Are you guys crazy? You can’t leave now! You can’t just leave like that!” The voice came from behind me, directed at the stage of the Bohemian near Melville in Jo’burg. The Blk Jks (pronounced Black Jacks), after a two-song encore, had just downed their instruments and were heading for backstage exit left. I had just witnessed one of the greatest live experiences in this country and I, too, wanted more!
A few weeks later and I’m seated in a room in Spruitview with the Blk Jks discussing politics, art, the hectic pace of Jo’burg life and the state of South African music. When I tell the band about the distraught fan they had so obviously won over, they are in hysterics. For them, these are the people who make what they do all the more worthwhile.
The Blk Jks are rock mavericks, sonic pioneers, social commentators and all round nice guys. Now settled as a four-piece, the band has been around in varying guises for the past three or four years. The current line-up of Linda Buthelezi (guitar and vocals), Molefi Makananise (bass), Tshepang Ramoba (drums) and Mpumi Mcata (guitar) has been together for just over a year. Their first gig with new drummer Ramoba and new bassist Makananise was in Grahamstown on June 16 last year. ”I think we met them two days before the gig and we told them: ‘Okay, we are playing on Thursday,”’ says Mcata.
Prior to joining up with the Blk Jks, Makananise was a session bassist and Ramoba, the dreadlocked drummer, was playing in a jazz big band at TUT in Pretoria. Both were recommended through friends. ”This guy called me up and asked if I want a gig,” says Ramoba. ”He said come and play; the guys play jazz; he didn’t want to tell me that they played rock. He thought I wouldn’t be up for it.”
The whole black rock band thing is something that has frustrated the band at times. Firstly, they are sick to death of people making a big deal out of the fact that they are black and play rock-based music, an anomaly in South Africa. ”We are done with this thing of black, white, black, white — especially in music,” says Makananise. ”We really want to show the world that South Africa means what it says when it talks about unity. We are teaching people to listen to different kinds of music so they can blend.”
It is for these reasons that the band used to get irate with journalists who wanted to pitch them as a black rock band. ”We have come to realise that we can’t do anything about it, man,” says Mcata. ”People hear black rock band and think, cool, that sounds like a lot of fun, but then they hear us singing depressing songs, songs that talk about shitty things, without being like yeah, let’s party,” says Mcata, in a mocking rock star pose. ”You end up getting all these adjectives and superlatives to describe the band, because if you just say we are rock, you are throwing people off,” says frontman Buthelezi.
Buthelezi says the band does not write protest music, but believes in having a message that moves beyond ”believe in yourself” and ”you can make it”. ”I think artists need to realise that whatever pedestal they are on, they need to use it and speak out,” says Buthelezi.
”We are not all ‘let’s party’, we are a band that represents reality. We sing about things that are happening now, good things, bad things,” says Makananise. ”If there are too many taxi accidents, someone needs to say something about it. If people are starving because leaders are fighting, we must say this thing is affecting us.”
The United Nations moving into Sudan, privatisation, global warming, the fuel price — these are all fair game when it comes to the Blk Jks. ”We don’t really sing about love,” says Buthelezi with a smirk. Behind all this social commentary is a firm grounding in music. Each member brings something different to the band’s melting pot.
Buthelezi finds inspiration in the guitar greats such as Jimmy Hendrix, Carlos Santana and Jimmy Page, as well as blues guitarists such as BB King and modern alternative rock bands the Mars Volta and TV on the Radio.
Mcata credits his musical epiphany to hearing Placebo for the first time, and Makananise recalls a childhood filled with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and a number of South African Afro-pop greats.
Ramoba is the solid jazz base upon which this band is built, the guy who makes sure that the Blk Jks are cooking in the proverbial kitchen.
Being a band with a wide array of influences and a sound that is hard to define has positives and negatives. The Blk Jks definitely stand out as one of the bravest of the new generation of local music collectives, pioneering a way forward and creating a new sound that is uniquely our own. They embrace myriad styles that are already present in South Africa’s rich musical culture, including rock, jazz, Afro-pop, funk, kwaito and many others. But it is the band’s positioning on the fringes of the local music spectrum that has seen them receive a luke-warm response from the music industry, which is too set in its way of accepting safe, unchallenging music that is marketable because of its crossover potential — read dollar signs.
They don’t get a lot of offers to play gigs, although the band accredit that as much to their style of music as to their aversion to the hassles of organising their own gigs. ”If we were a jazz band, we would have a lot of gigs and a lot of corporate gigs.But, with the kind of music we play, it’s not easy,” says Ramoba. ”Only people like Arno Carstens and Chris Chameleon get the big gigs.”
A discussion on the state of local music industry ensues, where transformation is a hot issue. The band is still miffed after coming second in the South African leg of the global Battle of the Bands competition. A judge told them they made ”selfish music” and chose to send Martin Rocka and the Sick Shop to London to represent South Africa. The Blk Jks argue that the judges missed a golden opportunity. Presented with an original black South African band that was blending the local music heritage into a new art form unlike anything heard before, the judges instead chose to send a white rockabilly band to represent the country.
The Blk Jks are also smarting because they did not get to play the June 16 celebratory concert in Newtown this year. ”I think this is the band that should have been there playing, so people can see what has happened between 1976 and now,” says Makananise. The band was scheduled for the rock stage, which was cancelled at the last minute.
”You have the rock here and the Bongo Maffin there. Why can’t we have people playing on the same stage?” asks Mcata. ”They are not even researching what is going on in this country; they are sitting in their offices and going for someone like Zola.”
”I think the government should support local musicians instead of giving one guy [Sipho ”Hotsticks” Mabuse] a lot of money, and then he comes on stage and performs alone with backing tracks. That doesn’t show development; it doesn’t take us anywhere. It really makes me angry,” says Buthelezi. ”He plays all the same songs he was playing all those years ago,” chimes in Mcata.
The Blk Jks say the industry’s inability to grasp what they are doing just makes them more determined to succeed, and the love that they get from the crowds when they do play makes the struggle worth it. ”There is a certain crowd for the music right now, but what we are looking to do is expand it into something that every-body gets,” says Mcata.
He thinks change is in the South African music air, with a third post-apartheid wave currently emerging. ”You had South Africa’s punk/hip-hop movement, which was kwaito, where people were slowing down these garage beats,” says Mcata. ”Then you find people saying: ‘No, kwaito is too stupid, it’s too generic and what we are going to do is go straight to hip-hop. We are going to add more words and more substance.’ But that didn’t quite work and now we are back at bands.”
The Blk Jks are currently recording their debut release and will be performing at the Horror Café in Newtown, Jo’burg, on Friday June 23 as part of the line-up for the Canned Applause Records Damn the Man event. Also performing will be Japan and I and The Sick-Leaves, as well as DJs Data Takashi, Sassquatch and Ring of Town — Â