Author: dpelser

A long, long time ago a barefoot poet wrote a song that changed a generation. The name of the musician was James Phillips and today marks twenty years since he died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident. James’s mother recognised very early that her son was gifted. Phillips once told her how, instead of words and… Read more →

Shifty Music was the record label that released the recordings of the “alternative” Afrikaans artists, such as Johannes Kerkorrel and the Gereformeerde Blues Band, Koos Kombuis and Bernoldus Niemand during the 1980s. Shifty was formed by Lloyd Ross and Ivan Kadey. A number of punk, new wave and mainstream bands and artists also vocally rejected the government’s policy of apartheid,… Read more →

The show ‘Piekniek by Dingaan’ which had been developed by André le Toit, later known as Koos Kombuis, caused a furore when it was staged in 1987. Kombuis had initially presented his ideas for the show, hand written on a few pieces of paper, to the head of CAPAB (Cape Performing Arts Board) theatre, Johan Esterhuizen. Esterhuizen had not been… Read more →

After separating from his wife, Ralph Rabie based himself in Johannesburg. He first lived in the suburb of Westdene, in a home that he shared with Irna van Zyl who was working at the magazine de Kat. Van Zyl had joined the End the Conscription Campaign and she along with a group of like-minded individuals felt that they had to… Read more →

After coming to power in 1948 the Nationalist government started drawing up and enacting legislation to enforce apartheid. The separation of races had an effect not only on people, but also on the radio! The SABC took to extremes the obsession of “separateness” of the races. Lyrics sheets of songs that were submitted for airplay on SABC radio had to… Read more →

On the 4th June 1976, the Sex Pistols played their first gig in the city of Manchester. There were only 42 people in the audience. The crowd who had become accustomed to the prog rock and bombast of 70s bands was absolutely mesmerised by the raw energy displayed by the Sex Pistols, who could hardly play their instruments. Tony Wilson… Read more →

A diverse collection of artists, as was the case for Johannes Kerkorrel and his peers, had their music either banned outright or denied airtime by the SABC during the apartheid era. The Beatles had all their records banned from being played by the SABC for eight years after John Lennon said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ.… Read more →

Ge-trans-for-meer was Johannes Kerkorrel’s third solo album. The album’s opening track was “Sê Sê”, in which Rabie exhorted the listener to “Say Say” a prayer for various downtrodden people, such as “the tramp without a bed” and “the school girl, ugly and fat”. In particular Rabie sang about the “AIDS sufferers that are dying” and “The gay broken by ideology,… Read more →

In May 1990 an Afrikaans music festival called “Houtstok” was planned to coincide with Republic Day celebrations on the 31st May. The festival would reunite many musicians from the Voëlvry tour (controversially, Johannes Kerkorrel did not play at Houtstok), but would also feature other artists such as Anton Goosen and Steve Hofmeyr. At that time South Africa was taking its… Read more →

Whilst it is clear that punk rock had an impact on a number of mainly English-speaking bands who then went on via the influence of James Phillips to inspire Koos Kombuis and Johannes Kerkorrel, some have also drawn parallels between Generation X and the Voëlvry movement. Generation X was the term first coined by Douglas Coupland in 1991 to describe… Read more →