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Despite the problems the friendship created ("When Sipho and I visited his parents, I was arrested and threatened with deportation"), Clegg and Mchunu formed a strong musical and personal bond. "As I became more familiar with the Zulus, I realized that I didn't want to just learn the culture, I wanted to do the culture, to become a culture-bearer. There were so many things about it that I found emotive and beautiful that I wanted to be part of that continuing tradition, especially as it related to dance and music." Eventually, Clegg was accepted as a "white Zulu."
"The press has implied there's a secret ritual or something, but being a white Zulu is more of an allegory. As a young white person I embraced the Zulu culture and a great majority of the people embraced me to the point where I have special ritual claims and obligations to several Zulu clans, just as they have claims and obligations over me. It's not so dramatic, except that it happened under the apartheid system and that gives everything more impact."
In 1976 Clegg and Mchunu cut an acoustic album of Zulu ethnic songs using the name Juluka. This created more problems. "We sang in Zulu and English on the same record," Clegg chuckled. "The record company was upset. They kept asking us, 'Is this music black or white? This will confuse the radio stations.' We finally had a meeting with the broadcasters and the record people and with great difficulty they decided that since the backing was African, the black stations should play it. I believe that that record was the beginning of the breakdown of such strict categories."
Juluka ignored the problems and got on with the making of music, gradually adding elements of south African folk, rock 'n' roll, funk and Zulu street guitar. "For the first year and a half the band played mostly in black areas, where whites didn't see us, so they weren't offended," Clegg said. "As we got more popular, occasionally we'd be playing in a township and uniformed police would walk on stage with their shotguns and say, 'You've got five minutes to empty the hall, or else you'll all be arrested.'"
Despite official harassment, by 1979 Clegg and his fellow musicians had a full-tilt Zulu/rock/South African folk/fusion band with six members (three white and three black) and a platinum album. Their success didn't stop the harassment entirely, but the bottom line, even in South Africa, is money, and since the band was making lots of money, the government was content to look the other way. Clegg feels that this de facto acceptance helped break down the racial barriers that separate musical styles in his homeland. "today there are several interracial bands doing pop, jazz and Zulu styles," Clegg said. When we started, everyone thought we were insane."
Before Juluka disbanded in 1985, the band had earned several gold albums and charted a major Top 40 hit in Europe with "Scatterlings of Africa," a poignant tribute to the African diaspora. "We were on the edge of international fame when Sipho decided he had to go home and help his family take care of their farm. He felt very seriously that this was his main obligations lay."
With the money Mchunu made, he built two schools for his people and introduced new faring methods to the community. Unfortunately, soon after his return home the local chief was murdered and a tribal feud ensued. In the unrest that followed, Mchunu's homestead was burned to the ground and all his cattle stolen. Clegg told me that today Mchunu is in a severe financial situation.
"I continued on in Johannesburg hoping that Sipho would want to get back together after taking a break, but he had too many obligations," Clegg said. Clegg told me he briefly thought about giving up music. He returned to work on his almost-forgotten master's thesis, an analysis of the symbolism in Isishameni dance, but in the end the music won out.
Clegg recorded a solo album of straight international pop entitled Third World Child ("There were still some African influences in it, they weren't as high profile as my stuff with Juluka"), but as the South African political situation heated up he decided to return to performing. Clegg wrote several new songs, most of them more overtly political than before, and his new band, Savuka, is determined to rock the South African cultural boat, in both senses of the phrase.
"I don't consider myself a political activist as far as being a socialist or capitalist," Clegg explained, "but I believe that people have certain fundamental rights. If these rights do not occur, then this must be announced to the world and they must be fought for. We sing about some pretty ugly things on stage, the murder squads and people who have been killed in prison, but we try to remain hopeful, to present a vision of a better future. I don't think music can make a change in the political situation, but it can help make people more aware, and in that way maybe we can make some small difference."
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