The high priest of monki punk, ex-Boo! frontman Chris Chameleon, has returned his glam-rock frocks to the wardrobe for his debut solo album Ek Herhaal Jou — an appropriately titled tribute to Ingrid Jonker.
Moving from the raunchy acid-face love of Boo! to the quietly considered despair of Jonker’s poetry is quite a leap for Chameleon.
“There’s a strong manic depressive aspect to my personality, and at some age I defined the manic as female and the depressive as male. That’s how I knew that the only way to get that happy manicness of Boo! was to do it as a woman.
“This is different from Boo!, but the female side of it is well represented in the sense that it’s Ingrid Jonker. Her having been a pretty serious chick, maybe things are more serious,” says Chameleon.
Jonker can perhaps be seen as a local incantation of Sylvia Plath — although Chameleon claims she is more of a combination of Plath’s intellect and Anne Sexton’s heart.
At the age of 31, in 1965, Jonker committed suicide by walking into the sea. She had published two collections of poetry; a third was released after her death.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela opened the first democratic Parliament with a reading of her poem Die Kind — written in response to the Sharpeville massacre — adding that she was “an Afrikaner woman who transcended a particular experience and became a South African, an African and a citizen of the world”.
With the place of the Afrikaans language in South Africa currently under debate, it is a timely return to his Afrikaans heritage for Chameleon. He says he has never denied his Afrikaans heritage. However, seeing himself foremost as an entertainer, the recent history of Afrikaans makes it a difficult language in which to generate widespread appeal. Using Jonker as a medium, Chameleon sees a way to bridge this gap.
Chameleon’s inspiration to offer a tribute CD to Jonker came after the popular Afrikaans soap Sewende Laan invited him to perform a poem of his choice on the show.
Chameleon says he’s never “bothered” with another person’s work, but that he was touched by Jonker’s poetry in a way that made him feel so human, putting him in touch with “all that is good about being a living soul”.
Upon recording two poems — Lied van die Lappop and Jy’t My Gekierang — he was drawn to the musicality and emotional tone of the words, and became inspired to do a whole album.
“When I used to write for Boo! I would sometimes use ‘aaaeeoooouuuu’ because I knew it had to sound like that. Then I’d try to fit the right sense in words to fit the meaning. That’s how I’d come up with a lot of lyrics, and sometimes I’d be completely stumped and be left going ‘oa-oa-o-o’.
“Ingrid had a very fine knowledge of the emotional value of the tone of words. That’s how she can describe a beautiful spring day and leave you feeling like shit — she uses a mantra of tones in her words to get you into her space,” says Chameleon.
In this sense, Ek Herhaal Jou offers an authentic tribute — the poems write their own melodies. Without Boo!’s tricks, Chameleon’s evocative and playful voice also does justice to the dynamic between melancholia and innocence within Jonker’s poems.
What sometimes detracts, however, is the flippantly frenzied percussion. However, it certainly brings light to some of Jonker’s darker moments, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Chameleon’s repetition of the poet invokes an incantation of a Jonker who may have been able to live in the present day. It breathes life, rather than harping on the tragedy.
Chris Chameleon performs on Sewende Laan (SABC2, 6.30pm) on Thursday