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Madosini collaborates with The Buckfever Underground
Vicky Plum - 7 Nov 2007, 04:03
Editor rating: Seven

Last night I went to a very strange gig. Madosini, the Xhosa poet and traditional musician, was collaborating with The Buckfever Underground, Afrikaans and English rock/poetry band. It was all for a TV series called Headset* that brings together artists from very different backgrounds and documents the process of musical sharing that takes place. It is a great concept, but it was a real problem that the artists couldn’t speak each other’s language. They needed an interpreter on stage, and the musical communication didn’t really work. I did catch some moments that were beautiful, and some that were horrible. But more of the beautiful moments happened when the artists were playing separately (the gig was broken into two separate sets and one collaborative). That is not to say that crazy, unexpected collaborations can’t work: when they do it is a particularly special, beautiful thing to see. But artists need to be motivated by their own creative drive, not by a third party. They also need more time than the month allocated by Headset*. I’m sure that last night’s concert will make great touchy-touchy, feely-feely, happy-New-South-Africa TV, but the unedited version of the music shows that bridging cultural divides to create new sounds (and post-apartheid identities, which is what this kind of project is all about) is a long process and hard work, not something to be lightly undertaken for a half hour slot. That said: it was a brave undertaking, and the fact that all of the musicians were willing to step far out of their comfort zones says a lot about their courageous, artistic approach to cultural identity. I would love to see the commonalities between Afrikaans and Xhosa poetic musical forms explored in a more thorough, systematic way.