A REVOLUTION of ‘another’ kind

It’s hard to tell nowadays whether a specific type of music represents a political system, or not. I can recall the days when I was young and reckless and how I often pretended to like some of the underground rock my English-speaking schoolmates took pleasure in blasting from their stereo-speakers. There were times when I wasn’t to sure whether they were bragging about the music, or the speakers. Of course back then, in those good ol’ wild days, much of the pretending had a lot to do with peer pressure.

I believe I was very fortunate though, to have been exposed to a wide variety of music since my childhood days. Consequently, as the years progressed, I developed my own unique fondness for certain styles (like we all do), which to this day includes a fairly wide collection of different types, some of which, depending on my mood, I’ll play full blast – privately - in the solitary ‘soundproof’ confinements of my vehicle, for it would surely shatter the earphones, or raise the dead if I played it anywhere else! It helps a lot if you’re the only one with full control of the volume, so when the screaming begins the volume can be set, just low enough to recognise ‘the return to sanity’.

Speaking of ‘sanity’ -- I happen to be living in a temporary place at the moment situated in a relatively peaceful neighbourhood. It is only when the weekend arrives that it transfigures into a noisy hellhole. I can handle the assortment of music coming from various apartments, which seem to grow a notch or two louder around 3 o’clock in the morning, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I was going to be jolted awake at around 5 o’clock by the sounds of gunshots going off – in PEACE TIME!!!

It reminds me of that horrid place called “Hillbrow”, in Johannesburg, where I once performed a series of short stints of duty as a young cop, back in the late 70’s. During the 70’s Hillbrow was supposed to be a designated 'Whites Only' area but is was far from White! It was a place where a mixture of different nationalities and different cultures lived together in what can only be described as a bizarre conflagration of disorder. They were definitely not one big happy family, that I know for sure, because there always seemed to be a trail of fresh blood flowing from the pavements on every street corner - (okay, ALMOST every street corner!).

Hillbrow always reeked with a specific blend of stench one can only associate with smoky Soweto shebeens and dirty toilets. Besides booze which was available 24/7, if you knew where to look, illegal drugs, prostitution, and racketeering of all sorts was the order of the day. No amount of police presence, or police raids, was ever able to restore law and order in that wretched place. I could never figure out why the government of the day allowed such chaos to thrive. Only now do I realize that it was, in all probability, the government’s mini-testing ground, to see how a multiethnic, multicultural environment would function in South Africa. Today, in the New South Africa, Hillbrow has dilapidated into an urban slum, beyond repair.

It is this new class of immoral creatures that are turning everything they touch into a state of non-repair, and who, through their attitude and actions, are steadily destroying this beautiful country. These creatures are also the ones responsible for causing people to run for their lives - in search of ‘more sensible’ and ‘more stable’ places to live and die – in peace!

Evidently, you’ll also find an ever-growing number of people who have taken the attitude of – “If you can’t beat them, then join them!” This, I believe, is what’s going to happen to the younger White generation and also to the ‘white’ South African pop music scene! It’s going to become more ground-breaking (a synonym for revolutionary) and more louder than ever!

The fusion of synthetic beauty with unrefined obscenity portrayed in the following music-video sent an eerie chill down my spine. The video is in Afrikaans, and the track played is also called “AFRIKAANS”. Although the video is obviously trying to portray that the Afrikaans language can also be ‘revolutionary’, sexy and ‘cool’, and utilizes, among other translucent things, a fine balance between acoustic and electronic sounds to achieve this, I sincerely hope that this is not a reflection of where the future Afrikaans music pop scene is going, because if it is, then there’s a good chance it may even put that other satanic creature, Lady Ga-Ga, to shame:

PUNK IN AFRICA is the story of the multi-racial punk movement within the recent political and social upheavals experienced in three Southern African countries: South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In these societies, the punk subculture represented a genuinely radical political impulse, playing out against a backdrop of intense political struggle, economic hardship and even civil war. A documentary film called “PUNK IN AFRICA” will have its local premiere in South Africa at the 32nd Durban International Film festival on 28 July 2011… more of this nonsense here.

These Punk Rockers are now claiming (here) that it was their “call to resistance” in the 1980’s, under dire stress and danger - (so they say), that played a generous part in dismantling “apartheid”… and all along I was under the impression we dismantled it all by ourselves - by handing the country over on a platter to the communists, and by unifying black and white by playing rugby.  It just shows you – one is never to old to learn something new. Maybe we totally underestimated the power and psychology of music :-)

I suppose we should be grateful that Julius Malema has not been introduced to these rap lyrics yet. BE WARNED – the link will take you to content that some readers may find extremely offensive and disturbing!

And finally…
For those of you who are wondering what exactly is on the very top of my music preference, the following comes to mind as I type, but it’s nowhere near a complete list:

The Eagles, Van Halen, The Pretenders, The Shadows, the Irish rock band “U2”, Roxette, Smokie, Uriah Heep; selected songs from male vocalists such as, Neil Diamond, Roy Orbison, Cliff Richard, Roger Whittaker, Lionel Ritchie, Kenny Rogers, Steve Hofmeyr, and Bok van Blerk; the German composer James Last; John Barry, who composed the soundtracks for the movies: James Bond, Out of Africa, and Dances with Wolves; and last but not least - the waltz-playing Johann Strauss Orchestra, created by the talented violinist André Rieu, whose concerts I prefer to watch while listening.