Grahamstown got a brief taste of what's in store for this year's National Arts Festival, when The Brother Moves On came to town last week for a once-off performance. BMO performed at local club Slipstream (SSS), in New Street, last Thursday, before moving on to Kenton-on-Sea the next day and will be back in town for the festival in June/July.
Grahamstown got a brief taste of what's in store for this year's National Arts Festival, when The Brother Moves On came to town last week for a once-off performance. BMO performed at local club Slipstream (SSS), in New Street, last Thursday, before moving on to Kenton-on-Sea the next day and will be back in town for the festival in June/July.
They are on the Eastern Cape leg of a countrywide roadshow. Established in 2009, the band is an 11-piece collective, with a core of four members, who represent a new music generation in South Africa. Mzansi youth find their voice in fusions of disparate genres, such as jazz and indigenous music, or rock music and hip hop.
South African bands such as Kwani Experience, Uju, Tumi and the Volume, Blk Jks, Ntjapedi, 340ml and, lately, The Brother Moves On, epitomise this mix. And because all these bands are based in the City of Gold, it's safe to presume that this generation's musical origins are in Joburg, in the performance centres of the artsy Newtown precinct, where most of them play week in, week out.
The bands might call their music "experimental, funk, lyrical" (as Kwani does), "experimental, hip hop, other" (as Tumi and the Volume does), or "Afro-spiritual funk" (as BMO does) but the truth is, all of these bands have their forebears in indie rock and Afro-punk – rock music subgenres found in the US, in bands like TV on the Radio, Arcade Fire, and others.
This generation's lifestyle is well documented by the street fashion photographer Lolo Veleko, and in South African pop culture publications such as Student Life (SL), and Seed magazines. All of this was brought to our attention when BMO were in town, during their rehearsal for a 11pm performance at Slipstream on 14 April. "Wherever we go, we try to break new [creative]ground," said Siyabonga Mthembu, one of the founding band members.
"We want to play [specifically]in places where a largely black band might not be expected to play," added Mthembu. His replies were to a Grocott's Mail question about why they chose to play in small towns like Grahamstown and Kenton-on-Sea, specifically in venues like Slipstream.
Playing in mainstream cities like Port Elizabeth and Durban would surely be far better for a growing band hoping to develop its fan base. "This is not a band, it's a creative space," said Mthembu. "We want to [eventually]venture into becoming a performance collective," he added, explaining that they might even branch into performance theatre, finance allowing.
Their music is really a story of where this country comes from and where we are right now, both regarding the progress we've made in forging a common identity as a nation, and the challenges that remain. They remind one of Juluka, the South African music duo of Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu, which merged Zulu indigenous music and the South African 1980s experience so successfully.
BMO's music is a fusion of indigenous music with rock music as its base; their compositions have the flair of African dance, and the fluency of West African music, without entirely being either. In a sense, BMO and bands like them represent the so-called "lost generation" – so different from their parents, and their values.
So if you ever wondered where to find the so-called lost generation, wonder no longer: They're at Slipstream, with BMO. Oh, sorry, they've already moved on.
