Publication Details Reference Pithouse, Richard (1998) Splashy Fen - 1998. SL Magazine June: -. Summary THE SPLASHY FEN MUSIC FESTIVAL HAPPENDED IN HE DAKENSBERG OVER THE MAY DAY WEEKEND. RICHARD PITHOUSE BRAVED TWO ROAD BLOCKS AND THREE DAYS IN THE COMPANY OF JUST JINGER FANS TO TELL SL ABOUT IT. The South African Music ExplosionTM has thrown Splashy Fen into an identity crisis which could just as easily prove to be the beginning of the festival’s end as the end of it’s beginning. But until time tells all that can be said with confidence is that the 1998 version of Splashy was as kiff as it was kak. It was kiff because it didn’t rain, Arapaho were just a bad memory, every day started with Maskanda on the rocks, East Coast Radio Party Night finally got received with the contempt that it deserves, Wonderboom were louder and tighter than Cito’s trousers, Boo were exhileratingly wild, Cool Friction, Mathew van der Want and Squeal did what people love them to do, Sugardrive were beautifully precise and soulful, Landscape Prayers were visually innovative and musically transcendent, Maalesh and Mazizakhe took trance back to it’s more soulful ancient roots, the Cape contingent of Colorfields Sons of Trout and Fetish put a shot of adrenaline straight into Durban’s cultural jugular and the way cool Fanozi Mkhize inspired logo was good enough to compensate for the largely amateurish programme, embarrassingly bad radio spot and media liaison that, in the case of at least one offical, was conducted in a spirit closer to that of Stofile Botha than Woodstock. The festival was kak because it didn’t have a fraction of the warmth of a Sunday afternoon jol at the Rainbow, far too many important artists were only seen on T-shirts and heard on car stereos, the toilets were inexcusably vuil, there was very little jazz and hard rock and no hip-hop, kwaito or boerepunk (unless you count Hare Krishna’s debating - in Afrikaans - whether or not the Freaky Pizza comes with olives), there was no-one selling Melt 2000 CD’s, Henry Ate and Just Jinger got top billing and they were Henry Ate and Just Jinger, and the mall rat infestation reached critical mass which meant that it was okay to fly the apartheid and Rhodesian flags and that comments like “Fuck off Ray Phiri we want Just Jinger” and “show us your tits” were considered by many to be sophisticated and amusing observations. Splashy Fen is South Africa’s first annual music festival and the only important music festival on the East Coast. It’s a festival which, despite the limits it has imposed on itself, tends to generate some superb performances, make conducive space for important encounters and introduce people to bands and styles of music beyond their comfort zones. Over the years it has been moving from its origins as a small get together for a community of people into Anglophone and Zulu folk to a folk festival that also features up and coming garage bands and the odd big name towards a festival with a definite focus on left to middle of the road pop/rock but which still makes space for a a lot of folk Both the shift from a community event to an event with pretentious to national importance and the shift from the folk subculture to the rock/pop mainstream have generated debate and tensions. Of course tension is neither an inevitably bad thing or unqiue to Splashy Fen. On the contrary most music festivals dance down a tightrope strung between (Dionysian) Carnival and (Apollonian) Art and in fact it is precisly this dynamic tension which gives them their energy, attraction and importance. But given that the mechanisms by which Carnival creates the space to explore new ways of being and seeing include communal excess and altered states of consciousness it always runs the risk of resulting in nothing more than a whole lot of people allowing each other to stop thinking beyond basic gratification. Although this doesn’t always resonate to well with Art’s reverence for discipline, nauance, originality and the pursuit of truth this dynamic tension is usually given coherence by being strung above a a safety net woven from a shared commitment to progressive new ways of being and and seeing. But when the bands with top billing are fundamentally conservative the saftey net is weak and tension can become counterproductive. What makes Splashy different to the average festival is that it has earned major cultural capital and this status gives it the liability of being held to especially high standards. The festival’s status comes both from the fact that it was started long before the post-apartheid music boom made festivals fashionable and profitable and because, like the Mail and Guardian and Koos Kombuis, it still able to bask in the afterglow of the light that it was in the dark of the fascist era. In fact it’s crucial to understand that the first Splashy Fen was held in a province that had been drenched with the posion of war for so long that for anyone who hadn’t cocooned themselves in suburbia it was almost impossible to escape it’s corrosion. Just days before the first Splashy Fen Festival Adrian Vlok, the then Minister of Law and Order, announced in parliament that: “We will take action against people, against actvists and radicals. We will take a firm hold on them. They will make a great deal of noise - we know that already. But we cannot allow ourselves to be deterred like that. We will use an iron fist, without respect for persons.” Splashy became a treasured refuge from this barbarism, the pain of the Natal War and the blindness to it as well as everything from Natal’s notoroious case of cultural cringe to the pressures of the call up and the utter inannity of insipid SAUK approved culture. Splashy made a difference and the people who founded and sustained the festival fully deserve their status as visionaries who have made a significant contribution to our music and our lives. But the high standars to which Splashy is held means that for a lot of people giving top billing to cliched, generic, souless, self denying fake American bands is a serious corrpution of the integrity of the on-going Splashy project. While everyone welcomed the many organizational and technical improvements there was onging and raging debate about whether giving top billing to Henry Ate and Just Jinger meant that the festival had sold out. It was a question that began to be asked after last year’s Arapaho debacle and was so ubquitous and incessant this year that it eventually became more suffocating than the dust and more irratating that East Coast Radio’s ridiculously patronising attempt to MC the Friday night session. But when a question is everywhere its got to be addressed. It’s easy to take one look at Just Jinger and Henry Ate’s top billing and to conclude that the McWorld has spread its tentacles to the Drakensberg. And it is true that last year’s festival was a strange mix of the authentic sublime and the sheepishly timid fake-American ridiculous and that this year’s festival took that schizophrenia to an even deeper level.But if, as they claim, the organisers genuinely tried to book artists like Amampondo, The Nude Girls, Transky and Pops Mohammed then it’s more a case of buying in than selling out. But even though these artists (and they are artists!) didn’t make it the fact is that this is a festival that continues to give maskanda the respect it deserves, exposes a new audience to artists of the quality of Gito Baloi and Tony Cox, puts a post-barbie woman like the soul branding Michele from Fetish on the main stage in a part of the world where empowered female figures are still a novelty to be celebrated, recognises the brilliance of Sugardrive’s unique low density highly expressive rock, lets ravers experience the ancient Xhosa diviner’s trance dance and draws together a wider range of subcultures than any other event. After all where else will you see a goth and a biker in earnest conversation with a trout fisherman? Spalshy 98 was also an event that gave a platform to challenging artists like Mosaic and Mathew van der Want and which was able to exposes the wonderful expansivess and expressiveness of the Cape Town bands to an audience that is largley drawn from a city that has generally failed to appreciate that the shackles of the past have actually gone. But although it would just be plain dof to make a blanket judgement like “Splashy sold out” it is equally clear that giving top billing to Henry Ate and Just Jinger was a serious error of judgement. Although they didn’t get their audience moving like Squeal, Wonderboom and Azumah did Henry Ate and Just jinger are clearly very popular. But its just as clear that Splashy Fen has never been about pandering to the lowest common denominator and that other festivals have been able to be very successful without sinking to this level. What’s more it’s just as true that no one who knows anything about music, art or life can stand to be in their presence. In fact the graffitti on one port-a-loo went so far as to suggest that “If you like Just Jinger you need therapy or a one way ticket to New Zealand.” Despite the grain of truth in this overly harsh judgement it is self evident that like all bands who haven’t found their own voice they are an artistic failure. Moreover in a country struggling to come to terms with it’s idenitity their denial of self in favour of a bland pseudo-American feel amounts to an ethical failure. Of course theory is in perpetual danger of disappearing up its own arse but there are also some very practical consequences of giving top billing to bands like these. It not only inceases the yob presence at the Festival but it also makes those yobs feel that they own the festival and that the more progressive bands are just an irratation to be endured until the real bands come on. The really shit thing is that there was a time when Splashy was an oasis of peace and a place for escape and regeneration but this year people who don’t tolerate racism, sexism and homophobia had to walk around with their fists clenched and their adrenalin pumping. Of course this is not to imply that all Just Jinger and Henry Ate fans are like this or that the bands in anway approve of stone age social sensabilites. However the reality is that a lot of their fans are like this and that these attitudes are most definitely not what the organisers or the loyal patrons of the festivals want. If the yob elements are catered for in the future it must be clear to them that they are there on Splashy’s terms and not the other way around. If Just Jinger have to be on the bill let them support Noise Khanyile, Prophets of Da City or the Springbok Nude Girls. If Splashy intends to repeat this error then it will soon be time to shift the festival from Peter Ferraz’s farm to a large suburban shopping centre and to franchise Oppikoppi. But if this was a one-off, as Pedro Carlo the man responsbile for this mistake assured his critics, then the future is wide open for Splashy and the festival may well enter the next century with it’s coherence and dignity intact. Pedro stresses that if he is appointed as a music programmer next year he will be open to the very best bands across all genres as well as to bands from North of our borders and this has got to be excellent news. And, given that Peter Rorvik, the second music programmer, glows when he enthuses about the deep soul of maskanda and the exquisite sounds which Matotiana Mantombi teases from her umrubhe mouth bow, it seems like Henry Ate and Just Jinger were a speed bump on the road to a world class festival rather than a right turn towards the sort of mediocrity that’s only good for soothing the suburban soul. Time will tell but in the interim Durban’s got Melt 2000 releases on the shelves, regular gigs by established artists like Madala Kunene, Landscape Prayers, Squeal and Sipho Gumede, bands like Thamela, Blind and Anarchy rising up from the streets, visits to Crash by the best of Jo’burg and Cape Town and progressive clubs like Sub-sonic and the Rainbow. There’s more than enough to feed the city’s collective soul until next May. ------------------------------- SPLASHY FEN: 10 YEARS UNDER THE MOUNTAIN Third Ear Music have put together a 35 track double album to mark the 10th anniversary of Splashy Fen. Richard Pithouse had thoroughly kiff job of checking out Splashy Fen: 10 Years of Music Under the Mountain The old Splashy Fen was free of both aggressive, cretinous security gaurds and the sort of rock bands who’re as derivative as their fake American accents. If you’re mourning it the good news is that a whole bunch of redemption songs are just a few bucks or a credit card swipe away. Even if you’ve never been to the festival you’d need a heart of stone not to be impressed with the startlingly good music by the relatively unknown folk singers. And, unless you’re the sort of person who hangs out at franchised fake English pubs, you’ll be hugely excited to see that the album also includes work by artists of the national and international stature of Vusi Mahlasela, 14 Shabalala, Adamu, Koos Kombuis, Mathew van der Want, Urban Creep, Highway Jam, Landscape Prayers, Madala Kunene, Tananas and Urban Creep. Of course the music does vary in quality but with the exception of Neil Solomon’s lyrically challenged In the Year 2000 it’s all eminently worth paying good money for. And the genuine treasures, which include work by Koos Kombuis, 14 Shabalala, Mathew van der Want as well as Urban Creep’s beautiful Noah, Adamu’s soulful Muxima, Jennifer Ferguson’s enormously powerful Lilleth and Tananas’ brilliant Makweru are each worth more than the price of the album. If you’ve a festival regular you’ll be especially pleased to see that the album includes some quintessential Splashy moments like Pedro Espi -Sanchis playing a killer tune on a PVC pipe, Harry Washburn railing against littering and a few doses of Dorian Du Toit’s legendary dead pan humour as well as his spontaneous acapella tribute to the late and unquestionably great James Phillips. It also comes with fascinating sleeve notes and a near complete list of all the bands and artists who played the festival each year. (Just Jinger have, pehaps a little too conviently, been left out....) Everybody knows that kak folk music is about as pleasing to the ear as the dentist’s drill and the early Splashy did have a few toe curlingly bad moments. But the festival did put meaning before money and it was always an honest, multicutural and peaceful experience which challenged the audiences with a compelling range of world class music. But the overdue addittion of more rock in the evenings hasn’t be carefully planned and that part of the festival seems to be losing its way. But, with enough presure they may even book some more of the bands that people actually want to see. Hell, it could even turn into something special. Imagine Splashy 2003 with Rage Against the machine or the Asian Dub Foundation opening for Anarchy and the Nude Girls...... But there’s no doubt that although progressive rock bands like Sugardrive and Fetish and a few old Splashy favourites like Madala Kunene, van der Want/ Letcher and Landscape Prayers made this year’s bill Splashy has lost some of its earlier magic and hasn’t yet come close to the more comprehensive and risk taking rock festivals. But, just as we can still find our way by the light of dead stars the spirit of the old festival will live on in this album. Moments which you’ve forgotten or half remembered are b(r)ought back to life and it’s a wonderful reminder of the best of Splashy Fen, some of the music of the decade and, of course, the inspirational hope and resilience that’s always characterised the South African political and cultural underground. Buy it. And next time you catch yourself slipping into another night of mediocre TV open the window, light a candle, lie back, nestle up to someone nice and take a head trip to Splashy Fen. You’ll feel the mountain breeze on your cheek, a warm rock against your back, the gentle chatter of good people and, of course, you’ll hear some seriously kiff music too. Can you afford not to buy this album? Oh, and by the way, 14 Shabalala is on track 14 and, yes, you can expect a warning from the Surgeon General to the effect that: “If sent abroad, this album is likely to generate instant and accute depression in emigre South Africans. Those in New Zealand are at particular risk and should immediately start taking prozac as a preventative measure in case of accidental exposure.” On The Web   Back