Sugar Man :: Bigger than the King, Stones, Beatles & Batman

You’ve heard every story there is to tell? How about this one? A Swedish guy makes a documentary in 2012 about a 1970s folkster from Detroit who returns from obscurity after discovering that he has a large, devoted audience in South Africa. The film culminates in a cathartic 1998 concert marking the musician’s first significant performance in 27 years to an audience who thought that he had died. The film is critically acclaimed and makes big waves in the US and the UK but, and here’s the rub, nobody in South Africa knows that it exists.

The real magic of the Rodriguez “story” (which belongs to different a dimension to the content of his two albums, which I’ll cunningly abbreviate as Fact and Reality) is that it continues to deliver delicious ironies. As such, perhaps its fitting that the dramatisation of this story should see its SA “preview/première” in the margins of the Durban Film Festival after taking the rest of the world by storm. Nevertheless, that the story is being well received abroad is cause for celebration in South Africa insomuch as we're paying dues for 30 years of Cold Fact sales that didn’t include Roriguez in the value chain by playing a role in launching a music career that slid below the US stardom radar in the 1970s.

Truth be told, Rodriguez is currently on his third resurrection. The “Rodriguez Alive” tour in Australia (yes, they also thought he was dead) marked his first circa 1979 through 1981. The second began with the first appearance of Cold Fact on CD in South African in 1991, taking in the release of Coming from Reality (mistakenly identified as his lost debut) in 1996 and ending with his “Dead Man” tour in 1998. The trilogy concludes with the first CD release of Cold Fact in the US in 2008 and features the world première of Searching for Sugar Man at Sundance in January 2012, where it was quickly snapped up by Sony Pictures Classics. In short, there’s room for a prequel and a sequel. Any (more) musicologist detective (filmmakers) out there?

Oh, and by the way, the story of  the other “honorary” South African album, Paul Simon’s Graceland, also premièred at Sundance this year in the form of Under African Skies. As Cape Town vinyl expert Steven Segerman surmises, Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970),  which appeared about a month before Cold Fact and went on to become the world’s best-selling album for the next two years, was responsible for stealing the thunder from everything  that folk-rock dropped in its wake. Yet, 40-odd years down the line, Simon and Rodriguez share their stories on the same film festival platform with both Graceland and the Searching for Sugar Man Original Soundtrack rubbing elbows in the Sony Legacy Recordings catalogue. “These are the days of miracles and wonder” indeed, to quote the closing words of the Searching for Sugar Man trailer, which inadvertently quotes Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble” from Graceland. Just a weird song title randomly inspired by a trip to 1980s South Africa? Take another look at the cover of Cold Fact. Curiouser and curiouser.

At DIFF :: Searching for Sugar Man

Searching for Sugar Man | Malik Bendjellou | Sweden, United Kingdom | 2012 | 85min

Many attempts have been made to dramatise the incredible shift in global consciousness that came about when the Internet started performing its magic in the mid-90s; when we discovered ourselves across time and space and realised that we were seeing ourselves in each other’s songs; when fiction was replaced by facts that were better than fiction. Few of these attempts can match the true story of an artifact that lost contact with its mothership and was orphaned on a distant planet where it stirred and amused the locals and provoked fantasies about its unknown origin until a technology was devised that would open a line of contact with its creator and reconcile imagination with reality.

Distilled as such, Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man (2012) is a documentary about our addiction to stories and the deep satisfaction that narrative patterns and peculiarities provide. The music of Rodriguez forms the tingling spine of the film but its overarching genius lies in the fact that Sixto Rodriguez is the “MacGuffin” of his own tale and has little to add when the yarn finally catches up with him. Rodriguez occupies the eye of a storm of intrigue, commentary and enquiry and then lopes through the Detroit snow with his mystery as intact as the crystal-ball apparition on the cover of Cold Fact.

Searching for Sugar Man is a beautifully crafted and emotionally evocative addition to Rodriguez lore and one that, given its success at Sundance 2012, seems set to finally and deservedly embed Cold Fact and Coming from Reality (released on CD in the US for the first time in 2008 and 2009) in the consciousness of his homeland. In addition to introducing the songwriter’s three daughters, the film features Detroit and London collaborators as well as Cape Town’s Stephen Segerman, Mabu Vinyl purveyor of sonic delights and a key cog in the strange mechanism that brought Rodriguez back from the dead and onto a stage in Belleville in 1998.

Hilton Schilder & Friends :: Padskou Jam

Hilton Schilder and Bien Petersen with guest Tony Cedras at iBuyambo Music & Art Exhibition Centre in Cape Town. This jam combines cajon, bows, trumpet and voice and sees Schilder workshopping an experiment in what he describes as “single-string technology” for his Wikkelspies Padskou. Plans to take this travelling bow show on the road are being conceived and will include the unveiling of a new instrument designed by Petersen and Schilder dubbed the wikkelspies (or “shake-spear” as Schilder will cunningly translate its Afrikaans name).

At Encounters :: Under African Skies

Under African Skies | Joe Berlinger | USA | 2011 | 102min

Eminently likeable interviewees including Oprah Winfrey, Harry Belafonte, Quincy Jones, Whoopi Goldberg and David Byrne extol the virtues of Paul Simon’s landmark 1986 worldbeat classic Graceland while the diminutive songwriter assembles his even more endearing South African collaborators Ray Phiri, Bakithi Kumalo, Isaac Mtshali, Joseph Shabalala and Barney Rachabane (among others) for a 25th anniversary gig in Joburg that, apart from the 702 shout-out in the trailer above, happened seemingly as stealthily as Simon’s visit back in the 80s. At the heart of the film lies a congenial debate between Simon and former Artists Against Apartheid activist turned TV personality Dali Tambo concerning the sanctity of cultural sanctions in which Simon gibes the sanctimony of the ANC concerning politics and the arts by saying “you’re going fuck the artists like all kinds of governments.” Tambo, sporting Daliesque whiskers, holds the party line but instigates a conciliatory hug.

At Encounters :: The African Cypher

The African Cypher | Brian Little | South Africa | 2012 | 89min

“W-O-W!” It’s a line from the film and a fair description of what Brian Little has achieved with his sophomore feature-length documentary, The African Cypher. Like its predecessor Fokofpolisiekar: Forgive Them for They Know Not What They Do (2009), the film glazes its subject in hyper-realism and sees Fly on the Wall mapping out territory at the intersection of reality TV and creative documentary. The film is essentially a mix-tape of dynamic dance sequences filmed on location and bathed in epic audio that culminates in a televisual dance-off at the Red Bull Beat Battle. The narrative is driven by less remarkable interviews touching on identity/redemption/salvation through dance but pulls off a turn-around crescendo with a sublime scene that taps into the universal truth of friendship and loyalty. While the word “cypher” in the film’s title refers to a circle of dancers, it also speaks of our voyeuristic compulsion to posit meaning. Although the ethnographic dimension of The African Cypher expresses itself most openly through the director’s voice-overs, the film operates in documentary territory that is unashamedly less interested in observation than cultivated subjectivity.

At Encounters :: A Common Purpose

A Common Purpose | Mitzi Goldman | Australia | 2011 | 75min
 

 Andrea Durbach & Justice Bekebeke

It’s 1985 in a Northern Cape Town town made socio-political pressure-cooker. An “illegal” gathering meets bullish, trigger-happy police and mob violence sees 25 people collectively charged with the murder of a policeman. A Common Purpose is both a reunion narrative documenting lawyer Andrea Durbach’s return to South Africa (having emigrated to Australia) to visit former death row clients-cum-friends as well as a legal drama that exposes the Kafkaesque legislation of the times. The film follows the development of the case and, while pointing to the State’s myopic desire to quash dissent, acknowledges but steers clear of the ethical conundrum of mob or retributional violence. It also features an interview with journalist John Carlin, whose book about the 1995 Rugby World Cup sets the cynicism of “Upington 25” defendant turned Independent Electoral Commission officer, Justice Bekebeke, in contrast with Madiba’s crafty plans for national catharsis. Carlin’s Playing the Enemy (2008) was adapted for the screen in the form of Clint Eastwood’s Invictus (2009).

At Encounters :: Jumu’a | Port Nolloth

Jumu’a: The Gathering | Dylan Valley | South Africa | 2012 | 48min

Just when you thought you knew everything about Cape Town, along comes Dylan Valley with a story about a mosque established by a Scottish Shaykh and a community of Muslim hipsters who are into riding waves and drinking artesanal coffee. Jumu’a: The Gathering is not only a window into Muizenberg’s Murabitun community, touching on the characteristics that set it apart from how Islam is more broadly practiced in Cape Town, but also a meditation of the socially cohesive nature of faith communities and the importance of the support mechanisms they provide. What emerges is a picture of an inclusive Islamic movement with spiritual values and practices that are as ancient and universal as they are contemporary and idiosyncratic.

Port Nolloth: Between a Rock and a Hard Place | Felix Seuffert | South Africa | 2012 | 32min

It’s no surprise that the Port Nolloth would appeal to a filmmaker with the eye of a photographer. Hemmed between fierce Atlantic and arid hinterland while negotiating dense fog and endless open skies, the Northern Cape frontier town makes for a beguiling canvas. Yet Port Nolloth: Between a Rock and a Hard Place delivers more than just eye candy. And while the film’s three character sketches document the town’s peculiar infatuation with diamonds, a feeling of liminality pervades, speaking to themes like masculinity, wealth, status and our relationship to higher powers like corporations, God and fate.

At Encounters :: On the Edge | Between Heaven & Hell

On the Edge | Isy India Geronimo | South Africa | 2012 | 44min

An indictment of the way homeless people are treated by South African police, On the Edge confronts audiences with the unsettling reality of life of the streets of inner city Johannesburg. The film also underlines the vulnerability of disenfranchised foreigners to human-rights abuses and even sees filmmaker Isy India Geronimo, an American lawyer chosen for a clerkship at the South African Constitutional Court in 2011, being incarcerated on an immigration offence as retribution for bringing the police to task. Geronimo's personal narrative frames the film but her Constitutional Court experience and legal knowledge as well as her own experience of being an "outsider" in South Africa sadly remain on the margins. And while the film gives a voice to victims and advocates the support provided by NGOs and churches, the behaviour of the SAPS is passed off as the institutionalised legacy of the SAP.

Between Heaven & Hell | Clifford Bestall | South Africa | 2012 | 48min

In 1989, songwriter Johannes Kerkorrel implored listeners to give their hearts and uncertain futures to Hillbrow. If Between Heaven & Hell is anything to go by, these are the commodities that the notorious inner-city Johannesburg neighborhood is still trading on. Commissioned by Al Jazeera Witness, filmmaker Clifford Bestall's story is pivoted on a boxing gym, a former champ turned trainer living its basement, two women boxers under his wing and a night-club owner cast as fight promoter. And then there's Bernice, an elderly Jewish lady as tangentially connected to the narrative as she is to the people in her neighborhood. As the title suggests, Hillbrow emerges as a place of exile where survivors strive for the dangling carrot of deliverance.

Achmat Sabera :: Hand-Crafted Cape Instruments

Although artistic license renders Achmat Sabera as a youthful man sans spectacles and wispy grey beard, it is fitting that a craftsman who occupies the humble wings of Cape Town’s dazzling carnival should be inadvertently celebrated by our national postal service. Based on a photograph by John Edwin Mason, 2011’s “Ghoema Drum-Maker” postage stamp was part of a series exploring historic links between South Africa and Indonesia.

2010 and 2011 brought much due attention to Achmat Sabera and his craft. On the heels of appearing in Mason’s book of photographs and short essays entitled One Love Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival, Achmat Sabera was featured in Iziko’s Ghoema & Glitter: New Year Carnival in Cape Town exhibition at the Castle of Good Hope. He also shared his trade secrets on camera, directing the creators of the documentary film Mama Goema through a behind-the-scenes journey of the drum-making process.

Like the hand-crafted instruments he creates and services for discerning minstrels, Achmat Sabera is a Cape Town original. He has donated drums to Mac McKenzie’s Cape Town Goema Orchestra as well as multi-instrumentalist Hilton Schilder and welcomes their application in any musical pursuit. Like any old-school artisan, however, he isn’t inclined to dabble in the arena of modern communications and digital ditribution. Until he does, if you’d like to invest in a Sabera “gamie,” you'll have to climb into the Cape Town goema wormhole and follow your ears.

Derek Gripper :: One Night on Earth (2012)

In a culture bent on compartmentalising its musicians, guitarist Derek Gripper is a slippery character. Here’s a guy who understands that a pigeonhole is not an enclosure but rather a place that a bird comes back to when it’s not busy flying. And why not come back to it? After all, if you don’t understand how a box works, how can you possibly think outside it? And who said anything about coming back to the same box? And perhaps some strategic wall removals won’t bring the whole structure down. Or will they? I guess these are the risks one has to take to bottle the sound of water or catch fish in a tangled net.

Coming on the heels of 2011’s The Sound of Water, which the guitarist self-effacingly describes as an album “that didn’t win a SAMA award” while neglecting to claim kudos for its nomination, Derek Gripper launched One Night on Earth: Music from the Strings of Mali at the Old Slave Church (Long Street, Cape Town) on Saturday 12 May 2012. Both playful as well as poignant, Night on Earth sees the unprecedented “translation” of West African kora music to solo acoustic guitar and features the compositions of Mali’s legendary Toumani Diabaté, who performed at the same, sublime venue in 2009. The album also features compositions by fellow Malians Ali Farka Touré and Ballaké Sissoko as well as French cellist Vincent Ségal.

Although this thrilling and highly-accessible instrumental outing merits attention, Derek Gripper seems less concerned about courting mainstream criticism than using the democratic tools of new media to build a community around his innovations. Released on his home-spun label New Cape Records, Night on Earth forgoes hard copies in favour of digital distribution on a “name your price” basis. Moreover, downloadable guitar tablature scores are available on Derek Gripper’s personal website, which also provides other useful guitar resources and explains his Montessori-inspired method of guitar training. “The only difference between the music of Bach and the music of Toumani Diabaté,” writes open-source advocate Derek Gripper, “is that Toumani’s music does not exist in the type of score format that allows another musicians to actually play the music themselves.”

Photo (First Edition CD Album Art) © Bernard Descamps