Music in their genes
IN THE bleak days of apartheid, the skills of the descendants of indentured labourers and other subservient people rarely surfaced nationally and internationally in the sporting and cultural field, owing to lack of funds, facilities and recognition.
The recording artists, singers and bands that made it past the post can be counted on one hand.
Most notable among local bands was the Flames, whose cover song For your precious love, must rank as one of the most famous songs to come out of Durban.
Steve Fataar still plies his trade in the city, and has a faithful following. Blondie Chaplin is regarded as a top-flight singer in the US together with Ricky Fataar.
Chaplin and Ricky famously were part of The Beach Boys, the American response to the Beatles, in 1972.
Sunny Pillay was also a fantastic singer who hailed from Durban and sang in the saloons of the US.
Another band from Pretoria, called The Flood, had a lead singer named Krishna Pillay. They produced a classic, emotionally draining hit called Let me into your life, which was number one on the South African hit parade for three weeks in 1976.
Chaplin was also a back-up singer and instrumentalist for The Rolling Stones.
For your precious love, which was originally sung by African American Jonathan Butler – not our Cape Town Jonathan Butler – in 1957, was also sung with soul by the Rolling Stones.
Another success story I uncovered recently was that of a Dushy Anthon Chetty, who left the beaches and bunny chows of sunny Durban in 1962, at the age of 18, to study law at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
At that time, Indians were denied access to tertiary education in South Africa and those who could scrape the money together and were gifted enough made the long haul to Ireland to study medicine or law, the staple professions of Indian parents’ dreams.
Luminaries like Professor Kader Asmal and Monty Moodley were two of the sojourners who returned to the country.
Not so Chetty, who assumed the name Gene while completing his first year law.
He frequented the clubs of swinging sixties Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, and was quite taken by the Irish show bands and fancied himself as a singer.
Eventually the Skyrockets advertised for a singer. Chetty applied, got the job and had the honour of having his name first on the band’s new title of Gene and the Gents. Prior to that, bands had the singer’s name last, such as The Miami featuring Dickie Rock.
Chetty was the first Indian to be a lead singer in a band in the UK in those days. He set Ireland alight with his good looks, charisma and scintillating singing.
Gene and the Gents went on to become a top band in Ireland, hitting the charts with C’mon Everybody, Hound Dog, The Way You Wrinkle Your Nose and Puppet on a String.
Chetty married Karin De-Zaaiger, who had come over from Holland with her family.
One of “the gents”, Henry McCullough, went on to play for Paul McCartney’s band Wings. The others also followed successful career paths and the band reunited from time to time in the ensuing years.
In the 1970s, when the pop era began to fade, and with a wife and children to support, Gene did postgraduate studies in management and is now a management training consultant in Hertfordshine, England.
Gene has written a book on his life called The Gene Chetty Story, published last year, which explains his early experiences of apartheid and then his fame in Ireland when the showband became a Top 20 band in Ireland and a top-five attraction in Northern India.
Ireland is a land noted for its singing prowess, yet a boy from Durban made it big in the spotlights of its dance halls.
If he had stuck to law, perhaps he would have ended up in a poky office in Grey Street practising law in the dark period of apartheid.
To sum up, the genes of our ancestors certainly carried talent in them.
Today we have artists like Sketchy Bongo and Jesse Govender to fly the flag for Durban.