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| Kevin Dunn [author of Global Punk] interviews The Dumpies and Sacia [drummer of The Dumpies] interviews WDTR in RaZorcake #117 [a prolific non-profit DIY punk zine]. The article photos are from The Dumpies South African tour. Top: The Dumpies at Zoolake Bowls, Johannesburg by Christelle Duvenage. Bottom: Shaun & Conley representing We Did This Records and performing as All These Wasted Nuts [folk punk] at Pool City, PE by Pitts Holli. |
We Did This Records had the amazing opportunity to be included in an article for the new issue of RaZorcake magazine. RaZorcake is a total institution in D.I.Y punk. This was all thanks to The Dumpies, a punk rock band from Texas. The article as a whole is Kevin Dunn, the author of Global Punk, interviewing The Dumpies (Joel, Mark, and Tim... minus Sacia, because she was busy working in the ER) about their various back water tours, and then Sacia, asking us some questions. Below you can read an excerpt from the article, followed by a podcast chat between Cape Town folk punk musician Jon Shaban and Brett Newski from Milwaukee.
Kevin: That's hilarious. You mentioned South Africa, which you guys just got back from a couple of weeks ago. How was that different from the rest of the tours?
Mark: It was racially the most intense place I've ever been because Apartheid only ended in 1994. You could pretty much feel it everywhere we went. They always say, "It's touchy." Before I went, I was like, "You just don't want to talk about it. That's your cop-out." After I went there and we went to the Apartheid Museum, we talked to so many people at length about it. I was like, "Wow, this is touchy, Holy shit."
Tim: That's why Shaun and Conley were great. They're very cognizant of that. They will point that out, even little things you'd see on the street. They would connect things, showing us where apartheid is still continuing, but it's more of a financial racism now. It was definitely something which seemed much more prominent than in all the other countries.
Joel: I'm still trying to wrap my head around why it felt so drastically different. Tim was talking about income inequality. It's not that dissimilar to what the situation is here, but there is a different flavor. There's something different about the situation there. It was a really intense learning experience being there.
Tim: In America, we got this picture of, "Apartheid's gone. Everything's great. Everybody loves each other. We're past that." You go there and it's still raw, and it's still very much a part of the country.
Kevin: Can you just say who those two people are that you were talking about?
Tim: Shaun and Conley from We Did This Records which is a D.I.Y collective throughout the whole country. They put out a lot of politically motivated music, playing in a couple of bands. (All These Wasted Nuts, Monday Morning Justice, Sloppy Folk, and so on.)
Kevin: I've been there many times and it's probably my least favorite country to visit because of that income inequality and the institutionalized racism. It's just so in your face and it's so hard to navigate coming from the outside. How is the D.I.Y punk scene dealing with that in South Africa, based on what you guys saw?
Joel: They're just as affected as the rest of the country. In fact, it was a big point of contention. On all these bills we're showing up on, we realized ninety percent of the bands were white. We were talking to Shaun and Conley about it and it's a very segregated scene. There's the Soweto scene and then there's the white scene. Once we realized that was happening, we tried to reach out to a bunch of bands and try to get the shows more integrated - with varying degrees of success - but it was noticeable. I can't imagine living and booking shows in a scene like that.
Tim: The openness is what's different in the U.S. In every show there'd be one or two black musicians and people would be, "Oh, there aren't enough black people here," or, "These bands are all white." In the U.S., you don't really say that. We did have a show in Soweto, but we realized that the bill was all white bands. Shaun was saying, "This really isn't that cool. We can't do this."
Kevin: You didn't play the show?
Joel: No.
...
Sacia: How did you guys get into punk?
Conley: Local ‘zines had a massive impact on exposing us to punk rock, both local and international. Me, growing up in a rural area, even I got a chance and went to my first show when I was fourteen just because of a local zine called Blunt that used to put out comps and list gig guides. It changed my life forever! It made everything I loved tangible and attainable.
Shaun: My cousin Kim was a metal head and when I got my first Walkman at the start of middle school she copied some Nirvana, Green day, and Face To Face albums for me. The chain stores Look and Listen, and CD Warehouse would also stock Epitaph and other biggish label releases. After going to some of my first local shows I learned about Croak Room Records, that was stationed in Pretoria, which used to do mail orders for some local punk records as well as some bands from Canada. Some kids at my high school were also doing distribution for Profane Existence magazine.
Sacia: how connected is the South African punk scene to the rest of Africa?
Conley: Numerous bands from the southern parts of Africa do frequent South Africa. Some festivals hosted in neighbouring countries like Mozambique and Swaziland have South Africans involved in the organizing as well. Most of the African underground scene is dominated by metal, which we aren’t that involved with so I can’t offer much more, unfortunately.
Shaun: There was a film produced called Punk In Africa that focused on some of the apartheid-era punk bands, then took a massive leap to the big names in early 2000s ska punk, and ended with a few minutes about bands in the rest of Africa. I don't know if any of those bands mentioned are still going or if new ones have popped up. I haven't heard of any since.
From my introduction to the local scene, there has been some sort of a connection with American, European, and Australian scenes. We've had numerous bands tour here on there own steam, from hardcore to crust and garage rock. Many bigger bands tour here with support from festivals like OppieKoppi or from groups like Punk Safari, who existed in the early 2000s and were all about bringing Fat Wreck Chords bands over. When i was in high school in Cape Town christian hardcore was massive and church groups were helping little local and overseas bands tour churches and high schools. We even had Underoath here. Though it's debatable weather any of that is "punk", it was probably the height of people being involved in the scene, whether that be with gig attendance or people making zines and stuff. A number of local punk bands have done European and Southeast Asia tours.
Sacia: can you explain the split between the Soweto scene and the rest of the country?
Conley: The rest of the scene had a huge jump start on the Soweto punk scene, or at least the one we are familiar with. This established scene enjoy privileges such as fully equipped venues, accessible location, and active booking agents, to name but a few . In our involvement in Soweto shows, it's amazing to see how any effort for a show or rehearsal always involves family member, neighbours, and friends regardless of the genre which is unfamiliar to the big city scenes. Racism and fear does play a role and keeping these scenes apart, but we have been actively trying to combat that by playing each other’s venues and houses.
Shaun: A few years ago some friends of ours helped start up Soweto Rock Revolution, after hearing about and chatting to folks in Soweto who were into punk and metal. This resulted in the first punk gigs at a skate park by Dube Station. The shows were a mix of acts from Soweto, Joburg, and the addition of some touring bands. There was quite a bit of publicity surrounding these shows from the get go, with numerous videos and articles being produced.
Not long after the first handful of shows did we hear about interest in the Soweto scene from the likes of Afro-Punk, and later Red Bull Music, Vans, and Converse. For a little while we had another collaborative effort in Maboneng, a gentrified arts street in town, called Punk Fridays. Unfortunately the last few Soweto Rock Revolution shows have been a white invasion of Soweto, as the sponsors and corporate interests had made it difficult for the Soweto scene to represent itself there.
As of recently, there's been a bigger fallout between Soweto Skate Society, who manage the prominent Soweto bands, and Soweto Rock Revolution. Currently, we're finding it difficult to collaborate with the Soweto scene due to not wanting to cross battle lines and due to our shows being DIY unsponsored shows where we split the cash made at the door between the bands, with no guarantee or pre-payments.
As of recently, there's been a bigger fallout between Soweto Skate Society, who manage the prominent Soweto bands, and Soweto Rock Revolution. Currently, we're finding it difficult to collaborate with the Soweto scene due to not wanting to cross battle lines and due to our shows being DIY unsponsored shows where we split the cash made at the door between the bands, with no guarantee or pre-payments.
Sacia: Is there a presence of white nationalists within the South African punk scene, like we see elsewhere like Eastern Europe?
Conley: Yes there is, but I wouldn’t say it’s proud and in the open. Most people get called out or get ostracized by the scene, so they don’t have much of a presence at shows or in bands, but every now and again a right-wing nationalist punk band would show its ugly face. In the '80s, we had quite a few bands that would wave the flag of the white nationalist party, but I’m proud to say that venues, agents, and bands are all on the same front when it comes to getting rid of this kinda trash.
Shaun: I had the unfortunate experience of playing a show once with a band from Pretoria called Chaos Christ, who i did not know at the time. They turned out to be a Christian chaos punk band who were LARPing as members of the SS. Aside from that, a globally known anarchist author (Michael Schmidt) from Johannesburg, who had books published by AK Press, and who had frequented shows, was exposed for being an undercover white nationalist and having a Stormfront account in 2015.
Conley: Yes there is, but I wouldn’t say it’s proud and in the open. Most people get called out or get ostracized by the scene, so they don’t have much of a presence at shows or in bands, but every now and again a right-wing nationalist punk band would show its ugly face. In the '80s, we had quite a few bands that would wave the flag of the white nationalist party, but I’m proud to say that venues, agents, and bands are all on the same front when it comes to getting rid of this kinda trash.
Shaun: I had the unfortunate experience of playing a show once with a band from Pretoria called Chaos Christ, who i did not know at the time. They turned out to be a Christian chaos punk band who were LARPing as members of the SS. Aside from that, a globally known anarchist author (Michael Schmidt) from Johannesburg, who had books published by AK Press, and who had frequented shows, was exposed for being an undercover white nationalist and having a Stormfront account in 2015.
Sacia: What are some of the things bands and punks in the U.S. and Europe can do to help out scenes like theirs?
Conley: Just come and visit us! Folks are always welcoming and excited to do things with touring acts or fans. Download our mixtapes and open up to what we have going on down here. There's so much talent and unique and interesting expressions of art and music.
Shaun: I think that for many people overseas, there's some aversion towards the idea of a South African punk scene, outside of the resent popularity online regarding the Soweto scene. Leftover Crack, for instance, were flooded with comments like, "why are you going to white Africa?" when they came here. It's kind of a tricky thing and i think many white people in bands here, especially punk bands, struggle with being white and South African. The legacy of apartheid is still very visible and a lot is unchanged due to the post-apartheid government's devotion to neoliberal capitalism over and above societal and structural change.
Sacia: You guys have a very DIY ethos that seems to intertwine with every aspect of your life, music, and label. Where did this come from?
Conley: South Africa has a very small music scene mostly dominated by country and goslpel music punted by Sony and BMG, so the alternative scene was forced to establish itself by means of DIY. this sprouted into zines, independent labels, and a lot of groundwork . This being intertwined with skateboarding, surfing and so on.
Shaun: While I do think we do DIY out of principle, it's also the reality of the alternative music scene in South Africa.
Copies of RaZorcake issue 117, featuring the full article, will be available at shows post pandemic. Alternatively you can book one in the comments section and we can send one to you... if things don't get better...
Brett Newski's podcast.
SOUTH AFRICA part one | full lockdown, tour meltdowns in S Africa, life of an artist in Cape Town
Jul 28, 2020
Jon Shaban (the SHABS) sits in to discuss the intense lockdown in Cape Town, as well as what it's like to tour and make a living as a South African indie artist.
More on the SHABS: https://theshabs.com/
If you would like to do something to help out the South African punk and alternative scene during this pandemic please follow, stream and share our new Spotify playlist
If you would like to do something to help out the South African punk and alternative scene during this pandemic please follow, stream and share our new Spotify playlist
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