Ch. 9: Hair and Healing

On the day the exchange rate peaked, Josh and I were giddy with our newfound spending power. We were planning to go to the Abdullah Ibrahim concert anyway, but we decided to pay for the best seats, and invite two of Josh’s friends. Abdullah Ibrahim is arguably South Africa’s most famous jazz musician. Living in America for a time, he played with the greatest jazzmen and earned an international reputation. He wrote and recorded a song, “Mannenburg” which became an unofficial anthem for the struggle against apartheid. Yes, this Mannenburg is the same place where I worked with Shawco (although an extra “n” was inserted for some unknown reason). He’s from Cape Town, and on the first of November he gave a concert here, this time at the Artscape Opera House – a far cry from the segregated clubs where he earned his reputation.

Abdullah played in a trio with two American guys, leading them through a continuous stream of tunes and tune-fragments. After the show, Josh’s friends went home and left us with two tickets to the “after party” which one of them had received from her dad. The “tickets” were lanyards with tags that said “VIP.” We followed the other similarly-important people we saw into a room, where we played our part by helping ourselves to a free glass of wine each. We soon discovered that the “after-party” was a press conference. In walks Abdullah with a handful of journalists. He sits at a table with his trio and some record execs. “Hello,” he says. Then he moves on to the questions portion.

Only one journalist seems to have anything on his mind. He asks some questions about the new solo album that he is releasing, and about Abdullah’s music in general. “A reporter once asked me, ‘What is improvisation?’” Abdullah begins. “I said, ‘Let me take you into the township at midnight. When you see a gang coming around the corner, it’s time to improvise.” I chuckle to myself, swirling my glass of wine. Township improvisation, I’ve been there.

Jethro from the Khoi Khonnexion is tall and skinny, with dreadlocked hair and two front teeth missing. He moves in jerks and speaks in bursts. He is a vegetarian and lover of cannabis. He calls himself “the ghetto poet.” He comes from Kalkfontein, a township north of the city with Afrikaans- and Xhosa-speaking residents. He invited me to his place to experience township life, and I accepted.

The tour started at the home of Jethro’s “B-minor” and the children she had with him. It was one room with some divisions – a kitchen, a living room, and a curtain hiding what must have been a bedroom. We left after an argument erupted in Afrikaans. Walking through the township, Jethro was venting to me. She had cut off their children’s dreadlocks. Uprooted them. Ashamed of her progeny’s indigenous identity, she had sheared off its expression. Too lazy to nurture them, she had relegated their care to a cold, buzzing, metal blade.

We wound around houses, stepping over streams of wastewater. Homes were small, so many were in the streets and in their yards, washing clothes, nursing babies, eating, smoking, laughing. We entered a house, walking in on a woman who was affixing her wig. Everyone wants the hair they don’t have, she said. She acknowledged that black people try to imitate white people’s hair, but she guessed that if I had a sister, she was probably not content with her hair either. I do, and she’s not.

“Hold on,” says Abdullah, “there’s another question.” The cameramen stop breaking down their tripods, packing up their boom mikes. It’s me – I have put down my wine glass and walked boldly to the front. “How is your music connected with the indigenous people of Southern Africa?” He spoke earlier about pitching his idea for an M7 school to the San in the Kalahari. The M7, focusing on music, menu, martial arts, meditation, medicine, movement, and mastery, is not doing so well in its Cape Town incarnation. People here are not excited about it, but the Kalahari San, he said, welcomed the holistic approach. “I am indigenous,” is his response to me. He starts pounding on the table and singing in the voice of a shaman.

Jethro walked me to his place, built out of corrugated metal and sticks. He lives in one room about six feet by ten feet, with a bed, a bookshelf, a radio, and a chest for his food, upon which stood a pot of coffee. The radio runs on a car battery; there is no electricity in any of these homes. His sculptures and paintings stand in monument to his self-identity – an indigenous man in a world out of touch. He was still upset about the hair, and only after about eleven neighborhood kids came by, calling him “uncle Jethro” and expecting his leadership as a soccer coach, did he cheer up. I went with them to their game. Jethro shouted instructions through the whole game, but was not disappointed with the end result, a 3-1 loss. Neither was the team. They paraded home through the streets, chanting their team name, “Love and Peace,” with a spirit of victory.

It was getting dark, and I was hoping that my improvisation could be limited to my ignoring of the shouts of “Boer” (Afrikaner) as I passed by the locals, and my escape from a confrontation with a drunk man, who took me weakly by the arm and tried to lead me away. Jethro was walking with me to catch a taxi. On the street corner we saw a woman limping, with a large sore on her ankle, and leading a child. Jethro spoke to her, then told me to wait there. He ran off toward a field, and I was left to respond to all the strange looks with eyes of nonchalance. I could see him in the distance, and he seemed to be gathering plants. A couple of minutes passed, and I was finding it harder to look like I belonged on that corner. Finally, Jethro returned. The woman was a Khoisan, he said, but she was never given traditional knowledge of medicine. The remedies she needed were growing practically in her back yard.

“Doctors don’t know anything about healing,” says Abdullah. Modern medicine is about separateness – first dividing body, mind, and spirit, then taking the body in isolation, and then specializing in a particular organ or system. Healing is breaking down the separations. In a country where separation was the rule of the land, healing is now badly needed. This is the imperative that drives Jethro’s poetry and his actions.

He navigated the minibus taxis with me, and walked me to my door. By then it was totally dark. I asked him how he would get home, as the taxis were already thinning out. He said he would manage; I later found out that he walked – a four-hour excursion. Safety does not concern him much. As soon as he opens his lips and shows his missing teeth, he said, everyone knows he is not worth robbing.