Zef rapper’s roots laid bare in humorous biography

BACK in the day, artists used to start dropping new music around September in order to compete for the coveted Song of the Summer title. But now, it seems it’s the season for South African musicians in their prime to drop… wait for it… biographies. In addition to Kabelo Mabalane’s I Ran for My Life, written with Nechama Brodie, another book is making waves.

Jack Parow’s Die Ou Met die Snor by die Bar, co-written by Theunis Engelbrecht, has also been published. The title is a lyric from some of Parow’s earliest recordings and means “the man with the moustache at the bar.” The book chronicles the Afrikaans rapper’s musical beginnings until his lifechanging, fully-fledged music career, but in his signature tongue-in-cheek way.

At the moment, the biography is only published in Afrikaans but, an optimistic Parow says: “It depends if a lot of people ask for it in English. Hopefully, in the end, we’ll have both versions.”

Born Zander Tyler, the Capetonian was surprised that the Penguin publishing house wanted him to pen a book about his life.

At just 33, “I didn’t know if I’d been around long enough,” Parow says matter-offactly. “But essentially, the book takes a look at where I am right now. It has fun stories and descriptions of my lyrics. I thought it would be cool to depict all of that and tell the story of how I got so far. In a few more years, then I will sit down and do a boring memoir.”

Unlike other biographies by musicians, Parow’s isn’t a tell-all. In fact, Parow believes he was already rather biographical through his music so there wasn’t a need for his friends to worry about him putting their business out on the front street.

“In the book, I talk about my friends, but I didn’t want their wives or families to read stuff and have it cause trouble for them with the heavy stories. My music is so honest already, most of the things in the book are things that people already know. People must just take me the way I am because I didn’t put in any bells and whistles.”

It’s precisely because people take Parow as he is that he has a bright future in the publishing world.

Although he has no immediate plans to write anything else, he admits: “I love writing so you never know. I enjoyed this process a lot. The lucky thing was that for six months, I just talked and Theunis was so into it and so amped. We met twice a week, then he’d go home and write that night. The process was really cool and happened faster than if people were writing their own books. It was in someone else’s hands to make the deadline,” he giggles, “but I’m really proud of it and thanks to everyone who has read it because the reviews have been positive so far.”