Se of an escape artist
at an alarming rate. Smiso Zwane is doing it through language. IsiZulu colloquial words like ishu, cava and umswenko have become en vogue because of his songs.
The other signature element is that it is music from an elaborately constructed world. The album is an attempt at the esoteric and an immersion in seemingly disconnected references from 16th-century Italian astronomer Galileo to football’s poet-in-chief Zinedine Zidane. The track titled after Galileo is a glitchy, low-maintenance slow jam. It’s also the song that cements Mlazi Milano’s status as the best South African album to drive to since Dear Reader’s Idealistic Animals.
Hearing KoolKat’s disparate interests make their way into a single cohesive project is what retains the listener’s interest in the album, particularly because most of these interests seem like elusive inside jokes. Listening to the album repeatedly you hope to gain entry into this restricted territory but this is an exercise in futility, yet the pleasure is in the trying.
OkMalumKoolKat has transcended rap. In hip-hop, the self is the centre but he employs the spectator’s view. On tracks like International Airport, which features Spoek Mathambo, he speaks about himself almost entirely in the third person. He treats his own life with the dramatic enthusiasm of a casual bystander.
Mlazi Milano operates outside the familiar tropes of Afrofuturism. It’s not an attempt at minimising one’s pain by becoming small and aloof. Instead, it is loud and accessible, it documents the mosh pit of contemporary urban life by being there in the mishap.
While everywhere we are being bombarded with reports of the demise of the world as we know it, Mlazi Milano is a much-needed reprieve, a reminder that ecstasy is the weapon of choice in an increasingly alien and cold world. It assures us of the joys of unfiltered escapism.
Exhibit B
Here is what we know. In the summer of 2015 Smiso Zwane was arrested in Tasmania and pleaded guilty to charges of indecent assault and assault with indecent intent. He was sentenced to six months and served one month with the remaining five months suspended.
This was based on the following story: After the release of the 100k Macassette Mixtape in the summer of 2015, OkMalumKoolKat embarked on a four-show tour of Australia. After a performance at Mofo festival, drunk, in the early hours of the morning, he entered the room of a female artist who had also been preforming at the festival. He groped her private parts and kissed her before telling her not to make a noise.
In 1979 Woody Allen made the beautiful yet disturbing Manhattan. Shot in luminous black-and-white, Allen stars in the film as a cantankerous writer who dates a 17-year-old.
It’s difficult to watch the film now and not think about what followed as Allen dated the adopted daughter of his then-partner Mia Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn. Allen and Previn would later marry and it would be business as usual.
In 2014, detailed allegations about Woody Allen sexually abusing Dylan Farrow emerged from the 28-year-old adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen in an article published in the New York Times, 22 years after a judge had found Allen’s behaviour towards a then seven-year-old Dylan Farrow “grossly inappropriate”.
There are some parallels here, mainly in the way that both Allen and Zwane have been allowed to continue their public lives without much scrutiny because their public work is perceived as more important than their personal offences.
Immediately after his arrest, there were calls to #FreeMalumKoolKat — mostly from male fans who thought he was being victimised. Just how he was being victimised by being held accountable for his crimes is still not clear.
The lesson here is apparent: indecently assaulting a woman is not a dealbreaker in the minds of many of OkMalumKoolKat’s fans. They have accepted the misguided notion that to be a bad person is the necessary tradeoff for making good art.
None of Zwane’s contemporaries stood up and indicted the rapper for his actions. Instead there were messages of support and casual surprise about his arrest — the most cavalier of which was a tweet by AKA in which he posted OkMalumKoolKat’s name next to a surprised face emoji. AKA now appears on track 13 of Mlazi Milano on a song called Mega Milano. We can never underestimate the capacity of men to bond while the trauma of their victims is reduced to background noise.
In 2012 American academic and filmmaker Dream Hampton published a short yet handy guide called Anatomy of an Apology. It’s one of those things that resurfaces on the internet on an annual basis. According to Hampton, the five steps to a genuine and meaningful apology are: 1. I’m sorry.
2. Here’s my understanding of how I hurt you.
3. I will never do this again.
4. Here is how I’m going to make it right.
5. Please forgive me.
When Zwane was released from jail he did issue an apology. But the widely quoted letter posted on Twitter and Instagram was not addressed to the woman he had violated. Instead it was directed to his fans, an apology for the ways in which he had disappointed them and an appeal for privacy and time to heal. Seen through the lens of Hampton’s five-step guide, the letter Zwane wrote is infuriating in the way it skirted accountability. Milano