Source: Fred De Vries (Fred De Vries – 01 Dec 2009)
Modest is the best word to describe Andries Bezuidenhout. Throughout our two hour interview he constantly tries to downplay the importance of his work as a singer/songwriter, as someone who carried the Voëlvry spirit into the 21st century. But for me Andries is one of the most exciting and versatile characters in the alternative Afrikaans scene. Many will know him as the singer of the now defunct Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes. But he’s also a sociologist at Wits University and a columnist for Rapport, while last year he published his first volume of poetry, Retoer.
It took him five years to come with a follow up to his first solo album Insomniak Se Droomalmanak. But the recently launched Bleek Berus was well worth the wait. Largely produced by Andries ex-band mate Drikus Barnard it has a bleak, almost tinny sound and songs that tell tales of leaving, murder and ecological disaster. Discomforting tunes for an uncertain age, but always with a touch of humour.
We meet at a Thai restaurant in Cyrildene, Johannesburg, not far from Observatory where Andries lives. He says he’s not very hungry and orders rice and tom yam. I choose green curry with fish. We finish a bottle of Chardonnay. And let it be known: Andries laughs a lot – and loud.
The songs on Bleek Berus seem to fit together quite nicely.
“The theme is dry places, the Kalahari, the highveld as a desert. It’s about where I feel at home, places without people.”
How did the theme come about?
“I really love the Namib desert and I love the Karoo and the Kalahari. And also, to be a bit pretentious, it’s the only place where Afrikaans is really rooted, in those dry places. That’s where Afrikaans is mostly spoken. Parts of the Karoo, parts of Namibia. If you think of Afrikaans as a South African language, that’s not the case. There were Afrikaners in Angola. The history of the language is not the history of South Africa, it’s a much more regional process. Die dorsland trek, the people who trekked through the Namib into Angola. Also in the Karoo you can’t pretend Afrikaans is a European language, because there it’s rooted in the landscape and the Khoikhoi people.”
Die Laatste Brandwag is your ecological song. It’s based on Bobbejaan Klim die Berg, which over the years has become a bit of a controversial tune. How did that one come about?
“Die Laatste Brandwag was for a tv-programme about traditional Afrikaans music and where those songs come from. They told me I had to use Bobbejaan, a traditional song. So what the fuck do you do? I swapped the meaning around. No one knows what the original is about, but I wanted to get away from the racist connotations. This one says: humans should never have lifted their hands off the surface of the earth.”
It has nothing to do with Ossewa Brandwag?
“Not at all. Baboons have brandwagte when the troops move around. They have one baboon constantly on the lookout for lions. That’s my reference. It’s about baboon telling people that they’re fucking up the place. I had an interesting email from Koos Kombuis about that song. He said he only understood it after the fourth listening. It first sounded like gibberish to him.”
It references Koos Kombuis and the FAK parody he did on Ver Van Die Ou Kalahari. But the rhythm and melody remind me of De La Rey.
“Well, it also has a rolling tune, I guess. But it was recorded in 2004, way before DeLa Rey. I worked around the tune of the original song, but turned it into a waltz, which is the first change. And then I turned a lot of the major chords into minor, to make it a sad song. We also did a great video. It was very tongue in cheek, with a doom prophet. He kind of mocked it. He had a poster that said ‘Die einde is naby’. And one that said ‘Wanneer kom die einde nou?’ And one: ‘Die einde moet nou naby wees.’ You have to send it up, you have to put the tongue in the check somewhere.”
You often strike me as a romantic, in the best way. A bit like the old Germans like Novalis, with their Sehnsucht and melancholia or the Swiss born Jean-Jacques Roussou with his deep love for nature. A bit heavy too…
“Well, there’s less humour here than on Insomniak. But I hope people see the humour in the arrangements. Like Die Ritme Van Chaos, which is a dicey song about white fears. We send it up completely with the arrangements. I love the arrangements. It’s tacky, computer based, a complete send up. The drums are so Leonard Cohen tacky 80s style. That’s all intentional.”
For a listener it’s not so easy to get all that irony.
“That’s fine.”
I thought: the man is depressed. I mean, look at the cover with its spooky, silver blue picture of an empty shack and a leafless tree.
“I love the cover.”
Me too, but it did give me the wrong impression. I took it too seriously. Most people will.
“Jaaaa. I’m not bleak about life here, I’m bleak about life. Living in South Africa, you feel more alive than you do in other places. Yes, shorter, that’s the ‘berus’ part, haha. But when you make peace with that… Look, the lyrics are kind of serious. And you have to counter the seriousness with a bit of humour. And on this one I had to do that with the arrangements. And Drikus understood it. He did it really well. I love the job he did on it.”
Bleakness is usually not a great selling point.
“I don’t expect to sell thousands of copies. I like a song with a good tune, a good solid structure and interesting lyrics. Folk songs, that’s what I do. Anyone can play my songs. I learned to play the guitar to Koos Kombuis songs. He said he only know five chords, and I figured them out. I know a bit more than five now. But I have no ambition to become a jazz musician.”
Two songs (Dis Net Werk Toe Wat Ek Nog Deur Hillbrow Ry and Die Sprinkhane Se Begrafenis) are about people emigrating. Do you blame those who emigrate?
“No, I don’t. I can perfectly understand. It’s fine, as long as they can live with that decision.”
You sound sad.
“Well, it’s tough when your drummer emigrates to Canada, hahaha. I have a sister inAustralia and a drummer in Canada. But they both didn’t emigrate because of fear, but to live there with their partner. I also have a good friend in London. It impacts on your life, the fact that people make decisions about where they live.”
Which song was the hardest to do?
“Vernichtungsbefehl. It’s 12 minutes long. That was either going to be a roaring disaster or it was going to work. And I think it works. I changed the original poem around on order and I worked a bit more on rhyme. But generally it doesn’t rhyme, and it has a strange metre. It was a huge challenge. Also because the melody is repetitive. I never worked on melodic change. I sometimes do bridges. But that one has to roll, like a dune, it has to keep going. The variation is more in the rhythm. It works because it doesn’t bore me yet. I’m sure it will, but I can still listen to it. For me that’s the criteria.”
It’s based on a poem in your book Retoer. How did that poem come about?
“That’s the army. Ferdinand was with me in the army. He was one of my friends. The poem talks about Namibia and the Herero genocide and the Vernichtungsbefehl (the destruction order). We once drove through the desert and came across skeletons. It’s interesting how you bury a person in a dune and the dunes constantly move, and how the skeleton was arranged in a much longer pose. The feet come out first, and as the dune moves it leaves the skeleton almost strung out. That’s an image that stuck. The song is basically about what the dunes hide and what they reveal. And in the end it’s about die skuld van onskuld. If you go into the army you’re 19, 20 years old. You don’t really know what you do. That goes for the German troops who were there when they massacred the Herero. It’s the same for the South African soldiers who were there (during the Border War). That’s why they want them young. They follow commands and orders. That song has the most of me.”
Why did you choose that particular poem?
“Again, it’s a strong theme in my life: taking responsibilities for things that you did that you don’t maybe… (voice trails off). Look, also it’s an important balance. It’s the only song that really introduces a political theme, tired old South African politics. But I hope it doesn’t do it in a tired way. I have mixed feelings about the place, because it’s also where I had to face some… Let’s put it this way: I started to develop my own personality for the first time in my life there, in a very late stage. I was 19.”
Who was Ferdinand?
“A friend of mine who was also in the army, a bit older. He was a big influence in my life at that time. He had studied before joining the army. He was at a different place in his life and questioned things, whereas I as a youngster from school just accepted what people told me. So that’s part of the theme. The song also refers to his attempted suicide. He drove around with the hosepipe in the back of his car for the time when he had enough courage to do it. One evening he got enough courage and went to Lovers Hill in Walvis Bay. He parked the car and took out the hosepipe, but it was too short to reach out to back window, hahaha. So he told us about this the next morning at breakfast, and it was interesting to hear the responses. Someone said: but Ferdi you have a hatchback, why don’t you just put the hose into the hatchback? He hadn’t thought of that. Maybe that was the right response, that no-nonsense response. That was the end of the conversation about the attempted suicide. No, I’m no longer in touch with him. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
Tell me about the story behind Dis Net Werk Toe Wat Ek Nog Deur Hillbrow Ry.
“That was another commissioned one, for a show we did at the Nelspruit Arts Festival, a Kerkorrel tribute with Stef Bos, Amanda Strydom, Jan Blom, Valiant Swart and I.They all had songs about Kerkorrel, so I wrote that one and decided to do it about the Voëlvry Generation, about where we are now. I reference (Kerkorrel’s) DonkerDonker Land. He was very important, but not more than Koos. James Phillips was the first one really, with Hou My Vas Korporaal. He’s the original and he inspired Koos, who listened to Wie Is Bernoldus Niemand?, and then realised where he had to go. So James started the whole thing. Koos agrees with that.”
How did he react to your Hillbrow song?
“His first response was: heimelik es ik bly ek hoef nie door Hillbrow werk toe te ry. Hahaha.
Does it still evoke those feelings of melancholia and nostalgia when you drive there?
“Hillbrow is interesting these days. A lot of it is picking up and picking up really fast. There’s a lot of renovation going on. In fact the Chelasea Hotel has already been renovated, so the song is already dated. So the song a bit more swartgallig than reality. There’s also a tacky ending to the song, a naïve kwela that all these guys used to do in the 80s.”
How do you relate to the Voëlvry generation?
“Voëlvry was the first movement. A lot of people feel part of it, even though they didn’t play in a band. But they were there. It was a sort of collective ‘fuck you’ to the Botha’s. I was 19 when Voëlvry happened in 1989. I was in the army. I saw Bernoldus Niemand live, playing with Koos Kombuis, but I never met him. Kerkorrel moved into a different circuit when I met Koos and Valiant. [Brixton Moord en Roof Orkes] were the third wave, after Valiant and Joos Tonteldoos. I’m just a blip on the cultural scene.”
You’re so self-deprecating.
“No, honest. It’s not that I made a big impact music wise, people know me more as a newspaper columnist than a musician.”
What do you listen to these days for inspiration?
“I know it’s a cliché but still Leonard Cohen. I listened to New Skin For The Old Ceremony before I came here. I love girly backing vocals, especially with a boring voice like mine. You have to soup it up a bit.”
Leonard Cohen writes lots of love songs. There’s a lack of those on your album.
“My greatest fear is to be corny. I have tried, but I just abandon them. The love song is the most difficult one to write, especially in Afrikaans. That’s the strange thing about Afrikaans. English are more willing to be corny. Afrikaans comes across as soetsappig. It’s a gritty language and when you move away from that the contrast is just so stark.”
You now also study poetry at Stellenbosch University. How does writing song lyrics and writing poetry differ?
“I started writing poetry in order to get away from the discipline and the strong, fixed metre in writing lyrics. But there’s a bit of a snag there: if you do use metre in poetry it has to be more fixed there than in the song, because when you sing a song you can smuggle a bit with how you sing it. My approach to poetry is generally more free verse, so for me that’s an escape.”
Is there poetry in your lyrics?
“Die Sprinkhane Se Begrafnis is there purely for the line: ‘En die sprinkane hou begrafnis op my kar se voorste ruit, muggies as confetti vir die dood se bruid’. I was driving at night and stopped and wrote down the words. I often stop to write when I drive. Look, (he points at the lyric sheet, at the words of Hoëveld-Utopia), the same happened with Nigel and Balfour in winter, I love the highveld in winter. I so disagree with Toast (Coetzer, who wrote a song called The Highveld (Is A Shit Place To Be In Winter)). I hate the highveld in summer, I love it in winter, that’s when it’s beautiful, really really beautiful. The blue gums, the dry grass land, the broken fences, the smoke, the mine dumps. What more do you want? Fucking Table Mountain? I appreciate it when I see it as a desert. That smell of the veld fires. When you arrive from overseas and drive home from OR Tambo invariably there’s a veld fire that welcomes you back. That veld fire is home. Bleak? That’s who we are, a bloody mine town with poison in the soil.”
