September 29, 2004
By Lucille Davie
IT'S taken two years of 24/7 work by Barbara Lindop to bring to fruition a project she feels intensely passionate about: recording the music and songs of the late exiled artist Gerard Sekoto onto "an illustrious album" which will hit the music stores in November this year.
In the 40 years he spent in Paris as an exile, in between painting, writing poetry and prose, Sekoto composed 21 songs with titles like 'Zoomba Tchaka', 'All my lonely days', 'Lovers luulaby', 'Parree always is Parree' and 'Shuffle on to Samba'. Twelve numbers have so far been recorded.
Lindop says the songs were discovered two years ago in his papers, a style of music she describes as "50s blues", written in the 50s, she believes. Sekoto left South Africa in 1947. Lindop, an art historian, has been involved in his life for the past 20 years, and has written three books about him.
She says: "This is extraordinary music. I wanted to return this extraordinary musical heritage to the country."
Some of the songs, says Lindop, were published in Paris and she has heard that two records were made, and although the search for the records is likely to be exhausting, she is determined to find them.
Lindop is the bundle of energy and the executive trustee behind the Gerard Sekoto Foundation, established 10 years ago, a year after Sekoto's death in Paris in 1993. Sekoto was born in Botshabelo in the Free State in 1913 and lived in Sophiatown and Kliptown in Johannesburg before finally leaving South Africa to spend the rest of his life in Paris, where he is buried.
He did several paintings while in Sophiatown, the most famous of which is 'Yellow Houses', one of the Johannesburg Art Gallery's prize possessions, and its first acquisition from a black artist.
The Wits University Art Gallery has his collection of 250-300 Soweto pieces entitled the 'Sowetan Collection', done between 1939 and 1989, which were originally purchased by 'Sowetan' newspaper. Another collection of seven pieces exists in the Constitutional Court Art Gallery, on loan from the South African Art Gallery.
Lindop says she's got together a group of musicians from Soweto, now called The Blue Heads (after his series of works by the same name), to record the music and songs. "None of them read music, so it's been a slow process," she says. In doing the recordings, they have tried to "retain the essential purity" of the music, even emulating the feel of the French vocalist from the original recordings.
The Blue Heads consists of six musicians and three vocalists, who play the drums, trombone, accordian, guitar and piano. The musicians, sporting several grey beards, are largely freelance and "frustrated", and have found the recording challenge "interesting and hectic".
He composed "lots of love songs, which were poignant". He played in a nightclub in Paris, and Lindop says his musical influences were West African spiritual, Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte and Zulu images, despite that fact that he was northern Sotho.
Lindop reckons that when he arrived in France, Parisians knew of Zulus, probably through the slaughter of the French Prince Imperial in the Zulu Wars of the late 19th century, so he capitalised on that knowledge.
"Music came naturally to him, he thought musically," says Lindop.
Lindop acknowledges the generous backing of the SABC for the use of their recording studios, in particular Judi Nwokedi, MD of public broadcasting services.
"He didn't want to come back to South Africa," says Lindop, "because he had become a French man."
He received a honorary doctorate from Wits University but refused to come back to South African to receive it, a condition of receiving the honour. But eventually Wits overruled their own ruling, allowing him to receive it in Paris.
Lindop says that he was filled with bitter memories of his land of birth - when the Johannesburg Art Gallery bought his Yellow Houses in 1940, he had to pretend to be a cleaner to see his own painting on display in the gallery. It was with these memories that he left, and despite the political changes in the country, he never wanted to return. Besides, says Lindop, living in Paris for 40 years, he became well known and was popular, "French people recognised and loved him".
Foundation
The foundation has in the past 10 years seen 150 to 200 students receive training as artists. Its aim is to paint murals of Sekoto's works on significant walls. One of these is the northern wall of the Christ the King church in Sophiatown, entitled 'Sekoto in Sophiatown'. Others are the Khaiso High School in Polokwane, entitled 'Sekoto discovered'; the Seventh Day Adventist Secondary School in Westdene, entitled 'Sophiatown revisited'; and the library in Mamelodi West, Pretoria, entitled 'Eastwood revisited'.
These hand-picked apprentice artists have had guidance from master artists like Sam Nhlengethwa and Mbongeni Buthelezi, who helped them plan the composition and divide the wall into segments. So far eight murals have been completed.
The Foundation is also involved in publishing Sekoto's children's stories and songs. The books will contain a recorder in the back cover, encouraging children to expand their skills.
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