Dougie Oakes
DORKAY House, Johannesburg: On a day in the mid-1970s, two musicians from Cape Town – Mervyn Africa and Russell Herman – are locked in deep conversation with Steve Biko, the black consciousness leader.
“Russell and I were members of a group called Spirits Rejoice,” says Africa, “and we had been enormously successful, winning nine Sarie awards (a Sarie being the main honour that musicians could aspire to in South Africa at that time).
“But now we had reached a type of glass ceiling. We felt there was nothing left for us to achieve in South Africa. Biko listened attentively to our story…
“From my side, it was about how I was born in District Six – and about how my dad’s cousin, from the Africa side, had ‘created’ the Schilder family. There were remarkable similarities in the way members of our musical family played. We were pianists, all of us. I started playing with the nuns at the Holy Cross Catholic Church, at the age of five. Later, I was enrolled at the Cape Town’s Boys choir, run by a Scot called McAdam. The choir involved boys from all the churches in the area.
“To the great initial disappointment of my parents, I told them I wanted to be a jazz musician. My mom and dad were far from happy, but they eventually relented when they saw how determined I was to live my dream.
“My first big band was a group called Oswietie, with Russell Herman, Robbie Jansen, Basil “Manenberg” Coetzee, Nazier Kapdi (later to serve time for murder), Kader Khan and Lionel Beukes.
“We played Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago covers – and we were widely followed around the Cape Peninsula. But, strangely enough, we never got onto vinyl. We were regarded by the record companies as ‘too progressive’.
“We did funny things in those days. We’d write a song and introduce it to our fans as a ‘new Chicago composition’. I guess we were scared that music-lovers would be less accepting if we introduced a song as one of our own compositions.”
Oswietie was also caught up in some bizarre situations in their short, but eventful, run.
“We were contracted to play in Luanda, Angola – and shortly after our arrival there, the stakes in the civil war that was raging in the former Portuguese colony went up several notches, and we couldn’t get back to South Africa,” says Africa.
“Stuck in Angola, we built ourselves into a music family to keep us going. There’d be days when we’d be listening to John McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra, while buildings were being blown up just a little bit further down the road.
“Then we were told that a company in France wanted to hire us to do a show with African dancers from Zimbabwe and women singers belting out Miriam Makeba songs.
“On the way to France, we had to stop over in Gabon. It was a bad move. When Gabonese authorities found out we were South Africans, they wanted to arrest us as spies. They even forced us to play at a hastily arranged concert in front of president (El Hadj Omar) Bongo to prove that we were indeed a band. We were held in Gabon for several weeks. It was Abdullah Ibrahim who saved us and got us back home,” says Africa.
During his time in exile, Ibrahim had somehow managed to acquire a Senegalese passport. It enabled him to pull some strings to get us out of the country.
“Afterwards, we did a celebratory album, Underground in Africa, with Ibrahim, as a token of our appreciation for what he had done for us. It was the first – and only – album in which Oswietie was involved.”
On their return to South Africa, members of Oswietie went their separate ways – and Africa took a short break from groups, until he got a call from Herman to say that Des and Dawn Linberg planned to stage the musical The Black Mikado and were looking for a pianist who could read music.
“Spirits Rejoice was born out of the backing group for the show. The Black Mikado was the first South African show to have blacks and whites on the same stage.
“Andries Treurnicht, who was still a member of the National Party cabinet at the time, came to watch one of the performances. At the end of the show he came backstage to congratulate us.
“The next day the show was banned.”
The group continued for a long time, performing their own music, and playing a large role in the production of the hit song Paradise Road by Joy.
But soon the need to find a new direction became increasingly urgent.
“In our discussion with Biko at Dorkay House, he spoke at length about the ‘consciousness of our art’,” says Africa.
“I’ll never forget what he said – because it helped take us to the next level in our development as musicians – and as human beings. ‘If there are people who aren’t ready for what you want to do’, Biko advised us, ‘get what you want to do with people who are ready’.”
Biko was murdered in 1978 – and three years later, creatively stifled by apartheid, Africa and Herman left to pursue new careers in England.
It was heady stuff for the new arrivals. There was a community of South African musicians in exile in England.
“We met Julian Bahula, who had been with Malombo, a group both Russell and I admired,” Africa says. “We also connected with Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Dyani, Joe Malinga and a group called Hawk, who had been popular in South Africa but who had then gone into exile in the UK, where they got involved with the ANC.
“Next thing we were warned not to come back to South Africa because the authorities believed we had also joined the ANC. We decided to make the best of what we could in our new home. Together with Brian Abrahams, we formed a group called District Six. I knew Brian well from my days on the music circuit in Cape. Then, he had been a singer at clubs such as The Catacombs in Cape Town.”
In the UK, Africa became a big achiever, among other things being commissioned by the Greater London Arts Council to compose and perform a jazz concerto for piano and full concerto. The original score is housed in the British Music Archives – and the District Six Museum. Not bad for a boykie from the District.