Karoo Kitaar Blues - The Documentary - 4 Aug 2003

A Key Films and Banjo Records Production
Presented by David Kramer
Produced by Philip Key and Renaye Kramer
Directed by Liza Key

In 2001 South African guitarist/songwriter David Kramer presented a show called Karoo Kitaar Blues that made South Africa sit up and take notice. It was a concert presenting the eccentric guitar styles of the Karoo the unique finger-picking and tunings of a marginalised people who live in remote villages and outposts of the of the semi-desert areas of South Africa.

For the first time audiences were treated to the sounds of the folk music of the’ karretjie’ people of the Karoo - the last generation of nomadic sheep shearers, ‘draadtrekkers’ (fence makers) and aloe tappers - ‘who eke out a living in the harsh and unforgiving outback of the Northern Cape and whose music has grown out of a need to find a distraction from the loneliness and hardship of their lives.’ They are descendents of the Khoisan the original indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa who were virtually all exterminated at the end of the 19th century.

The guitarists and singers that David invited to perform are all self taught musicians. Each guitarist began by making himself an instrument fashioned from an empty oil can, hand carved wood and gut and then learnt to play by listening to other musicians and experimentation. In the karoo there is no formalised instruction, no written chords or sheet music. These platteland musicians learn through osmosis bywatching, listening and then working out their own tuning and chord patterns. This isn’t just the case between musicians from area to area, but between members of the same family.

From Richmond in the Cape came shepherd Tokas Lodewyk who played percussive Karoo Blues on his guitar and whose strange and hypnotic hybrid of scottish reel and Khokhoi ritual dance -‘Karoo Choreography’ enthralled his audience. Hannes Coetzee from Herbertsdale played his battered guitar in an ‘optel-en-knyp’ (pick up and pinch) style sliding out the melody with a teaspoon in his mouth.

From Victoria West Siena and Jan Mouers and their daughter Magdalena sang their plaintiff songs of hardship and loneliness accompanied by Siena on a guitar tuned with three strings through one groove. Jan strummed the rythmn while brother, Koos Loff, played the accordion upside down.

Virtuoso violinist, Jacob Jaers, from the remote Kamiesberge in Namaqualand crafted his three-stringed instrument (blikviool ) from an old oil can, the bridge structured from stone, the tuning pegs from materials found lying about in the veld. This instrument is almost identical in construction to the ‘violin’ played by the San in the later 19th century.

However, the raw, haunting, high pitched sounds of Jacob's ‘blikviool’ will soon become a fading memory in the Kamiesberge as he recently died of a heart attack while cycling on his newly acquired bicycle to see his fiance on the other side of the mountains.

Most of these musicians are in the their late 60’s, early 70’s and their children and grandchildren have no interest in preserving this musical heritage. So unless we move fast and record this music for posterity this Khoisan-Afrikaner blues will lost to us forever.

David Kramers’s passion and commitment to recording these ‘wrenching, amusing and unique talents’ in Karoo Kitaar Blues has started the process of giving this music a place in our national heritage.

"Karoo Kitaar Blues" - the documentary - will follow David Kramer on a journey through the Northern Cape where he hopes to find another 'blikviool' player and new musicians whose instruments and songs are still unrecorded. He will then bring them together with Hannes Coetzee who he will pick up in Herbertsdale and the Mouers family in Victoria West where he will spend a week developing songs with them - getting these spontaneous and transient tunes down on paper and trying to find a synthesis between his own musical style and that of the music of the Karoo musicians. David’s journey will culminate in Cape Town where the musicians will rehearse and record their music and then, with a collection of new songs inspired by his travels, David and the musicians will present a new show.

The Musicians:

DAVID KRAMER
"As a kid I remember farmworkers gathering at the bottle store next door to my dad’s furniture shop in Worcester to sing and play the guitar. That’s where my musical education began. Since then David has had a yearning to record this music. I was aware then that this music was going to be lost, but the idea was too intimidating for me at the time. To convince white farmers back then (in Apartheid South Africa) that their black labourers were worth recording would have been difficult.’ Nearly three decades later he was still stalled by those same difficulties but his commitment to recording this music and giving these musicians their place in our cultural heritage finally paid off in the highly successful stage show Karoo Kitaar Blues." Kramer has turned these musicians into stars in the very winter of their years and well as preserving his music for posterity.

THE MOUERS FAMILY SIENA, JAN AND MAGDALENA
The Mouers family live in the Karoo town of Victoria West in an old house - part of which is a converted shop. Magdalena, the daughter, sings, Siena a retired domestic worker whose myopic eyes are enlarged a hundred-fold behind large 60’s glasses - plays the lead guitar. She uses a paperclip as a plectrum which she keeps in her hair under her hat . Jan - retired from many years of laying railway sleepers - strums the rythmn of the song on a battered old guitar. These guitars are unique to the Mouers in the way they are strung and tuned both differently.

KOOS LOF
Siena’s brother. A retired ‘draadtrekker’ (erects fences) from Chatsworth in Namaqualand. ‘A picture of elegance in his 1940’s hat and shoes, Koos’s smooth yellow face and slanting eyes so characteristic of these descendents of the Khoi - who have tramped this area for centuries - accompanies his sisters on the accordion which he plays back to front.’

HELENA NUWEGELD
‘Slumped back in her chair, her doek tied low above her eyebrows, a couple of nylon petticoats protruding from under her skirt, it was Helena’s voice that stole the show. Sitting before a microphone for the first time in her life she appeared unfazed by the limelight, instead descending deeper and deep into her hypnotic, head-nodding incantations in a voice dipped in brandy and tobacco toasted to a glorious huskiness.’

Helena is Siena’s sister. She lives in a shoebox size RDP (Reconstruction and DeveloPment Programme) house in Beaufort West and like her sister is also retired. Around 65 years old she is the singer in the family.

One of the highlights of David’s show was bringing Siena Mouers’ older sister Helena and brother, Koos Lof, together after along separation. It had been over a decade since these siblings had made music together.

TOKAS LODEWYK (Richmond)
Tokas is a weather-beaten shepherd from the Karoo town of Richmond who learnt to play the guitar while minding sheep. He has developed a percussive style that he calls Karoo Blues. ‘Slapping the bass strings with his thumb while picking a simple melody with his fingers and alternating with percussive slaps on the sounding board, Lodewyk develops a cyclical, hypnotic groove that gives this acoustic folk music its African feel.’

David Kramer remembers: When guitarist Tokas Lodewyk appeared on stage, the audience, mostly white Afrikaners, gasped collectively. On the surface Tokas is he sort of person who might work in the garden or on their farmThen he played and it was very powerful because he exploded the old mindsets there and then. Audience belief gradually turned to admiration. The playing and singing shifts people’s paradigms and gives them a jolt. Suddenly they are forced to confront the racial predjudice of the past and the present. That music transcends politics was best summed up by Tokas after the show : ‘When they spoke to me and shook my hand they didn’t see me as a little boesman (a derogatory term for someone of mixed race), but as a person.

HANNES COETZEE
|Hannes Coetzee’s is a soft-spoken 72-year old whose job is tapping the aloes that grow around his Karoo hometown of Herberstdale for their medicinal juice. Hannes composes his own songs and learnt to play the guitar on the side of the hill when the aloes were too dry to tap and to keep himself company on long lonely evenings in the mountains of the Kamiesbeg. The only known practitioner of the ‘optel and knyp’style he must rank as one of the most unusual slide guitarists in the world. If you shut your eyes you would think that there were two people accompanying each other on guitars.

Hannes Coetzee from Herbertsdale, plays slide guitar with a teaspoon in his mouth

JACOB JAERS
Jacob Jaers died last year. He was a nomadic shepherd who minded goats in the remote region of the Nourivier in the Northern Cape. The haunting sound of his three-stringed blikviool which he fashioned from bits and pieces found in the veld accompanied him during his lonely hours on the on the stark rocky outcrops of the Kamiesberge. Apart from Jacob’s spellbinding performance on stage his music has died with him undocumented. The main purpose of David’s next journey is to try and find another ‘blikviool’ player and to record and document this music.

The documentary film team under the direction of Liza Key will follow David and the musicians on their journey to Cape Town. The recording sessions and rehearsals at Glen Beach Studio will be documented and the film will end with a concert at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town.

Karoo Kitaar Blues is to be a feature-length documentary made for television, theatrical distribution and film festivals. It will be shot on Digibeta, a high quality format that could - if need be be transferred onto film for theatrical release.

Liza Key - Director
Liza Key was the director of the Mail and Guardian Film Festival from 1987 to 1994 and founder of the Mail and Guardian Short Film Competition and Limits of Liberty Festival. She is presently the director of SCRAWL, a laboratory for South African screenwriters run annually in Cape Town in association with the Sundance Institute. In 1997 she formed Key Films and was associate producer on Songs From The Golden City for Channel 4 (UK)

In 1999 Key directed and produced A Question of Madness a documentary on the life of Dimitri Tsafendas - the man who assassinated South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd. A Question of Madness was screened at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam in 1999 year and has been broadcast on South African Australian and Spanish television.

Key has researched and produced programmes for international broadcasters most recently Earth Summit: The Debate for BBC4. She recently completed a documentary on Wouter Basson -The Man who Knows Too Much which was screened at the International Film Festival of Amsterdam and has been invited to numerous international film festivals in Brazil, France, Italy, Germany and Norway. The documentary will be broadcast on SABC1 and SBS Australia later this year.

Philip Key Producer
Philip Key is well-known in the South African film industry as an innovative and visionary producer. Key has been involved in the industry for 25 years. He started his career as a film technician, specializing in sound and worked on a number of feature films in the 1980's.

He established Moonlighting Filmmakers in 1989 and was one of the first producers to travel abroad to market the country as a film location.

His company Moonlighting has grown into the country's largest film service company, having serviced over 650 international television commercials.