Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar

Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness”1 in Postwar Cape Town

Carol Muller University of Pennsylvania USA

n January 25, 1959, a short but To copy [note] for [note], word for rather glowing review ap- word, image for image, is to make the peared in The Golden City Post, known world your own … It is within O an exuberant world of copies that we one of ’s most popular news- 2 arrive at our experience of reality. papers targeted at a “non-white” audi- Hillel Schwartz 1996, 211-2 ence. It read:

Despite their prodigious use of There is no doubt about it, Beatrice recordings in formulating perspectives Benjamin is the mostest, the greatest on jazz history, historians have tended and the most appealing girl singer in to avoid theorizing the actual status the Cape, whispers Howard and function of these artifacts_the very Lawrence. What she did to the audi- artifacts that … would seem to consti- ence at Post’s show, “Just Jazz Meets tute primary evidence about jazz the Ballet” was wow. I got it bad when music. she sang “I Got It Bad.” Everybody Jed Rasula 1995, 134 else got it bad too and they kept shouting for more of that feeling. Most There was a time when radio was pure promising singer for 1959. Agreed. magic…the magic [came] from enter- [my emphasis] ing a world of sound, and from using that sound to make your own vision, Five decades later the performance of your own dream, your own world. ’s music in Cape Town, Susan Douglas 1999, 28 South Africa may not seem particularly noteworthy. In its historical moment, Just to sit in this dark place, and magic however, it was a remarkable achieve- takes place on the wall. For a moment, we forgot , we forgot there ment for a local singer of mixed race to was another world that wasn’t good; move her interracial audience emotion- we sat there, and were carried away by ally with a “foreign” repertory, i.e., a style the dream of these American movies. of song performance far removed from Actor John Kani to Peter Davis 1990, 23 the site of the music’s original produc- tion. It begs the question of how jazz had become both a naturalized discourse in Cape Town and part of the individual

Cultural Analysis 2002, 3: 19-46 ©2002 by The University of California. All rights reserved 19 Carol Muller

and collective experiences of so many his community, travel to America was who lived through that period of South like travel to the moon. “The only expe- African cultural and political history. For rience I ever had with Americans was this Cape Town-born singer, “I Got It Bad through records.”5 Similarly, when and That Ain’t Good” has a certain aura. South Africans began to travel in Europe Sathima Bea Benjamin3 recalls that this in the 1960s and 1970s, they report that Duke Ellington tune created an imme- they rarely met anyone abroad who had diate and steadfast bond between her- any knowledge of South Africa’s vibrant self and internationally acclaimed South jazz communities.6 African jazz pianist In this paper, one of a series of medi- (aka. Dollar Brand).4 Benjamin and tations on postwar performance Ibrahim were each working separately amongst people classified as on the piece when they first met at the “Colo[u]red,” I examine the media jazz fundraiser mentioned above. Unbe- through which ordinary people like knownst to them in 1959, through an Sathima Bea Benjamim, Abdullah extraordinary sequence of events, they Ibrahim, and their peers learned Ameri- would come to meet and record with can popular music and jazz performance Duke Ellington and his musical partner, in the port city of Cape Town. The mate- composer-performer Billy Strayhorn in rials derive from a long-term research Switzerland four years later. Benjamin project I have been conducting with Ms. and Ibrahim memorialized that encoun- Benjamin since the early 1990s. While ter by performing “I Got It Bad” once much of that project is concerned with again, but this time in the presence of its the auto/biographical details of her life composer. and music, including a move into cul- Two records came out of the 1963 en- tural and later political exile initially in counter, one featuring Sathima Bea Ben- Europe and ultimately in New York City, jamin (A Morning in Paris, 1997) and the this paper takes a more generalized ap- other Dollar Brand, (Duke Ellington Pre- proach to musical practices in Cape sents the Dollar Brand Trio, 1963, reissued Town, South Africa from the end of 1997). These records signified a climac- World War II to the early 1960s. Although tic moment for be- the musicians I have interviewed were cause while many South African musi- all somehow connected to Ms. Benjamin cians had performed the music of Duke at the time, I have integrated additional Ellington and Billy Strayhorn in primary sources, including discussion of and Cape Town, few archival film and newspaper material, to imagined they would ever have the op- enhance and enlarge upon the ethno- portunity to meet these musicians, or graphic particularity. witness them performing live, let alone Ms. Benjamin and her peers in 1940s record in the presence of such interna- and 1950s Cape Town initially honed tionally acclaimed artists. As the Cape their musical skills by taking cover in the Town jazz pianist Henry February com- imported sounds of American (and to mented to me, at that time for people in some extent British) popular music and

20 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

big band jazz performance. These styles Variety (changed to African Follies), Town- came to the port city through a range of ship Jazz, Golden City Dixies, and King personal contacts with visiting American Kong: An African Musical Opera. Even sailors, occasional tours by English and though they were heavily loaded to- American musicians,7 but more pro- wards white direction of “non-White” foundly through the importation of talent and there was, for example, little Anglo-American entertainment media “African” in African Jazz and Variety other and technology, specifically radio pro- than black bodies performing, such ini- grams and commercials, sound record- tiatives surely signaled a measure of ings, and Hollywood films. Without the hope in some for racial or at least cul- opportunities for formal musical train- tural integration in the future. For many ing, South Africans absorbed and lis- who participated in their performances, tened closely to the recordings, copying they also held the promise (though usu- and covering them live in local venues, ally not the realization) of international creating what some in South Africa have travel, particularly to England and Eu- called a culture of “carbon copies” of for- rope. On the other hand, for those of Af- eign music and musicians.8 Dovetailing rican and mixed racial descent like with the experiences of a small group of Abdullah Ibrahim and Sathima Bea Ben- men, who drew on their recent experi- jamin, it was an era of increasing state ence as wartime entertainers to train surveillance and exclusion in which the young musicians in the new repertory, scaffolding of apartheid was legislated many in Postwar South Africa had come if not yet fully enforced by the Afrikaner to believe in European classical and Nationalist government. The political American popular music as universal climate changed dramatically with the languages, languages that could be both Sharpeville Massacre in March 1960 in understood and mastered. which the National Security forces Postwar South Africa must also be opened fire on black protesters, killing characterized as a period of growing several. anomaly. On the one hand, there were In other words, in contrast to this pe- several “collaborative” musical projects riod in the USA, which may have started between English-speaking liberal whites, out completely segregated but was people of mixed race, and African de- slowly transformed, at least legally, scent. These included production of the through the Civil Rights Movement, by films The Magic Garden (1951) and Jim the early 1960s the outcome in South Comes to Joburg/African Jim (1949), Song Africa was legalized apartheid enforced of Africa (1951), Zonk! (1950) (see Davis with draconian measures. “Colo[u]red” 1996), the continued (state) support of the and other forms of African10 racial clas- Eoan Opera Company9 for “Colo[u]red” sification became increasingly problem- youth in Cape Town, and the organiza- atic especially in urban areas like Cape tion of traveling performance troupes Town and Johannesburg. The ideas and like The Arthur Klugman Show (or sounds of middle class respectability Coloured Jazz and Variety), African Jazz and expressed in “Colo[u]red” dance bands

21 Carol Muller

and those of political liberation sug- Town’s own” , , gested in the racially mixed or ideologi- or Bing Crosby brought these traditions cally non-racial membership of the small to life. “Enlivening” distant voices on but progressive jazz avant garde con- stage by using local singers and instru- trasted with the expanding force of state mentalists was a common practice for control and the repression of individual white musicians in the South African and collective expression. For some the record industry i.e., studios produced response was to engage politically, to foreign music under license using the become more outspoken; some with- voices of locally known performers.11 drew in fear; yet others used jazz perfor- In the third part, I reflect on the mance to articulate ideals of political and metacultural practice of creating “carbon cultural freedom and racial integration. copies” of recordings of foreign musical The first part of this paper situates so- performances in postwar Cape Town by called “Colo[u]red” racial classification people labeled “Colo[u]red.” While the in the postwar era from the perspective “culture of the copy” is not peculiar to of the musicians I have interviewed. This the twentieth century or to South Afri- narrative of the complexity of cans in Cape Town (cf. Schwartz 1996), “Colo[u]red” identity in Cape Town in it assumes particular characteristics in this period suggests why at least some the postwar period depending first on people in that community opened them- the ways in which originals were heard selves up to the possibilities of new and through different media—film, radio, “modern” musical sounds and practices and sound recordings—and then re- not historically germane to the region or peated or re-presented in the Cape; sec- regarded as articulations of “South ond, on how fertile the musician’s imagi- Africanness.” The second part is largely nation was in determining his/her ca- ethnographic with a focus on the partici- pacity to take on and reshape the social pation of Ms. Benjamin and her peers in and musical self through copying the a Cape Town culture of “carbon copies” voices, gestures, and clothing of the ob- and covers from the 1940s through the jectified performances of “American” 1960s. This narrative, or series of narra- others; and third, how mediated origi- tives, is about the transplantation of for- nals were copied (transcribed/memo- eign mediated performance onto local rized, or performed) by local musicians. culture. It tells of the translation of In this context, Cape copies sustained “American” music into a form of perfor- two broad kinds of performances: exact mance that was more culturally coher- copies of foreign models with/without ent, and one that occurred largely some improvisation or “ad libbing,” and through live reenactments. In other the more intellectual and politically pro- words, this is a history in which objects gressive world of the Cape jazz avant more than people bring the sounds of garde that strove for creative, original jazz and popular music to communities expressions in a non-racial social milieu. far from the sites of first/original perfor- It was the latter performance that mance. People posturing as “Cape troubled the Afrikaner Nationalist gov-

22 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

ernment because it countered ideologies lematic. This complexity was poignantly of racial purity and separate cultural exemplified, for example, in the results development. of the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994 when to the surprise of “Cape Colo[u]red” as Racial Classifica- many, the majority of people categorized tion as “Colo[u]red” voted the Afrikaner Nationalists back into power in the West- It would be a grave error not to provide ern Cape, defeating the bid of the more some understanding of the deeply em- politically progressive African National bedded sense of place that Cape Town’s Congress. “Colo[u]red” is thus a label residents, regardless of racial category, fraught with ambiguity because, like the historically attributed to that city. Cape notion of metissage elsewhere,12 to be la- Town is a place of exquisite beauty. Its beled “Colo[u]red” in South Africa has physical landscape, with Table Mountain never translated into a positive form of in the center, and the Indian and Atlan- identification. Though the label itself tic oceans surrounding it, has long pro- gained currency in the early 19th century vided for its residents a specific sense of in Cape Town the “Colo[u]red” label was locality. This was true for people of Afri- ascribed to those who were originally can and mixed racial heritage until about slaves but who had sexual relations with 1950. Within the space of about twelve Europeans in a period of greater freedom years, 1950-1962, the “Mother City” in interracial social relationships (Febru- changed from one which evoked a pro- ary 1983). It is worth noting in this con- found sense of place, home, and commu- text that slavery in the Cape was not lim- nity belonging, to a space of exclusion, ited to people of African descent because fragmentation, boundary marking, and many slaves were imported to Cape inevitable transgression. It was certainly Town from places along the 17th and 18th true for Ms. Benjamin and all the others century Dutch trade routes: Malaysia, In- who participated in Cape Town’s avant- donesia, Madagascar, Ceylon, and Ben- garde jazz community. These changes gal (Western 1996, 12-13). Unlike some were inflicted on those labeled “Cape of those of African descent in the US, Colo[u]reds” by a series of laws made many “Cape Colo[u]red” people had by the Afrikaner Nationalist government largely participated in European- rather in the early 1950s for the country at large. than African-derived cultural practices.13 They had a particular kind of impact in Under the apartheid government, how- Cape Town because this legislation in- ever, all people of mixed racial heritage tentionally sought to keep people catego- or married to someone who was mixed, rized as “Colo[u]red” out of white space. were legally required to identify them- State enforcement of these laws played selves as “Colo[u]red” regardless of their a critical role in the transformation and cultural orientation. In other words, the often destruction of these communities, category of “Colo[u]red” became an and of jazz performance itself. ideological and political rather than a To talk about “Colo[u]redness” in “natural” or cultural one. Cape Town is therefore extremely prob-

23 Carol Muller

Early twentieth century Cape Town istration Act (amended in 1966) created has been described by Ms. Benjamin as legal definitions for racial groups, defin- a period of “relaxed apartheid,” when ing “Colo[u]reds” as persons not native people of color mixed with those of Eu- or European, or persons married to a ropean descent though always in quite man or woman classified as “Colo[u]red” controlled frames. Social restraint not (Western 1996, 9). The Immorality Act only characterized social convention for (passed in 1927 and amended in 1950 to “Colo[u]red” people once the Afrikaner include a ban on interracial marriages) Nationalists came to power in 1948; it made all sexual relationships across what had also been an effective strategy un- was called the color bar illegal. The der British governance prior to that. For Group Areas Act (1950) required racial example, it was under the British that groups to live in specific areas, seeking “Cape Colo[u]reds” were removed from to separate out the “Colo[u]reds” from the Common Voters’ Roll in 1936. “Europeans” to preclude any further ra- Sathima recalls that two social principles cial mixing in Cape Town specifically were inculcated into her as a child of (though it had wider ramifications in the mixed race in that period: (a) know your rest of the country as well). The Sepa- place and (b) do not look for trouble. rate Amenities Act (1950) forced racial Culturally, the social rules were trans- segregation in all public venues.14 So the ferred into “Colo[u]red” dance band per- naming of “Colo[u]reds” legally became formance in which adventurous musi- a means to divide, rule, and marginalize cians were held to a stringent set of rules rather than to unite and empower. about permissible “deviations” from per- The racial category “Colo[u]red” is formance conventions. Jazz musicians therefore a label of ethnicity that has like Henry February and Abdullah never represented any kind of homoge- Ibrahim have provided humorous ac- neous group in South Africa, except in counts of their attempts to improvise the eyes of the apartheid regime. I have over set tunes and fixed rhythms in the specifically chosen not to use the word dance band contexts (see further Layne “identity” in the Cape Town context be- 1995 for discussion of these two styles of cause few of those classified as performance). “Colo[u]red” identify with the category. Without the right to vote equally with Some reluctantly accept it publicly but whites, the Afrikaner Nationalist govern- privately resent its application to them. ment proceeded to separate “Cape Some have rejected it entirely. A few have Colo[u]reds” socially from Europeans sought to “pass” for white. Many never (the label for “Whites”) through a series use the word “Colo[u]red” without the of legislative acts starting in 1950. This preface “so-called,” because this kind of was their strategy of “nation”-building: racial categorization underpinned the of forging a “nation” of European apartheid government’s policy of racial peoples at the center with all “others” purity, the denial of European participa- geographically, economically, and politi- tion in biological miscegenation, and ex- cally marginal. The 1950 Population Reg- clusion of people labeled “Colo[u]red”

24 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

from the larger nation-building project Sathima’s father’s generation kept them- of the Afrikaner Nationalists. selves apart from others of mixed race “Colo[u]red” intellectuals, some of who were called “Cape Colo[u]red.” whom were also members of the South Unlike some “Cape Colo[u]reds” who African Teachers’ League, completely spoke Afrikaans, who were part of the rejected social identification through ra- working class or variably employed, and cial categories, projecting instead ideals who danced to Afrikaans-derived live of a non-racial democracy (February band music (called “langarm,” the “long- 1983). In this instance, people prefer to arm” style of the tango) on weekends, be identified individually, and in terms St. Helenians aspired to participation in of categories other than race. Some use a milieu of English language middle class the label “Colo[u]red” to assert their dif- cosmopolitanism and “respectability.”18 ference from people of African descent. Some never took South African citizen- Others preferred to be identified as Afri- ship but remained British subjects, en- can.15 More recently “Colo[u]red” iden- gaging exclusively with the English- tification has also been re-appropriated speaking world. Certainly, most St. by some for political and economic mo- Helenians in South Africa were proud bilization and gain. that, prior to 1948, their birth certificates Sathima Bea Benjamin’s own family stated, of “mixed St. Helenian” rather heritage adds a new twist to the ques- than “Cape Colo[u]red” descent. On tion of being labeled “Cape Colo[u]red” weekends, this community gathered the because they were never “Cape extended family to play cards and sing Colo[u]reds” in the historical sense of the around the piano. Most were church- term. Half her family16 hailed from the going Christians. This would change remote Atlantic Ocean Island of St. Hel- with the next generation, which sought ena ruled by the British. Sathima’s father, to assimilate more into South African so- Edward Benjamin’s family, had immi- ciety, but they were forced to identify grated to Cape Town from St. Helena in themselves as “Cape Colo[u]red” from the late 19th century when his older sis- the late 1940s. ter, also named Beattie, was a young girl. In addition to policies of exclusion The Benjamin family arrived on boats in from South African citizenship and na- the Cape Town harbor and settled with tionhood, instituted by the Nationalist other St. Helenians. This group of immi- government from the early 1950s, “cul- grants lived in three places in the city: ture” was used to demarcate differences before its destruction, the on the basis of race and class. The Euro- Rondebosch-Claremont suburbs (on the pean classical tradition signaled good “Colo[u]red” side of the railroad tracks), taste and middle class membership for where Sathima spent her early child- the “Colo[u]red” (and African) elite. hood, and Athlone, a more settled Nationally it was the standard by which “Colo[u]red” area where she lived in her musical talent and excellence were evalu- late teens and early twenties with her ated. The distaste for jazz amongst the mother.17 Many St. Helenians of “Colo[u]red” elite is expressed as fol- lows:

25 Carol Muller

When the child has been allowed to themselves in the United States in the cultivate a soul we shall find a new 1940s and 50s. The increased availabil- illumination in the remaining cultural ity of sound recordings and films in the subjects, for he will be able to respond postwar period added to the more usual to the works of great masters of cre- sheet music, enabling individuals to ative spirits [i.e., European masters], music will not need to be rendered to learn the repertory by listening rather jazz nor the sensuous, and literature than reading the score, which corre- to vulgarity, before he can find genu- sponded more closely with the particu- ine pleasure in them.19 lar skills available to most in this com- munity at the time. In this section, I shift Most of the musicians I have interviewed focus to Sathima, or Bea Benjamin as she who were situated on the proverbial was known in Cape Town, and her mu- fence between working class and an sical peers’ responses to foreign sounds emergent professional membership of in their home environment in these the middle class had little music educa- years. I shall discuss three mediated tion. Sathima went for some piano and sources: radio, sound recordings, and theory lessons, as did Henry February film, and round off the ethnographic and Jimmy Adams. Even if you could materials with selected examples of “en- afford the tuition, training in European livened” repetitions and representations classical music and syncopation were the of this music in Cape Town through the only two styles available, so it was more early 1960s. common for “Colo[u]red” musicians to be self-taught. Big band arranger Jimmy Radio Adams recalls borrowing tuition books When I asked veteran Cape musicians, from his teacher. On the back of one of Jimmy Adams and Harold Jephtah, these manuals he found there was the where they first heard American music, “United States School of Music” in Wash- they replied, “It was in the air.” Jimmy ington D.C. that offered training through qualified, “In the air, on the radio.”21 Ini- correspondence. By combining superior tially there was only the English lan- aural skills with a close listening to bor- guage station, then an Afrikaans lan- rowed recordings, Adams taught him- guage and culture station was devel- self jazz harmony and arrangement from oped, and a third, called the Klipheuwel 20 the books he ordered from America. Station, aired for several years and then Contrasting with the peculiarities of shut down. In 1950 the first semi-com- local experiences, it would seem from the mercial radio station, Springbok Radio, films shown in Cape Town cinemas and was made available through state con- sound recordings sold in the city’s stores trolled broadcasting. Henry February that jazz, particularly as dance band ac- explained that his move from English companiment but also as avant-garde style syncopation to American jazz on artistic performance, were the sites piano occurred after he heard the Benny through which people of color were ne- Goodman Trio with pianist Teddy Wil- gotiating a fair and respectable place for son on radio. The piano playing “hit

26 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

[him] like a thunderbolt.” In response, formed by artists like Duke Ellington, February who had had some piano les- , , Doris sons, purchased books that taught the Day, Joni James, Frank Sinatra, Billie Teddy Wilson style. Later he heard the Holiday, and many others.23 music of Nat King Cole. He taught him- self how to play in the Cole style, and in Film the 1950s called his jazz ensemble the Nat While the radio broadcasts were an inte- King Cole Trio.22 gral aspect of the everyday chores in Bea Born a few years after Adams, Benjamin’s childhood, the cinema Sathima recalls that as a young girl she proved to be the social space that brought absorbed American popular music and the most complete package of the magic jazz through listening to her of faraway people and places close to grandmother’s radio, which played home. In contrast, Jimmy Adams rarely daily in their home. From the age of visited the “bioscope” (movie theater),24 about ten she used to keep a pen and and Henry February does not consider notebook hidden in her grandmother’s the movie fare influential on his devel- wind-up gramophone. The notebook opment as a jazz pianist—the audiences was hidden because her grandmother were looking for images, not good artis- did not think the young girl should be tic sounds.25 Harold Jephtah, however, wasting her time writing down the recalls attending the theater two or three words in order to perform them on stage, times a week in his youth.26 As diverse at intermission in the cinema, and later as the acts in the live variety shows that in clubs and at jazz gatherings. To hear preceded film screening in theaters, a the musical sounds as background mu- night at the local movie theater included sic was safe; to memorize the words, to two full-length feature films (usually transform them into your own texts, was “Wild Westerns,” action, or monster troublesome because the public nature films), a serial, the news, and a cartoon. of dance band and stage performance Jephtah’s favorite serial was “Terry and was not considered appropriate for re- the Pirates,” but the monster movies spectable young girls, especially not were his passion. It is to his avid view- those from the St. Helenian community. ing of those movies that Jephtah at- Nevertheless, because she could not af- tributes his desire to learn the European ford to buy the sheet music, sound re- orchestral repertory27 —prompting cordings, or fake-books, Bea Benjamin Jephtah to train as a classical clarinetist painstakingly copied the words of tunes and bassoon player in Sweden in the as they were broadcast repeatedly early 1960s. through the week. Once she heard a song In the 1940s, when the young Ms. at the movies or on the radio, she would Benjamin and her friends began view- take ownership of its melody by repeated ing American movies, the theater offered listening. Through this medium young more than mere consumption of audio- Bea listened to English and American visual images. For these young Cape popular music and big band jazz per- teenagers and aspiring performers, Hol-

27 Carol Muller

lywood films provided clearer models of (1989) and Jeppie (1990) both argue that popular performance, largely by people “going to the movies” was a ritualized, of European descent. There were, none- often boisterous, communal activity in theless, one or two films that stand out Cape Town’s “dream palaces” in the in South African film history because mid-1940s through to the late 1950s. they starred people of color. Cabin in the Nasson explains: Sky, starring Lena Horne as singer and Duke Ellington as band leader, and The local “bioscope” occupied a very Stormy Weather, featuring a range of Af- special niche in the recreational life rican American jazz performers and va- of the community, a place to which riety entertainers, were two of the most both adults and children went in or- der to be cocooned in the dream popular movies shown to “non-white” world of the flickering screen. Atten- audiences in South Africa in the mid- dance was regular and habitual, as 28 1940s. These two films were the cin- films continually widened their au- ematic models for the handful of local dience appeal and imaginative power productions, live and filmed, of the 1940s to transport people out of themselves, and 1950s in which largely black South and the humdrum confines of their African performers in Johannesburg work and domestic lives at least once starred. There were other films in which a week…While [cinemas] tended to performers like , Cab be fairly small and unpretentious in Calloway, and the Ink Spots appeared appearance, their names_the Star, the West End, the Empire, the British (Davis 1996). Furthermore, in the increas- Bioscope_dripped with the promise ingly repressive public environment, the of glamour or old imperial splendor. “bioscope” theater was the only space (Nasson 1989, 286-7) that allowed a measure of freedom in social (and romantic) interaction be- Shamiel Jeppie summarizes the experi- tween young “Cape Colo[u]reds” in ences as follows: Cape Town in the 1940s and 1950s. There were no other contexts in which, for ex- Sitting in often-crowded cinemas and ample, “Colo[u]red” girls were permit- on hard benches was a common ex- ted to appear publicly without their par- perience for many of these cinema- ents. With its mix of reality and fictional goers. From these packed seats audi- material, the program at the theater, ences would frequently audibly en- much like television in the United States gage with the film; as one letter to a local newspaper put it: and Britain in the same period, kept the community in touch with the outside I refer mostly to the talking aloud and passing comments on the world. The darkness of the cinema al- players, besides reading aloud lowed audiences to sit back, open their subtitles … and the sympathy and eyes to an otherwise inaccessible world advise [sic] given out to players of glamor and enchantment, or to keep by some persons. Some ladies them closed and to dream. again, bring their babies to the South African historians Nasson show in the evening.29

28 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

Amorous couples, and sporadic tory. She reinvents these “straight” melo- fights in the plebeian cinemas added dies with a jazz sensibility that enables to the texture of the Cape Town her to reflect temporal displacement and bioscope. Moreover there were the imaginative play as musical attributes. scenes of the audience bringing their snacks with them_from smelly fish and chips to milk chocolates. (Jeppie Sound Recordings 1990, 120) Though Bea Benjamin could not afford to buy 78 discs of her favorite perform- Hollywood films with mostly white ac- ers, three of her jazz colleagues tell won- tors and stars provided the bulk of the derful stories of the impact of film and entertainment for these largely working sound recordings on local culture. Jimmy class communities: westerns, thrillers, Adams recalled the influence of sound and horror movies were the favorites for recordings on black South African mu- men and boys, while women preferred sicians from a trip he made to the musicals and “weepies” as they were Johannesburg with Sathima, after the called (Nasson 1989). It was the bioscope sponsor of the their show, Arthur that promised the fantasy and magical Klugman, abandoned the performers sounds that so many “Colo[u]red” while on a tour of Southern Africa in the people aspired to copy. Sathima recalls late 1950s. Adams and Benjamin ven- that every Saturday for seven or eight tured into the Bantu Men’s Social Cen- years, she would make the trip to the ter, a mission initiated community cen- weekly matinée to get her “big dollop of ter that sponsored musical training and American culture.”30 performances of jazz and classical mu- Retrospectively, Sathima Bea Ben- sic by African musicians in this period. jamin suggests there were three levels on Distributed around the walls of one of which American and British films the rooms at the center were “holes in shaped her individually and musically. the wall with phonograph players inside. She identified with child stars of the Musicians were sitting in front of the movies, and recalls that her aunt even holes, listening to the records and copy- braided her hair in the style of girl stars ing the sounds.”32 of the period. Film culture inculcated a Jazz musician and community librar- particular notion of romance and roman- ian, Vincent Kolbe, explained that in his tic love, that even if she was never to re- youth musicians did not just play exact ally find it in daily relationships, she renditions of the music they heard in the could express desire for in song. For the cinema or on these discs. They also drew young Benjamin, the emotional force of on the images on record covers to con- romantic love she witnessed in the real- struct hair and clothing styles. istic images of the cinema was enhanced by the rich sounds of film melodies.31 If you were “Cape Town’s Dizzy Many of these old tunes remain archived Gillespie,” you took the album cover in Sathima’s memory, and are an inte- of Gillespie to the barber and had the gral to her current performance reper- appropriate haircut, and then you

29 Carol Muller

went to the tailor who would cut you Are.” After listening very carefully, he an outfit that duplicated what you transcribed the music he heard, exactly. could see on the album cover.33 When he gave the arrangements to the musicians in his band, they told him the During the mid-1950s Kolbe worked at music sounded like Lee Konitz. In des- the public library in Kew Town, where peration, Adams responded, “But when Sathima was living with her mother. The are you going to hear Jimmy Adams?”35 community was largely a generation of In her late teens and early twenties it “Colo[u]red” men who had participated was through the record collections of the in World War II, and their children were local library and that of Swiss entrepre- aspiring artists, teachers, and musicians. neur and friend Paul Meyer that Bea At Kolbe’s initiative, this group of “bo- Benjamin listened closely to the world hemian” artists listened to recordings of of American blues and jazz in the late jazz and discussed African American lit- 1950s, though the cost of hearing was erature that emerged out of experiences high. Meyer lived in the elite, politically of segregation in the United States. liberal coastal suburb of Camps Bay in Harold Jephtah, one of Cape Town’s which Ms. Benjamin, now classified as best-known Charlie Parker soloists in the “Cape Colo[u]red,” was only allowed to late 1950s, recalls that he would use stay if she had a permit to work as a whatever means necessary to buy the housemaid. To her family’s chagrin, latest 78 record of his favorite musicians. Meyer would take the young woman on “I lived in the record shop!” laughed the back of his motorcycle from Athlone, Jephtah. He remembers as a young boy where Bea was living with her mother, telling his mother that he had a tooth- to Camps Bay to hear his records. Both ache. She provided money for a visit to feared being arrested for breaking laws the dentist. Scheming Harry proceeded pertaining to racial segregation, like the directly to the record store and returned Group Areas Act. But, Sathima recalls, 34 home with a Coleman Hawkins record. she was so desperate to hear this music In contrast to Kolbe and Jephtah, that she was willing to take the risk. Sev- Jimmy Adams refused to buy any re- eral years after she began singing in pub- cordings. He feared that if he owned the lic, it was Billie Holiday’s voice, heard records he would listen to them too on record in the backyard of one of Cape closely, and lose a sense of his own sound Town’s most elite neighborhoods, that and musical identity. This did not stop made this young woman realize her own him, however, from regularly borrowing sound held a place in the world of jazz. the recordings purchased by Jephtah in order to shape his sense of the American From Hearing to Performing jazz available in Cape Town. Anxiety about a loss of individual voice is exem- From the 1940s through 1960s, young plified in the following anecdote. Adams South Africans heard and performed live tells of having once borrowed a Lee music in Cape Town in several interre- Konitz recording of “All the Things You lated contexts. These included perfor-

30 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

mance at home, singing in the church “originals” in their cinematic represen- and at school, live music on the streets, tation, and then have live versions of the live and mediated musical performances models impersonated on stage at inter- in Bob36 parties and the cinema/ mission. ”bioscope,” and the live dance band sounds of teenage Bop clubs. In this Cape Cape Tonians are very good at imi- Town realm of popular culture, a song tating. Excellent. We always had the first heard in a movie on a Saturday af- Cape Town Jerry Lewis, the Cape ternoon, for example, was reinforced Town Bing Crosby. I think for a while I was either Doris Day or Joni James, through repeated hearing in the follow- before I went into the other thing [i.e., ing week. It could be heard over the air, jazz].37 on record, and performed live in a cover version by local dance bands or in sub- Bea Benjamin first appeared in public as sequent talent contests held at the cin- a singer when she was about eleven ema or at fundraising events organized years old. She entered a Talent Contest in various churches and community held one Saturday afternoon at intermis- halls. This community of aspiring musi- sion and won. The prize: 8 free tickets to cians thus absorbed the sounds and im- return her to the movies time and again. ages of the imported, largely American- In this more popular period of her life, mediated culture through what seemed Sathima sang the songs of white singers to be a completely natural process of to- Doris Day, Joni James, and others: “Mr. tal immersion, of secondary orality, and Wonderful” and “Somewhere over the then reproduced these performances as Rainbow” were her two signature tunes. an integral part of local culture in the Despite singing a cover version of the Cape. song, however, Bea’s close friend Ruth Cape Town’s “Colo[u]red” movie au- Fife recalls that when she heard her at diences supported a longstanding tradi- that first talent contest it was clear that tion of live and mediated experience in- even if she was using the words and side the walls of the theater. Audience melodies of others, Bea Benjamin already members recall singing along with popu- had her own distinctive style, a charac- lar songs that accompanied “Tom and teristic signaling the move towards jazz Jerry” cartoons, for example. At the time performance early on in her life.38 the words and music would appear on The musical content of the films pro- the screen, encouraging collective partici- vided models of performance in two pation (Nasson 1989). “Just a Song at other places: first, local bandleaders “bor- Twilight,” a tune Ms. Benjamin vividly rowed” movie melodies for Saturday remembers from her childhood, was one night dance band performances; and sec- of these songs. Many local theaters also ond, they were used for amateur perfor- staged elaborate live variety acts and mances at local hotels. In the first in- hosted talent competitions between stance, Bea’s friend Vincent Kolbe recalls movies. Sathima recalls those events as that he and a friend would be given ones in which one could watch the money by one of the local bandleaders

31 Carol Muller

to go and repeatedly watch the newest When the emcees would announce movie arrivals as soon as they came to Joey Gabriels, they had their way, the the local bioscope. They were instructed emcees, he would come on and they to memorize the words and melodies of would announce, he was Cape a song sung, for example, by Nat King Town’s Mario Lanza or Caruso or whatever, and he would walk. OK, Cole. Once they knew the song they we would all be back stage and just would give the information to the walk on the stage and go to the mi- bandleader. The next Saturday night, crophone (which probably wasn’t Cole’s latest melody would be played working or working and making live at social dances for the “Colo[u]red” squeaks)…and there comes Joey community.39 In the dance band context, Gabriels. He would not come from the tunes were played “straight” to sus- backstage. When they announced tain regular rhythms required of ball- him, he came from the back of the cin- room dance. It was through these live ema. You know, with a big chest and renditions of dance band performances everything, just so pompous and full of conceit. by musicians known in your neighbor- This was all part of the act. He’d hood, rather than through the imper- get to the stage and walk to the sonal objects of sound recordings, that middle and he would take the micro- the majority of Cape Town’s phone stand and walk over to the side “Colo[u]red” community remembers and put the stand down there, like I hearing the “sounds of Hollywood.” don’t need this. And he’d just stand Film melodies were also heard in lo- there, a gorgeous tenor, you know. It cal hotels and at fundraising events. was always the same thing; people al- Sathima’s mother was a self-taught rag- ways wanted the same thing. He would just get these ovations; he was time pianist.40 On occasion Sathima, her so flamboyant.42 mother, and her sister Joan would go to a nearby hotel where there was always a piano and a place to sing. While Eva Sathima’s recollections are remarkably Green could only play in the keys of C, vivid for the forty-year time gap between F, and G, she knew the melodies of old original performance and its re- songs like “Up the Lazy River,” “Chi- membering. They are remarkable be- cago,” “Come Back To Sorrento,” and cause through her words readers of the “Sweet Mystery of Life.” Ms. Green text can almost imagine the stage per- rarely accompanied Sathima but she sona of Mr. Gabriels. It echoes the image would willingly work with some of the one creates in the mind’s eye of a simi- local talent. There was one man, Joey larly self-possessed Caruso or Mario Gabriels, who sang “Come Back to Lanza. For Joey Gabriel’s audiences, it Sorrento” (Gabriels changed his name to was the power of his voice and the air of Giuseppe Gabriello when he left South self-confidence he exuded on stage that Africa to study opera in Italy).41 Sathima called for repeat performances. It was his described a typical performance by the capacity to refashion the self in perfor- young man at a talent contest: mance, but, in the eyes of his audiences,

32 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

to do it better than the movie stars. His Expanding Political Consciousness flagrant disregard for the crutch of the In the late 1950s participation in this vi- voice, the technology of amplification, brant musical community began to be signaled to his audiences an improve- accompanied by individual reading ment on the original because Cape amongst a few of the more intellectually Town’s very own Joey Gabriels had no oriented musicians and artists. For ex- need for the mic: the unmediated ample, Sathima remembers that while strength of his voice was sufficient. In she was still teaching school, she would each reenactment Joey Gabriels’s perfor- spend her evenings in the local library mances served to articulate membership, where her friend and jazz performer for the young man and his audiences in Vincent Kolbe was librarian. She read Cape Town, in a larger tradition of popu- about “Negro”/colored experience and lar song in which they were now inex- listened to jazz recordings as part of a tricably entwined. Jazz Appreciation Club. Kolbe recalled Standing ovations were rather un- that the library was the hub of social and usual amongst Cape Town’s artistic activity_he described the commu- “Colo[u]red” audiences. Sathima recalls nity as “bohemian,” with several sensi- that the community that came to hear tive, artistic but politically conscious you sing was your harshest critic. Little schoolteachers in its midst.43 It was at this attention was paid to these sites of popu- library that Sathima and others began to lar performance by the largely white really listen to African Americans play- dominated media. Rather the real critics ing jazz, and to read the writings of Afri- were those of your own community. It can Americans in the United States. was only when “Colo[u]red” singers and Kolbe provided her with books by Rich- instrumentalists played in white or ard Wright, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. du mixed venues (such as the venue cited Bois, and others. She found the autobi- at the top of the paper) that anyone in ography of Billie Holiday, Lady Sings The the press paid attention. Instead, com- Blues: The Searing Autobiography of an munity audiences provided instant feed- American Musical Legend (1956), before back. If a performer was not able to mea- the book was banned in South Africa. sure up to their standards he or she As a woman now classified as would be booed off the stage immedi- “Colo[u]red” it is clear that Sathima read ately. For those deemed of adequate stan- the texts in particular ways. First, she dard, however, the audiences were recalls that in these books authors like warm, alive, and supportive. They had W.E.B. du Bois and Richard Wright clear aural and visual templates of the would use the racial categories of “Ne- sounds and sights they desired from gro” and “colored” interchangeably. other live renditions and recorded ver- With black South Africans and sions, and performers were expected to “Colo[u]reds” all lumped into the cat- meet them. egory of “non-European” this was not unusual for South African readers. What was peculiar however was the way in

33 Carol Muller

which Sathima recalls identifying with texts that contained eternal truths and the word “colored” though she did not might have application to your life. In necessarily sense a connection with the other words, these books on the African- word “Negro.” It does seem that, prior American experience were not read as to the Afrikaner Nationalist Population history so much as a kind of testimony Registration Act (1950) in which to experiences of racism elsewhere in the “Colo[u]red” became a separate racial world. As was the case elsewhere in category, there was a similar kind of South Africa, the introduction of literacy ambiguity in the minds of people of and mission activity are closely inter- mixed race in South Africa. This is dem- twined, and much “Colo[u]red” educa- onstrated in a newspaper article pub- tion lay in the hands of missionaries and lished in Cape Town in 1936 about the church schools. The consequence of this visit of Paul Robeson’s wife to the city. kind of approach to reading is that indi- Reporting on Ms. Robeson’s speech to a viduals may well identify with the ex- “non-white” audience it reads: periences articulated in the book, but not necessarily take note of the specific his- “Too often,” said Mrs. Robeson, “we torical period elsewhere in the world in have that inferiority complex, and al- which these books were written or con- though gifted in many ways, a sumed. Coloured man never feels quite certain of himself.” … She said that she felt In addition to reading, listening, and so at home that the meeting might meeting with this library-centered com- have been a Negro one anywhere in munity, Sathima was introduced to the the USA or in England. She said that small community of jazz musicians op- she had promised her husband that erating in the Cape. The late 1950s was she would not discuss politics on her the time when she began to question her present tour, but she would neverthe- identity, a process correlated with her less like to say something on the fault definitive move into the music produced of the Coloured race. “Too often we by people called “colored” in the United have that inferiority complex.” [my States. It was at this moment the young emphasis]44 woman began experimenting with the music of Ellington and met Dollar Brand. Presumably quoting Ms. Robeson di- By reading of the experience of a people rectly, the Cape journalist plays with the often called “colored” in the United same ambiguities in racial categories that States, Sathima concluded that she and one finds in the literature of Du Bois and her people were not alone in their expe- Wright, though the writer spells the riences of the harshness of racism, and word “Coloured” as it was spelled in that other “Colo[u]red” people were South Africa, localizing the identifica- making music in a similar style, i.e., hers tion. was both an ideological and musical/ Second, it seems to me that texts were aural identification. Jazz was the more read much like South Africans read the inclusive musical language that both Bible, not as historically situated, but as Sathima and Abdullah hoped would be

34 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

the passport to a transnational family of Pico Iyer’s quintessentially post-mod- like-minded musicians. It was in this ern text Video Night in Kathmandu (1989), period that she self-consciously moved a narrative on his travels in the tourist away from copying the voices of white zones of the “not-so-far-East,” provides women, like Joni James and Doris Day, a first site for refraction. Specifically, it is to the more emotionally evocative his tale of the culture of copies of Ameri- “blues” sounds of African-American can popular music in the Philippines that women like Billie Holiday. This was the suggests the most pertinent companion moment when the young woman began to the Cape story. Reading Iyer’s chap- to search for her own “voice” in her ter one is tempted to dismiss the Cape sound and as a composer. culture of copies as just that, only a copy, lacking originality, authenticity, and an Reflections on the Cape “Culture of emotional vocabulary of its own in the Carbon Copies” way that Iyer implies is the case with Fili- pinos in Manila. Iyer remains, however, In the last part of this paper I offer a se- a travel writer operating in the world of ries of reflections on taking cover in tourism.45 American music as a cultural practice amongst people classified as A more textured reading of the cul- “Colo[u]red” in postwar Cape Town. In ture of the copy comes in Michael the spirit of the improvising musicians I Taussig’s (1993) reflections on a cinematic am writing about, these reflections are scene invoking a moment at the end of shaped out of a playful treatment of sec- the Second World War. Taussig reads the ondary literature that suggests possibili- encounters of the “Third” world with ties for interfacing with the primary “First World” technologies of repetition materials presented. They come in three and its music by focusing on the ironies phases: first, by refracting the ethno- of such engagement. Critiquing the graphic material through other writings West’s loss of a cultural memory of its on the subject of covers and copies; sec- own initial intrigue with the mysteries ond, by honing in on the specific nature of mechanical reproduction through the of this culture metaphorized in the display of “frontier rituals of technologi- scribal image of “carbon copies,” and a cal supremacy,” Taussig reminds the culture shaped by ongoing practices of reader of one consequence of the Afri- oral transmission into which disembod- can “other” appropriating European ied musical products were inserted and sound recording specifically. He com- imaginatively reconstituted to cohere ments on a moment in Senegalese film- with local histories, characters, and sen- maker Ousamane Sembene’s 1988 film, sibilities; and third, by situating struggles The Camp at Thiaroye, in which a black for individual and group identity in the Senegalese soldier who has fought for tensions created by an increasingly re- the French in World War II awaits dis- pressive social environment with the charge. In the waiting period, Sembene sense of possibility conveyed by the portrays the soldier with his favorite popular media. possession: the phonograph playing

35 Carol Muller

European classical music. Taussig re- the consequences of ownership because marks: ownership always threatened a loss of the qualities of personal voice by trans- On the one hand, it is pleasing to the forming the bounded self into a body officers to see this man becoming like possessed by other voices. As the case of them through a machine whose job it Jimmy Adams suggests, if you listened is to reproduce likeness. On the other, without owning, you could still strive to it is profoundly disturbing to them because this man is using this ma- retain a sense of your own identity. Once chine to manufacture likeness. you owned the record through purchase, Thanks in part to this machine, he is however, you opened yourself to its not only too comfortable with Euro- power over your personal voice and pean culture, but he shows the way identity. for a “new man” who can be both In other words, hearing and possess- black and white, Senegalese and ing the recorded object differed from the French. (Taussig 1993, 206) possibilities of possession by listening to the radio as Sathima had done in her In Taussig’s reading, there are two issues, childhood. Supplementing the images one of technology and the other of race. and sounds absorbed in her weekly trips On the one hand, the Senegalese man’s to the “bioscope,” the radio played all imitations of European-ness reveal a hol- day long in the girl’s childhood home. low display of technological mastery, the Its words and music intermingled with African man equally able to play at pas- household chores, and was interspersed sive consumption albeit of a complex with other activities and sounds. Never musical culture: the recorded European allowed to sit down and listen to the ra- classical tradition. In so doing, he reveals dio, Sathima’s relationship to the radio and unravels the web of European was as daily companion. Through total power. On the other hand, it demon- immersion, the melodies she heard in the strates a one-up-manship as the black cinema or live performance were supple- man is able to code-switch culturally, per- mented with the visual images provided forming European-ness with the same fa- by the movies. She accumulated frag- cility as he performs African-ness. ments of the words to create a whole text. The process by which copies were She memorized the melodies and wrote made depended on the medium of trans- down the words in her secret little note- mission—radio, recording, or film—but book, out of her grandmother’s sight. also on access to financial resources, as This process of repeated listening, of par- well as on gender, and on what forms of tial inscription, and the accumulation of cultural production were permissible by textual fragments enabled her to listen the larger community. If you owned a with greater accuracy. The unpredictable sound recording, you could manipulate repetition of a song she loved enabled and control when and in what context her to capture a few more pieces, w/o/ you heard its contents, though as Jimmy r/d by w/o/r/d until the text was com- Adams suggests, one had to be wary of plete and she was ready to perform it in

36 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

public. This was a kind of additive hear- culture reproducing the original involves ing, a progressive habitation of the for- a relationship between human labor, in eign repertory through copying. the s/t/r/o/k/e by s/t/r/o/k/e or The Cape capacity to imitate stars w/o/r/d by w/o/r/d actions of typ- from afar by striving for faithful mime- ists and writers, and the technologies of sis, to looking and sounding alike, speaks inscription—the typewriter and sheets of of a particular kind of repetition in cul- carbon paper covered by individual leafs tures shaped by modern technology. of plain white paper. By analogy, the la- And it resonates with Iyer’s reading of bor-intensive process of musical tran- Filipino covers of American popular scription, of creating a text of words and music. In this frame the mediated “origi- possibly tunes: making scripts for live nal” is played and heard over and over performance is paralleled in a n/o/t/e again, relentlessly unchanging, so per- by n/o/t/e and w/o/r/d by w/o/r/d formers are able to present, and audi- practice. In this instance, it is the labor ences come to expect, the perfect like- entailed in producing the copy that car- ness. In the postwar era, Cape Town’s ries value. own Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and Bing On the other hand, the “carbon copy” Crosby were measured by the exactness is enmeshed in another kind of “master” with which they could reproduce the narrative. Here, the original script, called “original” in body—how they dressed, a “master,” is transcribed as multiple their hairstyle, gesture; and voice. Per- copies are simultaneously [re]produced formers aspired to, and audiences al- under the cover of sheets of carbon, typi- ways demanded, “the same thing.” In cally in shades of black or blue. In this this version of the copy, performers and mode of production, copies are made out audiences sought membership of a white of the deep impression left by the pro- English language cosmopolitan moder- duction of a master. The master is val- nity, proving they qualified by being as ued as being the first, the original, while good as, or better than, their European the copies are simply lesser quality rep- and Euro-American models. licas. This would be the view of those In some respects, however, the Cape producing the master. From the perspec- Town culture of the copy presents a con- tive of the copies, however, the technol- trasting case suggested by the idea of the ogy of carbon sheets is an enabling and “carbon copy.” Here, the carbon copy more democratic one because it allows invokes Taussig’s two dimensions, tech- for a greater distribution of the contents nological mastery and ideological iden- of the master into multiple sites of rep- tifications with race, though the scrip- etition. And there is a possibly ironic tural analogy to a musical and twist in the choice of carbon color: black performative process requires further or blue. Regardless of the color of the discussion. On the one hand, Hillel master, the color of the copied scripts Schwartz’s reflections on the culture of may be produced or mediated through the carbon copy as a scribal practice are tones of blackness or even just the blues. insightful (1996). He suggests that in this The evidence suggests then that there

37 Carol Muller

were several ways in which the foreign “others” to imagine themselves as dis- repertory was translated into the Cape placed members of the audience of these Town community: first as human cop- great moments. In turn each enactment ies, exact renditions of the voice and rep- was localized. In a cultural practice I call ertory as the “original” represented, and “reel to real,” American voices and you could achieve the replication by sounds of the world’s greatest perform- owning the recording; second, as covers, ers could be heard, copied, and embod- you sang the words and music of oth- ied in the familiar spaces of home, club, ers, perhaps even wore clothes modeled community hall, or school. on the visual representation, but your The postwar era was, nevertheless, an “voice” was your own because you historical moment of growing contradic- learned the repertory by secondary oral- tion. While the state legislated to deny ity through the radio or live perfor- people of color citizenship in political mances; and third, as a springboard for terms, the media continued to embody your own creativity, you developed a a more democratic sensibility. This con- sense of your own style using the words tinued until 1960 when political and so- and music as the source for your own cial life changed dramatically with the musical renditions. Finally, a few highly Sharpeville Massacre, the invention of skilled individuals created musical tran- “Bantu Radio” by the Nationalist Gov- scriptions that people could perform ernment, and the pervasiveness of from. In order to create a written tran- “light” (read only European) music on scription or arrangement one had to have commercial and state-controlled radio. a finely tuned capacity to hear, and the Until the early 1960s, however, the skills to translate sound into visual signs. American popular music and jazz com- Because there were no institutions that modities of the free market economy set taught this kind of popular and jazz per- the “standard” of performance. For these formance in Cape Town, musicians largely working class communities with taught themselves about musical pro- a few emerging professionals, the mea- cesses while transcribing the music. sure of good performance was estab- Their value lay in the capacity to repro- lished by the imported musical objects duce the sound as written copy, flaw- on the one hand, and the very personal lessly. and immediate audience responses to Through these four processes, indi- exact copies in enlivened renditions of vidual musicians who could not read or this music on the other. The repertory write music inhabited the repertory worked in South Africa because its ap- through the techniques of primary and propriation drew on the qualities of sec- secondary orality: they taught each other, ondary orality that local musicians al- or they listened closely to the sounds on ready had: good listening ears, passion record and painstakingly made human for the music, and a willingness to get copies. Thus “original” performances out there and perform. Through its im- distributed into multiple sites of repeti- ages and objects, “America” was per- tion through recorded objects enabled ceived to hold out possibilities for, if not

38 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

the full achievement of, freedom, of ra- sound had a place in the transnational cial and cultural equality. Its representa- world of jazz. While she had probably tions in the Cape fueled the conscious- heard the music of Billie Holiday before, ness of many performers, even if they did it was when Sathima was in her early 20s, not consciously seek to engage politi- a time when she was self-consciously lis- cally. This was a kind of cultural democ- tening for a sound with which she could racy in action. identify, that she heard it in the distant Through the period of intense politi- voice and experience of America’s own cal turbulence from the late 1950s, inner Billie Holiday. This was the moment reflection, and encounters with the small when Sathima’s version of the copy be- community of avant garde jazz musi- came decidedly blue in tone and ideo- cians in Cape Town, all of whom were logical position. experimenting with new sonic possibili- Ultimately, I am arguing that the im- ties, Sathima and a few others finally ported music translated into the postwar moved over into the improvised and Cape Town functioned as either a model more spontaneous world of jazz perfor- for carbon copying or as an acoustical mance. It is in this moment that mirror. The first enabled Cape musicians Baudrillard’s discussion of the mirror as to fashion selves modeled on others. an object in the home provides a useful These selves were valued locally for the metaphor for Sathima’s relationship to ways in which they insisted on a kind of the technology and mediation of foreign cosmopolitan citizenship, a membership sounds in domestic space. Along with of a truly imagined community of En- Baudrillard, “[w]e may say that the mir- glish-speaking, modern people of color. ror is a symbolic object which not only The second created a dual sense of self, reflects the characteristics of the indi- you could look in/at the mirror (book vidual but also echoes in its expansion or recording) and see your own image of the historical expansion of individual from a distance, and use that mirror im- consciousness” (1996, 22-23). These two age to reshape yourself in a more self- elements—the capacity to reflect, to see conscious fashion. This is not the culture oneself and aspects of one’s environment of the copy so much as an ideological from a distance or from a different per- identification—through voice, instru- spective, and the possibility of the his- mental performance, and body ges- torical expansion of consciousness ture—with others elsewhere in the world through the mirror image—resonate who had had similar experiences of the with the way in which recordings of pain of institutional racism and the sense American jazz in particular operated for of internal exile. Sathima. They operated as “acoustic mirrors”46 rather than as the media of carbon copies. In particular, it was after she read the life story of Billie Holiday and had heard her voice repeatedly on record that this young woman from Cape Town, South Africa knew that her

39 Carol Muller

Notes ideological nature of the category. I have in- serted the [u] to indicate that “Coloured” Portions of this research were conducted didn’t mean “black” but people of mixed while I was a Fellow at the National Hu- race in this period of South African history. manities Center, Research Triangle Park, Prior to the rise of Afrikaner nationalists, North Carolina (1999-2000), partially funded “coloured” was a more ambiguous label, by a grant from the National Endowment possibly parallel with its interchangeable use for the Humanities “Fellowship at Indepen- in writings of early 20th century African- dent Research Institutions.” I am grateful to American writers, e.g., Richard Wright and my colleagues at the University of Pennsyl- W.E.B. du Bois. However, after 1948 the state vania for the time given to pursue the project; imposed the label on all those who were of to Bob Connor and Kent Mullikin who mixed racial heritage or married to some- hosted my tenure at the NHC; and to fel- one who was, i.e., anyone insufficiently lows who responded so enthusiastically to white or sufficiently black African. This is an earlier version of this paper presented discussed further in the body of the article. there. Another version of the paper was pre- 2 sented at Penn’s Folklore Colloquium While “non-white” may seem to some to (March 2001), at the Department of Anthro- be a natural category, I have inserted the pology at the University of Pennsylvania, quotes to signify a rejection by many of Af- and at the Society for Ethnomusicology rican and mixed racial descent in South Af- meeting in Detroit, MI (2001). Additional rica of being defined in terms of an absence funding for research in South Africa was of whiteness. The quotes are intended to dis- provided for by a Junior Faculty grant from turb fixed categories. 3 the Music Department at Penn (1998-2000). Bea[trice] Benjamin changed her name to I am grateful to colleagues who read or com- Sathima Bea Benjamin while in exile. mented on the work as it progressed: Regina 4 “Dollar” was the nickname given to Brand Bendix, Jodi Billinkoff, Jeff Kallberg, Tim to reference his exchanges with American Taylor, and Greg Urban. Opinions expressed musicians and sailors who visited Cape here are my own, grounded in the material I Town in the postwar period. have gathered from so many willing indi- 5 viduals in Cape Town and New York City. Henry February, interview, September My deepest appreciation is expressed to 1996, Cape Town. 6 them. See other writing on South African jazz, 1 An explanation for the use of quotes and Allen (1997), Baines (1996), Ballantine (1999 the insertion of [u] in “Coloured” is neces- and 1993), Coplan (1985), Jeppie (1990), sary because it speaks to the processes of Layne (1995), and Molefe and Mzileni (1997). cultural [mis]translation of rhetorical prac- 7 Touring musicians were almost always tices in liberation struggles for people of white, and there was usually some discus- color in South Africa and the United States sion about whether “Colo[u]red” people in the twentieth century. Quotation marks would be included in the tour program. are used because “Colo[u]red” was an ideo- Audiences in this period were always seg- logical tactic by the state, to racialize and cre- regated. ate division amongst people of mixed racial 8 heritage. Many intellectuals prefaced the Jimmy Adams is the one who coined the term with “so-called,” continually remind- phrase “carbon copies” in my interviews ing their audiences of the constructed and with musicians. Chris Ballantine (1999) simi-

40 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

larly uses the phrase in his discussion of simi- cegenation positively through lan- lar practices amongst musicians of African guage. It is a serious blind spot of the descent largely in Johannesburg in about the English language which [sic] thus same period. implies that persons of indeterminate 9 The Eoan Opera Company became ex- “race” are freaks. It is another way of tremely controversial in the 1950s because it making invisible, of negating, the ex- was revealed that the Afrikaner Nationalist istence of nonwhites whose racial sta- government was financing its operations. tus remains ambiguous. (13-14) Such support was believed by the larger Lionnet suggests the use of the Greek community to constitute a sell-out to apart- word metis that refers to an art of trans- heid ideology. formation and transmutation, “an aes- 10 African here refers to Bantu-speaking thetics of the ruse that allows the weak peoples from the continent of Africa, and is to survive by escaping through duplici- contrasted with European peoples. In the tous means the very system of power current political climate it is more usual to intent on destroying them” (18). talk about people of European descent liv- 13 Eileen Southern (1999) argues for a simi- ing in South Africa as African as well. This lar distinction in African American cultural was not the case in the period under discus- history. According to her, differences sion, however. “African” might be substi- emerged between African slaves who as- tuted for “Black” South African. “Black” was similated more European-style culture and itself a contested racial category in this pe- those who retained African derived perfor- riod because it was argued that it reinforced mances. The differences depended on the apartheid government’s privileging of whether slaves worked inside the houses of racial category in social and political life (see their masters or out in the fields. February 1983). 14 11 Each of these laws is succinctly discussed In the early 1990s South African record in Barker et al. 1992, 374-381. company Gallo Records reissued white hits 15 One of the earliest political organizations from the period 1960-1990, claiming it was for “Colo[u]red” people called itself the Af- the time when “Local was Lekker” [Cool]. rican Political Organization (APO) and Ironically, few of the songs were locally com- founded the first newspaper aimed at a posed, what was local was the voice of the “Colo[u]red” readership in May 1909 singer, but not the song itself. (Adhikari 1996, 1). 12 Francoise Lionnet (1989, ch. 1) argues that 16 Little is known about Sathima’s mother’s the notion of metissage—cultural and/or ra- family heritage. Of mixed Filipino and cial mixing or hybridity—does not exist in Mauritian descent, Evelyn Henry was or- the English language in a positive sense. The phaned at a young age after her parents died word translates into “half-breed” or “mixed- in the Flu Epidemic of 1918. The young Ms. blood,” both of which carry negative asso- Henry was sent from her home in Kimberley ciations. While European languages like to live with her mother’s sister in Cape Town Spanish, Portuguese, and French do have where she met Edward Benjamin. Bea[trice] words for this kind of cultural identification, Benjamin was born to Edward Benjamin and she argues that each word has very specific Evelyn Henry in Johannesburg on October meanings. 17, 1936. The Anglo-American consciousness 17 John Samuels. Interview by author, Cape seems unable to accommodate mis- Town, September 1996.

41 Carol Muller

18 See Bickford-Smith, van Heyningen, and South Africans who delighted in recogniz- Worden 1999 (43) for a discussion of early ing the streets in which their own film he- efforts of the “Colo[u]red” elite to internal- roes were filmed. ize European middle class values. 29 This excerpt comes from a local newspa- 19 Walker, Evelyn. 1963. The Educational Jour- per, The Sun, January 2 1948. nal 35 (4). Cited in February 1983, 205. 30 Vincent Kolbe, who grew up in the more 20 Jimmy Adams. Interview by author, Cape culturally diverse District Six in Cape Town’s Town, September 1996 and December 1999. inner city, comments that in his community 21 Jimmy Adams and Harold Jephtah. Inter- Saturday night was the time for the movies. view by author, Cape Town, December 1999. Everyone in his family would dress for the 22 Henry February. Interview by author, occasion. He would attend with his mother Cape Town, September 1996. and grandmother. They would take sand- wiches and a thermos of coffee for the 23 Sathima Bea Benjamin. Interview by au- evening. The standard fare from 7:30 to 11:30 thor, New York City, April 1990. P.M. was a comic strip, the weekly serial (the 24 Jimmy Adams. Interview by author, Cape forerunner of the soap opera), a western, and Town, December 1999. a love story or musical (Vincent Kolbe. In- 25 Henry February. Interview by author, terview by author, Cape Town, September Cape Town, December 1999. 1996). 26 Harold Jephtah. Interview by author, Cape 31 Commenting on the relationship between Town, December 1999. music and emotional currency, Caryl Flinn 27 Caryl Flinn cites film composer George remarks: Antheil’s disdain for the gap between pub- lic taste and film music composition in which During the Hollywood studio era, Antheil scorns “Mr. Average Listener” for film music was assigned a remark- turning the radio dial to hear Benny ably stable set of functions. It was re- Goodman or Paul Whiteman rather than lis- peatedly and systematically used to tening to a symphony broadcast over the air. enhance emotional moments in the He continues by arguing that the best way story line, and to establish moods and to “emotionally condition” Mr. Average for maintain continuity between scenes better music is to insert orchestral perfor- (1992, 13). mance into his “favorite movie theatre for three hours a week” by using the style in the 32 film score. The viewer unwittingly becomes Jimmy Adams. Interview by author, Cape partial to the world of symphonic music Town, December 1999. (Flinn 1992, 29). 33 Vincent Kolbe. Interview by author, Cape 28 Peter Davis (1996, 26-7) remarks that even Town, September 1996. See also Ballantine though American movies were admired, the 1999 for a discussion on this practice very rare local productions featuring Afri- amongst Johannesburg musicians. can performers were extremely popular with 34 Harold Jephtah. Interview by author, Cape African audiences. One example is the film Town, September 1999. Jim Comes to Joburg, which featured 35 Jimmy Adams. Interview by author, Cape Johannesburg artists Dolly Rathebe and Town, December 1999. Daniel Adnewmah, and was shot in the 36 Bob parties were like rent parties in the streets of Johannesburg. The familiar loca- United States. Those who came were re- tion caused enormous excitement for black

42 Covers, Copies, and “Colo[u]redness” in Postwar Cape Town

quired to pay “one bob” (ten cents) to enter. 45 Iyer occupies a space that Bodley (1999) 37 Sathima Bea Benjamin. Interview by au- and Dennis O’Rourke (1987) remind us thor, New York City, October 1996. might appear to perform an “educational” 38 Ruth Fife. Interview by author, Cape function for the First World to learn about Town, September 1996. the Third, but more typically produces “ex- perts” on others who are often more dan- 39 Vincent Kolbe. Interview by author, Cape gerous for the superficiality of information Town, September 1996. gained than valuable for their insights. In 40 Sathima’s mother came from Kimberley addition, Iyer fails to acknowledge that the in South Africa, the site of a global influx of tourist culture he operated in works on the fortune seeking diamond prospectors in the principles of supply and demand: where the latter part of the 19th century. This is clearly demand for the familiar in contexts of where ragtime and syncopated piano styles strangeness results in the supply of that kind were heard and copied. of “culture.” In the spirit of Barbara 41 Italians mixed freely in Cape Town’s Dis- Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998) the process trict Six, the site of the most controversial might be expressed as follows: American/ form of mass removal by the apartheid gov- Western tourists want American/Western ernment in the 1960s. Remembered now as popular music but in an exotic context. Iyer a “Colo[u]red” community, its members was not a member of the communities of hailed from all parts of Europe, and on ar- performers, all he heard was the familiar rival in the Cape, intermarried with local sounds of American pop. He was unable, for residents. These were the people later labeled example, to distinguish local identities “Cape Coloured” by the state. Joey Gabriel’s through the grain or tone color of the indi- darker toned skin later enabled him to blend vidual voice as those in the Cape clearly in more easily in Italy than in South Africa. could do. The lack might perhaps not have Similarly, I have been told that when Frank been on the Filipino side as much as indica- Sinatra, also of Italian descent, appeared in tive of Iyer’s own cursory involvement with public in the USA, many thought him to be that performance culture. too dark, to be almost “colored” when com- 46 Before coming across Kaja Silverman’s pared with lighter skinned Europeans (Jodi work on The Acoustic Mirror (1988), I had Billinkoff, pers.comm., April 2000, National been using the idea of the mirror as an anal- Humanities Center, NC). ogy for the kinds of reflections facilitated by 42 Sathima Bea Benjamin. Interview by au- sound recordings and other imported objects thor, New York City, October 1996. like books. That insight drew on 43 Vincent Kolbe. Interview by author, Cape Baudrillard’s discussion in The System of Town, September 1996. Vernie A. February Objects of the mirror and the non-reflective (1983, 16) explains that the South African television screen in contemporary homes Teachers’ League played a critical role in (1996). While I use Silverman’s term (bor- shaping the political consciousness of rowed from Guy Rosolato) I am doing so “Colo[u]red” youth through the activist roles somewhat differently. She talks about the played by League members in the class- female voice as a kind of acoustic mirror, one rooms of three “Colo[u]red” high schools in that simultaneously exteriorizes and Cape Town: Trafalgar High School, Harold interiorizes in every utterance, and spills Cressy, and the Livingstone High School over into the boundaries between subject (which Sathima attended). and object (Silverman 1988, 80). 44 Cape Standard, June 23 1936, 4.

43 Carol Muller

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Holiday, Billie. 1956. Lady Sings The Blues: Copenhagen: The Booktrader: The Searing Autobiography of an 21-38. American Musical Legend. With ______. 2001. Capturing the “Spirit of William Dufty. New York: Africa” in the Jazz Singing of Doubleday & Company, Inc Sathima Bea Benjamin. Research Iyer, Pico. 1989. Video Night in Kathmandu, in African Literatures 32 (2):133- And Other Reports from the Not- 152. So-Far-East. New York: Vintage Nasson, Bill. 1989. “She preferred living Departures. in a cave with Harry the snake- Jeppie, Shamiel. 1990. Aspects of Popu- catcher:” Toward an Oral His- lar Culture and Class Expression tory of Popular Leisure and Class in Inner Cape Town, 1939-1959. Expression in District Six, Cape Master’s thesis, University of Town, ca. 1920-1950. In Holding Cape Town. Their Ground: Class, Locality, and Jeske, Lee. 2000. Cape Town Love. In Culture in 19th and 20th Century Sathima Bea Benjamin: Embracing South Africa, edited by Philip Jazz, compiled by Lars Bonner. Johannesburg: Ravan. Rasmussen. Copenhagen: The O’Rourke, Dennis. 1987. Cannibal Tours. Booktrader:103-105. Los Angeles: Direct Cinema. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Rasmussen, Lars, comp. 2000. Sathima Destination Culture: Tourism, Bea Benjamin: Embracing Jazz. Museums,and Heritage. Berkeley: Copenhagen: The Booktrader. University of California Press. Rasula, Jed. 1995. The Media of Memory: Layne, Valmont. 1995. A History of The Seductive Menace of Dance and Jazz Band Perfor- Records in Jazz History. In Jazz mance in the Western Cape in the Among the Discourses, edited by Post-1945 Era. Master’s thesis, Krin Gabbard. Durham: Duke University of Cape Town. University Press. Lionnet, Francoise. 1989. Autobiographi- Rosenzweig, Roy. 1983. Eight Hours for cal Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Por- What We Will: Workers and Leisure traiture. Ithaca: Cornell Univer- in an Industrial City, 1870-1920. sity Press. New York: Cambridge Univer- Molefe, ZB and Mike Mzileni, eds. 1997. sity Press. A Common Hunger to Sing: A Trib- Schwartz, Hillel. 1996. The Culture of the ute to South Africa’s Black Women Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unrea- of Song, 1950-1990. Cape Town: sonable Facsimiles. New York: Kwela Books. Zone Books. Muller, Carol. 2000. Sathima “Beattie” Silverman, Kaja. 1988. The Acoustic Mir- Benjamin Finds Cape Jazz to be ror: The Female Voice in Psycho- her Home Within. In Sathima Bea analysis and Cinema. Benjamin: Embracing Jazz, com- Bloomington: Indiana Univer- piled by Lars Rasmussen. sity Press.

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Southern, Eileen. 1999. Music of Black Americans. New York: Norton. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Western, John. 1996. Outcast Cape Town. Berkeley: University of Califor- nia Press.

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