03/12/2025
The recent launch at Wordsworth Books Seapoint of a new book on legendary South African musician and cultural changemaker, Johnny Clegg, gave new insights into Clegg’s legacy not only from archival and academic work (in the book) but from the memories of people who encountered him in formative ways.
One audience member at the Cape Town book launch recalled watching Clegg on television during apartheid after her mother called her into the room saying, “Come and see what I am seeing.” She remembered the impact of witnessing a white musician visibly crossing boundaries. She said she drew strength from seeing someone act without regard for what “could or would have or might have been”.
Another person reflected on how limited the written record about Clegg has been until recently. “There’s only one book to date that deals with Johnny, and that’s his autobiography. Now, there are two.”
Contributors to the book, Pakama Ncume and Marguerite de Villiers were in conversation with Michael Drewett, co-editor of the book. Ncume is a sound archivist and librarian at Stellenbosch University and Marguerite Coetzee is an anthropologist, artist, and futurist.
Ncume’s immersion in the 'Hidden Years Music Archive' offered an intimate window into Clegg’s beginnings. As she listened through recordings from the 1970s, she encountered “a white man wearing Zulu regalia and standing so close with a black man while the system had taught us that the two do not mix”. She first saw this as a child on an LP sleeve in her mother’s collection, but the archive gave her access to Clegg’s voice as it developed. “You could feel a man who is still finding himself,” she said. Ncume said the early tapes revealed a shy teenager navigating unfamiliar cultural terrain while forming relationships that would shape his identity. Listening to the recordings made the cultural exchange audible. “He really meant it,” she said. “It wasn’t accidental that he became a white Zulu.”
As reported by Claudia Gross from the South African Jewish Report Newspaper in this article - https://www.sajr.co.za/unheard-aspects-of-johnny-clegg-voiced-in-new-book
