BY RICHARD PITHOUSE
DURBAN — From Boksburg to Berlin, discerning ears are being seduced by a record label that measures its success in the currency of meaning. If this culture reaches critical mass, "the global village" might just stop being a convenient US euphemism for "Americanisation".
The label is Musical Energy and Loud Truth beyond 2000 (MELT 2000). Its artists dissolve the borders between the familiar categories of jazz, trance, dub, maskanda, drum 'n bass, kwaito [the latest South African township pop] and divination rhythms. Nobody seems to know if this is a post-genre or a new genre waiting for a name, but everyone agrees that the artists are mediums opening channels between meaning and pleasure.
Despite being based in the Tory-infested English countryside, MELT 2000 is internationalist in spirit and built on breathtakingly broad imagination. It has been sharing some of South Africa's best music with the world since 1994.
Robert Trunz (aka Chiskop and Temba) is the man whose vision and resources fuel this insurrection of subjugated musics and ideals. Originally from Switzerland, he moved to England in the early '80s to run the B&W speaker company. The company's radicalism ranged from the shape of their speaker pods to providing PA systems for illegal raves. B&W sponsored the Montreaux Jazz Festival for a couple of years and began releasing compilations recorded at the festival.
Then, in 1993, Trunz heard South African jazz legend Sipho Gumede weaving his spells at a club on the Durban beachfront and, not for the first time, Gumede's magical bass trips changed a life. In 1994, Trunz returned to South Africa. He bought along a group of B&W's top artists that included Brazilian drumming genius Airto Moreira and it wasn't long before B&W had put a whole range of innovative collaborative albums, as well as a sublime Gumede album, on the shelves.
Since then MELT 2000 has released a remarkable collection of albums by artists of the stature of Madala Kunene, Deepak Ram, Amampondo, Pops Mohamed and Busi Mhlongo, as well as a large number of groundbreaking collaborative projects and compilations. Although most of the artists are South African the stable includes musicians from Switzerland, down to the Cameroon and across to Cuba and Brazil.
The label's co-operative spirit means that all the artists on the label get to play on each other's albums and, for example, a maskanda band like Skeleton have didgeridoo on their album and Indian flautist Deepak Ram has West African kora on his.
In addition, there have been collaborations like Pops Mohamed and traditional Khoisan [South Africa's indigenous people] musicians, Madala Kunene and Swiss guitarist Max Lasser, English techno-dub innovators Bandulu and Skeleton, and ex-Orb engineer Greg Hunter and Umrubhe (mouthbow) virtuoso Madonsini Manquina.
Busi Mhlongo's new maskanda album, Urbanzulu, has won international critical aclaim and hit number one on the most important World Music Charts. But for her, MELT 2000 has meant more than chart success, critical acclaim and a chance to work with Angelique Kidjo's producer Will Mowat and top musicians like Cameroonian drummer Brice Wassy.
"MELT 2000', she stresses, "does not just sign artists as a business. They care for how you live, for your health, where you stay. South African musicians have been surviving on words for so long now but with MELT, we're finally seeing some action. Because of MELT, South Africans are at last getting a chance to listen to ourselves and to believe in ourselves. We've always copied American music but we haven't copied the way that they support their own culture. We need to understand that our music industry is a baby that needs our love to help it grow."
South Africa has produced a number of progressive record labels like Shifty Music, Tic..Tic..Bang!, Fresh Wildebeest Records and Sheer Sound. While MELT 2000 is not the whole story, it is certainly the most significant intervention into the avant-garde side of the South African music industry. Celebrate it. Catch the fire.
[Richard Pithouse teaches philosophy at the Workers' College and the University of Durban-Westville, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A version of this story first appeared in SL Magazine, Cape Town. Visit MELT 2000's web site at <http://www.melt2000.com>.]<~>