Ghoema‘s run at the Market Theatre represents more than a tight synopsis of the Cape’s history. There are sentimental reasons why this production is special: it is the first time the play is being performed since the death of its musical director, Taliep Petersen, and the recent arrest of two suspects fingered his murder.
On opening night, director and writer, David Kramer, went on stage to explain that he felt compelled to pay his dues before the musical began. The play, he explained, is a ‘tribute to Petersen and a celebration of all things Capeâ€. As they were rehearsing for this production, they would tearfully debate about how Taliep would have conceived the music, done a move or a scene.
‘Ghoema is an attempt to re-imagine the fact and the fiction, to rewrite the history of early Afrikaans music and to acknowledge the nameless people who created and contributed to it,†Kramer says in his programme notes.
It all starts on the on the ship on which the Portuguese and the Dutch followed the whiff of spices to the Far East. What ensues is a peek into time, the high seas aboard the ships and the earth, the Cape’s inviting earth. Ghoema is a story of the Cape and, therefore, also about slavery. The Cape was where new identities were forged by the Dutch, Portuguese, Indonesians, Malays and other Indian Ocean cultures.
Ghoema — a word that may come from the Malay term for a drum created from a small wine barrel or from ngoma, a Swahili/Bantu word for drum — celebrates these mongrel identities and the daily grind: work, food, trade and home. Then there is love and its attendant emotions when East, Africa, and the West met in the Cape.
Divided into two acts, the first explores the reasons and origins of the meeting and shows ships drawn to the east by the lure of condiments. It also shows the arrival of the slaves at the Cape, their assuming of new identities, and sometimes quite absurd names.
In its sweeping yet comprehensive reach, it celebrates life on the seas, the banditry, the relationship between master and slave and an alternative history of Jan van Riebeeck. In all this there is an ironic sexual innuendo is never far away.
Act two achieves a certain intensity, in the number Blue Sky in which a freed slave laments her sorry fate. The chorus of the Negro spiritual Swing Low, led by performer Danny Butler, whose aged charm and poise drew sustained applause from the audience.
The solid cast includes Carmen Maarman, Gary Naidoo, Marguerita Freeks and the comical Munthir Dullisear. Loukmaan Adams, winner of the Naledi Theatre Award for best original choreography, manages to realise the re-enactment of real life situations such as life on the ships and shore of old, bringing something poignant to the real history Afrikaans folk music.
The production ingeniously plays on the scale of emotions, moving from the mournful and slow-paced fado to the frenetically paced songs done by Naidoo and Dullisea in a chanting way reminiscent of today’s hip-hop.
Ghoema humorously celebrates the life of the early workers, the energy of the slaves and their resilience. The production aptly pays tribute to Petersen, the departed master of the local musical form.
Ghoema shows at the Market Theatre in Newtown until July 22. For more information Tel: 011 832 1641