Politically charged S.A. songs popular but irk some whites

Press, 6 August 1987, Page 11

Politically charged S.A. songs popular but irk some whites

BY

ARIK BACHAR

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg Johnny Clegg, whose politically-charged songs cut across the colour bar, has won the hearts of many South African blacks but irked some whites and the Pretoria Government. “We don’t see ourselves as a protest band. We are writing about the South African experience and there are certain things we have to deal with like detentions and the state of emergency,” he says about his band, Savuka. Sung to Afro-Western rhythms, one of Clegg’s lyrics states: “It’s been a long time since they (whites) first came and marched through our (black) village, they taught us to forget our past and live the future in their image.” Another says: “We have not seen Mandela in the place where he is kept,” in Zulu.

With such lyrics, some of Clegg’s songs have been banned from South Africa’s State-controlled

airwaves, and landed him in trouble with white audiences.

Qegg, aged 33, is the leader of Savuka, a band of two other whites and three Zulu blacks which ranks among the most popular in South African music and is enjoying increased overseas exposure.

Savuka, set up by Clegg in 1985, is caught between conservative white South Africans who are irritated by his anti-Govemment message and foreigners who want total cultural isolation of South Africa until apartheid is abolished.

Although blacks and whites often dance together in front of the stage when he performs, Clegg said that some whites in his audience hurled abuse when he sang the song about Nelson Mandela, the black nationalist leader who has been in prison for over a 25 years. “Some walk out, others come to me after the show and say *We like your music but hate your

politics’,” said Clegg, a former university lecturer.

Last November, six months after the white-led Government imposed a sweeping state of emergency to crush widespread black political riots, Savuka took part in a festival in the black township of Soweto in Johannesburg in support of children detained without trial.

“The police entered the stadium, said TSe’ festival was an illegal gathering and tear-gassed performers and audience," Clegg said.

He said at one time a radio station was visited by security police when a disc jockey decided to flout the ban on some of his music and broadcast the Mandela song. • In spite of the antiapartheid theme in Savuka’s cocktail of music and African-style dancing, the band has faced opposition when playing abroad from critics of Pretoria’s race policies. But attitudes appear to be relaxing, said Clegg.

“There is an attempt to recognise that there are progressive cultural forces growing inside South Africa and that these must have some kind of international support” Recently Savuka, with its array of instruments ranging from rock guitar and concertina to music synthesiser, set out on a five-week European tour. Born in Rochdale, northern England, Clegg moved to South africa when he was seven and was hooked on African music as a teenager when he stumbled on the street culture evolved among black migrant workers living without families in Johannesburg. Now a fluent speaker of Zulu, which features prominently in his songs, Clegg said: “There's a whole alternative world of street culture that you can step into here if you. want — 99 per cent of white people don’t even know it exists.”

Clegg teamed up in 1979 with Sipho Mchunu, a zulu who was working

as a gardener in whitesonly Johannesburg suburbs, to form Juluka, a band which put a greater emphasis then Savuka on traditional black music.

Clegg was then a senior lecturer in social anthropology at Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand University, a position he quit three years later as the pressure of academic and cultural life took its toll

Juluka broke up in 1985 when Mchunu, — whom Clegg said never felt at home performing in New York and other world venues, — left the group to go cattle farming in the Zulu domain of Natal province.

Now Savuka, slightly older than the state of emergency, is singing about the results of the crackdown on black activists.

One of Clegg’s recent songs refers to riots which have claimed over 2500 lives since 1984. “Voice on the radio says another one’s down; it don’t matter any more which side he’s on,” it says.