Alternatively, there is the risk that people do get the reference but that they are still not impressed — then, at best you’re unoriginal, and at worst you’re plagiarising.
A viewer or listener’s lack of familiarity with the source of an artist’s inspiration introduces legal and ethical complications. When does homage become trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own? And if the act of borrowing and adapting catapults you to stardom and financial success, what then? Iconoclasm is one thing, but appropriation of a marginalised person or group’s creativity is another. As Hannah McCann puts it, “cashing in on subordinate cultures is vastly different from trying to rip open a norm from the inside out”.
Consider the case of Josef Marais, who made a tidy living out of turning SA folk music and stories into English-friendly products that could be shopped to international audiences. Born Joseph Pessach (he probably changed his name for fear that it sounded “too Jewish”) in 1905, Marais grew up in Worcester but left to pursue performance opportunities in Europe and the UK. He went to the US around the time that World War 2 broke out and secured his career there, meeting his wife Rosa Miranda (who had fled from the Netherlands to escape Nazi occupation, and had also changed her name — she was previously Roosje Baruch de la Bardo).
Adapting songs that Marais had learnt in his youth for Doris Day, Frankie Lane and Johnnie Ray to turn into hits that became part of the soundtrack of America’s post-war era, Marais and Miranda produced album after album of musical Africana. There was also a globally best-selling book, Koos, The Hottentot, published in 1945, in which Marais reworked the tales he had been told by a childhood friend, an “indigenous” shepherd who shared songs and stories “as he had heard them from his tribal elders”.
In his new musical, Ver In Die Wêreld Kittie, David Kramer gives this anonymous Koos a more rounded and nuanced identity. As Koos Heuningbek (played by Dean Balie), he belies the exoticist image created by Marais, and becomes instead a professional musician in his own right — whose aspirations are limited but not stifled by the structural and casual racism of SA society.
The title character, Kittie (Rushney Ferguson), is Kramer’s invention. As Marais’ childhood sweetheart, abandoned by him to the life of servitude that he assumes is all she is entitled to as a coloured woman, Kittie is the narrative’s moral centre.
A quirky footnote: Kramer’s wife Renaye is the niece of Marais’ real-life small-town belle, Lily Lange. That’s another story altogether, but one wonders if Kramer sees something of himself in Marais — for he has also, albeit unfairly, been accused of cultural appropriation.
Marais (Andre Terblanche) and Miranda (Jenny Stead) are sympathetically portrayed; they have their reasons and their own tender love story. Because, ultimately, this show is not about heroes and villains, or recrimination. It is fun, heartfelt, poignant and celebratory. The performances are impressive — Balie, in particular, shines — and the music, played by a small onstage band, is as foot-tappingly catchy as you’d expect from a genius like Kramer.
• ‘Ver In Die Wêreld Kittie’ is at Die Blik (Epping) until August 11.
This column originally appeared in Business Day.
Culture
Chris Thurman: Giving ‘Koos’ credit where credit is due
David Kramer’s ‘Ver In Die Wêreld Kittie’ is fun, heartfelt, poignant and celebratory
Image: Mark Wessels
Without appropriation, there is no art. All artists borrow, imitate, quote, mash-up, pastiche, parody, pay tribute. That’s how creation happens. Ex nihilo nihil fit: nothing comes from nothing. Still, the process brings risks and benefits.
Sometimes the risk is that the audience won’t get the reference — as occurred this week when pearl-clutching conservatives, looking for reasons to complain about the affirmation that LGBTQ+ fabulousness is central to Parisian festivity, took offence at what they wrongly perceived to be mockery of Christianity, at least as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci.
Never mind that The Last Supper is a painting and not a biblical artefact; the art history allusion was, in any case, to a tradition of portraying the deities of ancient Greece, with Jan van Biljert’s Feast of the Gods the most prominent example (the kicker here is that the Dutchman Van Biljert, 150 years after Da Vinci, was probably citing the Italian master).
Brittany Smith’s gut-wrenching ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ faces her demons
Alternatively, there is the risk that people do get the reference but that they are still not impressed — then, at best you’re unoriginal, and at worst you’re plagiarising.
A viewer or listener’s lack of familiarity with the source of an artist’s inspiration introduces legal and ethical complications. When does homage become trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own? And if the act of borrowing and adapting catapults you to stardom and financial success, what then? Iconoclasm is one thing, but appropriation of a marginalised person or group’s creativity is another. As Hannah McCann puts it, “cashing in on subordinate cultures is vastly different from trying to rip open a norm from the inside out”.
Consider the case of Josef Marais, who made a tidy living out of turning SA folk music and stories into English-friendly products that could be shopped to international audiences. Born Joseph Pessach (he probably changed his name for fear that it sounded “too Jewish”) in 1905, Marais grew up in Worcester but left to pursue performance opportunities in Europe and the UK. He went to the US around the time that World War 2 broke out and secured his career there, meeting his wife Rosa Miranda (who had fled from the Netherlands to escape Nazi occupation, and had also changed her name — she was previously Roosje Baruch de la Bardo).
Adapting songs that Marais had learnt in his youth for Doris Day, Frankie Lane and Johnnie Ray to turn into hits that became part of the soundtrack of America’s post-war era, Marais and Miranda produced album after album of musical Africana. There was also a globally best-selling book, Koos, The Hottentot, published in 1945, in which Marais reworked the tales he had been told by a childhood friend, an “indigenous” shepherd who shared songs and stories “as he had heard them from his tribal elders”.
In his new musical, Ver In Die Wêreld Kittie, David Kramer gives this anonymous Koos a more rounded and nuanced identity. As Koos Heuningbek (played by Dean Balie), he belies the exoticist image created by Marais, and becomes instead a professional musician in his own right — whose aspirations are limited but not stifled by the structural and casual racism of SA society.
The title character, Kittie (Rushney Ferguson), is Kramer’s invention. As Marais’ childhood sweetheart, abandoned by him to the life of servitude that he assumes is all she is entitled to as a coloured woman, Kittie is the narrative’s moral centre.
A quirky footnote: Kramer’s wife Renaye is the niece of Marais’ real-life small-town belle, Lily Lange. That’s another story altogether, but one wonders if Kramer sees something of himself in Marais — for he has also, albeit unfairly, been accused of cultural appropriation.
Marais (Andre Terblanche) and Miranda (Jenny Stead) are sympathetically portrayed; they have their reasons and their own tender love story. Because, ultimately, this show is not about heroes and villains, or recrimination. It is fun, heartfelt, poignant and celebratory. The performances are impressive — Balie, in particular, shines — and the music, played by a small onstage band, is as foot-tappingly catchy as you’d expect from a genius like Kramer.
• ‘Ver In Die Wêreld Kittie’ is at Die Blik (Epping) until August 11.
This column originally appeared in Business Day.
You might also like....
Chris Thurman: Solo show explores wounds of segregation and racism
CHRIS THURMAN: A story of mothers and daughters and survival
Chris Thurman: Othello reclaims his language, gods and heritage in Foot’s reimagining