VIDEO: Interview with Mango Groove's Claire Johnston

CLAIRE Johnston of Mango Groove fame was at Gateway the other week promoting her band’s latest album Bang the Drum. The album is great – a little different in pace to what Mango Groove fans are familiar with but is still in vibey and Proudly South African Mango Groove style. A colleague and I caught up with Claire Johnston for an interview. The video supplement and article follows:

Interview with Claire Johnston

Ryan Calder

IT’S 9 am on Monday morning, and my colleague Galen Schultz and I make our way to the food court of Gateway Shopping Centre, carrying video cameras and dictaphones. Claire Johnston of Mango Groove is instantly recognisable.

Wearing a funky tartan cap, the famous blonde singer is sitting with her EMI rep Kevin at a coffee table in the food court as we approach. They stand to greet us and I immediately note her black and white jersey, which I refrain from mentioning, given the poor run of form of the Sharks in recent weeks. Still, I like that she’s thought about it. When in Rome...

We find the quietest corner of the busiest shopping centre in Umhlanga and get to the interview, which has come about after the release of Mango Groove’s latest studio album, Bang the Drum. The album is the band’s first in 14 years.

“Very good question, why now?” Claire Johnston reflects. “Mango Groove never split up, but we all took a break to pursue various projects which we had all wanted to do for a while. You get to a point where you love what you do, but probably don’t appreciate it as much as you should, and that’s a good time to take a break and explore different things.”

Johnston was 17 when she joined the group 25 years ago, and after Mango Groove’s success went on to pursue a solo career which saw the birth of three albums. “But slowly, over the past seven years, we had each started feeling those stirrings again, which was nice. It was nice to know that we were ready.”

Claire highlights the launch of the band’s website as a catalytic point in deciding to record again. “It was amazing once the website was up, we got responses from people asking where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing.

“We did some shows in Gauteng and people went crazy for songs like Hometalk and Special Star, and we knew the magic was still there. That’s why we’re in this industry: it’s a feel-good industry as much as it is a business industry.”

Claire Johnston knows the hardships of making a career as a musician, having recorded Fearless, a solo album in the UK, which she admits was very different from Mango Groove and “refreshing on a personal level”, but which wasn’t received well in South Africa. She then recorded Africa Blue, a collection of songs “which have influenced me and which I am fond of” which were closer to the sound of Mango Groove.

“I like to think of my solo career as running parallel with Mango. It can be done, you just have to be savvy about it.”

For now, however, Johnston’s focus is clearly on Bang the Drum, Mango Groove’s new 16-track offering which clocks in at close to 70 minutes. Recording the album “was like coming home,” Claire Johnston reflects, “because it was in the same studio where we recorded our first album. They’d changed some of the wallpaper and some of the technology was new, but it really felt familiar.”

Out of the studio has come an album that is typically Mango Groove. “People ask us who our target market is. I just say ‘well, everyone’. Perhaps I’m naive, but I like to think that music can do that, that it can stretch across all sorts of boundaires.” - www.witness.co.za

Related posts: Video interviews with ...

• Watershed • Magna Carta • Guy Buttery

STAND AS ONE: The unofficial Fifa 2010 World Cup song

THIS is the South African 2010 World Cup song everybody is talking about. FIFA and SAFA have not yet backed this track, so it's creators have decided to take the melody to the people. The foot-tapping beat is called "Stand As One" and after I listened to it it gave me tingles down my spine. Any feedback and comments will be passed onto the creators. Otherwise just enjoy it!

Come on Dance! As we blow our Vuvuzela!!

"Stand as one" 2010 Fifa World Cup Song

Title: Stand as One
Artist: Martin PK
Producer: David Campos
PR/Marketing: JP van der Spuy

Related posts:

• Dear World Cup vis­it­ors
• Shine South Africa for 2010
• South Africa rolls out Ubuntu in abundance

VIDEO: The history and origin of poi

Aunty yo, a South African poi instructor, describes the history and origin of this colorful technique as her students demonstrate the art of poi at the White Mountain Folk Festival held in the central Drakensburg, Kwa-zulu Natal.

Poi People

For more info visit: www.auntyyo.com

VIDEOS: Highlights of this year's White Mountain Folk Festival,
plus what some people had to say about the family-friendly event

White Mountain Folk Fest 2009 featuring "shushu" by South African band
Hot Water. Many thanks to all those who participated. What a lekker jol.

Click here for more info and to see last year's video

What happens when you introduce 500 volts to the rear end of a horny black rhino - A factual account by Wilbur Smith

The Electrician and the Horney Rhinoceros

THE plight of the Black Rhinoceros is, of course, due mostly to the value of its horn and the ferocious poaching that this engenders. However, a contributory factor to the declining rhino population is the animals disorganised mating habits.

It seems that the female rhino only becomes receptive to the male's attentions every three years or so, while the male only becomes interested in her at the same intervals, a condition known quite appropriately as "Must". The problem is one of synchronisation, for their amorous inclinations do not always coincide.

In the early Sixties, I was invited, along with a host of journalists and other luminaries, to be present at an attempt by the Rhodesian Game and Tsetse Department to solve this problem of poor timing.

The idea was to capture a male rhino and induce him to deliver up that which could be stored until that day in the distant future when his mate's fancy turned lightly to thoughts of love.

We departed from the Zambezi Valley in an impressive convoy of trucks and Landrovers, counting in our midst none other than the Director of the game department in person, together with his minions, a veterinary surgeon, an electrician and sundry other technicians, all deemed necessary to make the harvest.

The local game scouts had been sent out to scout the bush for the largest, most virile Rhinoceros they could find. They had done their job to perfection and led us to a beast at least the size of a small granite koppie with a horn on his nose considerably longer than my arm.

The trick was to get this monster into a robust mobile pen
which had been constructed to accommodate him.

The Electrician and the Horney Rhinoceros continued...

The Pursuit of Happiness

With the Director of the Game Department shouting frantic orders from the safety of the largest truck, the pursuit was on. The tumult and the shouting were apocalyptic. Clouds of dust flew in all directions, trees, and vegetation were destroyed, game scouts scattered like chaff, but finally the Rhinoceros had about a litre of narcotics shot into his rump and his mood became dreamy and benign.

With forty black game guards heaving and shoving, and the Director still shouting orders from the truck, the rhino was wedged into his cage, and stood there with a happy grin on his face.

At this stage, the Director deemed it safe to emerge from the cab of his truck and he came amongst us resplendent in starched and immaculately ironed bush jacket with a colourful silk scarf at this throat. With an imperial gesture, he ordered the portable electric generator to be brought forward and positioned behind the captured animal. This was a machine which was capable of lighting up a small city, and it was equipped with two wheels that made it resemble a Roman chariot.

The Director climbed up on the generator to better address us. We gathered around attentively while he explained what was to happen next ...

Enter Electrician

It seemed that the only way to get what we had come for was to introduce an electrode into the rhino's rear end, and to deliver a mild electric shock, no more than a few volts, which would be enough to pull his trigger for him.

The Director gave another order and the veterinary surgeon greased something that looked like an acoustic torpedo and which was attached to the generator with sturdy insulated wires. He then went up behind the somnolent beast and thrust it up him to a full arms length, at which the Rhino opened his eyes very wide indeed.

The veterinary and his two black assistants now moved into position with a large bucket and assumed expectant expressions. We, the audience, crowded closer so as not to miss a single detail of the drama. The Director still mounted on the generator trailer, nodded to the electrician who threw the switch and chaos reigned.

In the subsequent departmental enquiry the blame was placed squarely on the shoulders of the electrician. It seems that in the heat of the moment his wits had deserted him and instead of connecting up his apparatus to deliver a gentle 5 volts, he had crossed his wires and the Rhino received a full 500 volts up his rear end.

His reaction was spectacular. Four tons of rhinoceros shot six feet straight up in the air. The cage, made of great timber baulks, exploded into its separate pieces and the rhinoceros now very much awake, took off at a gallop.

We, the audience, were no less sprightly. We took to the trees with alacrity. This was the only occasion on which I have ever been passed by two journalists half way up a Mopane tree.

Chariots of Desire

From the top branches we beheld an amazing sight, for the chariot was still connected to the Rhinoceros per rectum, and the director of the game department was still mounted upon it, very much like Ben Hur, the charioteer.

As they disappeared from view, the rhinoceros was snorting and blowing like a steam locomotive and the Director was clinging to the front rail of his chariot and howling like the north wind which only encouraged the beast to greater speed.

The story has a happy ending for the following day after the director had returned hurriedly to his office in Salisbury, another male Rhinoceros was captured and caged and this time the electrician got his wiring right.

I can still see the Rhinoceros's expression of surprised gratification as the switch was thrown. You could almost hear him think to himself. "Oh Boy! I didn't think this was going to happen to me for at least another three years".

- The Electrician and the Horney Rhinoceros by Wilbur Smith

Best Happy Friday post yet: If historic people had Facebook

** More Happy Friday Humour **