Sunday songs give strength for the week
Accompanied by the aroma of roast chicken in the oven, the radio provides the true soundtrack for the day of rest
The Bogside Massacre occurred on January 30 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights association arranged a march that day. They took to the streets to protest against internment. It was a protest like any other until British soldiers arrived and opened fire on the unarmed civilians, killing 14 of them. Some were shot in the back because they tried to flee and some were shot while trying to help the wounded.
The killings of the Bogside
Massacre are the highest number of people killed in a single shooting during that conflict. Just over 10 years later, Irish band U2 released a song about it, Sunday Bloody Sunday, but this isn’t a story about that kind of Sunday song.
Sunday mornings are significant. They’re one of the few mornings the working class from the days of apartheid got to peel their eyes away from the dark to a morning of relative calm. No rushing for a train or taxi. No bowed heads staring at scurrying feet that leave families behind and head out for the day, the week even.
Sunday mornings are for taking a moment to stare at the ceiling until the crumpled clothes you didn’t bother to fold the night before start inching towards you, and the oven starts calling from the kitchen and the family starts to signal the start of their day with the clinking of teaspoons against cups in the kitchen.
Yes, Sunday mornings are different. They’re slower than Mondays, disliked more than Saturdays but definitely more necessary than other days, like a Thursday, for example. Such a nonday. Sundays are for rebooting,
recouping and reunioning. But the one true thing — outside of doing those extra little chores, or the spring clean you promised you’d do on Wednesday after work, or the smell of the roast chicken in the oven for family lunch — that Sundays are for, is Sunday music on Sunday radio. This is the true soundtrack of Sunday.
“I remember Sunday radio growing up, my mother cooking in the kitchen while I switched stations between Capital Radio and Radio Transkei looking for the perfect soundtrack for our Sunday. I remember Mbulelo Ngewu and Patrick Dalindyebo on Radio Transkei, then there was Steve Bishop, Kenny Maistry, Alan Khan and Alan Pierce on Capital Radio. All these deejays made my day that much more special.”
That’s Lunga
Singama. Lunga’s become one of those people who make other people’s Sundays better, he’s a radio DJ himself and he presents my show of choice in Cape Town on any given Sunday, I Heart Sunday on Heart FM between 10am and 2pm. Peak cleaning, cooking and reminiscing time. Have you ever tried drying a dish to Pacific Express’s Give a Little Love? Or readying your hands with oven gloves while singing along to Whitney Houston’s You’re Still my Man?
The Sunday song is not just any song. It’s music that bleeds nostalgia. Each song sings a memory. Each chord in every song lives to be 100, maybe more, because there is no suffering, its pulse always fine and steady.
“Growing up during the dark times, I saw how music made my aunts and uncles smile at a time when there was not much to smile about as black people in our country,” says Nonn Botha, who hosts the 4pm to 7pm show on Sundays on Radio 702 . Nonn hails from Evaton in the Vaal. She was born in 1979 and identifies as an old soul, even in those days. She paints this picture: “I remember sitting on my great-grandparents’ red stoep, polishing my uncle’s shoes on a Sunday morning. My mom and aunt were cooking up a storm on the coal stove and Donny Hathaway’s A Song for You was playing. I also remember listening to Nina Simone and Marvin Gaye on Sundays . And Eva Cassidy.” I don’t know Nonn personally, but I can see her on that stair outside the front of her house singing: “I’ve been so many places in my life and time/
I’ve sung a lot of songs/ I’ve made some bad rhymes/ I’ve acted out my life in stages, with 10,000 people watching/ but we’re alone now, and I’m singing this song to you.”
“Sundays are part of culture for black and brown people because Sundays are days of rest. And on that day of rest families get together to build stronger bonds through nostalgia, music and food. They sit around the whole day talking about wonderful memories and those memories are usually connected to particular songs,” says Lunga. He says it’s the job of radio stations to tap into the collective psyche of that nostalgia.
In my home, Sunday mornings looked like hot mugs of rooibos tea steaming over the Lifestyle section of the Sunday Times with Metro FM’s legendary Eddie Zondi in the background. This was a time before Apple Music playlists and Shazam; it was a time of remembering the song and remembering the artist. And sometimes, there was that song that started to play that made me stare up from the pages I so much wanted to see my own byline in and search the air for the name and artist, but the answers never came on the wind. Instead, I would message my best friend, who in her own suburb was sitting on her bed, listening to the same station, singing along to the same song while her mom did the same.
“Did you hear that? Who was that? It’s a kwaai song,” I used to say in an oldschool SMS.
I still listen to Heart FM every Sunday in my flat even though I could probably make my own playlist. I still read the Lifestyle section. I don’t have to SMS my friend to ask who the artist is anymore, but the Sunday songs are still and will always remain kwaai. ● LS
SUNDAYS ARE SLOWER THAN MONDAYS AND DISLIKED MORE THAN SATURDAYS