Worlds Apart: Johnny Clegg Has Been
Molded by South Africa
Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune
April 29, 1990
World beat, the catch-all term for non-Western pop music, first
reached a wider audience in America thanks to Paul Simon`s 1986
``Graceland`` album. But long before Simon began cross-pollinating
the rhythms of distant continents, Johnny Clegg, a white South
African, was forging a musical bond between his Zulu brethren
and his Western ancestors.
More importantly, where Simon created a pop hit with his record and then went on to other styles of music, Clegg is building musical bridges to and from South Africa for the long term.
"I am shaped by South Africa," he says in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. "Much of what I am, what I need, is in that country. It is a prison and a wombthat contradiction is what draws me there."
Clegg, who will open for Tracy Chapman at Alpine Valley June 9 and Poplar Creek June 10, was born in Manchester, England, but reared in Johannesburg. In his teens, he forged a lifelong-and illegal-alliance with his Zulu neighbors, slipping into the black townships to learn their language, music, dances and customs.
With one of his black friends, he formed a band, Juluka (which means "sweat" in Zulu), in 1976. Its mix of black and white styles and musicians became a political statement in itself, an interracial affront to apartheid. Until it broke up in 1985, Juluka was one of the most popular bands in South Africa, with five gold and two platinum albums.
Each contained songs that were banned on the government-sponsored radio station because they openly questioned the status quo. Clegg`s concerts, many of which played to mixed audiences around the black ghetto of Soweto, were frequently broken up by police.
Though Westerners may believe that the situation in South Africa has eased since black opposition leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Clegg says, "It`s still tense-the context is getting better, but the events themselves are still dark and brutal.
"We still have a state of emergency, and music is still seen as an undermining force. I haven`t had a show stopped since March, 1989, but the threat is still there."
As if to emphasize that the old days of repression haven`t ended, Clegg`s new single, One (Hu)Man One Vote, was banned by the South African Broadcast Corp.
As the lead track on Clegg`s new album, Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World (Capitol), it is perhaps his most far-reaching political statement yet, a state-of-the-world address that begins by challenging Americans:
- The West is sleeping in a fragile freedom
Forgotten is the price that was paid
"The right to vote has become a hassle for a lot of people in the West, it`s taken for granted," Clegg says. "With One Man, I tried to emphasize that this is a universal right that people fight and die for in other parts of the world."
Although previous albums spoke to the black community, Clegg acknowledges that young whites are making up a larger share of his audiences back home. That`s fine with him, because white attitudes are the ones he`s trying to change.
But as much as his music is political, Clegg isn`t in the business of politics. He brushes off the mantle of "spokesman" that some critics choose to hang on him.
"It`s very important to understand that I`m not a spokesman for South Africa; all I`m doing is describing the South African experience," he says. "There are already too many politicians in South Africa; it doesn`t need another."
Indeed, much of Clegg`s popularity in his homeland rests on his energetic live performances. With his new band, Savuka (which translates to "we are risen"), pounding out wave after wave of joyful, cross-cutting rhythms, Clegg often breaks into traditional Zulu warrior dances with black percussionist Dudu Zulu. When they collapse on stage, triumphant after metaphorically stomping on segregation and repression, their audiences roar with approval.
When he`s not dancing himself to exhaustion, Clegg`s voice combines the keening ache of Celtic music with the warbling intensity of the black South African choirs.
"I`ve been experimenting with my voice, looking for more emotional textures," he says. "Celtic music has a romantic appeal, because it reminds me of my father, whom I`ve never seen. It`s a connection with part of my past."
When Clegg was only a year old, his English father left home and was never seen again. His mother then moved with Johnny to Zimbabwe and later Johannesburg, which has become home.
Its beauty and brutality have shaped Clegg`s life and art, never more so than on his new album, a mirror of a "cruel, crazy, beautiful" land.
Clegg, who speaks fluent Zulu, married his wife in a traditional white Christian church ceremony and also followed Zulu custom, "marrying" her again after she gave birth to their son, a ritual documented on the joyful Moliva.
"It wasn`t a political act or a media event," Clegg says. "It was a celebration of my son`s birth with the community I grew up with."
Moliva epitomized the tone of the album as Clegg began recording last spring in Los Angeles. "I felt good, up, positive," he says.
Then, in the middle of the session, his friend and fellow anti-apartheid activist, university professor David Webster, was assassinated in Johannesburg.
"I came back from the funeral and my mood was completely different,`` Clegg says. "I wrote three songs Woman Be My Country, Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World` and One (Hu)Man One Vote that represented a complete break from the other songs. The album went from being upbeat and humorous to angry and desperate within a matter of days."
Clegg will carry these emotional postcards from his homeland around the world on a 10-month tour, which will play Europe, North and South America, Australia, the Far East and finally the Soviet Union.
"I believe that a solution in South Africa is within our grasp," Clegg says. "But what I hope my music will do is show people that what goes on in South Africa is not just South Africa`s problem."
It`s why Clegg`s album includes songs such as Warsaw 1943, inspired by the writings of Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. It tells a tale in both English and Zulu of betrayal and friendship during the Jewish ghetto uprising against the Nazis in World II.
"Our world struggle is not unique in South Africa," Clegg explains. "What is happening back home has been happening all around the world for centuries and Poland struggling under the Nazis and then the Soviets is just one example of that."
With political change occurring almost daily around the world in the last year-China`s Tiananmen Square uprising, Lithuania`s break with the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall-Clegg sees the world at a crossroads, as he sings on One (Hu)Man One Vote:
- In the East a giant is awakening
And in the South we feel the rising tide . . .
On a visible but distant shore,
A new image of man
The shape of his own future
Now in his hands
"In a world with a 21st Century technology base, an 18th Century morality and a 16th Century religion, we are trying to shape an image of man that is universal," Clegg says. "If that image is disturbed by one country, that image cannot exist."
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