A bunch of youth stand hunched in an undefined circle on a makeshift, graffiti sprayed street-corner set. They are gesticulating excitedly, either to a faint beat-boxer beside them or to the kid at the centre, who is freestyling something about sexual restraint and masturbation. His rhyme builds to a climactic crescendo before crashing like a self-satisfied orgasm amid the approving sea of jesters, prompting the floor manager to ceremoniously call the session a wrap.
In a few seconds, a tall, beefy young man with dreadlocks tucked in woolen headgear emerges from the outside broadcast van to shake hands with the participants and members of his crew. The floor manager tells him he was concerned about the volatility of the topic, but thinks it was handled with maturity. Tall beefy man is all smiles. The 12th episode is in the can. Fourteen to go.
Vusi Magubane, director of hip-hop talk show Cypher, which airs on SABC1 in July, is also the man behind Counting Headz, a documentary on female hip-hoppers in South Africa. I ask him how it is that they were discussing sex and yet there was only one woman on the panel. He says it was because of last-minute cancellations, I think it was the reason his film was made.
Magubane, an up-and-coming filmmaker who frequently uses hip-hop as an entry point into various topics, made the film after finding that his research footage of inner-city hip-hop artists consisted of mostly male subjects. Curious as to where the female practitioners were, he and colleague, Canadian filmmaker Erin Offer, set out in search of them. The result is a film that eschews narration in favour of a montage of polemical declarations of what it means to be a woman within hip-hop culture.
There are also scenes whose strengths are in their tenderness, such as the scene of a pregnant Nicky delivering a devastating beat-box. Visually, there are also flourishes of Magubane the multimedia dilettante. ‘I feature a lot of women in the film who, even if they are being interviewed, appear to be doing something,” says Magubane of the way he chose to represent his subjects. ‘Visually, I tried to make them look as real as possible because there was a lot of discussion about what realness means to them.”
Counting Headz has already featured in about 10 festivals since it was finished last year, including the Shoot Me Film Festival in Holland, the Atlanta Black Film Festival, the San Fransisco Film Festival, the Austin Women’s Film Festival and, most recently, the Black Lily Film and Music Festival. The documentary is due to appear at the Durban International Film Festival and the Hollywood Black Film Festival.
‘Durban is prestigious because it’s here at home, but at the Hollywood Black Film Festival, all the black filmmakers like Spike Lee and John Singleton attend,” says Magubane, still on the set of Cypher at Atlas Studios in Milpark, Johannesburg. ‘It’s also important because it’s an independent film festival and everybody is trying to improve the making of independent films.”
Magubane believes that what has made his film the globetrotter that it is, is the amount of effort he has put into promoting it. ‘When we were ready to go into post-production with this film, we received CA$16 000 and we used that to get into the festivals because it is expensive,” he says. ‘That was unusual because in South Africa people have the money to make a film but to promote it does not occur [to them].”
Magubane, who entered the film industry as an extra and then as an assistant on film sets before moving to music videos, is determined that everyone must see his film. He is currently weighing distribution options. ‘I’m learning as well, what to do and what not to do, so that when somebody asks me, I can tell them,” he proffers. ‘When I meet filmmakers [from elsewhere], they always tell me that their films have been supported by the TV stations in their countries. That culture of independence and taking the film around yourself is not there.
‘The only guy that’s really making movies here is Akin Omotoso. He’s a walker that guy. I don’t see a lot of people that start their thing without first getting the help of the National Film and Video Foundation. I guess nobody wants to start small and be laughed at.”
Counting Headz will be screened at the Eighth Annual Hollywood Black Film Festival, which runs from June 5 to June 10 and at the 28th Durban International Film Festival, which runs from June 20 to July 1
Women in hip-hop: A means to an Endz
One otherwise ordinary night in December last year, Endz hired a nondescript club in Durban and, in one of the strangest shows I’ve ever witnessed, launched her debut album The Otherness.
The weirdness wasn’t so much that the show drew an odd crowd consisting of the city’s hip-hop illuminati, the attendant prophets of doom and a handful of stray Jo’burgers who had been reliably informed that this was the ‘illest” show in town. It was more because, for once, the female MC was not the token pigeon among the cats waiting her turn for the saliva-sprinkled microphone. This time, she was the one running the show, with nary the prerequisite bravado nor mob antics to stamp her authority.
Durban was the last stop in her three-city itinerary to launch The Otherness, her sprawling collection of loose-limbed, dusty drum loops that are supplemented by a palette of neo-cosmic samples and stream of consciousness wordplay that is at once nihilistic and humanist. Endz doesn’t quite salute ‘daughters raising kids on their own” as much as she draws attention to spiritual wars that inform their choices to subvert, as opposed to reject, everything they have ever been taught. ‘She bent another rule/Spent another fool— /Now truth is on the loose—” she raps on Kingdom of the Next.
As low key as the launch of the self-funded release was, it didn’t stop her from commanding the stages of the Black Lily Film and Music Festival in Philadelphia earlier this month. The festival grew out of Philadelphia’s thriving neo-soul scene and this year included the likes of Ursula Rucker, Jill Scott, Kindred the Family Soul, Jean Grae and The Roots. It’s an experience she describes as ‘fruitful” and ’empowering”, but one that was perhaps more significant for what it affirmed rather than what it taught. ‘The festival was founded by two women who were doing screenings on a weekly basis and this year was the first annual festival, attended by a lot of artists from Philly and women filmmakers, singers and instrumentalists,” she says. ‘There were more female participants than males in the festival.”
Endz was invited to the festival because of her appearance in Counting Headz, a documentary about female participation in the local hip-hop scene that was the festival’s opening night film. She also performed at the three-day event’s opening night concert.
Back in Cape Town, though, where she works as a current-affairs producer and writer for e.tv, Endz, who is also a club DJ, explains that, as much as hip-hop has thrust her into the spotlight, it is not a priority for her right now. ‘Hip-hop is not going to become my day job anytime soon,” she explains. ‘I have other skills and there are other things I want to achieve. I am a mother, I have a son to raise and I want to continue with my career,” she says of plans to expand her influence within the media.
For her, it seems, it was more important to put the album out there by any means necessary rather than wait for some patriarchal label to tell her how to wear her pants or style her hair. Although hip-hop would be better for it, I guess it’s unfair to expect her to shoulder the responsibility of neutering the genre’s often misogynistic outlook. ‘I just concentrate on what needs to be said,” she concludes. ‘I don’t have to push the fact that I am a woman. It’s pretty obvious. I’m not on some feminist trip.” — Kwanele Sosibo