He may describe himself as a mere “blip” on the Afrikaans cultural scene but Andries Bezuidenhout’s new album Bleek Berus (One F Music) positions him as one of the country’s most significant songwriters.
This is evident on the poignant Dis Net Werk Toe Wat Ek Nog Deur Hillbrow Ry, a nostalgic lament, which poses the question: What happened to the Voëlvry generation?
Johannes Kerkorrel’s Hillbrow was an anthem for the youth that rallied around the Voëlvry movement, so Bezuidenhout’s confession that the only time he thinks about the run-down suburb is when he drives through it on the way to work is a severe indictment of how times have changed between 1989 and 2010.
Bezuidenhout acknowledges this in the liner notes when he describes the song as being about the Voëlvry generation who now drive BMWs and are too afraid to pick up hitchhikers.
In 1989 Kerkorrel was singing “gee you hart vir Hillbrow” and taking the piss out of racist South Africans behind the wheels of their BMWs voting for the National Party.
Bezuidenhout in 2010 is asking the questions: What has become of that punk spirit that fuelled Voëlvry? And what has become of those who were so inspired by Kerkorrel, Koos Kombuis and Bernoldus Niemand?
“En ek weet nie meer vir wie om my hart te gee nie/ en tog het ek nooit daai ou songs verleer nie/ dis net werk toe wat ek nog deur Hillbrow ry,” sings Bezuidenhout.
Addressed to a Laetitia who is living abroad, the song stands as one of South Africa’s finest pieces of social commentary in which Bezuidenhout reaffirms his commitment to South Africa through dialogue with his friend who has emigrated.
“Is ek deel van hierdie land met liefde en hart/ het ek te veel gegee en te veel gevat/ om die donker land nou te verlaat“.
In a recent interview on Litnet Bezuidenhout talked about the influence of Voëlvry. “It was sort of a collective ‘fuck you’ to the Bothas,” says Bezuidenhout. “I was 19 when Voëlvry happened in 1989.”
In this interview Bezuidenhout describes his band, the recently reformed Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes, as the “third wave”, the first being the Voëlvry musicians and the second including people such as Valiant Swart and Joos Tonteldoos.
“People know me more as a newspaper columnist than as a musician,” he tells journalist Fred de Vries.
Athough he describes this third wave as a “blip” on the cultural radar, the quality of the songs he has written on Bleek Berus disputes his self-deprecating attitude to his art. Songs such as Die Ritme van Chaos, which takes on the subject matter of white suburban fear, and Die Laaste Brandwag, which grapples with ecological disaster, are superb additions to the canon of South African folk music.
For, ultimately, that is exactly what Bezuidenhout is offering up on Bleek Berus — an album of contemporary Afrikaans folk songs, with their collective tongue firmly placed in their collective cheek. One only has to listen to the cheesy arrangements that invoke the spirit of Leonard Cohen circa 1988’s I’m Your Man and 1992’s The Future to see that Bezuidenhout is dealing with very heavy subject matter in a light-hearted way.
The recurring themes on the album are of drought and the desert, the Namib in particular, as the legacy of South Africa’s border wars are dealt with.
The last song, Vernichtungsbefehl, deals with the Herero genocide in Namibia and particularly how the desert dunes hide the skeletons — they are complicit in the cover-up.
As the title suggests, the album is fascinated with the idea of white people finding peace in the new South Africa, reconciling their troubled history and positioning themselves within the social fabric of South Africa — and the bleak dry landscape is the perfect metaphor for that history.
While friends emigrate and others live in fear, Bezuidenhout is looking forward — too much a part of this country to quit, but also disenchanted with the way most white people live their lives in the new democratic South Africa.
Is the Voëlvry message still relevant to white South Africans in 2010? Bezuidenhout doesn’t have the answers, but he is asking the questions.