Hilton Rosenthal
Johnny Clegg: Le Zulu Blanc: A Remarkable South African Musician and Anthropologist, Part 1 (with Special Guest Jesse Clegg)
Hilton Rosenthal and Professor David Peimer - Johnny Clegg, Le Zulu Blanc: A Remarkable South African Musician and Anthropologist, Part 1
- Today we have a fantastic, we are very lucky to have Hilton Rosenthal, who’s a forever friend. We’ve been friends for how many years?
I don’t, I don’t want to say, friend.
[Wendy] Okay, of course.
[Hilton] It was certainly early days.
Yeah, very many, many, many, many years. So we’ve got Hilton Rosenthal’s going to be in conversation with Jesse, who is the son of our beloved Johnny, and they will be talking together with David Peimer. And I know that you guys have spent a lot of time and effort working on this presentation. It’s also very significant that today is my mom’s 90th birthday. And Johnny played at my dad’s 80th birthday celebration. So it was almost coincidental. I mean, this is just, it’s quite remarkable. So before I hand over to you, I’m just going to do a little introduction. Tell people about you, we’ll talk about you, Hilt. So Hilton Rosenthal, for those of you who don’t know him, has been in the music business since graduating from Wits University in 1972 and joined CBS now Sony in South Africa. In 1978, he signed Johnny Clegg and his partner, Sipho, help me pronounce it correctly,
Mchunu.
Mchunu producing and publish all of Juluka and Savuka’s albums. He started his own independent label in 1980, which he sold to EMI years later before moving to set up a studio in Los Angeles. International artists that Hilton has worked with include Paul Simon, Carole King, Harry Belafonte, Foreigner, and Christopher Cross. He now lives in Sydney, Australia.
Thank you, Wendy. Lovely to be here.
Yeah, thanks Hills. It’s just I’m thrilled to have you on with us. Jesse Clegg, Johnny’s son, is a platinum selling South African singer songwriter. Throughout his career, Jesse has released 10 top radio singles and has been nominated for five South African Music Awards. He has toured both internationally and internationally, including the Isle of Wight Festival in the UK, SXSW in Austin, Texas, and Radio City Hall in New York for the annual Mandela Day concert. He has toured and collaborated with multiple international acts, including Daughtry, Walk The Moon, Msaki, Shekhinah, DJ Kent, Joan Armatrading, and most recently as the main support for Imagine Dragons Stadium tour across South Africa. Jesse has released three studio albums and is currently working on his new album in Los Angeles with Grammy winning producer, Tim Pagnotta. Today, Hilton and Jesse will be speaking with David Peimer about Johnny, a remarkable South African musician and anthropologist. Johnny was a very, very close friend. I knew Johnny very well, a special, special human being. Jesse, I remember the day that you were born. And I just want to send my love to Jenny, who I’m sure is listening and to all the family, and yeah, I’m so looking forward to today. So over to you, thank you.
She’s smiling me. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you guys.
Okay, just first of all, thank you so much, Wendy, and also for putting us all in touch and enabling this, I think, a feast of an event to happen. Thanks so much to Hilton and Jesse, Judy, Karina, Lauren, the whole team, everybody for helping us put this together. Just a quick note is that we are going to do part one today and then same time tomorrow, part two, because there is so much in the extraordinary and remarkable life of Johnny Clegg, that it would be an injustice to try and squeeze it into just one session. So we’re going to go halfway what we decided today and then pick it up tomorrow for the second part of Johnny’s amazing contribution to music, to art, to culture and everything. Just to add that it’s an honour and a privilege for me to honour Johnny in this way. And thank you so much to Hilton and Jesse for being so open and generous and offering to be part of this in a quite remarkable way. I don’t want to repeat what Wendy said, Hilton was Johnny’s best friend and a superb producer. And Jesse, obviously Johnny’s glorious son and a fantastic singer and musician in his own right as well. So thank you for all of us. And just to start, I suppose for those of you who’re not South African or don’t know much about Johnny, just a couple of brief words to give a context, and then obviously I’m just going to be asking questions and handing over to Hilton and Jesse primarily. Those of you don’t know, Johnny was a remarkable dancer, singer, songwriter, anthropologist. He was awarded the highest awards by the French OBE, by the British, and so many other awards we can go on and on. Primary parts of his career were obviously during Apartheid and then after Apartheid, and we will show tomorrow some of the clips of Nelson Mandela coming on stage to surprise Johnny and dance with him, and many other events that we will show.
So we’ll combine, the structure is we’re combining some of the clips of the actual songs and the concerts, some of the clips of Johnny speaking at Dartmouth College and elsewhere, together with getting a overall sense of this, of the remarkable, utterly inspiring life of Johnny Clegg. One other thing to mention is that I think as time goes on, my instinct is that Johnny’s reputation, name and cultural and musical and life importance is going to grow and grow massively globally, because it’s quite a remarkable life. He walked the walk, he didn’t just talk the talk, he went all the way in what Hilton and Jesse have said about a search for identity and change and immersing himself in Zulu culture and music in so many ways, not just talking, but doing. He touched so many lives, he touched so many lives of so many people in South Africa and globally and inspired and in these dark times, he gives us a glimmer of hope of somebody who was so inspiring to cross over cultures, to be so open-minded, a curiosity, a hunger, as opposed to being entrenched in a kind of Apartheid mental police. Johnny really went all the way in those times. Remarkable. Okay. And just to say happy birthday, I’m sure, from all of us, Wendy, to your mom’s birthday and all the best health and happiness. So if we could start, and if we could go onto the next slide, please, Karina. Okay, this is a copy of the, of Johnny’s book, which he wrote, and please, if you want to do one treasure, read this book in the next couple of weeks. It’s fantastic, inspiring and just beautifully written by Johnny. Could I ask you, Jesse, if you could start, and give us a sense of your dad the early days, his mom, obviously his background from being born in England, living in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia. Just a sense, if you wouldn’t mind.
Sure, thank you David. And it’s great to be here. Yeah, in my dad’s early years were quite tumultuous and it was really characterised by a lot of moving around and dislocation, and quite a complicated family dynamic. He was born in Rochdale in the UK to a Jewish mother and a Christian father, and his mom’s father, his grandfather, who lived in what was then Rhodesia, was quite a religious Jewish man. And my father was the only male Jewish heir of the family. And so he arranged events so that my father was brought back to Rhodesia with his mother and was basically barred from making contact with his biological father. And that was when he was very, very young, probably a year or two old. And from that point onwards, they moved around a lot. His mother was a single parent. They went to Zambia and ultimately South Africa. And his early years were really, there was a lot of people that came and went through his life. He had no real solid father figures other than his stepfather. And who really let him down in quite a dramatic way. He actually ended up kidnapping my father’s stepsister and taking her to Australia. So my father was left without a male role model. And the one male role model that he had had done this crazy thing. And I think that because he was, because he had no real solid family foundation and he was in this strange situation where they were constantly moving, it really gave him this curiosity about identity, about his own identity, about his search for a father figure, search for a community, a search for what it means to be a man, what it means to be in the world, and how to express oneself and how to carry oneself. And he was also able to explore certain experiences in Johannesburg as a white boy that a lot of other white kids weren’t really able to experience. And I think that was partly because he wasn’t really being watched a lot. His mother was a musician and also worked full time. And so he was kind of doing his own thing. And when he eventually met Charlie Mzilla, the first Zulu guitarist who taught him, which we’ll get to later, he was on his own mission. He was really a curious and independent young man. And it’s just interesting that your weaknesses are your strengths and your strengths are your weaknesses. it was a very particular grouping of pressures and family dynamics that allowed my dad to explore and had the need to discover these things.
Great. Okay. Thank you so much. And what you said about the need to explore the discovery, that curiosity and in a sense what we can maybe say later now, search for identity. Hilton, if you would come in on how you first met Johnny and those early days.
Sure. Thanks David. Thanks Wendy for having us. I was working for CBS Records, which is now Sony, and one of my responsibilities was overseeing the Black music division. And I suddenly became aware of and fell in love with the African music, which previously was predominantly the only exposure I had to, it was when Al May was playing it on a radio, out in her room. And I had met Muriel a couple of years earlier when she used to work for the same company before I joined, and she used to come in and always talk about her son, and about “My boy,” and “Can you introduce him to Simon and Garfunkle’s manager?” And we all kind of rolled our eyes, but clearly that stuck in my mind. So I became obsessed with trying to do a project, which was combining this new music that I’d discovered with the music that I’d grew up with, the Beatles, rolling Stones, et cetera, et cetera, and tried to work with our musicians on it and nobody was really getting it. And I was getting pretty frustrated. One night I was sitting at home, it was a Sunday night, and suddenly I remembered that I’d seen Johnny and Sipho at Wits University, and I literally went to the phone book, you remember what those were? And looked up Muriel’s phone number and called her and asked her what Johnny was doing. And she told me that he was planning to sign a new agreement with another record company. I said, that was a pity. And she asked what I had in mind, and when I explained to her, she said, “But that’s exactly what Johnny wants to do. I think you guys should meet.”
So we had this quite interesting first meeting. Many years later, Johnny and I discussed our different perspectives of that meeting. I saw this guy come in, huge afro, big beard, dressed almost like an African version of Crocodile Dundee, and he was very suspicious. I could see that he was very suspicious of me. He describes it as walking into an office where this preppy kid was sitting on a big fancy leather couch. And his thoughts were, I don’t know how us two guys are going to ever be eye to eye. But after some conversation, he said he was on his way to Zululand to complete his research for his doctorate that he was doing and for his thesis. And he would call me back, which he did when he, thankfully when he got back, we had a number of different meetings, and eventually I signed Johnny and Sipho to a contract, which, the one beautiful thing I remember was that the day we signed, Sipho was sitting at the end of the boardroom table. As someone who couldn’t write, he put his thumbprint on the agreement, lifted his hand, and went, “Something.” And this was really something many, many times we referred to, “Something.”
Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks Hilton, very much. Get a sense of Johnny’s early beginnings from his life and his family, and beginning with musical and music and recording. Hilton, if you could, sorry, if we could go on to the next slide, please. Thanks, so before we dive into this here, just as an introduction, Hilton, if you could mention a little bit about Johnny, the beginnings of working with Charlie, Charlie Mzila.
Sure, David, well, we decided, Johnny gave a lecture at Dartmouth, I think it was 2017, and we decided that in a lot of these cases, carrying things from Johnny’s perspective in his own words would be best. So this clip, I think is the one where he discusses how he met Charlie.
Okay, great. If we could show the next clip, please, Karina.
She didn’t have, so I had a kind of an English musical identity, which I subscribe to. I went up to the store and there was this chap playing a guitar, and I was quite as shy, I was very small for 15, and I stood there holding my bread and my milk, and I watched him play and I saw immediately that the guitar was tuned differently and there was a different picking style. And I just had like an epiphany and I thought, this is a completely unique guitar genre. It’s like a South African blues. And I’d really like to learn it. So shyly, I went up to him and I said, “Could you teach me?” And he couldn’t speak English that well. So it started off with gestures, “You will teach me guitar.” And he said, okay, I said, “Where do you work?” And he said, across the road, he was a flat cleaner opposite the store. I said, I’ll come to see you after school. And I came after school, then I started getting my lessons.
That’s great. Thanks. It’s so beautifully written also in the book, but we get a sense here of Johnny sharing at Dartmouth. And then if we could take the next step further, Jesse, if you could talk a little bit about dancing and what dancing, Zulu dancing meant to your dad.
Sure, so he obviously started as a lover of Zulu music, and Charlie Mzila was his teacher, and as he became more familiar, he learned some of the language. Eventually a friendship grew between my father and Charlie, and they were friends for life. Charlie is still part of our family and we still have contact with him, but eventually Charlie brought my father to the George Goch Hostel, where the migrant labourers were basically housed in these big, sort of, kind of warehouses. And there was this whole underground culture of dance and just these amazing dance competitions where they would bring traditional dance from Zululand and they would have dance contests in the hostels. And I think for my dad dancing was, it was really the next level for him in terms of his understanding of Zulu culture, his understanding of what the culture’s trying to say about masculinity, what it’s trying to say about self-expression. And it also gave him access to the community. It wasn’t just one-on-one with him and Charlie. It was suddenly this whole breadth of new people that he was getting to meet and see Zulu culture being enacted in this unusual sort of social system, but still very, very colourful and very expressive and beautiful. And it also was the first time that he had run-ins with the Apartheid police, which we’ll hear about in the next clip.
Okay, and also, just so we get a broader context, here he is, as a teenager, going into the very cruel, harsh conditions of the migrant Zulu workers on the Johannesburg mines and going in on his own is the only white guy at the time of the viciousness of Apartheid. So that courage to do that at such a young age. Okay, if we could show the, the beginning of the next clip, and if Hilton, if you could speak a little bit to the
The dance team came up.
Sorry, okay, let, let’s show the clip first. Thanks Karina.
But I went into the middle of the dance team and then they sung me in through the gate and we had this dance competition, and then they put sing me out and I started to frequent the hostels and eventually I was arrested and taken to my mother. I was standing between these two policemen. She opened the door and they said, “Look, your son has been arrested for breaking the Group Areas Act. Basically, it’s a statutory offence. He’s too young to process as a criminal, but we’re warning you that as he gets older, it’s going to become far more complicated for him and for you. And secondly, he’s going into a place which is wild. These are tribesmen. We are taking bodies out through feuds and tribal faction fights every weekend. It’s a very dangerous place for a white man to be in.” So my mother was very concerned, she was a cabaret singer and a jazz singer. So she understood passion for music and she wanted to be Ella Fitzgerald. So I said, “Well, I want to be a war dancer, and you want to be Ella Fitzgerald, you get it.” And she said, “I get it, but I don’t have to go into a dangerous area to do this and I need to have some sense that you’re safe.”
Thanks. Johnny, he’s got such a beautiful way of telling stories as well. Okay, thank you. If we can, Hilton, if you could take us, to the next step where Sipho comes from Zululand and the origins of Juluka for those who are not sure, the first band that Johnny created. Okay, if you mind just mention, speak to a little bit first before we show the clip.
Sure, sure. David. So evidently Sipho, when he arrived in Johannesburg, was working as a gardener in Houghton. And he heard about this white boy who was playing and singing Zulu music, and he sought Johnny out to challenge him. And this was the beginning of a pretty amazing long-term, lifelong friendship. We made a documentary in 1984, and I think again, Sipho and Johnny’s words, own words are the way to explain this.
Okay, lovely. If we could show please, Karina.
Migrants came from Natal mainly and some from Zululand, and they came to Johannesburg and they brought with them their language, their music, which was influenced by the language and music in Johannesburg. ♪ These simple things are all we have left to trust ♪ ♪ I hope I will not find you smiling in a dream ♪ ♪ I’ve come too far to face again what I have asked ♪ The two experiences met and melded and formed something which is entirely new and something which is entirely unique. And it is this cultural tradition, this the migrants worker culture in the city that Juluka uses as its musical base. And it’s from this experience and here that I met Sipho.
[Interpreter] My story begins with a meeting with a white man. I’m a migrant worker from Zululand. Like my migrant worker brothers, I left my wives and my children at home and came to the city to wrestle a livelihood for myself and my family. In the city I had to make another life for myself. I lived two lives. When I arrived, I heard there was a white man singing Zulu. I found him. Johnny and I have been together now for 14 years and I’ve taught him many things about the Zulu guitar, stick fighting and especially the dance.
Juluka, the word means sweat.
This is 13 West Street in Houghton, is a place I used to work before for 12 years as a gardener.
It’s also a place where Sipho taught me a lot more about Zulu guitar and stick fighting.
[Interpreter] Before Johnny could learn about the body in the dance, he had to learn about the body in stick fighting. The dance holds the key to understanding many aspects of my people’s life. The rhythm of the Zulu language, of the stick fighting of the dance, all influence the form and content of Zulu music and the kind of sounds we use in Juluka’s music. The Zulu language is really.
Just, one thing I have to mention is, we can’t underestimate for a second the context is some of the most cruel times of Apartheid. And these, Johnny is young, so young here, but is so hungry and determined to cross over that and immerse himself in a very real way, not just armchair in such depth with Zulu culture. Extraordinary in those cruel dark times. Okay, as we go on onto the next one, there’s a little bit, Jess, if you wouldn’t mind speaking to it, which is where your dad speaks about activism and the difference between being an activist in Apartheid and an artist musician.
Yeah, I think that what set my dad apart was that he came to Zulu culture at a very young age, and he was so connected to it. It was so much a part of his life and his sense of identity by the time he was old enough to understand the politics, that he never really, it was never the intention for him to be sort of swept up in the political conversation. And I think that I really admired him for, he really saw himself as an artist first. He was an activist and he talked about social issues, but he never aligned himself with any sort of political movement or anything. He wanted to find a way to tell the stories in a way that people could empathise and see the humanity in a way that everyone could relate to it. And in South Africa, which was such a fragmented society, it was actually the most effective way. It was a way that people could to see each other. And I think that really set him apart as an artist in terms of being able to show South Africans each other’s stories without finger wagging. And you’ll hear him talk about that difference and how he understood the political conundrum that the country was in.
Great, thanks. Then Karina, if we could show the next clip, which is, it’s Johnny talking at Dartmouth College
Analogy was Apartheid put a fence across the road. An activist would say, “Why is there a fence in the road? This is crazy. Who put the fence here? I challenge this fence. I’m going to smash the fence down. It has no right to be across my path.” The other way of looking at it, which is what I looked at it was, wow, there’s a fence in the road. How do you get over the fence? Is there hole in the fence? No, there isn’t. How can I leave? How can I climb over the fence? In other words, my solution was at the age of 16, was to say, “There’s this obstacle, it’s just a pothole in the road. I’m just going to find a way around it.” I never questioned the fence. It took me about four years later, as I entered university and did politics, started to question the system itself and to understand how it operated and why I was unable to find a different angle on what I was experiencing. I was also going through all sorts of adolescent issues about-
I think it’s such a beautiful and powerful image, that the image of the fence here. Could we show the next clip, please?
Analogy was Apartheid put a fence across the road.
It it should be the next clip. Yeah.
So activism and art, anthropology and political detention, these things found their way in my life to kind of make a weird existential puzzle. And I put it together as I went along. There is no map, there is no formula, and everybody has to find their own way. And in the final instance, I had to experience criticism from the left and from the right and from the centre. I remember a very good colleague of mine, Charles Van Osland, saying, “Why don’t you just take a socialist position and then you’ll only be hit by one side all the time instead of being hit by from both sides?” And as an artist, you have to basically be hit from both sides because you are occupying an independent space because you are an artist. You want to be a free thinker. You want to have have the freedom to construct something which is meaningful, which is good form, which is good quality, which has got something for value to offer and also enables you, and I want to come back now to identity, which enables you to define who you are.
I just love that way of speaking. He puts it so clearly and succinctly, the role of the artist vis-a-vis the activist being punched both sides. Okay, if we could take a little bit of a step forward now, and Hilton, if you wouldn’t mind introducing us to recording, Johnny recording with, Johnny recording “Universal Men,” in America.
Sure, David. So we went into the studio, I needed to put together some kind of a backing band to work with Johnny and Sipho. And I found, I thought that the two musicians that would compliment the best as a drummer called Gilbert Matthews and a bass player called Sipho Gumede and I let them just for a week play and really learn each other’s songs and express themselves. And the result was what I think is almost one of my favourite albums we ever did, which is “Universal Men.” It has a naivety and a purity that rings true still today. Unfortunately, my colleagues in the record company thought I was totally nuts. I was told it’s too white for Blacks, it’s too black for Whites, how we are ever going to sell this? The South African Broadcasting Corporation also had a policy at that time of having separate radio stations for each language group. So music that was mixing English and Zulu was never going to get played. And in fact, the first album was a struggle. My first validation of it though was, I took a copy of the song ,“Africa” and in “Africa, The Innocent Are Weeping,” to Mesh Mapetla, who was at Swazi Radio, although Swazi Radio couldn’t really, it was an independent station, but wasn’t able to really break music. But Mesh was a good friend, and I played him the song and at the end he burst tears and I knew, okay, “Something.” But we struggled through the year and eventually I left the company a year later and formed my own company, bought the Juluka contract out from there, and we recorded the album “African Litany.” So similarly, I have to say in the interim, there was media coverage, particularly in the independent press about Juluka and “Universal Men” at least had some recognition.
And a level was, although it was a low level and some level of sales, when we released the “African Litany,” we had similar problems in terms of getting radio play. In fact, our first single was a song called, “African Sky Blue.” But all of a sudden I got a call from our sales team saying, “The album is starting to sell and we have no idea why.” Well, what we found out was that song, “Impi,” which was a song about the Zulus and the British, a certain battle that the Zulus won. The song “Impi” had a chant in it that was being adopted by the kids in the townships as part of their protest. So they would be running around toy toying and saying singing “Impi.” The ultimate irony of this whole project was the album started really selling well, at the end of the year, Radio Zulu had a listener competition to vote on the album of the year, and “African Litany” won album of the year on Radio Zulu without ever having a note played on the station. The album went gold. And of course, again, another ultimate irony was that the song ultimately became the theme tune for the Springbok rugby team. I think the next pic slide has a picture of the first goal, this presentation.
Fantastic, if we could show that, please, Karina. If we could speak to that, Hilton?
Yeah, well, I mean, that was what we looked like in those days, obviously big smiles. It was an incredible moment for us to have a situation where after trials and tribulations the album was selling enough to be awarded a gold disc and still not being accepted by the mainstream media in the country.
Extraordinary, going from his life as a teenager that Jesse was describing earlier, all the way through and now to this, as a first massive global step. Thanks, so the next clip we’re going to show is one of the great, great songs, global reach, global impact, and amazing success of Johnny’s “Scatterlings Of Africa.” And let’s show it first, and then perhaps you can speak to it a little bit afterwards. ♪ Copper sun sinking low ♪ ♪ Scatterlings and fugitives ♪ ♪ Hooded eyes and weary brows ♪ ♪ Seek refuge in the night ♪ ♪ They are the scatterlings of Africa ♪ ♪ Each uprooted one ♪ ♪ They’re on the road to Phelamanga ♪ ♪ Beneath the copper sun ♪
Extraordinary song, extraordinary piece. Jesse, would you like to just say anything about, now watching your dad doing this and the song, the dancing, the crossover fusion of music?
Yeah, while I was watching that, I was reminded that my dad used to say on stage that this was his favourite song that he ever wrote out of all the music that he’d made. This was the, this was like a really foundational song and it’s really about how all humanity started in Africa and that we’re scattered around the world. But Africa is the birthplace of human beings and that there’s a deep connection to what it is to be human in Africa. And I think, Hilt can speak to this, but “Scatterings "also launched Juluka and it launched Savuka. It was a song that was the first sort of international break for both Juluka and Savuka. So it was a really special song that carried my dad through his career in Juluka and Savuka. Yeah, it’s a beautiful song and it’s one of those songs that has this timeless message and he is talking about such complicated and profound subject matter, but in such a poignant and clear and simple way. And it’s just a great example of what he was so good at, which was saying something very deep in a way that we can see the humanity and we can all connect to it.
Beautiful, thanks, it’s that incredible humanity as you say. Okay, could we go onto the next slide, please? And this is the launch coming to the UK and in Manchester, if I’m right, Hilton. And if you could speak to this.
Sure, David. So even again, no support from mainstream radio in South Africa, but the buzz was starting to happen around the world. Johnny and Sipho had done a a just an acoustic tour. They played in France, the word was getting around. And I got a call one day from a guy that’s, again, become one of my lifelong friends. The guy on the right of this picture is a guy called John Craig, who had a label in England called Safari Records. And John wanted to release "Scatterlings” in England. So again, without anticipating pure mainstream coverage, one had to be very creative about how one was going to promote this. So when we arrived in London, John, we took a photograph outside the Safari Records office. If you can see in Sipho’s hand, there is an Africa shaped picture disc. They manufactured the first shaped picture disc to send to radio of, it was basically a vinyl seven single, but in the shape of Africa. And in order to have a launch party, John arranged that we should have it in Manchester and that Johnny’s father would be, and his family would be invited. This was a kind of a surprise to Johnny. And it was an amazing evening. The next morning when John and I were driving back to London, we left Johnny and Sipho with our promotion people in Manchester, and we turned on the morning news on the radio and we heard the announcer say there’s a traffic jam in the middle of Manchester downtown area because there’s two Zulus dancing in the street.
Okay, great, thanks. Jesse, did your dad ever, he met his own dad when he was 21, if I’m right?
Yeah.
After all those years.
Yeah, he met him when he was 21. I mean, Hilt, you were there, but from what I gathered, and I was, I actually met him as well, Dennis, my dad’s biological father, they had a complicated relationship because he wasn’t present for my dad’s childhood. But my father always had a, he had this desire to honour his father and to have a relationship with him. And I remember when I first met him at the airport in London, I remember my dad taking me aside, I was probably eight or nine years old, and he said, “Just remember to call him Gramps.” And he just, he really wanted me to embrace his father as my grandfather. And my experience of him as a grandfather, we only saw each other a couple of times before he passed. But he was a very loving and affectionate grandfather. And he had my father’s, I remember recognising something in him, it was that he was an animal lover and he loved dogs and he was, he had this amazing ability to whisper into a dog’s ear and the dog would just follow him around for the rest of the day. My dad also loved the animals and loved dogs. And my dad would, he said to me before I met him, he’s like, “My dad is a dog whisperer, you’re going to see this.” It was amazing. He really was. But I think, I really, I loved the fact that my dad never, he never resented him. And he tried to include him, and I’m sure it was difficult for him, but as a son and as a grandson, I had this understanding that my father wanted the relationship to be honoured. And so he was made to feel like he was part of our family even though, it was such a dislocated kind of relationship over my dad’s childhood. But I always respected and acknowledge that my dad wanted to have him in our lives, which was wonderful.
That’s great. That’s great and extraordinary. ‘Cause the number of personal family traumas that your dad went through, that. And then what happened to the kidnapping of your dad’s sister, by his stepfather, all of that, incredible that he maintained such a spirit of optimism.
And my father’s stepfather was, he was actually quite a role model for my dad in his early years. He was a crime reporter. And so he showed my dad a lot about South Africa and Johannesburg. He took him around to just expose him to another side of society. And he was really like my first, my father’s first real, real male role model. And when this incident took place, I think it was quite a shock for my dad. There was quite a disappointment there and it made him weary. And when he came across Zulu culture and he came across migrant labourers, migrant labourers are away from their family. They don’t have family, they just have each other, they have the community. And Zulu culture is very rooted in community and in the strength of the individual in relation to community. And I think that that was a very powerful resonant message for my father in that moment.
Very powerful. And the idea of abandonment going all the way through. Okay, if we could gently move on to the next, which is the idea, Hilton, if you wouldn’t mind speaking just before we show Concert in the Park about the cultural boycott and the TV boycott.
Sure, well, so the “Scatterlings” reached the top 50 in England in January of 1983. And during that year we had planned a tour of the UK. Of course the cultural boycott was in place and, again, another irony, but the Anti-Apartheid movement in England was moving to try and get the English government not to grant work permits for Juluka. It became quite a furor in the media and Juluka just before we were supposed to go to London, played in Zimbabwe, and the BBC sent a TV crew there. And the news in England said that it’s if the South African government, if the British government manages to silence Juluka, they will have done something that the South African government hasn’t managed to do. So ultimately they buckled and they gave us work permits for the band to perform live. Before we left Sipho insisted that we go down to his homestead and get an ancestral blessing, a blessing from his ancestors for the show. So we took off one evening, drove down to Zululand, arrived at about one in the morning. Sipho kept us waiting at the gate for about an hour. And I kept saying to Johnny, “Why? Why is he keeping us waiting?” He said, “Because Sipho has to show his people that we show him respect.” Now, ultimately, we were shown into this ancestral hut, which was basically a simple hut with a thatch roof. The only things in the hut at that time was a kerosene lamp and a gas powered refrigerator. So we all sat around the side, Sipho came in, dressed in his skins, and had a pot in his hand. And he began with a crooked stick to rub his hands together to stir the pot. I whispered to John, “What’s going on?” And Johnny said, “Well, if the ancestors approve, the liquid will bubble up and bubble over.” So fortunately the liquid started bubbling up, and then Sipho started calling each of us up to drink it from this pot. When it came to my turn, I had a little bit of nerves, I stood up, I walked over, and as I bent down, Sipho looked at me and he went, “Just pretend, Hilt.” Anyway, I did pretend, but right after that they had the traditional slaughtering of the goat and we were each given a slice of skin, which was put on our arms, which they called which was for good luck. And Sipho explained that we should not remove this until it falls off, otherwise it would be bad luck. So we all drove back the next day with, we’d thrown some salt on it to try and cure it, and people were keeping their arms out the calf. When I got home, my Jewish dad who’d grown up in Eastern Europe and was a lot older than, a lot older than me, obviously, but really just couldn’t understand that he thought I’d lost everything. He thought I’d lost my mind.
Okay, thank you. Could we move on to Jess, if you could mention about your dad leaving Wits briefly a little bit?
Yeah, I think that he always had a deep love for academia and he, Wits University was the biggest university in Johannesburg, and he was working as a lecturer, amidst all the success of Juluka, he was still a full-time lecturer lecturing anthropology, which just spoke to his love of culture and his unique insights into the Zulu traditions. So, when Juluka started taking off, he always told the story on stage that he had to go to his supervisor and tell him that he wanted to take a year off to go and pursue this music thing. And then he is going to come back and get tenure and settle down into lecturing. And the supervisor said to him, “John, if you walk out that door, we are never going to see you again.” And my father’s like, “No, I’m just going to go and do music for a year and I’ll come back.” Anyway, he was right. My dad became a full-time musician, but he always had a deep respect for academia and he passed that down to me, and he met my mom at Wits and he was a, it always was a place that held a very deep place in his heart, Wits University.
That’s great, discovered love, and he made that huge choice to leave academia and go and immerse himself fully. Okay, Hilton, if you you could briefly introduce the Concert in the Park, and then we’re going to show the clip of Johnny playing there.
Sure, David, if I may, there’s one thing I think I should mention. When we came back from England and Juluka was on the charts, all of a sudden the South African media really started respecting Juluka. And there was their first sold out show, their solo show at the Colossian Theatre. And there was an incredible moment where people kept jumping up during the show and dancing and the security people kept telling everyone to sit down because the fire department had had certain rulings there. But when it got to the encore and Juluka started playing “Scatterlings,” two kind of lines appeared on the side, people just moved to the side and two Conga lines started moving down towards the centre, towards the front by the stage. And the two lines turned and came towards each other meeting just in front of Johnny. And the one guy on this side was a White guy, on this side was a Black guy. And the two of them embraced their arms and danced in a circle. The audience went nuts. And I think it was one of those moments where South Africa realised what the future could be.
Yeah, yeah. Amazing image and moments. Thanks for reminding me. Okay, if you would just introduce us to the Concert in the Park.
Sure, so I had a call when, on a Saturday morning, I was listening to Radio 702, which Wendy’s family was involved in owning. And I heard one of the musicians call up, they were having a telethon to raise money for Operation Hunger. One of the musicians wound up and challenged all other musicians to donate others 50 rand or something. And that got me thinking, what can I do that might be more than just challenging other producers, et cetera? And totally by coincidence, the following Monday, Issy Kirsch called me and invited me to go and see the new studios for a 702 up in Botswana and said, “We’ll pick you up. Meet me so and so, we’re going in a helicopter.” So we went up, we had lunch, and on the way back in the helicopter, we were flying over Ellis Park and I said to Issy, “I was listening to your telethon on Saturday. And I thought, wow, I wonder if we could do a concert, in aid of Operation Hunger at Ellis Park, but how the heck we can do that I have no idea. Issy said, well, I know Louis Luyt who runs Ellis Park and I’ll call him this afternoon. Issy called me that afternoon and said, "Louis said we can have the stadium for free as long as we pay for the cleaning.” It was three days. I called every manager, every producer, every artist I knew in the country. And within three days we had 24 artists lined up, all performing for free. We had all the staging, all the crew, everyone had offered their services for free. There was, half the acts were White, half the acts were Black. And of course the featured act was Juluka who went on just as the sun went down and the place went nuts. I was standing in the suite with Louis Luyt and when Juluka went on and he saw this response, he crossed his arms, he was, he looked at me and went, “Rosenthal, I don’t know what you’ve done here.” So here’s a clip of Juluka playing to a more than capacity crowd of well over 100,000 people at Ellis Park.
Thanks. If we could show please, Karina. ♪ Future clear ♪ ♪ And we are scatterlings of Africa ♪ ♪ Both you and I ♪ ♪ We are on the road to Phelamanga ♪ ♪ Beneath a copper sky ♪ ♪ And we are scatterlings of Africa ♪ ♪ On a journey to the stars ♪ ♪ Far below we leave forever ♪ ♪ Dreams of what we were ♪
Great, thanks. And then as we move to the end for today, Hilton, if you could speak just briefly about Sipho’s homecoming ceremony, and then I’ll ask Jesse, if you could come in on the crossing over ceremony.
Sure. So a year later, Sipho came to Johnny and I and said, “Look guys, I’ve accomplished what I want to, what I want to do with Juluka. I want to go home and I want to rebuild my father’s homestead, build the school, et cetera, et cetera. I’ll give you guys one year notice so that we can continue working. But-
This is when they’d already achieved such enormous global fame. Starting all those years back in Yeoville in Johannesburg.
Yeah, and during that time, they toured America, they toured Europe, they were a well-known band and ready to really break through internationally on a major scale. And Sipho decided it was time to go home. He had a homecoming ceremony where he invited all the local chiefs and there was about 1,000 people there. The one notable thing was that that was the weekend where the government abolished Immorality Act, and I spent the whole weekend. There were only a few White people there, including an attractive young female journalist. And I spent most of the weekend fending off guys telling me, asking me if they, if I could fix them up with this young lady. But this was the same scene that ultimately, the same place where there was a ceremony for Johnny’s crossing over and I think Jesse can best explain that.
If you could take it from there, Jesse, if you could share with us.
Yeah, so this ceremony was when my father passed. There’s a very beautiful Zulu tradition that once. Sorry, can you hear me?
Yeah.
Oh, okay. Once the person dies, then there’s a period of one year where the soul is in transition. So, and you have to allow that time to lapse so that the soul can realise that it’s died. And then you do a ceremony at the end of that period where you kind of welcome the soul into the next phase, which is then, becomes an ancestor and it can then watch over the family. And you can commune with that person. And you can ask for their blessing and you can connect with them in a much deeper way. And so this next clip was me and my family coming to Sipho’s homestead as my dad had done so many times before in the past. And this was us welcoming him into the world of the ancestors. And we burnt the which is a sacred herb. You inhale the smoke and then it gives you a sort of sensitised mental space where you can hear them and you can commune with them. And so you’ll see in this clip, I also had my daughter at this event. My father never got to meet her, but it was wonderful. And Sipho gave her a as well as Hilton had mentioned, which is a symbolic gesture of her joining Sipho’s family and joining the greater family of Makhabeleni. And it was just a beautiful ceremony and celebration with the community to honour his life.
Lovely, thanks. If we could show that Karina, please.
Jesse, oh my brother.
Hello, pops. ♪ Through all the days that eat away ♪ ♪ At every breath that I take ♪ ♪ Through all the nights I’ve lain alone ♪ ♪ In someone else’s dream, awake ♪ ♪ All the words in truth that we’ve spoken ♪ ♪ That the wind has blown away ♪ ♪ Oh, it’s only you that remains with me ♪ ♪ Clear as the light of day ♪
Thanks. Thanks Karina. So we’re going to put it to together now for today. And as you can see, there’s so much in the journey of Johnny Clegg, which is quite remarkable. And we’re about halfway through and we’ll pick up part two tomorrow, same time for everybody. We take the whole next step in Johnny’s really quite incredible journey together. Thank you so much with Hilton and Jesse. It just remains for me to say thanks so much to Jesse, Hilton, Karina, everybody for helping with putting everything together that we can give you a bit of a sense of Johnny’s drive, discoveries, anthropology, the music. And as Wendy has often said, the spirit of Johnny and how that just starts to come in more and more. That remarkable spirit of sheer humanity through his life and music.
And–
Anything you’d like to say, Wendy?
I just want to say just his joie de vivre, he was so much fun. I remember countless and endless evenings of us getting together weekends, recounting stories, so many interesting stories, so many funny stories. He made us laugh constantly. And he always, he was just sunshine. Everything about him was sunshine. And I just remember these two beautiful little boys, Jesse and Jaron and Jenny whenever we were, and such a close beautiful family. So I just want to say, Hilton and Jesse and to all of you, thank you so much for today. It really just warmed my heart and just thinking about memories and that special journey that we all had together. And just one last thing, just almost like foreclosure, all so much coincidence that today is my mom’s birthday and as I said before, and Johnny was at my dad’s 80th and then I actually ran down the other day just to, just to have a chat to my mom and there was one of her friends, Mirriam Bach was there and she said, "Wendy, do you know that Sipho was my gardener?” So I was like, oh, I cannot believe it. So, so many other stories I didn’t have a chance. Mirriam, I’m sure you’re listening today, so, so many, yeah, I’m sure that Jesse would love to talk to you too, just a whole nother side. It’s just we, the South Africans are beautiful, big family. So I just want to say thank you very much to all of you today.
Thanks Wendy. And just before we go on onto questions, if that’s okay, Hilton and Jesse, if you have 10 minutes or so.
Of course.
Sure.
Q&A and Comments:
Yep. Okay. Also, just to add to it, Wendy said, “I knew Johnny briefly as a student, you stayed in the flat opposite where I stayed in the student house in Rally Street in Yeoville. And I remember nights of crazy discussions as students do, drinking this, smoking that late, late, late music. All the stuff that you guys have spoken about so beautifully, it was before I went to America, so-
That’s amazing. Yeah, I mean we were like such young students and we celebrated having long hair, beards, the whole trip and like three, four in the morning early on, going on and on and on about all these things that you’ve mentioned here and spoken about. So thanks. Okay, I’m going to go onto questions. Here.
So Adele, Adele wishes your mom happy birthday, Wendy.
And Naomi says, "Thanks so much. It was so interesting.”
Q: David asks, “Where was Johnny born and when did he die, of what?” Jesse, perhaps you’d like to take that.
A - He was born in Rochdale in the United Kingdom, 1953 and he died in 2019 and he died of cancer, pancreatic cancer.
Thanks, and then Bob asks, Bob says to all of us, “Thanks for a brilliantly constructed presentation and I really appreciate, Hilton, all the work you’ve put in and Jesse and Judy, really thank you.”
Thanks for giving us the opportunity.
So, and Bob says, “Maybe you should work your way through the music collection. Favourite artists, da, da, et cetera.” Well that, but that would take us, God, we could go on so many aspects of Johnny’s remarkable journey in life.
Q: Valerie asks, “What year was the concert in the park?” Hilton?
A - It was in 1985. January or February, 1985. January, 1985.
Okay. Melvis, Mavis and others just talk about how wonderful they’ve enjoyed the presentation overall and hearing it, feeding others as well. Beverly.
David, if I can, David, if I can interject for a second, I just had a crazy moment the night before last. I was getting into Walter Isaacson’s book about Elon Musk and Musk comments that in 1985 he and his brother attended the concert in Johannesburg with over 100,000 people. So Elon was there. Hello Elon.
Oh, okay, we have to contact Elon on X and tell him hello buddy, you know? Yeah, exactly. He owes one. Okay, Mark.
Mark says, “Johnny was an absolute icon of our time growing up in South Africa. A legend. He punctuated my teenage years. Thanks so much for doing this webinar.”
Barry. Yeah. Hold lots of like other comments here, just thanking us so much for the presentation, et cetera. Okay. I think we can hold it here together if that’s okay. And then we are going to pick it up tomorrow, same time for everybody and hope everybody has a great evening wherever you are. And be lovely to meet everyone again here on Zoom tomorrow. Thanks so much, Jesse.
Thank you.
Can I just say one also, sorry Wendy, go for it.
Go on, go on.
No, just to say once again Wendy, thank you for putting us all together and inspiring us to do this, to share for your mom’s birthday and to, for everybody and everybody listening and watching, please, any moment I’m going to plug, please enjoy his book.
Exactly. Thank you.
Okay. It’s brilliant.
Yes.
It’s poetically and brilliantly written. It’s a beautiful inspiration of humanity and light in these dark times. It’s extraordinary and a coming together of cultures, which Johnny really really walked the walk, so.
Thanks guys.
Thanks guys. It’s been a pleasure
See tomorrow.
Really enjoyed it.
Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.