That was more or less what went through my mind as I strolled along the tree lined streets, past all the faux-French (and occasionally misspelled) culinary delights and saw the glowing faces of the Authors and the stiffly excited crowd of mainly middle-aged white women who were happy to meet heroes such as Barbara Trapido, Michiel Heyns, Etienne van Heerden, Mike Nicol, Tim Couzens and of course Zimbabwean writer Peter Godwin and Scottish author Janice Galloway.

It’s not yet in the same league as juskei, but somehow FLF conjured images of gents and ladies playing croquet, dignified yet archaic. Sure, there were attempts at something more hip and trendy. I saw Zapiro walking around, which usually means there is something about cartoons. One of the forums discussed our new mishmash language, labelled ‘lekker English’. And I attended a discussion loosely based around the question why young blacks don’t read (although the organisers were hesitant to phrase it like that and called it ‘Young, Black and Reading’), a hot topic that was fortified by the fact that there were no eager black kids in attendance. The participants talked excitedly about ‘R50 romances’ for the townships and Yoza.mobi short stories you can download through Mxit onto your cell phone. And if you comment on the story you will get free airtime. Wow. But will it promote a culture of reading? Somehow it sounded like that cunning theory that Sun readers will eventually pick up the Mail&Guardian.

There were sincere worries about a lowering of quality and standards. Whatever happened to the serious book review? The Sunday Independent doesn’t pay its reviewers anymore, so they’ve lost respected critics like Michiel Heyns, while Tymon Smith of The Times admitted that his paper prefers the ‘re-interview’ (a journalistic monstrosity that lives somewhere between uncritical review and shallow interview) to a thorough review. The virus also seems to be affecting the higher echelons of learning. As Stellenbosch University academic Leon de Kock wryly observed: ‘The UCT creative writing course has produced a lot of not so great books.’

Later I spoke with one of the ‘new black voices’ Sifiso Mzobe, who hails from Umlazi, quotes Salman Rushdie as his hero and has written Young Blood, a novel about car hijackers, which has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. So dire is the book situation in the townships that he sometimes stands on an Umlazi street corner to sell his books. So far he has sold about 150.

Hijackers, skop skiet en donner, romance, urban blight, science fiction, fantasy and horror, those seem to be the subgenres that might get young readers interested in books. But will they? And will they subsequently make the jump to the more demanding ‘literary’ works? ‘Kids don’t read’, said Mzobe. ‘Maybe they don’t have time, maybe it’s not cool.’

No time, not cool… In a recent interview with The Guardian English author Martin Amis noted that ‘the long read is a dying art’, because ‘there are so many claims on our attention. Very literate people admit they can’t read books any more. And just as the literate brain is physically different to the illiterate brain, the digitally savvy brain is different again. It’s a physiological change, not just a moral one.’

The digital age has given us excess of access, where the ‘desire’ to find anything tangible (a record, a book, a magazine) has been replaced with ‘drive’ to just keep going, to keep tweeting, blogging, uploading, surfing, downloading, facebooking, to keep on keeping on – a kind of addictive kill-time that has replaced the time consuming proper digestion of culture. As cultural theorist Simon Reynolds put it in June issue of Wire magazine: ‘More primal and basic than desire, drive is associated with repetition and regression: it’s not the quest for the (impossible) object that will fill lack, but a kind of enactment of loss itself.’

• Complete article at LitNet

This time was different. The request came from Boekehuis, that cosy little book shop in Auckland Park, Johannesburg. The sender explained that the ten year anniversary of Boekehuis would be celebrated with the publication of a book about Johannesburg. ‘Readers, dreamers, gold diggers and Joburgers’, we were all invited to submit a story, poem, essay or whatever that captivates our passion for the city. A panel of ‘experts’ would then choose whose contribution would qualify for publication.

Now apart from the question if the world is waiting for yet another work on Johannesburg, there were some bits in this request that made me raise my eyebrows. There was, for example, no mention of who these ‘experts’ are. There was no mention of who would publish this work. And there was no mention of any remuneration.

Since Boekehuis is part and parcel of Naspers, one would assume that Naspers will supply/appoint the experts and publish the book through one of its imprints. So far so good. But if this is indeed the case, why is there no indication of any kind of the fee for those lucky enough to have been selected for the end product, which, one assumes, will not be given away for free. Or does this mean that there’ll be no payment whatsoever? That the chosen ones must go on their knees and whisper ‘we’re not worthy, we’re not worthy’ and count themselves truly lucky to have been selected by this elusive panel of experts and to be part of this Joburg book?

Naspers, as we all know, is not some struggling independent publisher, but a gigantic commercial enterprise that owns numerous newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, on-line companies and has huge international interests – in China, Brazil and Russia to name but a few. So if they will indeed publish this ‘Ten Years Boekehuis’ book, why on earth would they not pay the contributors a decent fee?

And this raises some other pertinent matters – because Naspers/Boekehuis aren’t the only chancers. Half the world seems to think that writers and journalists do their trade as a hobby, that they all fall for the idea that ‘it is good for your name’ to be seen in this or that publication. Immortality guaranteed. Or as the editor of an academic book that used one of my pieces replied, when I asked about payment: ‘No, but you’ll be invited for international conferences.’ Yeah, right. Still waiting.

The writer, it seems, is seen as a friendly, generous and/or vain person with a well-paid job, who is happy to spend a few hours racking his/her brains and then typing it out, simply to hold the hard copy that contains his effort as a trophy. Either that, or he’s seen as a struggling loser who is so satisfied with his ‘bohemian’ (read: poor) lifestyle that he doesn’t care about money. So naturally he must do things for free.

Truth is that it’s this kind of attitude that is busy knocking writing back to the old days when it was a gentlemanly profession, with only the rich having the wherewithal to do it full-time; or a pleasant past-time for talented housewives with well-to-do husbands. A self-fulfilling prophecy if we, writers, poets, essayists, journalists, don’t learn to say ‘NO’, or ‘YES, BUT…’

Chislett himself would prefer the second depiction, because one of the reasons for him to publish this anthology, he stresses repeatedly, is that he’s eager to move away from the limiting label ‘music writer’.

“I do a lot more than that and always have’, he says in a coffee shop in Linden, not far from his flat. “I far rather have people know me as a writer who does music and other things as well. I’m interested in so many other crazy things that I don’t wanna get stuck as a music writer.”

Despite the typos and self-published look, the fifteen stories from A Body Remembered make for a riveting, if dark read. Chislett writes about desperate housewives and erotic fantasies with fatal endings; he describes Kafka-esque nightmares; he reworks myths and revels in twilight scenes and shady joints where anything can happen and nothing is strange.

Most of it is written from the point of view of various dispassionate characters whose interior monologues and streams of consciousness Chislett tries to capture in words. And although there’s very little music in the book, most of the stories do have a rock & roll feel, with lots of late night/early morning fatigue and emptiness. The overriding theme is that of people feeling trapped – in their body, in their mind, in their place of work, in their existence -, which makes it a rather bleak book for someone who comes across as jovial and gregarious and who goes out of his way to help others.

He laughs and emphasizes that the stories are not autobiographical. “But that disengagement is a function of me, as someone who grew up in a place and time where I’d never thought I’d fit. I grew up as a privileged white South African being told to fuck off and go home by Afrikaans kids because I wasn’t wanted. And I was exposed to that same mindset by black people when I went to university. Then I travelled back to England, where my family comes from, and realised that I didn’t fit there either because of me growing up here. So I came back to South Africa and tried to find a way of making myself belong.”

The waitress arrives with our coffee. Chislett takes a sip. “There’s a psycho-emotional component to this as well,” he continues. “I’m the youngest of five children, so I’ve always been on the fringes when I was growing up. As a social being I’m what I call a ‘satellite friend’. I don’t have one great group of mates that I’m the middle of. I have lots of groups that I rotate between. That disengagement is part of that.”

Some stories work better than others. The vacuous housewife in Maid of Honour is too clichéd to be gripping. As a reader you’re waiting for the twist, but it never comes. Chislett shrugs. “It’s about the role available to women, but also about the fuck up of living in the northern suburbs behind high walls. Her husband is as much a cliché as she is, working all the time, doesn’t give a shit about the kids. As you drive through those northern parts of Joburg, you wonder if these people who live there have an idea what complex to drive into, because they all look so identical. They are battery farms for yuppies. It’s disgusting architecture, not suited to our climatic conditions, poorly built on areas with no infrastructure. This is the ideal world that’s being sold to us. It’s what you must aspire to. That scares me a lot, because it’s turning our rainbow nation into a nation of grey people.’

Two stories are very different. Cerebus and Waiting for the God-Boat both have surprising religious overtones. One is about a priest who “acts as the guardian of a hell hole”, in this case a shopping mall. The other is about a priest waiting to die. These sacrosanct references sound strange coming from someone who is a self-confessed anarchist.

“I grew up in a fairly religious household”, explains Chislett. “My mother is still a firm church goer and I became a server. I got confirmed, Anglican. Then I went to high school and discovered rock and roll and walked away form all of that and never looked back. I spent three years studying philosophy at university and got very interested in counter culture and literary anti-social activities and thoughts. But one of the things I do like to do is play with myth and meaning. There’s a lot of mythology that I rework, but I don’t always use mythological identifiers. In those two cases I’ve used Christian religious ones instead.’

So he lost his religion. And a couple of years ago Chislett also lost his belief in the irreverent alternative lifestyle as an engine for change. “I no longer believe in the rock and roll dream or that being a anti-social outcast is having any kind of effect and would change anything for the better,” says the man whose occasional leather jacket and huge tattoos serve as signifiers of his punky past. “Commercial culture has way too efficiently subsumed and absorbed youth culture for that to ever be the case. The revolution did never happen. The hippies never took over the world, the punks never did.”

He admits that ‘the underground man’ is actually just as boring and stuck in his ways as your average office clerk or suburban housewife. All of whom feature in his stories, and all of whom seem equally unhappy. It’s all about living the lie, says Chislett. “Being a punk or a yuppie or whatever, is fundamentally underpinned by a series of lies that suit other people and not you. And by adhering strictly to a punk or alternative lifestyle you’re buying a series of stories that are no more true than any other story. So yes, there is a lot of disillusionment in there, even in the ones that do resonate with my lifestyle, because I no longer belief in those things.”

So what does he believe in? He orders another coffee, thinks for a while and harks back to the interbellum when French authors Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre were the rage and wrote masterpieces such as The Plague and Nausea. “I guess if you’d call me anything, you’d call me an existentialist. I don’t believe there is an inherent meaning out there. And if one’s actions are not designed to give meaning, existence can be completely meaningless. Look at modern life: if they’re not drugging yourself with tv, drugs, alcohol or extreme sex most people live lives that are very mundane. A lot of stories toy with those ideas. It’s about western civilisation. We’ve divorced out intellect from our spirituality and physicality to such an extend that many people seem to inhabit either one or other of those things and are bad at reconciling the three.”

Reading those dystopian stories and hearing Chislett talk leaves you with slightly weary feeling. Here’s this relatively young writer, someone who once believed in alternative rock as a unifying force, someone who still has a lot of belief in the country, someone who is always full of ideas, energy and plans for the future. And yet he comes out with a collection that paints a decidedly detached, pessimistic picture of human kind.

He nods. ‘My message is not about belonging to anything like this at all, but much more about the pursuit of personal meaning.’

“Sjoe,” I say.

“Yeah, hahaha,” he laughs.

CV

1970 Born in Johannesburg

1991 Plays bass guitar for punk band The General Woodheads

1994 Freelance journalist for print, tv and radio

1994 Moves to the UK

1997 Client liaison officer for ESPN Legends

1998 Moves to Cape Town

1998 Wins Ernst Van Heerden Creative Writing Award for short story: Pinstripe Punk

1999 Web editor for iafrica

2000 Web editor M-Web

2001 Launches Urban 1, short stories by unpublished SA writers

2002 Marketing communications manager New Africa Books

2002 Launches Urban 2

2003 Project manager The Cake Group in London

2003 Launches Urban 3

2004 Senior accounts manager Adele Lucas Promotions

2005 Senior manager for PR bureau DCPM

2009 Publishes A Body Remembered (Ge’ko)

Heroes/influences

Henry Rollins: “Never gave up, never sold out. Changed his game to go with the times. What energy and power!”; David Bowie: “The ultimate chameleon and trend setter.” Ian Banks: “The man is a writing machine!” Philip K Dick: “Sci fi of the interior!” Martin Amis: “Who said post modern literature couldn’t be popular?” TS Elliot: “A master of words and deeper meanings.”

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• A Body Remembered by David Chislett
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  EAN: 9780981441009
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Wits academic Michael Titlestad (1964) grew up in Verwoerdburg. His Afrikaans teacher, meester Grobbelaar, did something unusual: he made the boys read Breytenbach’s poetry. “The shock of those surreal texts in Verwoerdburg with its military base! It had an enormous impact.”

Young Breyten grew up in rural Western Cape. In 1960, he packed his bags and boarded a Portuguese ship that took him as a fourth class passenger to Europe, where he ended up in bohemian Paris. Life there, I suggest, must have been an epiphany for a young artist whose encounters with la vie bohème had been restricted to Cape Town.

South Africa’s most important living poet started his artistic life fifty years ago –as a painter. “Painting taught me about the physical importance of texture, colours, silences, resonance, patterns, structure and perspective, synchronism and dissonance… of words. It made me aware of the materiality of the medium. On top of that, many of my poems are just little pictures. Painting continues to inform my approach,” explains Breytenbach in an email.

“Epiphany? Maybe,” muses Breytenbach. “Youth is always the high point of ecstasy, no? Yes, I certainly bathed in the general atmosphere of Paris as movable feast and laboratory of inventiveness, experimentalism, transgression, new thinking (with Camus probably finally more influential than Sartre) – and all of these linked to avant-guard political internationalism and to theories of transformation. We were poor but happy (to quote Hemingway.) It was a true privilege to walk the same streets and drink in the same bars as Beckett and Giacometti and Ionesco, to count among one’s friends artists and writers and runaways from Russia and Argentina and Mexico and Cuba and Morocco and Mali and Holland and Denmark and Brazil and, and…”

• Complete profile at my homepage

But nonetheless, it is an exciting city, built from a mineworkers camp a little more than 100 years ago. It’s never dull, always changing, eternally edgy. And, as artist William Kentridge recently remarked: it may not have impressive churches or palaces (or even a great, accessible museum), it does have its summer cathedrals of huge storm clouds and spectacular lightning.

Anyway, one of the books that came out recently is Johannesburg; The Elusive Metropolis (Wits University Press), edited by Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe. A lot of it is quite theoretical and academic. But fortunately it also contains chapters that are lively reportage, written by local luminaries such as the late John Matshikiza, Mark Gevisser and yours truly.

My contribution is about that ghastly phenomenon that has all but killed street life: the shopping mall. Get lost in Sandton City and get disgusted by all the new developments in Honeydew.

Anyway, read it, and ask yourself the question: how is Joburg going to deal with the influx of thousands and thousands of football fans when fifteen World Cup matches will be held here in June/July 2010, including the opening ceremony and the final?

FOCUS ON KOOS KOMBUIS by FRED DE VRIES

Last year Koos Kombuis recorded an album of furious protest songs called Bloedrivier. It contained fist-in-the-air rock anthems such as Die Fokol Song and Reconciliation Day about the murder of his friend Taliep Pietersen.

The album was conceived during those gloomy pre-Polokwane days. As Kombuis recalls: “The songs were written when Mbeki started propping up Mugabe and going for third term of leadership of ANC. I was starting to think: oooh, this is looking very dark. I began to feel quite racist. Every time I saw blacks on the street I thought: why can’t you vote for someone else, dammit.”

He touched a raw nerve; Bloedrivier with its loud guitars and thundering choruses became the best selling album of his career, which spans more than twenty years. “I got pretty big cheques and we paid off our house loan, almost all of it,” he says, grinning at the paradox of turning rebellion into money.

This house, where he lives with his wife, two kids and dog Griet, stands on the outskirts of Sommerset West. Or as he explains in an email with directions: “The very last street of the very last suburb where the very last Voëlvry survivor lives…” He goes on to describe the house as “a mock Tuscan double-storey, and you might get barked at by a very stupid but perfectly pedigreed Boxer dog who sometimes responds to the name of Griet.” The mail ends with: “Welcome to my world!”

The world of Koos Kombuis is a very peculiar one. His history as an Afrikaans icon is long and winding, and includes school rebellion, drugs, soul searching, journalism, more drugs, girlfriends, more soul searching, electro shock therapy and a stay in Ward 6 of the Weskoppies mental hospital.

But interesting enough, it was his stint in the army that was his real epiphany. It opened his eyes to a different world, one beyond suffocating Calvinism and dysfunctional families. “Suddenly I would sleep next to a bed with a Portuguese guy and then a soutie and then someone else, rich and poor, all together. I loved that. I thrived on that deurmekaarigheid. I thought: this is how it should be.”

In the 80s he started strumming his guitar, learned a few chords and composed touching, often satiric songs such as Boer in beton which appeared on the 1987 cassette Ver van die ou Kalahari. Not much later he met like minded musicians Ralph Rabie (Johannes Kerkorrel) and James Phillips (Bernoldus Niemand). Together they embarked on the seminal Voëlvry tour in 1989. When the whole thing imploded due to conflicting ego’s, debauchery and exhaustion Koos became an endearing alternative Afrikaner troubadour, a true bohemian with a pocketful of songs and a sweetheart in every town.

For a long time it seemed he would be the first of the Voëlvry guys to collapse under the self-destructive lifestyle. Instead, James Phillips died in 1995 in a car crash and Kerkorrel committed suicide in 2002. Koos, meanwhile, cleaned up his act, found a caring wife and made fame as a folkie, a gifted writer and a sharp columnist, finally finding solace in suburbia.

Well over fifty, he was tired of kombies, drugs and dirty socks. He had paid his dues. And then, all of sudden there was this return to angry rock. First he and his band played Oppikoppi and drew a bigger crowd than the Violent Femmes. Next he received a loan from his friend Dutch singer Stef Bos to record the album. He got his old buddy bassist/arranger Schalk Joubert in, and the process began.

“We went to the studio and all sorts of people just phoned and said: I heard you’re doing a CD, can I be part of it, I’ll do it for free or for very cheep. Next moment all these huge names in the studio, even Anton Goosen.”

The title raised a few eyebrows. Bloedrivier… Was Koos, the affable vagabond going the same nationalist route as Bok van Blerk with De La Rey or Deon Opperman with his play Ons vir jou, appealing to the Afrikaner laager mentality? “I was terrified of that,” he says. So what he did was make a distinctly multi-racial video for Reconciliation Day and start an on-line war with Deon Opperman. “I thought: this is the ideal opportunity, let’s stage a fight with this guy. Because in the public eye they will see me as separate from him. It was perfect. The right wingers didn’t go for it.”

Still, the title is rather ambiguous. He nods. “I’m not an Afrikaner, but I am Afrikaans speaking, and the history of the Afrikaner is my history. But obviously I see what happened at Bloedrivier in a very different way. I see it as a lot of violence and I see it as a misunderstanding between Dingaan and Retief. A big tragedy. I don’t see it as God making us win and all that crap. But it’s part of the history and a powerful symbol. I saw it as about the water being dirty, the pollution, the violence and all the crime. It was a perfect metaphor. But it was dangerous because I didn’t want it to be: grrr, fok julle, ons is blankes. So I picked the fight with Opperman, and it worked: intelligent people bought the CD.”

Afrikaners and Afrikaanses. Two years ago Koos wrote a column for Rapport in which he gave up his Afrikanerdom. “So many people hated me for that. I betrayed die volk. But I found it hard to live with the word Afrikaner. I don’t like the fact that when you speak a certain language you should have all this cultural baggage. I know that for traditional Afrikaners it’s not just speaking Afrikaans: you’re white, you like rugby and you go to this church and you abuse your children in some way, hahaha. I love the language. I have spoken it all my life. But when I think of who my real friends are, they’re people like Taliep, people outside the fold, urbanised people. The fact that I’m white or Afrikaans is very low on my list of priorities.”

Even though much of the anger he felt last year has evaporated (“The other day I almost bought an ANC T-shirt, coz I really like and trust some of these new guys.”), the making of the album, the fulmination against ANC’s arrogance, has had a cleansing effect on Kombuis. He got rid of the guilt and the liberal knee-jerk of “I’m so sorry I’m white”.

“You mustn’t put black people on a pedestal. Because then, when they disappoint you, you become more racist than you would’ve been. And for a while this was happening in my head, even while I was doing this recording, trying to understand my anger. Afterwards it sort of righted itself, and I realized it’s not an issue anymore. Before I used to overcompensate. I’ve stopped doing that. Which is a relief.”

An example? “Like there’s a black beggar who comes at my door. I’ve been helping him to get a job. At one stage I caught him lying to me. I got him a job and he never pitched. I was so angry at him. I scolded him. And I felt so relieved. Hier die ou is ’n doos. When I was shouting at him I told him: ek is nie ’n fokken racist nie, maar jy het my teleurgestel, don’t come back. And it was like: ha, I’m free. It became just a guy, not a black or white guy.”

CV

1954 Born in Cape Town as André le Roux du Toit

1958 First manuscript rejected

1959 Expelled from nursery school

1960 Sabbatical

1961 Starts school

1964 Discovers the Beatles

1971 Conversion to Christianity

1973 Conscripted

1974 Wanders around Joburg, doing odd jobs

1977 Sent to Weskoppies mental hospital

1978 Looses virginity

1979 Conversion to spiritualism

1980 Conversion to Judaism, rejected by synagogue

1981 Starts writing career (short stories for Huisgenoot) from Long Street brothel

1982 Publishes Suburbia

1987 Releases Ver van die ou Kalahari as André Letoit

1989 Voëlvry Tour

1990 Releases Niemandsland as Koos Kombuis

1990 Conversion to Rastafarianism

1993 Gives up hard drugs

1997 Falls in love, settles down

2000 First child born (not counting those out of wedlock)

2000 Publishes autobiography Seks & drugs & boeremusiek

2002 Second child born

2004 Conversion to humanism

2008 Releases Bloedrivier

Heroes/influences:

Johannes Kerkorrel, because he was the reluctant Messiah of Afrikaans rock; Jesus, because unlike Zuma, he never sued anybody; Hugh Hefner (Playboy editor-in-chief), who has shown immense courage by trying to live with three blonde women simultaneously. No sane man would attempt such a feat; My wife, Kannetjie. She is my inspiration, my best friend and my life coach. And she got me out of jail last November.

The editor of Huisgenoot (Esmaré Weideman) -she is nice person with a great sense of humour, but she is also tough as nails… Steve [Hofmeyr] certainly made the biggest mistake of his life when he took her on (he threw a cup of tea in her face).

Photo courtesy Christine van der Merwe

Therefore this year a Top 11 that doesn’t just include albums, but also single tracks, ex aequo’s, books and blogs. And some are certainly not form 2008, but are somehow linked to the year, with ample space for women and psychedelica.

Here it is – in no particular order – my top 11 for 2008 – for what it’s worth…

1) Shannon McArdle – Summer Of The whore (Bar None Records). Great title, great break-up album. Shannon McArdle was one of the singers and songwriters of the indie band Mendoza Line, who split after making the excellent, depressing 30 Year Low. At the same time her relationship with Mendoza’s other songwriter Timothy Bracey broke down. Summer Of The Whore recounts that painful break-up. Musically it’s a more laid-back affair than the Mendoza’s, while the lyrics verge between angry, bitter, sad and relief. Fave tracks: That Night In June and He Was Gone.

2) Pink Floyd – Echoes (from the album Meddle (Harvest)). I’ve never been a huge fan of post Syd Barrett Pink Floyd, and from Animals onwards I found them increasing dull. But some of the work has certainly stood the test of time. And when I heard that keyboard player Richard Wright had died this year I played Meddle again. Wright was responsible for much of the beautifully melancholic Echoes, which covers most of side B. And what a great, simple signature he left behind with that “ping” right at the start.

3) Cat Power – Jukebox (Matador). The Guardian predicted that 2009 will be the year of female musicians and the end of indie boy bands. They added that there is especially a future for electronic female pop. Maybe that’s something Chan Marshall aka Cat Power now also should try her hands at. After all she has worked with Faithless and El-P. Her latest album Jukebox was a kind of sophisticated extension of The Covers Album from 2000. Once more she managed to make other people’s songs her own, but Jukebox lacked something as unexpected as the Stones cover (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction or something as exquisite as the Moby Grape tribute Naked If I Want To. Lovely album nonetheless. Fave track: New York, New York.

4) Michael Bracewell – Re-Make/Re-Model; Art, Pop, Fashion and the Making of Roxy Music, 1953-1972 (faber and faber, ISBN 978-0-571-22985-7). This is the story behind one of the greatest debut albums of all time. It describes in great detail the context and environment that led to the formation of Roxy Music and the recording of that sublime eponymous LP. Some critics found Bracewell’s style and unusual eye for detail (read his description of The Marcus Price shop, Newcastle’s only trendy clothing store in the early 60s) too much. I loved it, and took out that 1972 Roxy Music album to play it again and again and again. Fave track: If There Is Something.

5) Sticky Antlers – Sticky Antlers (KRNGY). Although the new Jim Neversink album still hasn’t been officially released, South Africa had plenty of interesting releases this year, especially by Afrikaans musicians such as Battery 9 and Bittervrug. But biggest kudos to the Sticky Antlers, who are part of a Pretoria collective. They started out as an improv band and crystallized into a proper fearsome lo fi noise-band that draws from outsider art, comix, underground films, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey and The Boredoms. They’ve released numerous home-made CD-Rs on their independent KRNGY-label. Their first full length album comes with an exquisite hand made cover. The sound is distorted and haunting, occasionally verging on the hysterical. Read more about them on www.myspace.com/stickyantlers Fave track: Company

6) Ex aequo: Drive-By Truckers – Brighter Than Creation’s Dark and The Dexateens – Lost And Found. Southern rock continued its survival long after the heady days of €€Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers, thanks to efforts by the Drive-By Truckers and the Dexateens. Brighter Than Creation’s Dark is easily the best Drive-By’s album since they started in 1996. In vinyl terms it would have been a double album. Nineteen compassionate tales of losers and no hopers captured the spirit of 2008 more than anything else. Fave track: Two Daughters And A Beautiful Wife. The Dexateens started out as a bunch of southern punks, but have developed over the years into a semi-acoustic alt.country outfit that makes great use of dual vocal harmonies. Their Lost And Found can be downloaded for free (or whatever you want to pay) from www.skybucket.com/media/dexateens/. Fave track: Altar Blues.

7) Paul Westerberg – 49:00. Now this is a real odd one. The former Replacement released this as one mp3, which was to be downloaded from Amazon, and would cost a mere $ 0,49. Which was great value for 43:55 minutes of music. Amazon, however, soon removed the mp3 from its list of downloadables, allegedly because of copyright issues (there is a weird bit at the end where Westerberg does a medley of old songs). So by the time I heard about this album I had to track it down on blogs. Eventually I found it, downloaded it and when I played it I thought something had gone wrong during the downloading. The first couple of songs sound ok, but then you get snatches of compositions and you hear different songs playing simultaneously. Some tracks break off in what seems to be the middle, and others start way past their intro. From various reviews I learned that it was all intentional. All in all a great, messy, ADHD piece of music. And there’s more self-released Westerberg stuff on the net, like the missing minutes of 49:00 on a track called 5:05 and Bored Of Edukation. Go and find it…

8 ) Hari Kunzru – My Revolutions (Penguin paperback, ISBN 9780141020204). This book was inspired by the Angry Brigade, London’s late 60s answer to the Rote Armee Faktion. The book traces the life of a 50-year old radical turned terrorist turned junkie turned incognito bourgeois husband. An exciting, entertaining novel that should be read while playing Pink Fairies and Hawkwind, and that somehow reminded me a lot of the founder of anarcho punk band Crass, Penny Rimbaud.

9) We Have No Zen (http://wehavenozen.blogspot.com/). I stumbled upon this blogspot after reading a piece in The Wire about an ultra obscure psychedelic noise Japanese band called Les Rallizes Dénudés. They were especially active in the late 60s and 70s, and apparently there were links with the people who hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 351 in 1970, orchestrated by the Red Army. Which is quite beyond the realm of normal rock and roll. Anyway, We Have No Zen not only had lots of Les Rallizes Dénudés music, but also tons of other equally extremely obscure music, all there to download for free (and some to buy). A superb blogspot!

10) Ex aequo Various artists – Summer And Smiles From Finland (Fonal Records) and Sprengjuhöllin – Sprengjuhöllin. I know, I know, Summer and Smiles From Finland is from 2005, but I only discovered it this year. With the dreary muzak of Coldplay and the trusted sounds of Oasis, Metallica and AC/DC topping the charts, one has to look beyond the English speaking world for interesting music. So after reading a small article about Finnish band Paavoharju and the Fonal label I searched for them on eMusic and found an introduction to Finnish music, a compilation called Summer and Smiles From Finland. I duly downloaded it and have enjoyed tremendously ever since. It’s weird and wicked, freaky music, uncategorizable. Fave track Nina olen, Palasina. And there’s so much more out there up north. Check out the Icelandic mods of Sprengjuhöllin, whose self-titled album almost makes up for the disappointing new Okkervil River album and the lack of Kinks/Ray Davies material this year. Fave track: Worry ’til Spring.

11) Finally a big chapeau for The Pavement Special, a live music/magazine/CD initiative which was started in 2007 by South African journalist Lloyd Gedye and designer Michael MacGarry. The third issue of TPS was launched in December, and the accompanying CD with tracks by tracks by Sticky Antlers, Blk Jks, Buckfever Underground, Cutout Collective, kidofdoom, Jacob Israel, Gazelle and Tale of the Son, gives a prefect overview what’s happening left of dial. www.pavementspecial.com

PS Oh, and I completely forgot to say what a great album Japanese band Boris made with Smile (Southern Lord), a perfect mix of noise, melody and drone, a kind of Blue Cheer for the new century. And also forgot to mention how much I enjoyed the Dylan movie I’m Not There and the Joy Division documentary and the Ian Curtis film Control. So that would make it a Top 13 or a Top 14 even…

First published on FreddeVries.co.za

But Nuruddin’s father, a merchant, was a stubborn fellow. He invited teachers from other parts of Somalia to set up schools in Kallafo. Hence, for a while young Nuruddin visited an American mission school in the morning and an Arabic school in the afternoon.

Because Nuruddin spoke Somali, English and Arabic he was often asked for wordy assistance. “At the age of ten, eleven I started a business in writing, where I would charge people to write letters for them,” says Farah in his Cape Town apartment.

“One day a man came and told me his wife had run away, and he was threatening her that if she did not come back in three months he would go to the town where she was, beat her up and then drag her all the way to Kallafo.” Cheeky Nuruddin changed that threat into: “If you don’t come back in three months you may see yourself divorced.”

The woman received the letter and showed it to her brothers. They took it to the local judge, who declared them divorced.

Farah recounts this anecdote to illustrate how he became aware of “the power of the word” and why he wanted to become a writer. “From then on it was a question of ability: could I or could I not?”

But the anecdote exemplifies more. It gives an idea of how Farah developed a sense of justice early in life. It shows how he became aware of the fate of women. And it hints at an early longing for cosmopolitism, a refusal to succumb to the dogma of one language, one religion, one culture.

This strong desire for cosmopolitanism, that cacophony of voices and opinions, resonates during our three hour interview – from the moment he shows me the views from his apartment in Rondebosch. There’s Table Mountain. That’s the university. André Brink lives down there. That’s where JM Coetzee used to live. Later he talks about his watered down friendship with Salman Rushdie, another literary master in exile.

But where Rushdie surrounds himself with supermodels and glamour, Farah, wearing jeans and takkies, epitomises ascetism. His basic apartment used to be his office, but after his wife and children moved to the United States it has also become his living space. It’s like a cabin where he spends ten hours a day writing and reading. Sometimes, when he’s working on the final draft of his manuscript, he goes “into hiding” here. He gets his food delivered and works obsessively. Yes, totally anti-social.

He’s moved to Cape Town in 1998. Remarkable, I say, that he feels so at home here. After all the city is often seen as a last vestige of apartheid. Farah shakes his head. “Cape Town isn’t false, it’s true to itself. It has been like this for centuries, it’s the ‘mother city’, a cosmopolitan city. And cosmopolitans embody a certain mix of tolerance and intolerance. Everybody locks themselves in their apartments. If I meet people from this building in the corridor I say hello, but I have not set foot inside their apartment. If we meet we tolerate each other. But if anyone goes beyond a certain line I remind them: this is my space.”

When I mention the often lethal attacks on Somalis in South African townships he’s remarkably nuanced. “People forget that ten, fifteen years after independence these things happen in every country where the government doesn’t fulfill its promises. The people who are ill informed about the politics of their own country need to take it out on others. The foreigner is usually the scapegoat. And I would add: more South Africans have suffered from township violence than Zimbabweans or Somalis

“I would blame the government for not doing something quickly enough. I also blame the Somalis, who went into the hyena’s mouth, for not knowing what they were doing. Many are ill-educated and have left Somalia for the first time. They went in, assuming erroneously that they were protected by the fact that they did good business with these people.”

Farah loves to talk and debate. But first and foremost he’s a formidable writer, with nine novels and several plays to his name. His singular subject is Somalia, that godforsaken country in the Horn of Africa. In 1974 Farah was forced to go into exile, to avoid arrest for treason after writing slightly subversive things. He subsequently lived in Europe, America and half a dozen African countries. Meanwhile, in 1991 a civil war had erupted in Somalia, after which the country would become known as a ‘failed state’ where the charred bodies of American soldiers were paraded through the streets and pirates rule the waves.

Farah has made it his task to “keep the country alive by writing about it”. His style is idiosyncratic, full of parables, myths and metaphors. Some critics have been irked by the slowness and the detours, which sometimes reduces the narrative to a trickle. Others think it’s a pity that he writes in English, since it’s not his first language.

Farah, who in 1998 won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature and whose debut From a crooked rib is a Penguin Classic, shrugs. ‘People would say that. They’re open to their opinion. In Somali we say: a hunchback will eventually get used to his discomfort. So even though English was my fourth language I got used to its discomforts to make it work for me.”

He asks me to imagine putting long passages by William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway next to each other. Yes, everyone will immediately recognise the awkward Faulkner. “Every time a new voice emerges it would use language in a different way. Someone who’s ‘original’ would take you a very long time to get used to.”

He’s now working on the third part of his third trilogy. His oeuvre can be read as a reconstruction of the collapse of individual and the nation. It’s an attempt to capture the complexities of Somalia, to show that there’s much more at stake than the media-friendly simplification of a struggle between clans. The problems are rooted in the colonial past, the patriarchic society, the lack of education, the arrival of Islam and the character of the Somalis. “They are a very self destructive kind of engine, full of gumption and movement. And the movement is not necessarily positive all the time. Not all of it is healthy.”

• Complete interview, plus CV, on Freddevries.co.za

“The last one?! Really? Why?” she exclaims. And when I tell her why, she shakes her head in disbelief and argues: “You’re the first who says he doesn’t like the story. My two favourites are the title story and that one! For me that story was necessary, and one of the hardest to write. It has a character dying and a character based on somebody I know very well. It can be read at many different levels.”

Madness is the main theme that connects Brümmer’s collection of short stories based on someone called Mia coming of age. Madness runs through Mia’s family. It’s a genetic thing, and Mia, a vulnerable girl who cannot keep boyfriends, is scared that she also carries the dreaded gene.

After Brümmer had walked into the Cape Town restaurant where we meet for the interview I couldn’t help but look for similarities between Mia and Willemien. The first thing that struck me was her long, thin fingers, double jointed, just like Mia’s. Additionally there’s an awkwardness; an almost cramped grimace when she tries to convey something that’s really important to her and she can’t find the right words. She often resorts to Afrikaans.

Brümmer loves walking the thin line between fiction and reality. She knows people will start looking for references to her great grandfather C.J. Langenhoven, the Afrikaans author who in 1918 wrote the words to Die Stem.

“He’s this cultural icon among Afrikaners,” she says. “They really like him, for what he did for Afrikaans. I’m very interested in Langenhoven as well, but for very different reasons. I’m interested in my family history and the very dark side of Langenhoven. He’s a perfect example of what people do when they’re bipolar.

“Langenhoven would have these patterns where he would work and work really hard. He’d write a book in one go, on a manic hype. He wouldn’t sleep, just drink cup after cup of coffee. And when he was finished he’d literary crash and start drinking, so bad that he went to the liquor stores and said: please place a prohibition on Langenhoven. And when he came down to Cape Town – he was a parliamentarian – the people who’d come and fetch him from the train would be called die draers, the carriers, because he’d be so drunk that he literary couldn’t walk. That was the kind of life he lived.”

With a touch of mischief she adds that as a teenager in Hoërschool Groote-Schuur she, despite her shyness, refused to stand up when they played the national anthem. “Because I felt in those days (the late eighties) you couldn’t sing Ons sal lewe ons sal sterwe ons vir jou Suid-Afrika.”

• Complete profile and CV at FreddeVries.co.za

http://www.insig.com/nuus/nuus_artikel.asp?iID=69

Or, if you don’t want to click, see below

Die Fred de Vries-onderhoude: tussen die mark en integriteit
Uittreksels | September 2008

Newtown is die hart van Johannesburg. Dis hier waar die Markteater is. Net om die hoek was die Vrye Weekblad se kantore. Deesdae dien die gebou as die hoofkantoor van die National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. In die oudae het ’n mens ’n bier by die Yard of Ale kom drink. As die partytjie rof geraak het, het jy om die hoek geloop na ’n hotel toe waarvan ek die naam nou vergeet het. Die hotel se kroeg het meer soos ’n sjebien gevoel. Op die een balkon kon ’n mens deur die gapings tussen geboue kyk hoe die son in Fordsburg se rigting ondergaan.

Ek onthou nou nog vaagweg ’n oomblik, dit moes in 1990 gewees het; ek staan op hierdie balkon met die soveelste bier in my vuis, ’n oomblik van stilte, alhoewel die musiek deur die betonvloer dreun. Soms is daar sulke oomblikke in jou lewe wanneer niks eintlik gebeur nie, maar ’n mens het ’n gewaarwording van iets – ’n gevoel, ’n atmosfeer, ’n keerpunt wat nie met bulderende trompette of wapperende vlae aangekondig word nie.

Ek is pas uit die weermag en Nelson Mandela is pas uit die tronk. Die Voëlvrytoer is pas verby. Sal dit heeltemal te melodramaties klink as ek sê dit was ’n duiselingwekkende gevoel van vryheid? Dalk was ek net ’n bietjie aangeklam. Tog is dit vreemd hoe ’n mens jou identiteit aan plekke kan koppel. Vir my het Newtown dus ’n sekere gevoelswaarde.
En hier sit ek nou, amper twintig jaar later, weer in Newtown. “So, wat is jou geheim?” wil ek by die Nederlandse joernalis en skrywer Fred de Vries weet. Ons sit in die restaurant Gramadoelas en praat oor sy jongste boek The Fred de Vries Interviews: From Abdullah to Zille. Fred se veronderstelling is dat elke mens ’n geheim het; iets wat jou ’n sleutel tot die persoon se benadering tot die lewe gee. Die doel van ’n onderhoud is om daardie geheim te ontbloot.

Só maklik gaan Fred my egter nie laat wegkom nie. Die restaurant, wat gewoonlik op ’n weeksaand nogal stil is, is vanaand besonder rumoerig. ’n Groot groep Amerikaners sit skuins agter ons en praat terwyl hulle kou. Dis nie ideale omstandighede vir ’n onderhoud met ’n gesoute onderhoudvoerder nie.
Die bundel bevat 39 onderhoude met mense soos die jazz-maestro Abdullah Ibrahim tot Helen Zille. Maar benewens ’n aantal bekende name word die boek eintlik gekenmerk deur ’n seleksie van mense wat gewoonlik onder die radars van die hoofstroommedia beweeg. Jy ontmoet musikante, skrywers, beeldende kunstenaars en allerlei kulturele aktiviste. Die meerderheid van die onderhoude is voorheen in The Weekender gepubliseer.

Die feit dat Fred Afrikaans verstaan maak dat Afrikaanssprekende persoonlikhede nogal prominent in die bundel is. Hulle oordonder egter nie die landskap, soos die geval in soveel Afrikaanse publikasies is nie. Hulle is oorwegend mense wat tuis is in ’n konteks waar die taal nou staatsbeskerming verloor het en neffens ander tale vir ruimte en hulpbronne moet meeding. Vir my is dit besonder positief dat die bundel onderhoude ’n Engelssprekende gehoor bekendstel aan ’n hele aantal mense wat nie in die stereotiepe beeld van “Afrikaner” inpas nie.
Liefhebbers van Afrikaanse letterkunde sal eweneens die boek insiggewend vind vir die onderhoude met mense soos Marlene van Niekerk, Ingrid Winterbach, Danie Marais, Kleinboer, Toast Coetzer en Ronelda Kamfer. Dan word daar gepraat met die manne van Fokofpolisiekar, die vroue van Rokkeloos, asook Steve Hofmeyr en Bok van Blerk.

Dis die onderhoude met die skrywers wat ek die meeste geniet het. Is dit dan nie moeilik om onderhoude met mense te voer wat self vaardig met woorde is nie? Fred sê sommige van die onderhoude was meer geslaagd as ander. Sommige mense is baie versigtig oor wat hulle sê. Hy praat oor sy onderhoud met Ingrid Winterbach. Dit het by haar huis plaasgevind. Op ’n vreemde manier maak dit die onderhoud juis moeilik, sê Fred. Soms is dit juis beter om die onderhoud op neutrale grond te doen. Fred dink nie hy het ooit by Ingrid Winterbach se geheim uitgekom nie. Hy wonder hardop oor ’n gesprek wat hy later met iemand gehad het wat haar goed ken. Hulle het gepraat oor die feit dat sy mediteer. Dis iets wat sy nooit genoem het nie. Tog, as ’n mens Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat lees, is daar elemente wat sterk op Zen-Boeddhisme trek.
Hy praat oor die onderhoud met Ronelda Kamfer. Fred voel hy ken die konteks in die Wes-Kaap nie baie goed nie. Sekere kere het sy byvoorbeeld na woonbuurtes verwys wat hy weet ’n spesifieke kulturele betekenis het, maar wat hy nie noodwendig die diepte van kon snap en dus in die onderhoud weergee nie. ’n Mens besef keer op keer dat plekke vir mense ’n diepere betekenis het – dat iets soos Newtown, Distrik Ses, of Manenberg, nie net ’n plek op die landkaart is nie, maar dat daar ’n hele geskiedenis is wat mense se persoonlikhede en identiteite vorm en brei.

Met die meeste van die onderhoude voel ek egter dat ek nogal iets nuuts leer, selfs oor van die persoonlikhede wat ek redelik goed ken. Fred sê as joernalis stel hy meer in mense belang as groot politieke gebeure. So gepraat van identiteite en plekke: Ons praat oor Fred se vorige boek Club Risiko: De jaren tachtig, toen en nu. Dit gaan oor ondergrondse bewegings in Johannesburg, New York, Berlyn, Amsterdam, Ljubljana en Parys. Die gedeelte oor Johannesburg gaan oor die musikale eksperimente van die kunstenaar Neil Goedhals in plekke soos Yeoville en Hillbrow. Sy projek (of band) se naam was Koos. Marcel van Heerden was deel daarvan en hulle het byvoorbeeld hul musiek deur middel van kassette in bruinpapiersakke versprei. Van hierdie opnames is in ’n CD agterin Club Risiko, wat ongelukkig nog nie in Suid-Afrika beskikbaar is nie.

Goedhals het later selfmoord gepleeg deur van ’n woonstelgebou in Yeoville af te spring.
Sy volgende boek – sy “labour of love” – gaan oor Sinclair Beiles, die Suid-Afrikaner wat deel van Ginsberg en Burroughs se beat-beweging was, maar wat ’n meer obskure dood in die Johannesburgse Algemene Hospitaal gesterf het.

Hoekom sulke tragiese figure? En vanwaar die obsessie met ondergrondse bewegings? Fred het as student in Nederland in ’n punk band gespeel – Zero-Zero. Die projek het gesneuwel, maar die ondervinding het hom geleer om waardering vir mense te kry wat daarin slaag om kuns te pleeg in ’n konteks waar kommersiële belange belangriker as integriteit is.
Fred noem sy benadering psycho-geography, wat ’n mens seker as psigo-geografie kan vertaal – ’n kombinasie van sielkunde en maniere om die belangrikheid van plekke te verstaan. In Club Risiko het hy gekyk hoe daardie laaste oomblik voor globalisering gewerk het in plekke soos Johannesburg en New York. Dis tye toe jy nie sommer die nuutste ondergrondse projek van die internet kon aflaai nie. Plate is met informele netwerke langs na obskure platewinkels toe aangegee. Mense het oor hul nuwe projekte in saamgeflanste tydskrifte – “little magazines” – geskryf en daaroor gedebatteer.

Suid-Afrika is júis interessant, omdat die mark vir kuns, boeke en musiek soveel kleiner is. Hy sê hy het respek vir mense wat, ten spyte van beperkte geleenthede, steeds maniere vind om ’n lewe te maak. Die briljante skrywer Ivan Vladislavic verdien byvoorbeeld sy brood as redakteur van ander mense se boeke. Die mense in The Fred de Vries Interviews is teenpole vir tragiese figure soos Goedhals en Beiles.
Ek is nie seker of ek daarin geslaag het om Fred se geheim te ontbloot nie. Ek dink ek verstaan beter hoekom hy soos ’n argeoloog tussen Suid-Afrikaanse kunsartefakte rondsnuffel. Dis die blik van ’n buitestander wat ’n mens soms anders na jou eie landskap laat kyk. Hierdie buitestaander skryf met ’n besonder sensitiewe pen oor die mense wat dit die moeite werd maak om in ’n onstuimige land soos Suid-Afrika te woon.

Ek ry huis toe – deur Newtown se donker strate, verby die nuwe social housing by Brickfields, al met Smitstraat langs tot deur Hillbrow, Yeoville, en dan deur die hekke van my gated community in Observatory. Ek wonder oor Fred se psigo-geografiese perspektief op mense en plekke. Ek wonder oor daardie oomblik van vryheid jare gelede op die balkon van die hotel in Newtown. Hoe moet ek nou daaroor nadink?
Tot nou toe het ek vryheid oorleef. Dis moeilik om enigiets met integriteit te doen in ’n land met soveel teenstellings. Gelukkig is daar ’n hele aantal interessante mense wat steeds probeer en darem oorleef in die proses. En nou is daar ’n bundel met onderhoude wat hierdie konstante proses van onderhandel op ’n besonder sensitiewe wyse weergee.
Andries Bezuidenhout