NEO•GRIOT

The Music and the madness: Why Brenda Fassie Still Matters – Part 1

Written by Lebohang Thulo

Thursday, 25 November 2010

Brenda Fassie, aka Ma-brrr                           It's been six years since Brenda died, but judging from the headlines that keep popping up - "Brenda Fassie sings for 2010", "Could you play the part of Ma-brrr" - or the rush of nostalgia that her songs still invoke, it's clear that the world is not done with the pop princess.  In a time of mass production, when a music career can be built on a pretty face and a gimmick, does the music and madness that she brought to the world still matter? FROM TOWNSHIP TO THE TOP Brenda's life story is a well-known tale. Like most black people born in South Africa under apartheid she was born into modest circumstances. Except somewhere around her teens her story took a fantastical turn. Born in Langa, a township in Cape Town in 1964, the young Brenda left her hometown for Johannesburg and gained fame in 1986 with her hit song "Weekend Special". She became a superstar with all the trappings: the money, scandals and the drugs that led to her death at 39. At the time of her death she had sold hundreds of thousands of records and become one of Africa's most beloved divas, bagging numerous accolades locally and internationally including, SAMAs and a Kora. Months after her death she was voted 17th in the list of Top 100 Great South Africans (See the complete list on Wikipedia). THE BEAUTIFUL MADNESS Brenda - Mural, Langa High School Nkuli Mlangeni is a curator behind the Cape 09 commemorative exhibition "So who was Brenda Fassie?". Her exhibition, held at a high school in Langa, was an effort at understanding 'The Madonna of the Township' as she was dubbed by Time magazine. Mlangeni says she found that it was songs such as "Zola Budd" and "Vul'indlela", plus the scandalous headlines, that had made the biggest impression on today’s young South Africans, many of whom are too young to remember her in her prime. Predictably, the real Brenda was hard to pin down. "Like she said in her song, “Ngeke Umconfirm" [You can't confirm me], said Mlangeni. Vuli Ndlela – live   The time journalist and magazine editor Bongani Madondo spent covering Brenda's music and scandals in the 1990s may have given him a glimpse behind the craziness, some of which came to use in his role as researcher and script consultant on Ma-Brrr the Musical.  "Artistically and spiritually I would compare her to late African American graffiti and fine artist Jean Michel-Basquit and musician Busi Mhlongo", Madondo says. He believes that Brenda was the genuine article but it is his description of the diva as "Princess Diana on hyper-active pills" that reveals the scope of her popularity. Madondo wrote about many artists but says Brenda remained the more popular subject.    Even after headlines like "Brenda's Legacy of Pain" and "Down and out in Brenda's Hillbrow", her popularity never seemed to wane. Despite stories of wild behaviour, missed gigs and destructive relationships with both men and women, the fans remained and helped many of her albums become hits including the record-breaking ‘come-back’ album Memeza in the late 1990s.  How do we account for this? Dion Chang, a trend analyst and social commentator, believes that besides the music, fans relate strongly to artists with a purity of spirit. "You acknowledge, even if you don't agree with the life-style. People admire someone who sticks their neck out." Madondo agrees that it was her humanity that kept fans coming back. "She appealed to our beaten but resilient selves." My Baby

WHY BRENDA FASSIE STILL MATTERS – PART 2

Written by Lebohang Thulo

Thursday, 25 November 2010

GO HERE TO SEE ALICIA KEYS PERFORM BRENDA FASSIE The night before the kick-off of greatest sporting event the on African soil, the FIFA World Cup, American songstress Alicia Keys along with the current SA "it" group BLK JKSperformed Ma-Brrr's hit "Too Late for Mama" to a packed Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg. This Brenda favourite is a haunting song that tells of a young black mother's demise under apartheid. The performance to a crowd of 30,000, not to mention the millions worldwide, was affirmation of the staying-power of Ma-Brrr's music. On the most public night for Africa in recent times, Alicia Keys and the BLK JKS chose to bring Ma-brrr on stage with them. Carrying on her legacy is Brenda's son Bongani. Now in his early twenties he has followed his mother's musical path as a music producer and musician in his own right. Until not long ago he was a member of Jozi, a hip-hop group known for mashing up American crunk and traditional music. In interviews he has expressed an interest in remixing some of his mother's songs for a new generation of music fans. But with him the reasons are also personal: "When I hear her songs, you don't know what it does to me", he revealed an interview a couple years after his mothers death.   Her spirit also resides in young musicians who themselves are still learning to navigate their way as artists in the industry. Singer Simphiwe Dana is a completely different sort of music animal compared to Fassie. At 30 she is being hailed as the new Miriam Makeba. Her music is a mix of traditional Xhosa, jazz and soul music, and she’s never in the papers for bad behaviour.  But as an African artist she is aware of the role Fassie played in laying the foundation for her and many others. "I don't think record companies and promoters took female artist for granted after Brenda. Dealing with Brenda forced them to learn how to treat an artist."  For Dana, Brenda matters for reasons that other African musical icons matter. "Brenda Fassie will always matter; we should never forget the fearlessness of Brenda, the spirituality of Busi Mhlongo and the grace of Miriam Makeba".   With the music and the enormous legacy, Chang says Brenda remains relevant because she represents an era in time. "Great artists are a product of their time and space, they are a marker of social history", he says.  This makes sense as Brenda emerged in the 1980s at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle. Her battle with personal demons and her candid exploration of her identity and sexuality in the early 1990s mirrored the shaky beginnings of a country that is today still trying to define itself as democracy.  For Madondo the reasons she still matters brings us back to where we started, those headlines: "Would she be written about so often, almost every week, six years after her death if she didn't?" ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB The Sunday Times Heritage Project - Brenda Fassie  Wikipedia  last.fm  Life-size bronze, Bassline music venue in Newtown, Johannesburg Sculptor - Angus Taylor. Copyright of mrbaggins1