“You know, for my people, the so-called Cape coloureds of Cape Town, many of us feel like we are lost in a no-man’s-land between Europe and Asia, unsure of where we fit in,” says Mac, the narrator of Lloyd Ross’s The Silver Fez.
“That’s one reason why the choirs are so important,” he says, observing that in a community with low employment and high levels of poverty and crime, “the Malay choir is the one place where you are always accepted”.
Identity, belonging and marginalisation are insistently interrogated in Ross’s documentary, which chronicles the fierce rivalry between two choirs competing for the Silver Fez, the ultimate award on the Cape Malay choir scene. The film follows two men — Hadji Bucks, the boastfully wealthy owner of the Starlites, and Boeta Kaatji, one of Bucks’s former singers, who is the leader of the Continentals and a struggling house painter — in their David-and-Goliath struggle for the Fez.
Betrayals of friendship and selling out for money are two resonant themes in this stranger-than-fiction tale, resembling a musical version of The Godfather (without the dead bodies). Ross calls the rivalry between these “larger-than-life characters” a “fantastic coincidence for a filmmaker” — its dramatic tensions could easily provide the plot of a feature film.
Many of the men in these all-male choirs come from poor neighbourhoods on the Cape Flats and are unemployed, with families to feed. “If you’re not working, you’ve got no self-respect and no respect from the community,” says Ross, so being in a choir is “a godsend: it’s like a home”.
The music derives from the days of slavery in the 1700s, and the Nederlandslied, one of several types of songs performed by the choirs, blends Arabic quarter-note vocal solos with Western instrumental melodies — a blend that mirrors the ancestry of the choir members. Ross explains that the lyrics have not changed for hundreds of years. “Thou shalt sing the songs exactly as the ancestors did,” says Mac, “and thou shalt not break the chain.”
The music also “absolutely keeps people off the streets”, says Ross. Mac echoes this in the movie when, referring to their struggles with social abandonment, poverty and its associated ailments, he explains that “we Capies have a way of dealing with this kind of situation — we put the pain into song”.
This trend of using art as an outlet for frustration and marginalisation permeates the Tri Continental’s opening-night movie, The Glass House. Directed by Iranian-born Hamid Rahmanian, the film is set in a centre for young girls from “the outskirts of society”, as Rahmanian puts it, and explores their struggles as Iranian women in poverty-stricken and severely dysfunctional families.
One of the opening scenes shows the girls in a creative writing class, where their tutor, a small, fiery, grey-haired man, tells them: “You don’t need to curse at people or beat yourselves up or pull your hair out. Sit down in the secure space of your mind and beat the shit out of your misery with your writing.”
The film depicts five teenage girls desperately grasping at some filament of identity. One is in a horrendous temporary marriage to escape her physically and sexually abusive family; another looks after her emotionally abusive father. One is a teenager who has been forced into drug addiction by her mother, and there are two sisters who are trying to record a hip-hop album behind closed doors under a government that does not allow female singers to be heard in public, unless they sing traditional songs.
The film industry in Iran is a tough one to crack, he says, largely because it’s run by the Iranian mafia. But it’s also “difficult because people are difficult”, he says. “In the West, the system has its own red lines. You know who your enemies are. But here, there is no system.”
The girls, whose difficulties fuel their creativity, become stronger throughout the film. They are all rebels: the sister rappers, Nazila and Noosheen, have an especially hard time in a country where women’s voices are seen as provocative. They “are only allowed to sing in the company of women”, says Rahmanian, “and Nazila has had to release her music underground”.
Whereas another of the girls constantly relies on men to establish an identity for herself and to escape her pain, Nazila and Noosheen emphasise their individualism and self-reliance and “push their anger and hatred to create art and evacuate themselves from that anger”, says Rahmanian.
“Even the law didn’t want to know about us, and that’s why we have sunk so deep. Society ignores the reality, and when you talk you end up in a cage,” raps an angry Noosheen, headscarf around her neck, make-up expressive and fingers bejewelled.
Music was once a pivotal part of Iranian culture, which has been destroyed by what Rahmanian calls “decayed religion” — decayed because “in Islam, singing is the most important thing”.
A similar destruction occurred in Afghanistan, once the cultural hub of South Asia. It is now the home of Afghan Star, a toned-down version of the global Idols series that provides the title of the documentary directed by Havana Marking. In this film, Afghans are shown reclaiming their identity as a musical nation, but slowly and with potentially life-threatening consequences.
The film shows a transforming Afghanistan — the first episode of Afghan Star is watched by a third of the population. But dancing is still strictly forbidden and a contestant who removes her headscarf receives death threats. The Taliban still have a significant say over what goes down in the country and in certain cities still raid homes at night looking for forbidden material.
Setara, a contestant from the more conservative city of Herat, who dances on stage, is a “loose woman”, “flirtatious” and “deserves to be killed”, according to people interviewed at random on the streets about the show.
But the director and producer of the television show, who explains that Afghanistan once had a thriving pop-music scene, wants to “move people from guns to music”.
In the three movies, the different inflections of music in Muslim societies in modern times become evident. In The Silver Fez music is encouraged and cherished; in The Glass House women performing popular music to a mixed audience is forbidden; and in Afghanistan’s Afghan Star, singing is technically allowed, although music invoking any kind of emotion or rhythmic reaction from the performer or the listener is a definite no-no, and fear of the Taliban is still an important factor.
The movies explore how different individuals, and peoples, have tried to claim, reclaim or preserve their identity, all quite consciously, through music. All three films have characters who fill the space with a burning need for recognition of who they are and want they want to achieve in society and in their lives. Some rebel, others succumb to their situations — and we see how these choices have remarkable, and vastly different, consequences.
“If you look at religion, music is not there,” says Lema, who still fears the Taliban and what they might do to her. “It is banned. But I have to sing. If I do not sing, what else can I do?”
The Tri Continental takes place at Cinema Nouveau theatres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Tshwane and Durban and runs until October 12. For programme details visit www.3continentsfestival.co.za