Tuesday 3 October 2017

Mlungu Death Machine... Live!


Flopping onto the cape town music scene, from some local punk and ska legends, surfaces the internationally ignored supergroup, Mlungu Death Machine! Armed with the best local band name of all time, an unrestrained Loopy, and musical instruments... These punk ass hippies are going to genocide your ear holes with their sweet magical dream flop (I have only heard a part of a live band practice recording off of Loopy's phone in February... but it sounded cool)

So for those unfamiliar with the word "Mlungu", what follows is some lazy internet research where I cut and past a bunch of shit from a single source. Empirical much!

"Many white South Africans believe umlungu is a derogatory term referring to “scum of the sea”, while others believe it simply means “white person”. This prompted the Dispatch to look into the origins of the word.

Zola Wababa, director of the University of Fort Hare-based IsiXhosa National Lexicography Unit, the legal custodian of the language, read the definition from the unit’s hefty Greater Dictionary of IsiXhosa.

An umlungu is, firstly, “a white person [a person of European extract]”, and secondly, a “member of the abeLungu clan descended from whites shipwrecked on the Pondoland coast circa 1700 and absorbed by the Pondos … ”

He said the word was coined during a time of colonialism and apartheid oppression but “semantic extension” has seen it being used in “polite or rude ways”.

“Words are just letters – it is the emotions attached to them by us humans which give them their power for good and evil,” he said.

“There is no history of the word being associated with white scum or foam from the ocean,” he said.

Today “ama-BEE” and “umlungu” are terms used interchangeably by people in townships and from rural areas to describe a black or white boss with power and money."

(Source: dispatchlive.co.za - Experts say ‘umlungu’ is not negative in meaning )

They are jaming their second or third show: Seventh of October, Saturday at 2 PM - 5 PM, Octopus' Garden in Muizenberg.


The band is:

James Klopper - Sings songs and plays the guitar.
Leo Burnett - Jams them sweet foot-stomping dad tunes on the gueetar.
Stigue Nel - Blows the horn and does some singing of songs.
Ray van Wyk - Plays the rhythm cupboard in leather gloves.
Loopy - Shouts and plays les bass.

Post by: Shaun Richards

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