Citation for the late Taliep Petersen @ Hon. Graduation, UCT. 14th.December,2007
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Taliep Petersen
We are fortunate that the two musicians whom we honour today should each have chosen to be born in a place and at a time when a great writer was also living there. Here is what Richard Rive, in his wonderful book BuckinghamPalace, District Six, has to say through the mouth of Zoot, the Jive King of District Six who hung out with the Jungle Boys, just after he had been harassed by a policeman for walking on the beach at KalkBay:
You know, it’s a funny thing, but it’s only in the District that I feelsafe. District Six is like an island, if you follow me, an island in a sea of apartheid. The whole of District Six is one big apartheid, so we can’t see it. We only see it when the white man comes and forces it on us, when he makes us see it—when the police come and the council people and so on—or when we leave the District, when we leave our island and go into Cape Town or to Sea Point or come here to Kalk Bay. Then we again see apartheid. I know the District is poor and dirty and a slum, as the newspapers always remind us, but it’s our own and we have never put up notices which say “Slegs Blankes” or “Whites only”. They put up the notices.[Rive, 1986:pp.95-96]
Which is another way of saying that the essence of District Six was its humanity; its spirit of inclusiveness. And it is the exuberant vitality and non-judgemental humanness of District Six, in the face of poverty, mean racism and a hostile state that is at the heart of everything that is expressed about it by writers, painters and musicians who have loved the place and cherish its memory in so many different ways. For its destruction was irreversible. Its spirit, like a beautiful Ming vase, could not survive being deliberately dashed in pieces against the rocks when in the 1960s & ‘70s the community of 60 000 persons were forcibly removed and every home was bulldozed flat. And a wasteland was created in the heart of Cape Town.
Taliep Petersen was born in District Six so it is small wonder that so much of his work grew out of his rootedness there and that the first of the Kramer-Petersen musicals to burst upon the national scene should have been a celebration of the District which opened at the Baxter Theatre in 1986. But he had already been in music a long time. He first sang in public at the age of six in the Coon Carnival, thirty years before that and subsequently performed in local productions of Hair, Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar before getting the opportunity to study the classical guitar at the Fitznell School of Music in England. He wrote his first revue, Carnival a la District Six based on Cape Town’s nuwe jaar celebrations before teaming up with David Kramer for their first musical, working on the same theme.
Here is what Kramer had to say about his partner’s sheer musical ability. “Taliep, wrote Kramer, had perfect pitch and an incredible ear for harmony. He could hear intervals that were indiscernible to me, but when he arranged the voices they always sounded heavenly.He described his musical ability as ‘a God given talent’ and would often say: ek het ore soos ‘n olifant.”
Indeed he did; and the voices and the harmonies are captivating. From District Six which they took to the Edinburgh Festival this powerful new team moved on to re-write the musical landscape of the western cape and to enrich immeasurably the culture of this country. First came Fairyland, also about District Six, and then Poison, a bold attempt to get to grips with the issue of drugs and gangs on the Flats. It played well in this country and was invited to Malaysia. Then Croonersand after that, in 1999, another blockbuster Kat and the Kings----telling the story of Kat Diamond and the Cavalla Kings, This musical which won two coveted Laurence Olivier Awards (including the best new musical of the year) in London brought international recognition to Taliep Petersen and David Kramer. A recognition that was greatly amplified by the success of the musical when it was taken to Broadway and elsewhere.
In between all this joint activity the twin stars were also doing their own thing. In Taliep’s case he hosted a TV series, O’se Distrik Ses; participated in Idols & Joltyd; and wrote a sitcom called Ali Barber. It was songs from the second session of this that he recorded on his first Afrikaans CD, Deur Dik en Dun, singing songs which he and David had composed. Without even hearing the music, the words alone are wonderful. Take this verse, with its compassionate understanding and gallows humour, of Die Strolers:...die landlords vannie cardboard hotel
O’s try ‘n honest,
net ‘n living te maak.
Is o’s ‘n siekte,
djy will skaars aan my raak.
Gie my ‘n kans,
daar wag ‘n surprise.
Ek is ‘n millionaire,
Maar net in disguise
But the best was yet to come. For Petersen & Kramer were not only musicians, with warm and infectious humour, able to put together catchy tunes but also deadly serious social historians determined to recapture and give back to people, through popular songs, the history of which they had been robbed over centuries of oppression. The opening of Ghoema, first in South Africa and then in London, in 2006 marked an important step in the ongoing liberation of this country. For it has brought the long history of Cape Town and the surrounding farms under the spotlight as seen through the eyes of those without power in the colonial and slave-owning society. And the reclaiming of history is a profoundly liberating process.
Taliep Petersen, said the Premier of the Western Cape [Ebrahim Rasool] when he died, had the ability to “capture our entire history, express our deepest pain, articulate our joy, and demonstrate our humanity through music and drama”.
For, yes, Taliep Petersen is dead. And we mourn both his death and the manner of his passing. Yet strictly speaking this award is not a posthumous one for it was decided by the University Council before he died almost exactly a year ago,only days after the opening of Ghoema in London. Today we are here to celebrate his life and to honour his work. For his music will live.Long, long after we are all gone.
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