The depth and intensity of my love/hate relationship with the Podcast & Chill with MacG show since its inception in 2018 is unmatched.
How the show has transmogrified from filming by cell phone, in dusty and crusty makeshift studios, to a professional, ultra HD set-up that employs a claimed 30 people and commands nearly a million subscribers (“chillers”), in just a few short years – all the while staying true to its original uncensored, subversive, counterculture brief, is nothing short of phenomenal.
But I sometimes detest it with as much passion for the evidently poor research and lack of general knowledge that mars it, as well as conducting interviews while clearly drunk, and defending it (I really don’t care how counterculture you are, that’s a no-no!). These guys also think nothing of bad-mouthing everyone who turns down their interview requests, which is immature and unfortunate.
Talk about getting high on your own supply.
Every once in a while, though, they put out a true gem of an interview.
One such effort is their latest, featuring the multi award-winning DJ Cleo.
He speaks candidly about his glorious music career, including making music for big names such as Mzekezeke, Brown Dash, Pitch Black Afro, Mandoza and Brickz. He dishes out the inside story on the making of mega-hits like Guqa Ngamadolo, Phansi Komthunz’ Welanga, Puff ‘n Pass, Sweety My Baby, Tjovitjo, Left-Right, Ntofontofo and others.
Cleo also opens up, in astonishing detail, about how he got expelled from high school three times and also spent a week in the slammer (for stealing a CD player), where he came within a whisker of getting killed – and how that entire episode completely changed his life.
“Focus” features prominently when Cleo the teetotaller speaks.
But midway through the interview Cleo laments the sheer folly of being pointed at and ridiculed by youngsters at Wits University, where he’s pursuing a degree in business administration.
His crime? Going to varsity full-time, in his 40s.
The poor DJ was actually at a loss trying to describe the absurdity of it all. And so he should be.
I, for one, couldn’t imagine anything more fascinating than being young and on the same campus as a business-savvy musical genius who’s seen and done it all in the music biz, produced genre-defining songs, currently owns eight properties, and still produces music (the latest being Es’khaleni Street Music Vol.1, featuring an interesting Mapiano remix of Kabelo’s It’s My House “Balele”) after 23 years in the game.
Apparently, not some of those bright sparks from Wits.
A brief snapshot from the conversation…
Cleo: You know what’s funny though? Walking on campus and hearing them murmur… ‘Hey, there’s DJ Cleo. And then they laugh. You keep walking, and then others do the same thing and they laugh. And I’m like, ‘What’s so funny?’ You even check yourself, to seek if there’s anything wrong… I just could never understand what is so funny about me being on campus. This is the same place where your very lecturer that you respect is doing his honours or masters [Or PhD]…”
Sol: Maybe it’s that whole thing where they think uwile (you’ve fallen off) You know how people are… especially our kind?
Cleo: So, you ‘fall’ at a school where you pay R160 000?
Sol: Why would you laugh at a man getting his education, when you’re a student? It’s the dumbest thing ever.
I couldn’t agree more.
This exchange somehow takes my mind back to a markedly different world in a semi-industrial part Durban, some 550km away, where I found myself on Wednesday.
I’m at the doctor’s rooms, thanks to an eye infection. There’s about five other people, including a free-talking, 60-something granny, and an equally extroverted first-time mother in her late 20s, whose 13 day-old infant is suffering from some kind of stomach trouble. This is possibly due to feeding on a mixture of baby formula, water, and intermittent breastmilk. (She says she had to return to work immediately, hence the inability to breastfeed)
So, I’m busy trying to convince her about the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months for the baby, when these two dishevelled, thin chaps pull up at the front door. Their faces are the study of consternation.
The granny clearly doesn’t like these guys at the front gate one bit.
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Earlier, she had complained about insolent, brand-conscious teenagers. (“Babies look so cute when they’re young. Wait till they’re 15. They don’t even hide it when you buy them clothes they don’t like, even with your last pension money!”)
“How can we help you,” asks the receptionist, as she peers through the window.
While the duo struggle to find the best way to describe their spot of bother, the old lady mutters under hear breath: “Good thing you asked them what they wanted before you let them in. We don’t want to find ourselves being ordered lalani phansi (get on the floor), so they can do as they please.”
We emit stifled laughs at her half-joking, half-serious remark.
It doesn’t take long for the receptionist to somehow decipher – as if by telepathy, because these chaps never said it themselves – that they both need “sick notes.” But not your ordinary, bona fide medical certificates: ones that must be back-dated at will, to Monday.
“Sorry, we won’t be able to help you. There’s another doctor up the road. Try them.”
After a brief wait to contemplate their next plan of action they shuffle off slowly, sheepishly, their hard-to-find jobs probably hanging by a thread.
The receptionist walks back to her seat and says: “Ngibabona beseza laba. Ave behlupha (I can spot these ones from a mile away. They are full of trouble). Kush’uthi bebebudlonya kusukela ngoMsombuluko ngoba bebeholile (They’ve probably been getting themselves drunk to a stupor since Monday, which was payday.)”
She says they receive requests for dodgy medical certificates “all the time.”
I find myself wondering about the phenomenon of payday/Monday/Friday absenteeism; whether this particular kind of playing with fire is any less prevalent now due to the scarcity of jobs; and how many people are jobless, or on final warning today, due to alcohol abuse.
The stats paint a gloomy picture about South Africans and our parlous relationship of overindulgence with the bottle.
The end of the year is nigh, along with yet another attendant festival of wanton, ethanol-addled debauchery, and road carnage.
How many won’t see 2023?
And how many must die before we “de-glamourise” alcohol and other narcotics and unmask them as the “un-cool” social activities that they are? When will we begin to save ourselves from this road to self-destruction?
Can you start this weekend, by having a few glasses less than usual?
Or will it be business as usual as we opt for the “I’ll only die when I’m dead,” mantra, which a now-late kwaito artist once espoused?
Aaaah, the human race.
A mass of contradiction and irony
A sea of absurdity and stupidity.
Amazing ceaselessly.
Since time immemorial.
By Facebook Writer & Content Producer
