Message Music: A South African
Sings Out Against Apartheid
by Iain Blair
January 10, 1988
Johnny Clegg is not a name that means much in America, where the 34-year- old singer/songwriter is recording an album for Capitol Records.
But back home in his native South Africa, he`s very big news, and has been for many years, thanks to his provocative musical stance, which has effectively cut across all racial and class barriers, much to the embarrassment and annoyance of the authorities.
For the last 12 years or so, first with a group called Juluka (Zulu for "sweat"), and now with his latest band, called Savuka (Zulu for "we have arisen"), Clegg has mined the rich, largely ignored ore of traditional and street Zulu music and dance and fused it with western-style rock and Celtic- country influences to produce an infectious, intriguing blend that predates Paul Simon`s acclaimed Graceland effort by several years.
In fact, Clegg and Savuka`s impressive debut album on Capitol Records, appropriately enough entitled Third World Child, was produced by Hilton Rosenthal, the man largely responsible for putting Paul Simon together with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the other musicians for Graceland.
Hardly surprisingly, Clegg, a wiry and intense man, is hoping some of that project`s success rubs off on his own record, which has already gone gold in South Africa.
"Of course, it`s great to be big anywhere in the world, but being No. 1 in South Africa is still like being a big fish in a small pond," explains the singer. "In the end, if you have any big ambitions, especially in the music business, you inevitably start looking toward Europe and America."
In the past, despite being a musical and cultural phenomenon in his homeland, Clegg and his music have been largely passed over by the American record-buying public.
But now, with two of his songs on the well-received Songs of Soweto album, and an American record label firmly committed to the act, Clegg and Savuka are a lot more optimistic about their chances here.
"I just don`t want people to be put off by the political connection," stresses Clegg. "Yes, all my songs are politically motivated, but they don`t point fingers. I present an idea, but then it`s up to people to decide for themselves. In fact, I`m not a political activist, and I resent music being used as a tool for propaganda. But music can expand people`s consciousness and awareness of what`s going on in the world.
"And that`s what we`re trying to do about the situation in South Africa, make people more aware of just how complex the political and economic realities are. It`s not just blacks versus whites, you know.
"In the white minority, you have an Afrikaans-speaking majority who have no great love for the English-speaking whites like myself. And in the black majority, there are many different tribes and factions who have no great love for each other, either." Clegg sighs and shakes his head. "It`s pretty complicated."
As an honorary White Zulu and one of the country`s few white musicians to have become deeply involved in South African black culture, Clegg is perhaps better qualified than most artists to comment on the political and social realities of apartheid. It turns out, however, that the singer is actually an Englishman by birth. "Johannesburg is my hometown, but I was born in Rochdale, England, and when my mother then moved to Zimbabwe, I spent the first six years of my life there before we moved to South Africa," he explains.
The young Clegg learned to speak Ndebele, an African dialect, before mastering his native tongue, and found himself "instinctively drawn to Zulu culture and music in particular." His mother, a former cabaret singer, didn`t disapprove of such interest, but it was regarded as "subversive behavior" in the totalitarian South African society of the `60s and `70s, Clegg says.
"The only place you`d normally meet blacks was in the workplace," he explains. "Otherwise, life was totally segregated, from schools to buses to toilets-kind of like the American South earlier this century. So growing up like that was the norm. It was only when I met some Zulu street musicians in the back streets of Johannesburg, places whites never saw, that this whole other world opened up and inspired my imagination."
Two Zulu musicians in particular influenced the young teenager. "The first was Charlie Mzila, whom I met when I was 13, and who was already in his mid-20s," reports Clegg.
"It was through Charlie that I first learned traditional Zulu music, which is very pastoral, very melodic," he continues. "Then I started to learn Zulu, and to tape and document their songs. It was a private world, an escape, but also a very rough world. Even in modern city life, they`re still warriors and extremely colorful characters, and the more I hung out with them, the more trouble I got into.
"The second major influence, and my partner in forming Juluka, was Sipho Mchunu, whom I met a couple of years later. He was my age but also a loner, and initially was very suspicious of `this white kid` who was hanging around the street scene," recalls Clegg. "But we became friends, and ended up playing together for six years in the back streets.
"Because of the group`s racial mix, we weren`t allowed to perform at any public venue, and often we`d get chased by police or firemen," adds the singer. "Eventually, I was arrested by the authorities and continually harassed."
In all, Clegg was arrested more than a dozen times by police and security forces for a variety of anti-apartheid acts, but such treatment only served to increase his commitment to his unorthodox blend of Zulu and Western music and lyrics.
"In 1976, Sipho and I recorded four singles in Zulu, but we got no support either from government-controlled white radio stations who considered it subversive, or from the black stations who thought it was an insult for a white to sing in Zulu," he reports.
"Basically, we managed to upset and offend everyone, and the situation was made worse by the Soweto uprising the same year. The country was in absolute turmoil,`` Clegg recalls. ``So a racially mixed group like Juluka was like a red rag to a bull, and the only way we broke through was by constantly doing live shows.
"And the police usually broke those up, but eventually we started making fans, and after getting no airplay on our first album, our second album went platinum, and they couldn`t ignore us any longer."
After several more successful albums and tours, the band finally called it quits in 1985 when Sipho was forced to leave to take care of his tribal people. "We were on the edge of international fame, having already toured Europe, America and Canada, but Sipho had promised his father he`d return to his people, and in Zulu tradition that`s absolutely binding," explains Clegg. Devastated by the loss of his partner and the subsequent disintegration of the group, it appears that Clegg seriously considered giving up music for the academic life.
"In fact I`m currently working on my master`s thesis, an analysis of symbolism and gesture in Isishameni (Zulu dance)," says Clegg, who prides himself on his Zulu dancing ability. "But in the end I decided to keep going with the music, and that`s when I decided to form Savuka."
Using two musicians from the original Juluka, and hiring three new members, Clegg and Savuka played a few warmup shows in Senegal and then Paris before hitting the road with a national tour of South Africa last year.
"Musically it was great, but in every other respect it was a nightmare," says Clegg. "After the State of Emergency, my music was more politically outspoken than ever, and consequently we had more trouble with the police than ever, not to mention money problems."
But if his comeback tour was less than satisfactory, it was enough to bring the band to the attention of EMI Worldwide, and then Capitol in the States. "The success of Graceland opened a lot of doors for our kind of music," notes Clegg, who was listed in Paul Simon`s album credits "for what, I`m not sure," he smiles.
In Europe, and particularly France, where the group played with Tina Turner and David Bowie last summer, "Third World Child" is a hit, and the musicians Dudu Zulu, Derek DeBeer, Steve Mavuso, Keith Hutchinson and Solly Nletwaba are treated like stars.
"Back home in South Africa, we`re still fighting to get heard, though," says Clegg. "The government has banned two of the songs as `politically inflammatory` 'Missing,' which is about death squads, and 'Asimbonanga,' which is about four anti-apartheid martyrs Victoria Mxenge, a black civil rights lawyer who was murdered; Neil Agett, a trade unionist who died in political detention; Steven Biko, who also died in prison; and Nelson Mandela, who has been imprisoned for over a quarter of a century."
In spite of the grim realities of apartheid, Clegg, who is actively involved in Amnesty International as well as the politically outspoken and newly formed South African Musicians Alliance, is hopeful and optimistic about the future of his troubled country.
"All the various groups, both black and white, need each
other. There is no real solution without cooperation," he
says. "And I don`t think for a moment that music can change
the political situation in South Africa, but it can make a difference.
It can make people more aware."
talkingleaves
MMVI