h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi folks! I decided to share some Afrikaans music with y'all. To start the year, here's one written by Koos Du Plessis and sung by Laurika Rauch, 'Kinders van die Wind'. Lyrics are in the video, here is my English Translation:

I know an old, old song
Of the ways and woes of life
Of long-perished ships
In the cellars of the ocean

The words are forgotten
But the tune still lingers
Like vaguely familiar snatches
In a very old tale

Of drifters without direction
Of seekers who never find
And in the end they all were merely children of the wind

Faces, dreams, names
Have been blown away by the wind
And where those words went
Only a child can guess

Drifters without direction
Seekers who never find
And in the end they all were merely children of the wind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW6PxO7lRrA

What a beautiful song! And what a lovely voice she has!

Thanks for that.

Glad you liked it Dmitri!

Here's a male vocalist who's been really big back in the 'old days': Gé Korsten. Born in the Netherlands but came to SA with his family while still a young boy. This is a rather kitschy vid from I guess the late seventies or early eighties, but Gé had a hit with this song quite some time earlier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tru2i7IzW9U

Oh ... 'Liefling' means 'Darling'. I'll see about posting the full lyrics ...

Beautiful voice!

I kind of like that set...

A bit of kitsch isn't necessarily a bad thing!

Anyways Gé definitely had one of the best voices, and he liberally applied it to big, schmaltzy songs like that one. But he also sang proper opera, indeed he's responsible for bring a bit of that kind of culture to us barbaric Boers who had only just been dragged from the bushes into the modern world.

Anyways here are the lyrics for 'Liefling', translated:

You know that I cannot exist without you
You know that you also cannot exist alone
That you know well

(Chorus

Darling, can't we just forget and forgive?
Darling, I can't live any longer without you,
That you know well

You know that old memories never fade
You know that no-one can stand in your place
That you know well

(Chorus)

Now is the time, don't wait
Because I yearn every day
Here is my heart, take it now
Here is my heart, just for you

You know that I cannot exist without you
You know that you also cannot exist alone
That you know well

(Chorus)

Gé sang and spoke quite proper Afrikaans but there remained a bit of the Dutch about him and he made this vid in the Netherlands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOXX0VXsBjI

I guess the Netherlands also aren't much like that any more. I reckon those folks understood him quite well. Afrikaans and Dutch are just barely mutually intelligible ... more when sung than when spoken. It's strange, the two languages are spelled very similarly but the pronunciation differs quite drastically.

Great Tracht!

Isn't that true 'The City of New Orleans'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF1lqEQFVUo

Yes - caught out! I know this was done in the old times here, folks simply grabbing a tune by someone else and making new lyrics, and as far as I know, never crediting the original artists. I didn't know that song ... thanks! I'll see if I can catch a few more ...

Never a bad thing to have more songs.

Yeah probably not!

Well here's a guy who did write his own tunes and lyrics, Anton Goosen. He's known as the 'liedjieboer' (farmer of songs). A bit humorous and satirical a lot of the time. Here's 'Boy van die Suburbs' (late 1970's or early 1980's):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LulwyHcKJF8

Lyrics translated:

Home fracas in his flask, 1 2 3 safe 5 6
Boy of the suburbs going partying tonight
The long weekend he's off, heading to Durbs and back
One thousand CC's roaring through the air

He listens to Elvis and the sad sunshine sisters
Sissie plays along on her Hawaiian guitar
Gnome at the front gate and a fish tank in the sitting room
Sticky thing beside the screen door that makes the bugs die

(Chorus)

Boy of the suburbs, boy of the suburbs, boy of the suburbs
Is going to hit the iron horse

Hoo wha wha hoo, yodel-edel-ay-dee-hoo
Hoo wha wha hoo, yodel-edel-ay-dee-hoo

The little ducks in a row beside the Tretchikoff painting
What is a house without my mother, he says
Each house has its cross with a beer in the right fist
He knows life, and he is worldly wise

Over a tree branch in the street his car engine hangs Sunday late
Sissie helps him also, in her crimpolene mini dress
On the dashboard a lawn grows and at the back is a huge white wing
G T W Z tuned up for Sunday fun

Chorus

Saturday afternoon until deep past midnight
He and Poppy shuffles at Blapsfontein
She's Cherry and Baby, she's his and she loves him
On the back of the saddle (seat) the world may come

He's built like a dream, and his muscles roll and shine
Tatoo on the chest of a big sinking ship
And Boy of the suburbs and his Poppy de Jaër
And Boy of the suburbs plays true-love with her

Chorus

Angels on high have a laugh in their eye
Because they know and appreciate his worth
Mmmm they know he's the salt of the Earth

Chorus

I kept a straight face until the 'tattoo of a sinking ship'.

This reminds me of a novel I read once, I think it was by Jan-Willem van de Wetering, about a middle-aged Dutchman who, when he was much younger and in the navy and very drunk, got the coat of arms of the Dutch East Indian Company tattooed on his chest. And now he was much larger, and so was the tattoo, and he could never take his shirt off on a Dutch beach...

I am thrilled that you have rednecks in the land of the Boers, too.

Heh! I hope you realize it's quite an affectionate parody, and I'm sure many of this sort of character ended up buying and liking the record!

Makes met think of when I was selling humorous magazines for charity in Pretoria in the nineties ... I saw quite a few of this sort, but ten years later and about 30 lbs heavier, tattoos blurring and spreading ...

You know, I'm actually from this kind of stock ... my father came from a working class family living in the Jo'burg region. His father was a train conductor. But my dad and his brothers and sisters got a great education and so were quite cultured and all (except for my one aunt) managed a socio-economic 'leap' into the upper-middle class. My mother came from a wealthy family owning a lot of farmland in the Free State. But she and her brother and sisters were not as well educated ... she at least was, she went to the university in Pretoria where she met my dad, but my other aunts and my uncle on my mom's side were never highly cultured (though all very smart).

Basically ... it was thanks to Apartheid that my dad could get the good education which enabled him to rise above his humble beginnings. The National Party did a lot to try to raise the living standards of Afrikaners and had a whole educational and cultural project with which to do it ... which was indeed very successful. Should I feel guilty about it? I honestly don't, I only regret that the government didn't manage to uplift EVERYONE in the country to the same degree. (But ... I must inform you that despite what you folks may have heard in the US, upliftment of non-whites was indeed a major goal of the apartheid government, and LOTS of money went toward it, including the building of schools and universities and the staffing of them. What we did wrong was not letting non-whites participate in these projects from the outset, excluding them from the whole political process, and ignoring them as major role-players in an incredibly myopic way.) The current government could indeed do it ... but it doesn't seem to be much of a priority for them. Education in the country is in a dismal state right now. True, we did indeed do a lot so far ... but it's not enough!

Anyways. Here's another song and a completely different voice, Sonja Herholdt. She was big in the seventies and eighties:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oafqMNZT1ik

Lyrics translated:

Waterblommetjies in the Boland
Waterblommetjies from the Kaap
Make the stew just as in the wineland
And say love me a lot before you go to sleep

That wind is again blowing into my front door
It makes my heart sing lustily
It's good to say good-day to the Cape again

Oops sorry the lyrics got caught off!

Continuing:

And I take you along to the field of wheat
Who rides along when my heart burns like this
It is great to love the Boland

Van Hungs again filled his pipe
Tafelberg has its hat on
And the 'bergies' are starting to stand towards home

Groenpunt tower winks its eye
and the South-eastern makes a wide bow/curve
And the wagon road helps you as you go home

O the air here is free
where my heart all the time wants to be
And I want to settle me down next to old miss Victoria

Let us walk through the dunes
Go buy something at the parade
When the wind is blowing cold
Let me quickly button up your coat

Chorus

O Cape, O Cape, most beautiful Cape,
Again you make my heart hurt so much
Your ghantang of course always comes again and again
The Mayflower sailed out
Went to get snoek (mackerel) there by Hout Bay
Where Karbonkelberg witnesses the stormy sea

Three creatures watched the stars at Dassie Point
Set foot into the wind and passed on the halo
They returned to Table Bay and on Devil's Peak waved at the angel,
And the angel wiped a tear from his eye.

My relatives were all country folk. My grandfather was what they called a 'dirt farmer' - subsistence farmer on a mountainside. Came from a long line of them.

Since we've never had a true class structure in this country - just rich and poor people - we tend to regard the 'pickup truck and country music' thing as more of a 'lifestyle choice'. There's no rule says you can't love Beethoven and Johnny Cash both at the same time.

The lady with the water lilies has a lovely voice. Alas, record companies were responsible for a lot of unnecessary background music in the 60s and 70s.

I managed to read Mandela's autobiography and it was fascinating all the divisions the ANC had within them and the whole questions of violence/nonviolence, whether Communists were good for the freedom movement and all the various tribal chiefs' positions. It was a terrific balancing act but he did meet several intelectual white people who were great allies (without being too conceited hero types). You are right all the people MUST be involved in the process for any type of democracy to succeed and no one should be left out. And good education is what is required to permit peaceful change and progress.

But when there is too much inequity and people are frustrated they fall for any stupid conman or dictator because it is too much trouble to think. Look at who dumb white people elected here out of fear of losing white privilege. Just being too lazy to think is really a sin but they are finding out the negative consequences of electing a nincompoop to the job.

Actually there's not a rigid class structure among us Afrikaners either, Dmitri. But there are some rough lines ... mainly between the Cape Afrikaners and those of the old Transvaal and the Free State (the Boer Republics). It's more a matter of culture than of economics. The Cape Afrikaners tend to be 'high culture' and the typical Boers more 'low culture'. But the British had a dim view of the lot of us; some Afrikaners after the English took over, became Anglicized so as to gain a higher cultural status.

A massive cultural project starting in the late nineteenth century aimed to elevate Afrikaners and the Afrikaans language, culturally. This tended to go along with socio-economic upliftment.

The 'suburb' subculture parodied in Anton Goosen's song is mainly a kind of culture found in the Pretoria/Johannesburg region, among low (but not *very* low) class Afrikaners, with strong influence from for instance popular culture in America and the British lower class culture (Elvis, motorbikes, tattoos) thanks to radio, movies and comics.

Apartheid was actually a great leveler of us Afrikaners.

Anyways. It's very different today; we now again have some dismally poor Afrikaners, living in squatter's camps; but I'd say most Afrikaners today are quite affluent. But still not many are 'high culture' as in actually reading a lot of (or any) good literature, or listening to music above that which appeals to the lowest common denominator (ooh baby baby, thumpa-thumpa-thumpa, autotuned stuff that is being cranked out by the bucketload, and what I call the 'jaai-maai' style of pronunciation).

On that note - here is a purer, less overproduced version of that song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-o3cOMGSbw

The lyrics are by Anton Goosen, by the way. He worked with Sonja Herholdt a lot since her voice is much better than his. Sonja did the song first, then Laurika followed with the above version.

I can give TONS of cultural notes about that song. First of all: despite the image used in that video, 'waterblommetjies' are NOT water lilies. They're a different species of aquatic plant which only occurs in the south-western Cape, Aponogeton distachyos. It is used to make a stew, using the flowers. It's quite a tasty vegetable, and you can buy it in local shops.

Hi Elektra! I should read Mandela's autobiography ... I haven't yet. I think in the long run the ANC and other liberation organisations' ties with Russia and Red China ended up hurting them and the country as a whole. Those guys had their own agendas to push, not actually caring that much about the struggling folks over here, and as a result of the great fear of communism (which was also encouraged among us by the influence of the Americans) ended up negating sympathy the liberation movements might have engendered among the whites. But as you say, there were indeed whites who were sympathetic, but in the Apartheid days that meant having to make a huge leap of faith and trust.

Since I'm speaking about music here, it's interesting but perhaps not unexpected that musicians tended to be far more liberal than the average Afrikaners. Anton Goosen for instance was always very critical of the government and some of his stuff got banned. Sonja Herholdt was also quite liberal. I'll mention many more ... things really got heated in the middle to late eighties.

Anyways the big problem right now is indeed that we don't have good politicians. And the voting public is generally poorly informed and naïve. It is extremely easy to con them. I won't say the government is actually in it to con them, but they do indeed try to misinform and manipulate them - and they tend to succeed. Jacob Zuma has been a very very poor president (incredible number of accusations against him: from rape and sexual assault to and all kinds of corruption) and now Cyril Ramaphosa who looks set to replace him, doesn't exactly have clean hands either.

Education has a strong ideological basis at the mo, and generally the tenour is that the whites are responsible for everything that's bad and the liberation movements, specifically the ANC, responsible for everything that's good. The problem is that right now the country is having things not-very-good overall so whites get blamed a lot, even though there's not much we can do. There IS INDEED an economical elite which owns most of the country's wealth, and this elite is indeed mainly white, but they're not the typical white folks in the country, they're a tiny handful of ultra-rich folks many of which don't even live in the country but who own a bunch of stuff here. The typical white South African person has very little economic power and even less political power. But if whites keep getting blamed for everything in an un-nuanced way, we might see (even more) indiscriminate killings of white people by disgruntled black people. And if the 'economic elite', who anyways don't care that much for the welfare of the country and its people, pull out because things get too hot, the entire economy might go down the tubes.

I like that version of the song, Willem. The stew looks tasty, too.

I think I'm going to continue my crusade for nuance...a seriously undervalued quality these days...and South Africa's beautiful people of all races are on my personal prayer list.

Here's one for you that just popped up on my Youtube subscriptions - Malinda Kathleen Reese is a super-talented young lady who is launching her musical career with the help of Google Translate. This time, she's let the ol' translation engine loose on 'The Circle of Life', and it's done the usual bang-up job on Zulu. Hakuna matata, as somebody probably says, somewhere...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8LchmWwyBA

That's a great video Dmitri, thanks a lot! I've been checking out her other stuff also. Lovely voice, and she looks nice too!

On with Afrikaans music. Here is a traditional song sung by Carike Keuzenkamp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5cvrOMQOIc

She, too, was born in The Netherlands but she's completely Afrikaans now. Her popularity started in the sixties and continues to this day! She sang a lot of children's songs and also was a presenter of a TV show for kids.

One of my father's colleagues from the University had a son who was absolutely obsessed with Carike, having made essentially a shrine to her in his room. Today he's a successful singer himself!

Anyways here's the translated lyrics:

You with your mandolin
I with my bandurria
We sing the old kraal song together
Singing of water streams
Of snakes in wild olive trees
And a mountain reedbuck standing on the ridge

We sing, we play
Of the old kraal which would never bore us
You with your mandolin
I with my bandurria
We sing the old kraal song together.

Very lively. And I *know* I've heard that tune before...but I can't place it.