Monday, April 18, 2005
Why Write About Music: Music Journalist Mission Statement
(or, the news we need to know)
Without a doubt, the most fascinating contemplation on writing about music comes today from Botswana:
Arts/Culture Review
Washing Hands Off Guilt
Talking Musica
RAMPHOLO MOLEFHE
4/18/2005 2:15:07 PM (GMT +2)
How many artists of any significance do you know who climbed to the top by copying other peoples’ works? How many people do you know who rose to stardom without ever having composed a song? Show me one artist worth mentioning who rose to fame without ever having recorded a song.
I know none. On the contrary, I have found that it is in fact the making of one’s own music that brings popularity and recognition among peers in the artists’ community.
It would not be stretching things too far to assert that in fact invention and originality is the very reason for taking up the arts or any kind of creative work.
Mimicry and copying is just the opposite of what is required when one takes on music or art as a “career” or “occupation”. In fact people take up music as a hobby precisely because they hunger for some form of creative expression.
I say these things because my association with the music group Impromptu troubles me. This is how the story goes. I came back from the United States where my father had been working for the government 35 years ago.
I was utterly dismayed at the practice of the time when some of the most talented Batswana musicians were wholly and totally absorbed in copying and imitating European and American rock groups.
First of all, this was completely alien to my ideological disposition, which was very concerned with the liberation of black men from the racism that I witnessed in Mafikeng and New York. I could not see how liberation of the black person could happen by copying the music and culture of the very people from whom the Africans wanted liberation.
Secondly, I found that when the artists tried to copy the Europeans, they sounded most unnatural. Their diction was faulty. The rhythmn that ran through my veins from my dancing to Mahlathini and the Dark City Sisters in my formative years as a young black boy growing up in Mafikeng, Moeng and Serowe was completely absent.
I could not understand what these people were trying to do or achieve by trying to escape from their surroundings and pretend to be in a place where they had never been. Uhu, a ba a tsenwa he?
Thirdly, I had enough stuff between my ears to tell that if they thought this was the way to make a name or some money, they were barking up the very wrong tree. You just tell me: how do you gain recognition for yourself by pretending throughout your life to be that other person?
Surely all that you achieve is to enhance the stature of the other person in everybody else’s eyes. That is the exact opposite of what you set out to do in the first place! Is it not?
So, these were three good reasons why I denied myself participation in the music of the time. The Southern African Students Movement, Jeff Baqwa and I organised the homecoming of Letta Mbulu, Caiphus Semenya, Dudu Phukwana, Cecil Barnard (now known as Professor Hotep) and Jonas Gwangwa.
Gwangwa promised to return permanently to Botswana and mooted interest in forming a band. Before he came, I collaborated with Lefifi Tladi, Oupa Rantobeng Mokou, Bonjo Keipidile and Thabiso Leshoai in the poetry and music group which went by the name Dashiki. That group welcomed Gwangwa and was eventually transformed into Shakawe.
I was wholesomely engaged by Gwangwa’s spiritual and artistic commitment to the indigenous music of “the South”. He did not teach me to play the piano. He taught me how to make music. He also taught me that music – not just playing music – was a way of life.
This music spoke about love, freedom, liberation, the Morula tree, the Kgalagadi desert, Kippie Moeketsi, Ratsie Setlhako and everything that I felt in my eyes, ears, skin, nose and tongue. The music sounded like Setswana, Zulu, Xhosa, Sesarwa, Sepedi and everything else that is a part of me. All I needed to do was to commit myself totally to learning how to express that musically.
Now I can almost call myself a musician. And that is why I shall write newspaper articles about the music and art, and eventually, I will write a proper book about the music and the musicians I experienced through playing.
Gwangwa left. Bonjo, Lefifi and I went our different ways. The only way I could play music was by practicing journalism, which I did with a passion that equalled my obsession with African music of Botswana.
I wrote the first investigative story by a private newspaper into administrative and other forms of corruption at the Botswana Housing Corporation in 1985. Six board members resigned and the General Manager, a certain Mr Richardson escaped to England claiming sickness.
I wrote the first and longest surviving column called Tantjie and started to believe that I could risk some claim to calling myself a journalist.
That is why I cannot understand how six adults who claim to be musicians can sit at Buyani Bar and play something that they call music for six years and fail to produce an original song, let alone a record.
I simply cannot understand. And every time I try to understand I die a little. So perhaps, I should make my own record. I do have the music in my heart and in every face that I see every day when I rise to face Botswana and the world.
© Mmegi
Music Music Journalism ¶ 4/18/2005 07:44:00 AM
(or, the news we need to know)
Without a doubt, the most fascinating contemplation on writing about music comes today from Botswana:
Arts/Culture Review
Washing Hands Off Guilt
Talking Musica
RAMPHOLO MOLEFHE
4/18/2005 2:15:07 PM (GMT +2)
How many artists of any significance do you know who climbed to the top by copying other peoples’ works? How many people do you know who rose to stardom without ever having composed a song? Show me one artist worth mentioning who rose to fame without ever having recorded a song.
I know none. On the contrary, I have found that it is in fact the making of one’s own music that brings popularity and recognition among peers in the artists’ community.
It would not be stretching things too far to assert that in fact invention and originality is the very reason for taking up the arts or any kind of creative work.
Mimicry and copying is just the opposite of what is required when one takes on music or art as a “career” or “occupation”. In fact people take up music as a hobby precisely because they hunger for some form of creative expression.
I say these things because my association with the music group Impromptu troubles me. This is how the story goes. I came back from the United States where my father had been working for the government 35 years ago.
I was utterly dismayed at the practice of the time when some of the most talented Batswana musicians were wholly and totally absorbed in copying and imitating European and American rock groups.
First of all, this was completely alien to my ideological disposition, which was very concerned with the liberation of black men from the racism that I witnessed in Mafikeng and New York. I could not see how liberation of the black person could happen by copying the music and culture of the very people from whom the Africans wanted liberation.
Secondly, I found that when the artists tried to copy the Europeans, they sounded most unnatural. Their diction was faulty. The rhythmn that ran through my veins from my dancing to Mahlathini and the Dark City Sisters in my formative years as a young black boy growing up in Mafikeng, Moeng and Serowe was completely absent.
I could not understand what these people were trying to do or achieve by trying to escape from their surroundings and pretend to be in a place where they had never been. Uhu, a ba a tsenwa he?
Thirdly, I had enough stuff between my ears to tell that if they thought this was the way to make a name or some money, they were barking up the very wrong tree. You just tell me: how do you gain recognition for yourself by pretending throughout your life to be that other person?
Surely all that you achieve is to enhance the stature of the other person in everybody else’s eyes. That is the exact opposite of what you set out to do in the first place! Is it not?
So, these were three good reasons why I denied myself participation in the music of the time. The Southern African Students Movement, Jeff Baqwa and I organised the homecoming of Letta Mbulu, Caiphus Semenya, Dudu Phukwana, Cecil Barnard (now known as Professor Hotep) and Jonas Gwangwa.
Gwangwa promised to return permanently to Botswana and mooted interest in forming a band. Before he came, I collaborated with Lefifi Tladi, Oupa Rantobeng Mokou, Bonjo Keipidile and Thabiso Leshoai in the poetry and music group which went by the name Dashiki. That group welcomed Gwangwa and was eventually transformed into Shakawe.
I was wholesomely engaged by Gwangwa’s spiritual and artistic commitment to the indigenous music of “the South”. He did not teach me to play the piano. He taught me how to make music. He also taught me that music – not just playing music – was a way of life.
This music spoke about love, freedom, liberation, the Morula tree, the Kgalagadi desert, Kippie Moeketsi, Ratsie Setlhako and everything that I felt in my eyes, ears, skin, nose and tongue. The music sounded like Setswana, Zulu, Xhosa, Sesarwa, Sepedi and everything else that is a part of me. All I needed to do was to commit myself totally to learning how to express that musically.
Now I can almost call myself a musician. And that is why I shall write newspaper articles about the music and art, and eventually, I will write a proper book about the music and the musicians I experienced through playing.
Gwangwa left. Bonjo, Lefifi and I went our different ways. The only way I could play music was by practicing journalism, which I did with a passion that equalled my obsession with African music of Botswana.
I wrote the first investigative story by a private newspaper into administrative and other forms of corruption at the Botswana Housing Corporation in 1985. Six board members resigned and the General Manager, a certain Mr Richardson escaped to England claiming sickness.
I wrote the first and longest surviving column called Tantjie and started to believe that I could risk some claim to calling myself a journalist.
That is why I cannot understand how six adults who claim to be musicians can sit at Buyani Bar and play something that they call music for six years and fail to produce an original song, let alone a record.
I simply cannot understand. And every time I try to understand I die a little. So perhaps, I should make my own record. I do have the music in my heart and in every face that I see every day when I rise to face Botswana and the world.
© Mmegi
Music Music Journalism ¶ 4/18/2005 07:44:00 AM
