‘You’re sailing to hell in a sieve if you don’t change your lyrics,” declared a pale-eyed Catholic priest as we came off stage at a seaside café in Luanda. The lead vocalist of the band SpokTown, I’d just finished singing our eyebrow-raising pop tune Vatican Valley.
Sweat was trickling down my cheeks after spending the greater part of the afternoon jumping around on stage like a mountain goat with my fellow band members.
I was taken aback briefly to see the cleric, complete with dog collar, among the sizeable crowd at the café where our band was performing. But our local guide whispered in my ear that his brother-in-law owned the place and clerics were regular patrons.
This was Luanda, the hectic capital of Angola and one of Africa’s most merry-go-round cities, despite having been the toxic ground of a civil war a few years ago.
Father Baroso, as the priest asked me to address him, could not let our band’s lyrics go unchallenged in a city that, after all, had played host to Pope Benedict only 18 months before.
My words fell on a stuffed rock when I tried to counter the criticism, saying that there were proven examples of Catholic priests abusing their positions to abuse altar boys sexually. That is when he threw diplomacy to the wind, and told me to my face: “You’re repeating coffee-table hearsay. There is absolutely no proof to those allegations your band is repeating in that song.”
As there was a handful of fans milling around me asking for an autograph in Portuguese, it would have served no meaningful purpose to engage in a slanging match with Father Baroso. He repeated his warning: “You might be booking yourself a permanent spot on the left side of hell. Blasphemy!” — before stalking off with the righteous fury of one who has just declared a fatwa.
“You’re not preaching to me something I’ve not heard before” was all I could say lamely, before turning back to fine-tune my Bob Dylan copycat electric guitar for our next set.
Back on stage I was soon diverted by another type of fan altogether, though no less irritating.
I reluctantly accepted a boiled egg from a moustached man who had leapt on to the stage and was embarrassing himself in a leopard-print vest and polka-dot bow tie. “Don’t point at anyone with a moustache. It’s rude in Angola,” said our guide when I gestured to him to get off the stage. Still, he got off the stage.
Musically speaking, the sun had never shone so brightly on SpokTown’s fortunes. Here we were in humid Luanda, attending a back door, invitation-only mini-festival called Absolute Bombanellas. The only “format” for the festival was that it should be staged in Luanda and at venues around the city, be that a street café or even on a basketball ground.
I still don’t know what Bombanellas are, but who cared? It was a chance to sample our music before a wider African audience. The fact that we would mix with amateur indie bands from Australia, Texas, Lisbon and Canada ensured that the chances for collaboration and comparing notes were high.
Driving from Cape Town to Angola via Botswana and Namibia was both a stroll in the park and a pinch in the spine. Few of our six-member soft-pop band had ever set a foot in a desert. While we were cutting across the Kalahari at high speed on our way to the Caprivi Strip, Zanele, our saxophonist, got goose-bumps.
We had not gone very far when she stopped our convoy of two Nissan Pathfinders. We thought she wanted to kneel, face Mecca and chew some raw desert sand. But when she signalled all of us to stand in a circle — minus our instruments — we were convinced that she was about to force the atheists among us to perform some religious ritual.
Instead, she pulled out a red and pink box, wrapped in lovely foil paper, and knelt at the feet of her boyfriend, Kant, our drummer. This was more promising — perhaps she was going to propose to him?
What happened next made me laugh so hard that if I’d been back home in Cape Town my dogs would have come running.
“Kant, will you move in with me?” Zanele asked, opening the box and presenting him with handcuffs.
We laughed and hugged and jumped around in the desert night until squeaky noises jolted us back to reality. We jumped hastily back into our Pathfinders thinking that perhaps the proverbial white desert lions were in the vicinity. Two minutes later we peered through the windows in awe — there was a band of what looked like wolves circling our cars, sniffing the scent of fresh ÂDunlop tires.
We continued on our way to Angola, fuelled by swigs of Three Ships whisky and Captain Morgan rum.
If Zanele’s desert proposal had been hilarious, the border laws were not. Crossing the Caprivi Strip we were uncertain about which country we were in. Angolan officials said the strip was theirs; Namibia villagers and paramilitaries claimed it belonged to them. The vehicle’s onboard GPS seemed undecided and switched between Angola and Namibia every few kilometres.
Again, Zanele couldn’t contain herself and whispered loudly: “It’s boring and disgraceful when two African countries tear their mouths over a tiny strip like this. What’s really in a name, Caprivi?”
An Angolan trooper with good hearing and a rifle took exception. “National disrespect and spitting on our patriotism, serious charge — $150!” he said, eyeing Zanele’s T-shirt, which proclaimed Namibia Will Outlive All of Us! Her attire did not help her case.
Zanele haggled: “What about $50?”
“It is not just about the money but my honour. Make it $70,” suggested the trooper quietly, careful not to arouse the attention of other soldiers smoking cigars at the army post nearby. Zanele added a $20 note and with risky brinkmanship she strung together some horrible Portuguese words meaning “So we now know the price of honour in Angola — $70.”
After our show in Luanda, with our band members packing and counting our instruments for the long journey back to Cape Town, I could not stop thinking about how to make a song about the Caprivi Strip. Something along the lines of Ringo Starr’s catchy tune, The Other Side of Liverpool, perhaps?
Ray Mwareya is a screenwriter, actor and lead vocalist with the Cape Town band SpokTown. His film, Vatican Valley, will premiere at the Berlin and Montreal film festivals. He is Zimbabwean