the piano or the trumpet or the saxophone, but its manipulation requires at least as much skill.
Therefore you would not walk into the average African village and hear everybody, man, woman and child alike, beating away with dexterity at this marvellous instrument. Children might distractedly while away the time by beating one with a stick or a couple of chubby paws, but the true practise of the instrument is left in the hands of the professionals people who spend almost a lifetime perfecting the art of drumming.
The drum, after all, is as much sacrament as entertainment. Its soul, as Ellington put it, is like the elusive soul of a woman and demands as much care and attention — not a dilly-dallying matter (and I suppose I’ve just started another whole furious debate just by saying that).
The Drum Café ethos seems to go against all that. Just like that inane pop song that went ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing / in perfect harmony”, the Drum Café philosophy is based on the notion that it is possible to teach anyone (white people in particular) to connect with the simple, earthy heartbeat of Africa by spending a few sessions banging around on a mass-produced djembe.
And this is where Professor Makgoba’s philosophy comes crashing head on against the survival strategy of the unreconstructed white baboon, or bonobo, against whom he rails. They are both saying the same thing, but have completely opposed understandings of the meaning.
Makgoba is saying, ‘Submit yourself to the dense and ancient logic of Africa. Respect it.” The gung-ho Drum Café folk, on the other hand, are saying, ‘Bang on a drum and Africa will love you.” Or, to go even further: ‘Bang on a drum and you can forget about feeling guilty about being in Africa.”
The Drum Café launched its book, written and narrated by one Laurie Levine, over the past weekend and put across just this message. There were a couple dozen young black performers, mostly women, grinningly selling the almost exclusively white audience just this message as they drummed their drums on stage. Everyone in the audience had a drum on their seat and was encouraged to use it. All was love and bliss.
The Drum Café ethos, under the cheery guidance of founder Warren Liebermann, who leapt on to the stage late in the day to tell us what it was all about (sort of), drummed the message home. Willie Makgoba and his dodgy philosophy were nowhere to be seen.
There is something very bizarre about receiving the message of the spiritual power of the African drumbeat under these circumstances. Those of us from Makgoba’s supposed constituency who had the dubious privilege of being invited to participate experienced a physiological reaction that was uncomfortably close to blushing — if we had been able to, that is.
It is awkward enough to pretend that we have ‘reclaimed the land” (which, of course, we haven’t). All the more awkward to discover that we have not only lost the land: we have even been relieved of the drum.