Minstrel memories
Boeta Maalie remembers how D6 house was hub of activity
CLOTHES maketh the man, wrote William Shakespeare in Hamlet. However, in the case of the minstrels, clothing and costume design helped shape a community and a culture. Achmat Hadji Levy was a tailor, his name inextricably linked to the klopse tradition.
Years of dedicated stitching together of uniforms, while enduring the pinpricks of the political landscape of the ’60s and ’70s, helped bring out the bright colours which brought the minstrels out of obscurity.
His younger brother, Ismail – known to friends and family as Boeta Maalie – was born into the bustling hub of activity in District Six in 1922.
He remembers Boeta Achmat’s attention being focused on the bales of satin and metres of cotton thread in the build-up to the Tweede Nuwejaar march.
The 93-year-old says it was perfectly normal to him back then to have people in and out of his house “like bees”.
From around August, preparations would begin for the uniforms.
With Boeta Achmat hunched over the treadle sewing machine, a handful of tailors would be sub-contracted to turn the brightly coloured Chinese satin into jackets and pants stripes for the troupes of minstrels.
The house-run operation churned out about a hundred uniforms a day for several teams, being swiftly overlocked together, with no time for high-fashion fittings.
Under a fragile veil of secrecy, the Levys were privy to the various teams’ colours and designs. Of course, the secrecy couldn’t hold – the colours and designs would be leaked by around October.
Ideally, Boeta Maalie says, teams should only have known around two weeks before the Tweede Nuwejaar march.
He recalls with a chuckle that often performers couldn’t afford the R3 to buy their uniforms and, so, would play a quick game of dice to make up the shortfall.
It was all in the spirit of the sport, he reminisces, because people would do whatever they could to join the party.
That party, he says, was two days of overindulgence, whether from the tables of cakes, the bottles of whisky or the Oom Tas from the smokkie.
He still finds it hilarious that people had to be peeled off the streets in the morning because “they’d sleep where they’d fallen”.
As a younger member of the family, Boeta Maalie was tasked with the cleaning up.
Because their home was among the first klopskamers, he remembers once picking up 290 empty whisky bottles.
Food was plentiful for the masses of minstrels gathering ahead of the march.
“The big boys would ride along Sir Lowry Road and into Russell Street on the back of a van, handing out samoosas and such,” Maalie smiles.
Boeta Maalie says a long walk in satin through the city in the height of summer can be quite uncomfortable, but seeing his family gathered on the corner of Russell Street, not far from his home, as he passed in the street parade, was worth it.
Dressed in the same uniform, faces covered in paint, it was difficult to identify individual members.
“Maar jy moet net kyk wie tanne het (But you just need to see who has teeth),” Maalie chuckles as he remembers how he would tell his family members apart.
In the 1920s and 1930s, you could count the number of troupes on one hand. “Two privates”, the teams made up of a mix of cultures and races.
Later saw the rise of the “coons”; the troupes who sang traditional Nederlands leidjie sand mop pies, who dominated the performance world.
It was Boeta Maalie’s 80-strong band – The Cornwalls – named after the street their captain “Aboobi” lived in, who first made the move from string instruments to brass, which is now the norm.
The Cornwalls performed in a troupe that included between 40 and 50 women, making up the 300 or so performers who worked at Group Appliance and Furniture Wholesalers.
He remembers one captain who had a wooden leg: “We didn’t know his name, we just called him Ofa Een Been.”
It was in the late 1930s that he remembers the night troupes – or nagtroepe – emerging.
He recalls the Cape Malay Choirs joining in the festivities, singing along with Christmas carollers on New Year’s Eve, to render eclectic mixes of traditional and American-influenced arrangements.
These days, the competition part of the minstrels’ festival shows just how much the different cultural influences have impacted on the formation of klopse culture.
Boeta Maalie doesn’t attend the carnival anymore, due to his age: “It was too much of a good thing,” he admits.
His grandson, Ismail Kriel, is now 26 and far removed from the klopse community. He says it’s because he didn’t grow up immersed in it, but many of his friends are involved.
Kriel has noticed how the dynamics in the movement have changed, and are constantly evolving to attract younger members.
As Cape Argus editor Gasant Abarder’s keen ear picked up during the Santam D6 Entertainers’ band practise a fortnight ago, he remarked: “That’s a mash-up of Meghan Trainor and John Legend.”
The klopse’s continuous metamorphosis is what Kriel sees as the future growth path, drawing from contemporary sources like X-Factor and The Voice.
If you’re wondering where the recent a capella influence crept in, look no further than the Pitch Perfect franchise, according to co-owner of Santam D6 Entertainers, Malick Laattoe.
“The result,” he grins, “is aca-amazing.”