Like father, like son: Meet Ashur Petersen
IT WAS the small hours of December 16, 2006, when I heard what sounded like a gunshot piercing the calm. Minutes later my cellphone rang off the hook with the worst news I had received in a while: Taliep Petersen had been shot dead – murdered – in his home a few blocks from mine.
We lost an icon, an irreplaceable talent whose genius we will forever battle to match.
For his only son Ashur Petersen – then only 14 – the emotions of losing his dad so violently is still raw.
We meet in the parking lot of Kenilworth Centre. The impromptu interview is fashioned around Ashur’s busy schedule as he prepares to celebrate his dad’s memory with a 10th anniversary tribute show at the Grand Arena at GrandWest tomorrow.
Some 5 000 people with a host of celebrated artists are set to pack to the venue to remember the South African musical legend.
I spot a guitar that used to belong to Taliep – a prized possession for Ashur – on the backseat of a sponsored car, emblazoned with details of the concert and a picture of his dad.
The resemblance between father and son, in appearance and manner, is striking.
Ashur, after a little coaxing, agrees to sing Klop, Klop from Taliep’s hit production with David Kramer, District Six
– The Musical. It is an upbeat, ghoemastyle song that Ashur somehow captures in a sombre tone. I can’t help but feel the emotion.
“It feels like yesterday. You live your life day by day and you don’t really think about the time that has passed. You try and just get through it, and personally that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Ashur says his dad’s untimely death brought him and his siblings closer.
“My sisters and I weren’t that close when my dad was alive. We lived in such a big house and when you live like that, everyone is in their own space.
“After my dad passed on we made a pact to keep it ‘The power of six’ – that’s what us siblings call ourselves. We get through anything and everything together.”
Ashur, now 24, has picked up the mantle and is aspiring to follow in Taliep’s footsteps. A few years ago he paid tribute to his dad in a production Like Father,
Like Son which ran at the Baxter Theatre and Artscape.
For the 10th anniversary show, Ashur has upped the ante to celebrate his dad’s legacy in style after some persuasion from Emo Adams, who made his name playing lead roles in a number of Taliep musicals.
“It’s a funny story. I initially wanted to do Like Father, Like Son. I went to Italy and when I returned I met up with Emo Adams at the airport.
“We hadn’t spoken for a while and he wanted to know what was going on in my life. I told him what I was doing and what I wanted to do this year. I told him I wanted to plan a huge thing… I wanted to do Like Father, Like Son, but I wanted it to be bigger and better this time.
“I initially thought of the Grand Arena when I thought of Like Father, Like Son, but he said 10 years was a very auspicious moment.
“Ten years was a big thing, so he said I should rather – instead of me celebrating it by myself – get a number of other artists that he’s influenced and who has worked with him throughout his life to participate. “That’s how the idea came about.” Tomorrow night, more than 25 artists will be on a star-studded line-up in a fitting tribute to Taliep. Ashur, his mom Madeega Anders and his siblings will be performing as well
“When we thought about it, we initially had an idea to get all the old cats… all the old guys he was with from the very beginning. Then we thought we should balance it out with the young and the old.
“So from the old cats we have Terry Fortune, the usual suspects like Alistair (Izobell), Loukmaan and Emo Adams, Vicky Sampson and David Kramer.
“There also Chad Saaiman, Jimmy Nevis, Karin Kortje, Neville D, The Rockets, Top Dog, Sophia Foster, James Bhemgee and Jaloersbokkies.
“Shaleen Surtie-Richards of Egoli will be the MC. Also on the line-up are Nur Abrahams, Jody Abrahams (who played the lead in Kat and The Kings), Rick-Lynn Groenewald (the son of the late Ricardo Groenewald of Ricardo and Friends fame), Sasha-Lee Davids, the Cape Malay Choir and the South African Youth Choir.
“I think we might have surprise guest artists, but for that you’ll have to come to the show to see for yourself.”
Ashur’s own musical journey unsurprisingly started at a young age. But the relationship between father and son really took off when Ashur asked Taliep to teach him to play the guitar.
As I listen to Ashur recount this story, I think of the many tense sessions between my dad and I when he was teaching me how to drive.
Like those driving lessons, Ashur’s guitar lessons with Taliep was a rite of passage. They’re moments Ashur will never forget and will treasure forever.
“I started performing when I six years old, and when I was nine I asked my dad to teach me to play the guitar. Whenever I came from school and I walked into the studio, his guitar would be on the guitar stand. I’d walk past and just strum the strings.
“One day I mustered up the courage to ask him to teach me. He said no. He was very impatient and if he did something, he did it right. I went to my room and started sulking. With me being the only son, he had a soft spot for me. He came to the room with the guitar and told me, ‘Just don’t play nonsense’.
“I picked up the guitar and started to play and he said, ‘Did I not just tell you not to play nonsense?’ But he was joking, of course. He was a very busy person but he would always find the time to teach me something.
“He would teach me a few chords and say that by the following week he wanted me to know it. If I didn’t, he’d leave and come back until I knew it. That motivated me because obviously a son would like to be taught by his father.
“When he passed on I became selftaught. I’ve been playing the guitar for 14 years. Because he had so many instruments in his studio, I learnt to play everything and now I can play them all.”
Ashur has been recording in a studio he created at home and has also been working on cruise ships as a performer. These steps, he would only later discover, were all steps Taliep took on his journey to the theatre.
Now Ashur has found the theatre as well and fallen in love with it.
“The funny thing is I try not to think about the footsteps of exactly the way he went or what road he took. But somehow I just end up there, wherever he’s been.
“With the studio he started small. Now I’m starting small with a studio at home. I was on the ships and I didn’t even know he had been on the ships entertaining as well. He was on the ships with Terry Fortune and I didn’t know they were a duo. I found this out recently.
“And theatre, where that’s concerned, I always pictured myself being a performer and I saw myself overseas and in Hollywood. I saw myself being a big name in this world. “Then, when I did Like Father, Like
Son, I just fell in love with the production side of theatre. Then I found out that’s what my father fell in love with in theatre as well because he started with productions like Pippin and Hair.
“I just find myself in similar situations where he had been in his life. I will probably end up in the same place he had been, God willing. You never know.
“I am recording at the moment. But my heart is with the people and my dad always said, ‘Don’t forget where you came from, don’t forget your roots’.”
We miss Taliep Petersen. I remember going to see Songbook – an anthology of Taliep and David’s work – a few months after his murder. People wept openly.
It was a great production that took you down memory lane. But even in that production, featuring Taliep’s best work, there was something missing. While every song, lyric and scene had Taliep’s influence, it just wasn’t the same.
Ashur nods in agreement as I share these impressions with him. “My daddy just added a certain jeera, koljana… that spice! Now you don’t get it anymore.”
Ashur and the line up of artists promise to take you on a roller-coaster journey to remember Taliep at tomorrow’s show.
He has a long way to go as an artist, but there is that unmistakable magic in Taliep’s only son. He has what his dad had and if he continues on this path, all of us who loved Taliep so much can look forward to so much more magic.
“There’s going to be a museum with all the awards he has won. The Laurence Olivier award – his, and now my, most prized possession – will be featured in a museum in the banquet hall at Grand-West to coincide with the show along with all of my dad’s other awards.
“It will be a memoir where people can read things, even newspaper articles, and see old posters of the plays. It’s going to be a very, very special show – inside and out.
“People are going to laugh, they’re going to cry, they’re going to share personal moments with the artists that people did not know. The thing that reminded them of my dad and the moments they shared.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re not only involving the artists, but people from all over who loved him as well, with videos of ordinary people’s memories of Taliep Petersen to make it interactive.
“It’s going to be something like you’ve never seen before. That I can assure you.”