Hello everyone!

A lot of people have sent in emails and messages expressing interest in buying Hannes music which was before only available on CD in South Africa but now for the first time you can buy Hannes Coetzee's songs online individually!

Go to www.rhythmrecords.co.za and type in Hannes Coetzee and songs from the album Karoo Kitaar Blues on which Hannes featured are there to buy individually! So now you can buy your very own copy of Mahalla!

Enjoy! :)

 

Hello everyone!

Just letting you know that brand new photos are being put up of Hannes with various artists and people he met while on his recent visit to the Port Townsend Slide and Steel Experience in Fort Worden State Park, Washington, USA.

This was Hannes's first trip overseas and he said the thing that impressed him the most was the friendliness and the acceptance of the people! This is quite extraordinary considering that Hannes doesn't speak any English!

 

Hannes has been invited to participate in the PORT TOWNSEND SLIDE AND STEEL EXPERIENCE which takes place in Fort Worden State Park, Washington, USA and is leaving South Africa TOMORROW (the 21st of June 2007) for the first time as this will be Hannes' first trip overseas! David Kramer will accompany him and they will spend a week at this park for culture and the arts, where aspiring slide guitar players will have the opportunity to attend workshops and learn slide guitar techniques from Hannes and listen to him in concert.
For more information go to www.centrum.org or www.davidkramer.co.za

Hello everybody

This is just to let you know that there is a new video up of Hannes Coetzee playing live in concert  - enjoy! :)

David Kramer met Hannes in 2001 during the making of a programme on guitarists for South African television. Since that meeting, Hannes, together with other musicians, joined Kramer in his award-winning production, KAROO KITAAR BLUES, in which marginalised and forgotten musicians were showcased, playing authentic 'ou liedjies' (translated from Afrikaans meaning 'old songs').
Hannes is also featured on the CD, Karoo Kitaar Blues which was recorded live at one of these concerts.

For more information about Karoo Kitaar Blues go to www.davidkramer.co.za

This magazine article first appeared in SA City Life (May 2002)

It might never be as marketable as Paul Simon's Graceland or Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club. But as an artistic triumph David Kramer's Karoo Kitaar Blues is right up there in the same league.

On the surface David Kramer's Karoo Kitaar Blues doesn't appear to be the kind of show that would make you cry. But cry is what you do during this emotional roller coaster of joy, regret and fierce national pride.

Based on two journeys of discovery through the Karoo and Namaqualand that David made with TV documentary maker Jan Horn in 2000 and 2001, the show is a jaw dropping celebration of eccentric and long forgotten guitar and singing styles. Held together by David's typically wry and insightful narration and a brace of new songs inspired by his travels through South Africa's outback, it makes for riveting musical theatre.

What's fascinating about these platteland musicians is they have learnt through osmosis. In the Karoo there is no formalised instruction and no written chords or sheet music. Each player learns by watching, listening and then working out his own tuning and chord patterns. Even more intriguing is that this doesn't just vary from area to area, but between members of the same family. That the hypnotic, cyclical tunes begin to acquire a comforting feel is no accident. It gets damn lonely herding goats in the Karoo or walking to the next farm.

Singling out the highlights is difficult. But one of them has to be Jacob Jaers whose blikviool emits a raw, haunting screech that evokes the beautiful starkness of the Namaqualand landscape that is his home. Jacob's three-string instrument is fashioned from an empty Caltex oil can that he plays with a bow made from a bent stick strung with horsehair. To 'oil' his playing, Jacob swipes the bow through some tree gum kept in a groove at the top of the fingerboard. He's riveting.

As is Victoria West husband and wife guitar duo Jan and Siena Mouers. 'They reminded me of the Briels,' says David who found the grizzled couple living in a house Jan bought with his railways pension. 'They sing old Afrikaans songs. Songs about being pushed aside and ignored, the hardship of being orphaned and the characters of the Karoo. Songs that challenge the Calvinistic notion that Afrikaans is a white man's culture.'

The killer moment for me though comes in the form of Wie Gaan Vir My Nag Sê? A new addition to the Karoo Kitaar Blues set that David first unveiled at the Baxter in October/November last year, the song is an instrumental originated by Hannes Coetzee, the most famous member of the cast thanks to his face being used on the striking Karoo Kitaar Blues posters. An aloe tapper from Herbertsdale in the Klein Karoo (he extracts the healing juice for sale to the local co-op) he must also rank as one of the most unique slide guitarists in the world. Hannes, you see, plays using a teaspoon held in his mouth.

As David explains, the Americans play slide by sliding out the melody with a glass or steel tube over their pinky finger while plucking with the fingers on their opposite hand. Hannes, however, plays the chords with his left hand, plucks optel-en-knyp style with his right hand (this style involves thumping the rhythm on the bass strings with the thumb while and plucking the top strings with the fingers) and then slides out the melody with a teaspoon held in his mouth.

Hannes's sound - effectively that of two players - resonates deep in your soul whether your roots are platteland or not. Not least on Wie Gaan Vir My Nag Se? which drips with so much poignancy you could tap it. It's then that you realise just how uniquely talented Hannes is and that he will probably die tapping aloes. The sense of loss and injustice is enough to make a hard arsed man weep.

David recalls how he made a lot of hard arsed men weep back in April last year when he first tested the waters with Karoo kitaar players at Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, an experiment that spawned the debut run of Karoo Kitaar Blues at the Baxter.

'When Tokas Lodewyk appeared (he's a shepherd guitarist from Richmond in the Karoo) the audience (mostly white Afrikaners) gasped collectively. On the surface Tokas is the sort of person who might work in their garden or on their farm. What happened that night was as much about status as it was about music. It was about how people perceive themselves and each other. It's like the audience were saying, ''Is this some kind of mistake? Has he wandered onto stage by accident?'' Then he played and it was very powerful because suddenly he exploded old mindsets there and then.'

David says audience disbelief gradually turned into admiration. 'You can't help marvelling at the playing and singing,' explains David. 'And that starts toying with the audience's emotions. It's shifts people's paradigms and gives them a jolt. Suddenly they're forced to confront the racial prejudice of the past and in many cases of the present. There is a sense of how could this have happened? How could we have done this to people who speak our mother tongue? How could we have denied them this opportunity?

'It's similar to that feeling you get when you see that shoe shiner in Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club movie who long ago gave up on his music and resists being coaxed back into the studio to record. You think, ''My God, what a waste!'' '

David doesn't cry on stage. For him the show is a complete jol. But you get the sense that he's silently wept more than once since he started on this musical journey which takes South Africa's blik guitar god full circle. 'The show is smile time for me,' he explains. 'But it's also tied up with regret. On the one hand I'm happy for the musicians. It's beautiful to witness them receiving affirmation and acknowledgement. On the other hand I feel anger and regret that I've taken so long to do this.'

David's feelings are understandable when you learn just how long. 'As a kid I remember farm workers gathering at the bottle store next door to my dad's furniture shop in Worcester to sing and play guitar. Those times were a huge influence. That's where my musical education began.'

fter completing a BA Textile Design degree at Leeds University in 1974, David had a strong yearning to record that music. 'I was aware it was going to be lost. But the idea was too intimidating for me at the time. To convince farmers back then that their labourers were worth recording would have been difficult.'

Nearly three decades later David was stalled by those very same difficulties, but it didn't stop him from putting together a massively authentic show that's as slick as it's unpredictable. 'Because they aren't professional musicians there's this feeling that anything can happen,' explains David.

Rave reviews from both press and public are testimony of a job well done. But the show nevertheless has its critics who accuse David of exploitation, this even though marginalised people have found dignity and some badly needed cash in this project.

'What do those critics expect me to do when I encounter musicians like these?' asks David. 'Should I just drive past? Or should I rather respond to the artist in me and frame them in a show like Karoo Kitaar Blues? One thing an artist does is open other people's eyes to new and exciting things. It involves seeing the meaning of something that a lot of people wouldn't look at twice and saying, ''Hey! Look at this! Have you seen this?'' All I'm doing essentially is opening a door into another world you wouldn't normally have access to.'

Karoo Kitaar Blues ( a film directed by Liza Key) follows South African songwriter David Kramer and slide guitarist Hannes Coetzee into remote regions of South Africa on their quest to find musicians who play an almost forgotten folk music. The film documents their journey into the harsh and arid landscape of Namaqualand and the Great Karoo interweaving musical performance and interviews with violinists, guitarists, piano accordionists and mouth organ players who play what Kramer describes as Karoo Blues.

Little is known of the origins of this music. It is the music of the shepherds and sheep shearers who are descendants of the original inhabitants of these semi-desert areas - the Khoi or more correctly, the Quena. This music has probably evolved in much the same way as the Afrikaans language that the musicians speak - a blend of indigenous and colonial influences.

By the end of the journey, nine musicians are invited to Cape Town, South Africa where they record some of their songs and perform to packed houses and great acclaim at the Baxter Theatre Centre.

"Karoo Kitaar Blues is an extraordinary record of a music that is dying out and a moving tribute to the people who play it." - IDFA 2003

Karoo Kitaar Blues has been shown at film festivals around the world, winning the Golden Reel Award at the Tiburon International Film Festival in California in 2006.

Karoo Kitaar Blues, both the CD and DVD are now both available online at www.kalahari.net