THE DOEF-DOEF CONSPIRACY
features an individual (for lack of a better word) young singer (for lack of a better description) drawn from a bottomless pool of disharmonious clones. Each with their own little orchestra, postersplattered minibus, carefully coiffed forelock and over-fed adherents.
This finely tuned package of mindless thumping and dripping sentiment is actually nothing new. It is lifted from the European tradition of schlager music ( schlager : to beat or hit; schlagen : to knock out). A quick Wikisearch will reveal schlager music to be “sweet, highly sentimental ballads with a simple, catchy melody or light pop tunes”.
Contemporary schlager is also closely associated with so-called volkstümliche musik. “Not unlike schlager, volkstümliche musik is often belittled by younger or more sophisticated audiences as a massively commercialised product created for the lower strata of society,” according to the cyber-encyclopedia.
In other words: beer tent tunes for the plebs.
During the Nazi era, volkstümliche musik was also co-opted by more nationalistic Germans to stir patriotic feelings among the volk. (So heil Steve, heil Kurt, heil Janita — huil julle oë droog vir die toekoms van local musiek.)
Somehow, these rousing ditties with their brain-numbing backbeats found their way into neighbouring lands. The sound mutated into various strains, and grew in popularity to culminate in a massive schlager -fest: Eurovision, the largest “musical” event in Europe.
(Eurovision does not confine itself to European musical folly: participation is open to any country. It was launched in 1956 and 52 countries have participated at least once. But for the most part, it’s a European happening and that continent can be held largely responsible.)
Eurovision contestants are often massive stars in their respective countries — sometimes by far outselling the likes of Beyoncé or One Direction in those markets. The German schlager - star Andrea Berg has sold more than 10 million discs in her heimat and her “best of” compilation remained in the Top 100 for 342 terrible weeks.
While names such as Helene Fischer, Matthias Reim and Berg are reverently spoken in their homeland’s kneipen and bierhallen , they’re meaningless beyond German borders. The latest Eurovision winner, the Austrian singer Conchita Wurst, no less, only gained foreign fame because of her bounteous beard (or his beautiful dresses, whichever anomaly you prefer.) So yes, it’s Europe’s fault. A quick spin of any given Eurovision hit (a fetching plastic replica of the Eiffel Tower to anyone who can distinguish between them) will reveal the chilling similarity to our host of Afrikaans lieder- mongers. But only recently has it come to light exactly how similar.
In an interview with an Afrikaans weekly paper, one Roy van der Merwe admitted that about 80% of the Afrikaans music industry’s output is Eu- rovision-related. He should know — as the president of the Eurovision fan club for non-European countries, it is he who helps South African “artists” secure rights to Eurovision songs.
According to Van der Merwe, at least one in four of the individual entries (some 400 ditties of the total 1 600) since the competition’s inception has been “re-done” in Afrikaans. Many have been hits in the Afrikaans pop market: for example, Rina Hugo’s Jy’s vir My (Spain’s 1973 entry Eres tú), Manuel Escorcio’s Soveel Herinner My (Ireland’s 1970 tune All Kinds of Everything) and Karlien van Jaarsveld’s recent title track Uitklophou (Georgia’s 2013 song Waterfall ).
Luxembourg’s Eurovision 1973 hit Apres toi was translated by Bles and Sunette Bridges, Gé Korsten, and Janita Claasen and Patricia Lewis under three different titles.
Tunes are “borrowed” from other sources too, as long as they contain the same half-witted carnival overtones and plodding interplay between bass drum and crashing cymbals.
And of course, much is lost in the translation. Snotkop (a milestone in Afrikaans music’s long tradition of silly monikers) and Monique Foxx (erstwhile wife of British bodyguard Matt Fiddes, who claims to be the biological father of Michael Jackson’s last born, Blanket) both Afrikanerised the Brazilian song Rap das Armas (or Parapapa ) about the Brazilian police’s battle against narco-crime.
Instead of drawing obvious parallels or maintaining the theme of serious social commentary, the Snotkop video depicts how young Snotkop parties at home when Meneer and Mevrou Snotkop leave for the weekend. Most subjects covered are even less weighty: usually schmaltzy boy-meets-girl material with the odd attempt at flippancy to disguise the soul-destroying flimsiness.
And there they go, the hopping, skipping picture of jugendliche freude — right through the South African musical wasteland.
I was at a loss to explain all this to the young musician of course. “There are some things Afrikaans people do,” was the best I could muster, “that even Afrikaners cannot fathom”. LS