Miles Keylock reviews Phrased Differently, a compilation by the team of Mail & Guardian journalists

“Strange, Freddie thought as she listened, music has become one big sound. Nothing is discernible anymore.” The line is out of Barbara Adair’s new postmodern novel End (Jacana, 2007) but anybody struggling to navigate the contemporary South African music-scape will relate to what Freddie’s talking about as she cruises through Jozi: the monocultural nightmare lurking beneath the Rainbow Nation myth. As Freddie puts it, “No one listens to music anymore. It’s accessible to all. It is just one sound that is always available.”

Phrased Differently has the antidote. Take its title: different to what exactly? That “one big sound” that fuels the conveyor belt of compilations selling uniformity, either through “exotic” African tourist postcards such as The Great South African Trip, or segregationist sales pitches such as Ons Rock Jou Taal and those branded Bump clubber’s guides.

Rather than attempt to categorise the contemporary South African musical experience into either easily digestible consumer cliché, the team of Mail & Guardian journalists curating Phrased Differently juxtapose some of the divergent musical voices shaping South African society together on one CD. It’s a deceptively simple curatorial ploy that challenges you to celebrate difference over uniformity, flow over unities and to shelve your generic prejudices and actually listen.

Listen to the mash-up strategies at play in Sibot and Spoek Mathambo’s whimsical electro-rap opener Bang on the Drum. Moby on crack, anyone? Okay, maybe not, but hey, part of the pleasure of listening to this primer lies in finding your own ways of navigating these mobile arrangements.

Perhaps it starts with joining the dots between current progressive rock poster boys Mars Volta and our own forgotten 1970s favourites Freedom’s Children in the genre-surfing deconstruction drive of the Blk Jks’ Transit Camp.

Or tuning into the unmistakable Sophiatown jazz nostalgia fuelling saxophonist Moses Khumalo’s Celebrate Mzansi, and then wondering where the hell you’ve heard his name before. (An obituary: “Sax star commits suicide at 27”.) Or maybe it’s decoding the cathartic call to consciousness in Tumi & the Volume’s altrock filtered rap Signs.

Make no mistake, juxtaposing such diverse sounds as Rantoboko’s acoustic soul hop smile Kimba Kure and Magarimbe’s kwaito smash hit Sister Bethina alongside the alternative indie rock of The Wild Eyes Breakdown and the Black Hotels’ Johnsson Mann is ambitious. But that’s the point.

Will some listeners hit that fast forward button when Paul Hanmer’s chromatic jazz joint Oxtinato segues into Afrikaans neo-Beat poet Toast Coetzer and his Buckfever Underground combo’s stream of consciousness post-rock poem Die Wortel van Kwaad? Probably.

But this primer isn’t meant for them. It’s meant for those listeners frustrated by the homogeneity of any Rainbow Nation musical recipes. Sama-winning Hanmer aside, the roster of artists populating Phrased Differently are hardly household names.

But don’t presume this means Phrased Differently is buying into any “mainstream vs underground” divide.

Its mission is far more utopian: ultimately it’s about letting the divergent South African musical voices speak for themselves.

http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2007/2007nov/071123-phrased.html