Karoo Kitaar Blues (review)

Karoo Kitaar Blues is a documentary film that traces the efforts of David Kramer, a South African musician, to find hidden pockets of folk music tradition in isolated corners of the Great Karoo, the vast desert region that stretches between the Western Cape and the southern reaches of the Kalahari. If this search for "old music" sounds like a familiar plot line, it is because Kramer's venture and Liza Key's subsequent film are clearly modeled on the late-1990s success of Ry Cooder and his efforts to recover the forgotten musical traditions of prerevolutionary Cuba, as captured in the Buena Vista Social Club album (1997) and depicted in Wim Wender's 1999 documentary of the same title. Such transparent similarity should not dissuade viewers, however. Kramer and Key's project is equally rich, not only with fine music and performances, but also with a charming sense of character, as the musicians individually are "discovered," interviewed, and given their day to shine. As a result, this film is a terrific resource for teachers seeking visual material that portrays cultural life and leisure in South Africa.

As in Wender's film, the narrative of Karoo Kitaar Blues is book-ended by public performances of the assembled musicians in 2001 and 2003. The middle section of the film documents the efforts of Kramer to find these musicians in such small and unassuming outposts as Kharkams in the heart of Namaqualand. Kramer compares his undertaking to that of Alan Lomax, who traveled throughout the American South during the 1930s making recordings of blues and folk musicians for the Library of Congress. Consequently, we see Kramer going from town to town in his VW bakkie, meeting "these invisible people who play this music that's almost been forgotten." The eccentricity and exuberance of the music—which is played by women and men alike—compel this road trip forward, with such unlikely instruments as the blik ramkie (tin can guitar) and the blikviool (tin can violin) defining the originality of performance style and melody. Both instruments are made from square, gallon-size Caltex oil cans, with the three-string blikviooltucked under the player's armpit instead of placed on the shoulder. One standout musician, Hannes Coetzee, manages to play an astonishing guitar style known as optel-en-knyp, for which he uses a teaspoon placed in his mouth as a slide for the melody. A musician himself, Kramer plays along and takes notes, which provides for some comic scenes. In one instance, he asks Pieter Cloete, a guitarist, what the idiosyncratic tuning he is using is called, and Cloete matter-of-factly replies, "North." Another scene has an elder musician speaking to the film crew from behind a closed door and telling them to go away, despite the pleas of a gently encouraging relative. Such moments add to the film's fieldwork sensibility, which many readers of this journal will appreciate.

As perhaps expected, the exact origins of this music and the individual histories of the players are somewhat elusive. Interviews reveal that most are self-taught, having learned their craft by watching and imitating older relatives and friends. Though many of the musicians would be considered "coloured" (mixed-race), the social history and the impact of twentieth-century politics on these scattered rural communities do not come through. Entertainment value for the most part supplants the concerns of academic inquiry. However, a helpful interview with Kramer, provided as a DVD extra, does go further in this direction to contextualize the music and point to its complex origins and meaning. For example, he argues that the blikviool, dating from the 1790s, descends from the ramkiki played by the Khoe-san rather than from the European violin. Kramer also emphasizes the subversiveness and sexual innuendo found within the lyrics, which mock the status quo in subtle ways. Song structures are described as having a blend of African and Indonesian...