majestikc wrote:
South Africans also seem to be a bunch of "proudly south african" crabs with their heads in the sand, NO ONE is allowed to express anything negative towards anything south african, say you don't like U2........that's fine, say you don't like Parlotones..........HOW DARE YOU they're south african and they've done well! (you just jelly they'll think).
My perception has always been the opposite. I may be wrong. It seems to me that South Africans tend to think we have the best rugby players in the world but all local music sucks because it's local and thus ipso facto sucky. Now I can write long, rambling essays about this, but key thing is I never thought that it was so, and there were a lot of South African musos that I thought didn't get the recognition they should have got from South Africans.
So I think it's cool now that people in South Africa can get their kicks from a South African band playing in South Africa.
I think a large part of their appeal is this "proudly south african" garbage that's been forced upon us like something form the USSR.
Actually it reminds me of Britain. I recall back in the 60s there was a big "I'm backing Britain" campaign to try to get the British to buy stuff that was made in Britain. People had stopped buying British-made cars, for example, because the Japanese and German and French cars were cheaper and better made. There was more and more imported content on TV - because it was cheaper. etc etc.
The other problem with all of that, of course, was that money was flowing OUT of the country. British wages were ending up in other countries. Which, you might say, is OK and free market and all that, and I might not fight very hard, but for any governments to try and keep the country's GDP in the country seems not unreasonable to me.
If you have any ambitions to play music for a living in SA then these sort of campaigns should interest you. Essentially they say "don't spend your money on overseas bands, spend it in SA on SA bands" and that should boost the local music scene.
