Dear reader, finally, I found him! Urbane in loose black pants, a nylon shirt and sky-blue tie on a slow Sunday morning, he, like many who were walking the streets, my offhanded assumption was that he was just on his way to church. Which was true, partly anyway; just another devout believer off to commune with his Maker.
Until in steady strides he loomed into my sightline granting me a closer look and gradually able to make out what could only be described as a rare (for a while I’d thought extinct) sight around Kuyasa. Slung over his shoulder, an acoustic guitar, which looked like some primordial battle implement strapped on the back of a gallant warrior. Indeed at that moment, to a promiscuous connoisseur of music, *Mr John, 75 years old, couldn’t have been anything less.
There I stood for a moment mesmerised, unsure how to broach him into strumming something. Anything. Could he even play? Last I’d heard anybody play around here was the late Bonakele Mrwarwaza. Bra Bombo; scraggly, always laughing, and so tall he stooped under doors always perplexed local residents. At least his guitar did. Haggard old thing; strung with bits of fishing gut, rusted mesh wire and patched up with wood from old pallets. Carrying it everywhere he went, it clanked uselessly, like it would break apart at any moment.
That’s because Bra Bombo, dreadlocks unkempt, an artist of the wayside, had not composed himself, tuned his relic and begun plucking at the strings. Distinct Afro-gospel riffs here, hints of that 80s disco-funk style there, the man played songs that made drunken dance merrily with tears streaming down their cheeks.
He played to the beer-addled crowds in the haggard haunts where he hung out. Or on his way home from them. Sometimes all alone on his stoep. Mostly, though, he played to anybody who cared to hail him off the street to listen.
Caricature of the struggling artist, his talents largely went unrecognised. He regaled audiences who swooned in his skill but had nothing to give him when his sets were done. Sometimes he might get a refill of his poison, or a R5 coin snuck into his shirt pocket but mainly he played for no more than a “thank you.” Legend has it that in a former incarnation Bra Bombo was a suave session musician travelling the country. He played with outfits from Mdantsane – the mammoth (the country’s second biggest), boxing-crazed township of East London.
They went everywhere. From small clubs to rowdy community halls. Those were Bra Bombo’s glory days, where he smoked Courtleighs and drank stiff brandies in the more genteel joints. A lanky gentleman, with square teeth and an easy smile, he was likely quite the cassanova amongst the fairer ones.
But the life of an artist is an altogether turbulent one. All angst and adrenaline – taking off anywhere the wind may blow. Then suddenly there are new acts on the scene, fellow bandmates getting married or dying, gigs not coming as frequently and slowly the abyss begins to swell all around you. As exciting as the ascent to the spotlight, as quick the come-down to disillusion. To insipid everyday life, finding regular employment, making ends meet and all along asking yourself if the show is really over.
Bra Bombo died in the 2010s, the familiar, adored sound of his guitar eternally muted. In the intervening years, I’d longed to listen to a flesh and bone guitarist from Kuyasa. It seemed I’d raised my hopes too high, was asking for too much. Then like some apparition from a dream I wished never to wake from, there Mr John stood, on a Sunday morning starting to play to nobody in particular not even the slow-growing crowd of curious kids. Could’ve sat in admiration all day but the church bell began tolling and he said he couldn’t keep God waiting – maybe another time – as he disappeared, still playing, kids at his heels. Ah! Kuyasa’s own Chuck Berry, sans perm, turning the corner. The wonderful things my eyes have seen!
Although I’d roused him from his afternoon nap a week later, the old man nonetheless still patiently heard me out. But, he said, ‘I’m an old man, nowadays my whole life, the music, everything is simply dedicated to God. Whatever it is, you plan to do, don’t do it!’ I’m gutted, only buyoed up his caveat as I walk out the gate – ‘but I’ll think about it and you may use my photo.’
Then Jefferey Rademeyer, the man who’s on a mission to create a legacy project around Kuyasa and Lowryville calls with a story worth looking into. ‘Ever heard the name Tokas Lodewyk,’ he asks? I hadn’t and as a Noordkaapenare I’m all the poorer for it. From nearby Richmond, the late Lodewyk was an old hand of Afrikaans blues and folk. The world would’ve never known of him were it not for the jolly, eccentric David Kramer who was ‘was invited by Jan Horn to accompany him on a road trip in 2000 to seek out musicians who still played and sang the ouliedjies,’ he says on Daily Maverick.
Their sojourn would bring them to outposts like Beaufort West, Fraserburg, Richmond, Chatsworth and Victoria West and into the musical company of the Mouers family, Siena, Jan and Magdalena; the accordionist Koos Lof; guitarist Tokas Lodewyk, amongst others. Although this may have been an unexpected surprise for these up-country folk who were barely recognised in their own backyard, for Kramer who from a young age had realised ‘that old Afrikaans folk songs that were presented in the FAK Sangbundel as volksliedjies had not originated in the mouths of ‘white’ singers but had been created on the farms by self-taught musicians,’ it was cathartic.
https://youtu.be/xYDT1qU6aNU?si=IuECwAu4XKw0jMX-
The encounter would lead to Karoo Kitaar Blues, a documentary that is still as much moving to audiences today as it was back then. In it you stare into the genius of the likes of Hannes Coetzee, the man who slides a teaspoon (held steady in his mouth) on the guitar strings as he strums endearing bluegrass-ish melodies with BB King-like whining in between. His collaboration Ek Ko Huistoe alongside Kramer and Lof; Kramer with his signature knees-bent-hips-thrusting dance, Coetzee playing a small blikkitaar is sheer musical madness. Not to mention phenomenal if one takes stock of the fact that barely months earlier Coetzee and Lof were probably playing out on a stoep somewhere in the Karoo. Now there they are playing to rousing applause inside the Baxter Theatre.
It’ll be difficult not to tap your feet as Helena Nuwergeld, frugally dressed in a sweater and a doek, Koos Lof with his accordian by her side, and backed up by Kramer’s band as she sings Pale Toe. A shuffling, jumpy lidjie with the sort of lyrics that would be best avoided in polite company. Unapologetic rustic music; no holds barred, no part of the anatomy too crass.
Then the man with the faraway glare and expressionless, if slightly sad look, Lodewyk, blikkitaar in hand, asks Antie Maak oop jou Deur. A simple man, in the sort of attire you’d find on any farm labourer, strumming his blikkitaar even though behind him more sophisticated instruments are lined up.
You’d have to have a heart of stone to be unmoved by the simple beauty of these legends of the boondocks, content in the unsophisticated ways they’ve known all their lives. And to think all these years nobody has looked up and said, ‘geeze! Now here are talents to get behind’ until Kramer and Horn rolled up in an VW bus.
Precisely for such reasons that Rademeyer means business on the envisaged legacy project. Community-driven and apolitical, the long-term vision would be to preserve the township story – then and now. To seek out the sort of people and literature that in time would help piece together the origins of the place and people.
Here at eParkeni, Mr John has renewed ours hopes in unearthing local talent. A cursory search has led us to names like NolinDevotion, a gifted rapper from Lowryville. We’ve heard of a guitarist from that part of town too. Mr Rademeyer is certain that if one visited the Plakkerskamp, they are bound to stumble on a host of other Tokases. And there’s a Mozambican acquaintance of this writer who, having seen a few videos from the Karoo Kitaar Blues documentary, smiled and said, ‘I could play that.’ Throughout our interactions, he’s never given me any reason to question his decency. Still, we’ll have to but him to the test. But first we have to get our hands on a guitar.
*Not his real name.