On Sunday (25 April) a new show called
A Country Imagined premieres on SABC2 at
21h00 . It has two unique aspects to it: the first is that it spotlights past and present South African artists, musos, dancers and writers through the landscapes of the country.
It visits different landscapes and places to see how they've inspired the creativities of people who've emerged from them.
Also, it's presented by Johnny Clegg. When I first heard news about it I started wheeling and dealing to chat to him for us immediately because I'm a bigtime fangirl - he's blown my hair back for forever.
His album Third World Child was the
very first album I've ever owned (I still have it) and the first music concert I ever went to was a Savuka concert, which impressed me like you can't believe. I was about 12, it was at the Good Hope Centre and the crowd went so crazy the organisers had to bring out hosepipes to water people down things got so hott.
Many
Juluka and
Savuka concerts got even more intense. Round about the same time there was a concert at UCT - which I was too young to go to but that I heard about through the gossvine (I've always been a snoop) - where riots broke out in protest against apartheid.
Ultimately Johnny Clegg's musical imagination has always been defined by the social, political and physical landscape:
Tashi: How did it happen that you came to present the show?
Johnny: I was approached by Harriet Gavshon who is an old friend of mine, who is executive producer of the production. She basically said: "Look, we have this programme and we feel it's not a run of the mill show. It's a very special kind of presentation and we've identified you as the person who we feel will be able to communicate and make the linkages between art and landscape, being both a musician and anthropologist by training - we'd like to talk you about it".
In my role as a musician and cultural activist in South Africa over the past 30 years I'm considered to be a communicator, I'm able to communicate information across culture, across language, it's what I do and like - that kind of fitted into the whole idea of the show so we went for it.
There was no blueprint or template, we created it as we went along and for me that was a wonderful experience. You know, I've never been a TV presenter before so this was a fantastic opportunity to delve into that area - I'm really happy that I did and I think we did a very good job.
Tashi: How did you choose where to go? Which artists to feature?
Johnny: This was a very deeply research-driven project - we were looking to make a very strong connection between both recognised famous South African artists and also what we called "outsider" artists.
Artists who've had no formal training and who haven't had shows in galleries but who've made powerful representations through art, poetry, dance, sculture, whatever it is - which has had an impact and which is a good representation of the work in that particular landscape that we visited.
We spent six months researching, each area, each town, each landscape and made contact with the artists in the area. We set up interviews and then went out to shoot it.
Tashi: So you didn't start with the landscape or with the artists, it was a combo of both?
Johnny: Yes, obviously there are outsider artsists who've already made an impact too so it was a combination. We also feature a lot of very famous artists. There were also some landscapes that are connected to storytelling as an artform so we've covered this too.
What came out of the landscape was a bread basket of expressive forms that were either visual or aural or tactile. Many of them also indigenous to South Africa, praise poetry, indigeonous sculture and a lot of indigenous dance.
We even made comparsison between Hindu and Zulu dancing - we got a dialogue going. It's a road-opening show in a way. I think the most important thing is that South Africans will see the country in a completely different light, and people they've never seen before.
For instance there are some places in the Karoo that are still locked 50 years ago which is just amazing, people living that kind of life.
Tashi: Whose imaginations can we expect to see?
Johnny: There are hundreds of them - I wouldn't want to pick one out and leave another out. We include so many forms, for instance we interviewed the most famous graffitti artist on the Cape Flats, we feature wire artistry, tin artistry from a chap called Oute Lappies to traditional dancing in the desert - so many different things.
We were mainly guided by the landscape, those territories offered up certain artists, we were trying to find a way in which each region gave up it's own unique blend of practitioners and people who engage in any kind of expressive form.
Tashi: In your travels while filming, what did you see that really impacted on you besides the obvious?
Johnny: I think history, the history of the Eastern Cape was very strong. The whole history of that area is frought with amazing events and conflicts and compromises.
I loved the Karoo too, I think it creates a different human relationship to the landscape to the Eastern Cape.
You go to Limpopo Province and there’s a different energy, the way the people relate to the landscape. You go to North West Province and it’s also very different, people relating to their environment in such unique ways.
It all made me understand even more deeply that South Africa is just such a diverse country - it has so many different traditions and histories that are
layered. It was the most powerful experience of this entire project.
Tashi: Do you perform the theme song for the series?
Johnny: In things I relate to in my life there are songs from Jaluka and one or two from Savuka but it’s not driven by my music at all. There’s a separate person who does the theme music .
My songs appear now and again as songs, reflecting a particular event or incident that just so happens to coincide.
Tashi: What’s your fave track of yours of all time?
Johnny: My favourite is Scatterlings of Africa because it was a song that started my career as a professional musician in 1982 when it got onto the Top 40 in England.
I resigned as a university lecturer and became a professional musician then. I then re-recorded it with Savuka and it went to Number 1 in France, Belgium and Switzerland and it went to Number 10 in many other European countries.
It’s also a song which is a credo of mine, basically that Africa is the birthplace of mankind and also the place where I struggled to create my own African identity so it has a lot of personal meaning for me at that level.
Tashi: Would you say that you and Jesse (Clegg) are the Mzansi version of Julio and Enrique Iglesias?
Johnny: I would say not really because those two are following a similar musical sound and tradition. Jesse has gone straight into rock and alternative rock tradition which is foreign to what I do so he’s found his own voice.
Also his writings and lyric content is very different to mine - I was shaped by the ‘70’s and 80’s in South Africa, in fact all my songs were about South Africa, I only sang about the South African experience.
Jesse’s a very far-ranging writer, he’s a very talented song-writer, he understands the relationship of rhythm to melody, and song structure and all those things which I never really, I never had singing lessons, guitar lessons, he’s had all that - musically he’s far more advanced than me in understanding the technical side of the music so there is a difference.
I haven’t passed on a batton to him - he’s created his own musical world and musical vibe. I think growing up in the house of a celebrity has really made both my children, define themselves in a way, using me more as a counterfoil than as a model if you know what I’m saying - which also is fine by me - I think it's fantastic because they both bring something very unique to the world.
Tashi: So we won’t be expecting any romantic-love-song/combo/duo’s from the pair of you?
Johnny: Not at all.*laughs*
Tashi: What would you say the biggest challenges are that face new musicians in South Africa today?
Johnny: I think just getting known, getting your stuff out there, getting played on radio. Also, getting the right shows, the right live performance together , you know have to have a strong live act to survive now, it’s the live side that’s more important than selling albums.
Tashi: The show's filmed in HD and also uses time-lapse photography - who gets lapsed and why?
Johnny: You need the time-lapse to give a sense of landscape - you set up the camera and then run it for an hour, maybe from 4 to 5 o’clock and you can actually see how the landscape breathe - all these changes that are very quick that you can’t see in a simple shot of a landscape.
You see the clouds rushing across the sky, you see the light changing on the rocks, you see then sun movng across the water - it’s an important part of giving a sense of a landscape’s dynamic components. If you film for a half a day and then bring it down to a thirty second clip you get an amazing idea of the what the landscape feels like.
Tashi: What landscape has been your biggest inspiration when it comes to your imagination?
Johnny: You know the places that I like from a landscape point of view are really Northern Cape, Karoo and Mpumalanga. Parts of the Eastern Free State and Kwazulu Natal. There are moments in all of these places.
There was a song I once wrote called Babanango, there’s a place in KwaZulu called Babanango - I once drove through and wrote a song about the town.
I tried to find a video of Babanango but couldn't, so here's a vid. of Scatterlings of Africa (with cool scrolling lyrics) to end: