We are 16 graduate students at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. We're living and reporting in Cape Town during June and July, creating multimedia content documenting a defining time in the country's history.
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Reporting Cape Town
Die Antwoord Brings The Weird
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South Africa is a country still working through its wounds, thrust onto the main stage perhaps before it is ready, but thrust all the same. –Richard Poplak
Die Antwoord’s April performance at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival was the white South African dance-rappers’ first performance in the United States and the product of months’ worth of Internet buzz.
In Cape Town, the group’s home base, Die Antwoord (“The Answer” in Dutch-derived Afrikaans) is known as a key but relatively new act representing Zef, a South African cultural movement. Headed to New York City next week to kick off their first North American tour, the group brought their insane energy to the Cape Town International Convention Center Wednesday night.
Zef combines 80’s-era conspicuous consumption, rave culture, spliced African sounds and rhythms, and tongue-in-cheek parody of white South African elites. The genre echoes early American hip-hop while fitting comfortably into the international pop pantheon. It is strange, vulgar, and distinctly Afrikaans.
As a couple of my white colleagues at Media24 put it, “We were brought up for most of our lives to believe that black people were inferior.” With the implicit understanding that this kind of indoctrination is a great way to fuck people up for life, they said, “we have to have some sense of humor about it.” Zef, therefore, is a type of cultural reconciliation.
Though arguably a novelty act, Die Antwoord carries the weight of South African problems behind it, including dire poverty and the remnants of race warfare. At the same time, their party-centric approach the music keeps things light, bizarre, and always moving.
The group is raunchy, grating, yet technically excellent. To an American ear, the sound is fresh if abrasive. The accents are distinctly foreign, the raw confidence of MCs Ninja (the dude) and Yo-Landi (the little sprite) impressive.
The poor "white trash" aesthetic is familiar, but without the shrill whine of Eminem or the emo-pessimism of Atmosphere.
In Cape Town, fans of various backgrounds lauded Die Antwoord for mashing up the musical traditions of different races and classes. All the fans I spoke with agreed: the group, and the Zef culture it represents, is part of the healing process of the young democracy of South Africa after apartheid. At the same time, the music is a good excuse to go out and get crazy on a Wednesday night. Kevin Douglas Grant
