Let's begin with the back-story. Sharon Katz, a South African from Port Elizabeth, has distinguished herself as an anti-apartheid activist who formed South Africa's first multicultural and multilingual musical group in 1993. She and her performers tirelessly toured the country on "The Peace Train" promoting tolerance and a peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa.
Her work received international attention in 1994 when "she was commissioned by the Independent Electoral Commission to write songs in many of South Africa's languages to teach people how to vote for the first time in their lives. CNN caught Sharon jumping from a helicopter to perform the songs in a remote area of KwaZulu because there was an urgent need to inform people quickly." (Quote is from the Concert Program).
She has since become an unofficial good will ambassador for South Africa, and is engaged in numerous projects that use music therapy to heal people's lives.
Sharon Katz and The Peace Train appeared at Reston, Virginia's CenterStage on January 25, 2004, a night when a blizzard accompanied by the Washington, DC area's dreaded "winter mix" (i.e., icy slush that sticks like Krazy Glue) was roaring through town. Forecasts of awful weather had kept much of the audience at home. The diehards who came were initially a very nervous bunch because it had become obvious that getting home after the concert was going to require a Herculean effort.
From Ms. Katz's description of her early influences, (Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, and Simon & Garfunkel), I was expecting a somewhat somber evening: a little guilt and a little angst blended with outrage at the state of the world. Instead, we were treated to high energy, upbeat Afro-pop fusion music. The Peace Train is rousing and fun and not a bit preachy, (well, at least not the bits that I could understand, for The Peace Train performs songs in all 11 of South Africa's official languages). The look of the band was even a treat, the five performers were dressed in bright orange, purple, and turquoise embroidered robes, which, combined with the fuschia drum kit, and the colored theatrical lights, gave the stage the air of a tropical Christmas.
In no time at all, the audience became thoroughly relaxed and happy, cheerfully clapping out polyrhythms, chanting in African languages and singing enthusiastically, the snow apparently forgotten.
From Sharon Katz's Web site, I learned that The Peace Train lineup is somewhat fluid. The group that appeared at CenterStage consisted of Sharon Katz on guitar and vocals, Henry Macmillan on trumpet, Lynn Riley on flute and sax, Eric Roberts on drums, and Junius "Pop" Wilson on electric bass guitar.
Reston's CenterStage itself deserves a mention. It is a little gem of a theater, very intimate with only 290 seats and some of the best acoustics in the area. I'd expected The Peace Train's horn section to drown everything out, but the sound was very full yet balanced. I also was surprised that there were no keyboards and expected to hear a "sonic hole" in the arrangements, but the mix was rich and full even without the keyboards. If you want to experience great performances at close range, CenterStage is the place to do it!
[Author's Disclaimer: I can't claim to be totally disinterested when it comes to CenterStage; I work for the Reston Community Center, which houses the CenterStage Theater. One of the reasons I chose to work for The Community Center is that I saw the CenterStage and instantly fell in love with it.]
The group began the evening with a song about South African men who were
forced to work in the mines. The song featured some very tight, very beautiful
harmony singing. Sharon Katz, who does almost all of the solo singing, has a
pleasant, expressive voice and her guitar playing is excellent, combining
elements of folk, rock and jazz styles. After a brief Zulu language lesson,
(luckily we weren't graded), the band played several upbeat numbers including
"It's a Crazy Life" which had Restonians clapping out complex rhythms that no
Restonian had ever clapped before. "Crazy Life" is a fusion of Simon and
Garfunkel-style guitar riffs with what sounds to me like Ghanaian Highlife music
and maybe even a bit of Kora style thrown in.
The next song "Sanalwami,"
a Zulu song, was a delicious mix of Afropop sounds with some lovely playing from
the horn section. It's supremely happy, danceable music. Next up was "Sala
Ngoana" ("Be at Peace, My Child") which was not quite as lively as the numbers
that preceded it but still far from dour. I couldn't catch much of the English
lyrics, which seemed to be about children in wartime. It was a protest song, but
I didn't feel like I was being beaten over the head with a message. "Mandela"
was a tribute to Nelson Mandela that featured lots of guitar effects and flashy
playing by Ms. Katz. The energy level went up a notch with "Guabi Guabi," a song
in Zulu from Durban that had the band dancing while they played. Next was the
old chestnut, "Mbube / The Lion Sleeps Tonight," known and dreaded the world
over as "Wimoweh." This, however, was the funkiest version of "Wimoweh" you've
ever heard. I could almost start to like it again. Katz followed with a love
song for Africa: "Afrika Khayalami" / "Africa, My Home." The band closed with
Katz's signature number, "Get on the Peace Train." It's a funky, highly
syncopated rock number that had a whole hall full of Washington, D.C. movers and
shakers happily chanting "Choo-choo, choo-choo."
During the concert, each band member was given plenty of solos and they all had great chops. Wind instrument player Lynn Riley demonstrated her prowess on flute and saxophone, Junius "Pop" Wilson played funky African rhythms on bass guitar, but for me the standout was Eric Roberts' drum solo.
Now, a bit of background is needed here. There is nothing to my mind more boring than a drum solo, the very words "drum solo" are enough to put me into a coma. For years I've written them off as nothing more than extensive wanking. Eric Roberts' solo, however, was a flaming "drumcano," an overwhelming demonstration of elemental energy. As he played I felt my chest tighten the way it always does during the Fourth of July Fireworks Finale.
To sum it all up: Sharon Katz and The Peace Train is an Afro-pop band that combines technical virtuosity with infectious joy and high spirits. They are definitely worth seeing.
An Interview with Sharon Katz
After the show, Sharon Katz was kind enough to give me a short interview. She is a slightly built person with close-cropped red hair who speaks soft, lightly accented English. Born in Port Elizabeth, she is of Eastern European Jewish background.
I asked her how she came to oppose apartheid.
"I'm Jewish," she replied, "and I grew up within the Jewish youth movement that is called Habonim. It's a Zionist, Socialist movement. My whole peer group was about Civil Rights, Human Rights and I got exposed to the music of Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan and I just loved the lyrics. The lyrics would really speak to me and as a young person I hated Apartheid. It was so wrong - I just couldn't understand it. You could see the suffering, you could feel the suffering and as a child it hurt me. So I resonated with these songs. All of those songs were about changing the world and I really believed in that stuff."
Growing up in South Africa in the 1960s, the U.S. Civil Rights movement and protest songs "filtered down" to her. She listened to tapes of protest songs and of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech that had been smuggled into the country.
At age 11, she taught herself to play guitar from books and immediately formed a band called Shalom Bomb. "Shalom Bomb", she explained, is from a poem by Russian poet, Yevgeni Yevtushenko. Shalom Bomb was the first glimmering of what would later become The Peace Train.
In answer to the question, "why didn't you feel afraid of the government," Katz responded:
"I don't know. I had the gift of music and I was a rebel and I didn't think of consequences, I just followed my heart and my spirit. I didn't really tell my parents what I was doing but when I was about 15, I met up with some artists who are very famous today..wonderful, wonderful musicians and actors, one of whom is John Kani who is the artistic director of the Market Theater in Johannesburg today. He's a brilliant actor and playwright who was working with Athol Fugard. I met up with these black actors at an underground play when I was about 15 years old. It was very hush, hush in a venue that people didn't know about, invitation only. After the show the cast sang a banned song that is now our national anthem. I jumped up and I was so moved I ran to the stage and I felt like I had to know these people and I became friends with them.
They took me out to the townships when I was 15. They hid me at the back of the car, covered me up with blankets - we used to go watch them at rehearsals. When my parents were at work, I used to invite these players to our house -it was strictly illegal to do this. You could not have black people in your house. It was against the law.
I loved African music with a passion since I was very young. I started to spend more and more time out in the townships making friends with African people and learning their music."
During South Africa's State of Emergency in the 1980s, Katz came to the U.S. to study music therapy at Temple University in Philadelphia. She gravitated to working with emotionally disturbed teenagers and also worked as a music therapist in the prison system. She was very homesick for South Africa and when Mandela was released, she decided to return home.
"When I got home, there was such a groundswell of change that I felt I had to do something big. I started travelling to all the outlying areas, to the villages, to the townships, and eventually I persuaded a company to sponsor me to a vehicle and I got commissioned by the performing arts council to put on a multicultural choir and they almost fainted when I said I wanted to put 500 voices together. But they said 'okay, go ahead,' though they thought I was crazy. That was in 1992, two years after the release of Mandela but two years before the elections. So, I was quite ahead of the times because there was still a lot of resistance to change in South Africa.
I got some companies to believe that I could break down the barriers of racism through music therapy and by working with youth. So I wrote songs in Zulu and Xhosa and many other languages that I'd learned through the years and I composed a musical that would reflect the hopes and visions and aspirations of the youth of South Africa. By the time we staged the first show, When Voices Meet, with the 500-voice choir, we knew elections were coming but a date still had not been set.
Our first concerts were incredibly successful. It was the first time there had been such a huge mixed crowd in the Durban City Hall. I mean, Durban City Hall was white, white, white! Beaches, restaurants were white, white, white - all those laws were still in place in 1992. But then everything started changing. By the time we did our first show in 1993, things were really starting to change. And then they set the date for the elections which was going to be 1994, and we decided in December 1993 we were going to rent a train and we would ride around South Africa on it. We were going to be a moving billboard for peace. By the time we actually rode around South Africa on the peace train we were talking about elections - it was almost like an unofficial paving the way for elections in South Africa. We did not have government support because it was the old government."
After the elections, Katz took on her role as South Africa's unofficial goodwill ambassador, taking a 45-member performing group on a 5-week, 8-city U.S. tour in 1995.
Now based in Philadelphia, Katz is involved in several projects in addition to performing with Peace Train. She's been taking Americans on tours to South Africa to show them what it's really like now. There is an incredible spirit in South Africa. People who have been so abused by the system have not been beaten down. They are an example to the whole world. Right now they are working in their communities to make things better and there's an amazing love between black and white. There isn't racial hatred in South Africa as you would expect there would be. People work together.
She is also writing music for Kofifi, a play that will open in the Freedom Theater in Philadelphia. The story is set in the Sophiatown era in South Africa (The Sophiatown era was a flowering of African urban culture, somewhat like the Harlem Renaissance in the U.S. In 1960, the South African government decided Sophiatown was a hotbed of subversion and had it demolished).
Future Projects include collaborating on a CD and U.S. tour with Miriam Makeba's mentor Dolly Rathebe. Katz also is setting up the Peace Train Foundation. Its mission will be to help educate youth and promote job creation and leadership development. The foundation will also establish orphanages in South Africa.
Katz is returning to South Africa in March for a visit.
Two recordings of Sharon Katz and The Peace Train are available. Her most recent recording is Imbizo. Crystal Journey is the title of her other CD. The group can also be heard on Carnival: Rainforest Foundation Concert, alongside internationally renowned performers such as The Chieftains, Annie Lennox, James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Tina Turner.
