Sunday, May 27, 2007

With Love from JHB in the Eighties

In the early 80's in Johanneburg, a band called Via Afrika were creating a very fresh post punk, very South African, new eloctro'ish hybrid of arty ideas and left wing politics. I was still in boarding school, but made every effort to escape to see them whenever they played, I believed then, as I do now, that this band of creatives were one the country's finest. Lead singer Rene Veldsman was quoted as saying they were 'A glamorous protest against governement policy, homophobia, the constrains on freedom of expression and generally, the rules in place during the apartheid years.', I can't express how much this stirred inside of me and just how much their dubby new wave sound shook me to my very core. Wierdly, as this time in our country was pretty dire, somehow the underground art & music scene was very much alive, always attempting to subvert the right wing stranglehold, these days people express themselves through shopping, for the most part anyway. This fantastic track, slightly edited, is perhaps my favourite of theirs and somehow now sounds more Disco/Cosmic than it ever did then, it's even got some techno stabs of a kind, but for the main part it's epic, a bit dark, a bit crazy, and is the kind of treasure that I believe needs new light. Some called it Afro Rock, but I'm sure you'll agree its rather more Afro New Wave meets Dub Electro via Africa. Not my usual sort of post, sure, but no less important than my usual ones. I'd be interested to hear what u all think.

Via Afrika - Afrika The Tiger (Sad Ghost Edit)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Easy Chris. Time to let the cat out of the bag, who are Sad Ghost?

chris keys said...

Hey Marc
One guy apparently