Watershed have spent the past two months touring South Africa. Some would call that a slog. They call it laying down new tracks.
“What we wanted to do with this tour was go out on the road and just go back to that thing that got us into the industry, why we do this. And it’s because we love singing, we love playing music, and we love touring,” explains the group’s frontman Craig Hinds.
Elephants march in unison. Giraffes gallop across the plains. A hippo yawns. A lion sleeps. And intercut between the music video’s stock wildlife footage, a brighteyed and curly-haired young white man with an acoustic guitar performs traditional Zulu dances, shows off his stick-fighting skills and sings of his search for the spirit of the great heart.
“There’s a highway of stars across the heavens / The whispering song of the wind in the grass / There’s the rolling thunder across the savannah / A hope and dream at the edge of the sky / And your life is a story like the wind / Your life is a story like the wind.”
From recording and launching their fiery debut album ‘Guns And Money’ to supporting Kings Of Leon on their South African tour, 2011 was a busy year for blues-rock trio Shadowclub. And they couldn’t be happier.
“It’s feeling amazing,” admits frontman Jacques Moolman backstage at Synergy Live in late November. “We’re working really really hard and we’re riding the wave that came when we signed our record deal at the beginning of the year.
‘Pump It On’ isn’t just four minutes of pop genius. The irrepressible summer anthem also heralds the arrival of Toya Delazy – as if from nowhere.
But it’s been a long journey from a convent primary school via Howard College’s Jazz program to the South African pop charts.
‘Never forget where you came from,’ Louis Armstrong once told Hugh Masekela.
He never has.
Hugh remembers growing up in the KwaGuqa township outside Witbank, where women ran alongside the coal trains with tin cups to collect the nuggets that fell from the cars. He remembers playing soccer with a worn tennis ball in the gravel street, occasionally losing a big toenail when he kicked a concealed rock.
But most of all he remembers the music.
Born in Israel, raised in South Africa, a resident of New York, first successful in Denmark, Yoav knows no borders. Nor does his music – combining elements as diverse as acoustic folk and hip-hop – which has seduced people everywhere from Russia and Turkey to Tunisia and Iran.
“It’s like a Risk board,” the 36-year-old musician jokes of his songs’ global penetration which – three years after his international breakthrough – have even caught on in South Africa. That’s largely thanks to a hugely successful 2011 – his second album, ‘A Foolproof Escape Plan’, won a SAMA, ‘We All Are Dancing’ topped the 5FM charts, and he supported Tori Amos and Imogen Heap on their local tours.
“Strike the match and light the fire/ whole word burns/ a funeral pyre,” sings Jeremy De Tolly on the lead single from The Dirty Skirts’ new album, ‘Lost In The Fall’. “It’s all gonna burn, it’s all gonna burn”.
Bit of a change then for the band best known for wanting to punch a hole in Saturday night (‘Homewrecker’) and describing dads who don’t dance (‘Daddy Don’t Disco’).
“It’s pretty crazy at the moment,” says The Script’s drummer, Glenn Power, with just a hint of understatement. In the past month he and bandmates Danny O’Donoghue and Mark Sheehan have been as far afield as Australia, The Philippines, the Netherlands, and the United States.
“I don’t want to go home,” admits a clearly elated Bono as U2’s Cape Town show draws to an end. The feeling — echoed by the capacity crowd — is completely understandable: it’s been a shared evening of rock ‘n roll showmanship, political soapboxing, and surprising intimacy.
For all the size of the show — six days to set up; 204 shipping crates of equipment; 32 000 fasteners for the video screen alone — it’s ultimately about the four men at the middle of the 360-degree stage. This spectacle has soul.
Kanye West is the Angelina Jolie of hip-hop — his personal life overpowers his career. But unlike the actress — who tries to ignore the whole Brad-Pitt-plus-six-kids thing by playing secret agent, assassin, or 1920s housewife — the rapper actively brings his public persona to work.
Clearly the creation of the man behind such tweets as “If baroque and mod had a car crash… what would that ambulance look like?” and “I love me”, ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ amounts to West jumping up and down on a table, shouting: “Yes, I’m a crazy douchebag. But I’ve got feelings too.”
Nils van der Linden