On the 14th of April the Port Elizabeth-based rapper VJ Nakasa dropped a short "pseudo video" on YouTube titled ZITHANDE. The 'Bhaynari' creative describes the visual re-appropriation of a few Yizo-Yizo scenes (into a beautiful ode to love!) as "[a] township romance seen through the nostalgic lens of our memories." We had a chat with the muso and this is what came out of that conversation:
Can you share how ZITHANDE came about and who else worked with you on this project?
ZITHANDE is an interrogation into the idea of love. It was born out of what I think is the inconsistency between things we say about love and our experiences of it. The lyrics run through the popular language of love, of this unconditional “I will do anything for you; I cannot live without you” lingo. I call it ZITHANDE because I feel, essentially, when we confess to people that we love them, what we really saying is we love how they make us feel. So, that's how it was born. I worked with one of my long-standing friends, my brother actually, a guy called A Sounds. A Sounds is a factor, a very fundamental pillar of Motherwell Hip Hop, the township we reside in, aph’ eBhayi and he’s been a creative influence and inspiration for the past 8 to 10 years.
We worked together closely. He is the one that created the video. He made the beat, and the words that ended up being the essence of what this song represents were born out of experience. Ukubone, jus’ getting into relationships and getting out of relationships and essentially finding yourself in a space where you retrospecting on what you’ve done wrong, what could’ve possibly been the error of judgement. What could’ve possibly been occurred when we give ourselves to committing to people, projecting into possible futures, finding ourselves not being to tolerate their very presence at some point; really assessing ‘yintoni lanto’? and giving it form.
Tell us briefly about the decision to re-appropriate, or rather excavate, Yizo-Yizo; put differently, the decision to use the scenes as a cultural-aesthetic creative reference?
The pseudo video, as we have dubbed it, was conceptualised and created by my dear brother, friend, and creative partner A Sounds, who is a decorated hip hop producer and art director. Naye ngowalapha eBhayi, eMotherwell, so we inhabit the same ‘hood’, and that's what we do- we represent. Basically, mna nomjita we connect a lot about South African history, in the context of politics, pop culture, media and possibly all other dimensions that speak to us as young black men in the South African space. I think Yizo-Yizo is a symptom of a lot of our grievances, with i-TV in particular, and how its become (i think to a certain degree it was born as that but there was a time when it put on ‘appearances’ to tell unique stories but now it has dropped the whole thing) a holistic commercial project and that waters down the integrity of storytelling itself and I think Yizo-Yizo was probably the peak of honesty, the peak of saying ‘this is what happens’, and whether or not it fits into the framework of what the SABC is about, it fits into the framework of everyday South African life, for a lot of us young people in the townships, was about. And to kind of weave in the story of love through a space which most popularly depicted as a place of hate, crime and fear, was something that i think on his part came from the need to show that every experience is dynamic and diverse man.
I think it serves more of a commercial benefit to depict the townships as places of agony
I mean, love lives everywhere, ‘coz everywhere you find people you find relationships, and you find the need to connect and thrive around one another and with one another regardless of the challenges. But you also find those challenges, you find the differences, you find the great depression that emerges from those differences. But a lot of times people choose to tell particular stories about ikasi, in ways that i think have overridden what township life really represents. I think it serves more of a commercial benefit to depict the townships as places of agony, and occasionally have this magical ghetto fabulousness, than to actually follow the existential experience of what young people are going through ekasi.
Stylistically, what is it about those few scenes in particular, and Yizo-Yizo in general, that works best for you?
uYizo Yizo for us is a symbol of rebellion, it open up so many possibilities of how to tell stories in ways that mattered. The media is an increasingly commercial project that makes it difficult when artists want to tell stories that aren't essentially selling anything other than the moment of where we are as a people; stories with no corporate edge, that don’t neatly fit into stereotypes or age restrictions , stories that come from the gut-wrenching place where South Africans are and that's what Yizo-Yizo was blatantly and bluntly. So to weave together the music with the monumental piece of television, that was deliberate; it came from trying to connect the two in people’s minds. I’ve always been about telling the South African story that I feel is not done in ways that the majority of the people who live it experience. A lot of storytelling has become grandstanding for brands and commercial interests. My music is the testament to what I think is the moments and feelings of what i think is happening in the undercurrent, because I live there, I inhabit the space myself.
I’ve always been about telling the South African story
Yizo Yizo is an important piece of historical popular culture; what we wanted to do was to capitalise on the nostalgia, create and subvert that with the content of the song. I can't really tell you the method that went into editing and creating that visual piece because A Sound just rocked up and told me he had something for me one day and when I watched it I was astounded and as we spoke about it after that I realised that the creative process of how that thing came together was also somewhat accidental; we both didn’t know how perfectly those scenes would fit into the lyrics as he edited it. I don’t know whether he looked for the moments or the moments were looking for him but I think for me it speaks to the fact that Yizo Yizo had such a diverse story arc where a lot of things lived, including love. To tell a story and investigate what love means might be so easy on the platform of Yizo-Yizo’s visual landscape because Yizo-Yizo told that story and told it in such a diverse way.
My initial reaction to the video was “ahhh the perfect scene finally finds the perfect score”; did you write the song with those scenes in mind? Can you tell me more about the process of marrying the two?
It's a great acknowledgement of the fact that the art we creating resonates in a way that is in-sync with what we think are some of the greatest moments of the South African media machine. How well the scenes connect with the song was something very deliberate because A Sounds sat and looked for the content, he looked for the spaces in the story that spoke to something that the song conveyed but I think it ended up being easier than he anticipated because I think both my music and Yizo-Yizo come from the same place, and I think that place is the place where authenticity lives. I know that's a word that people throw around so often that we hardly know what it means anymore. For me, authenticity means acting from a place that is fully and holistically you and not doing anything because of what you have to gain but doing it because that is the most natural thing at that moment for you to do.
Within South African collective imagination, the series was/is notorious for ‘glamourising’ crime and other vices in the townships, and you chose a ‘love’ scene that seeks to humanise people in the townships. Can you tell us more about that choice to single out an often missed nuance?
Authenticity is challenging because the media is a money machine. We live in a capitalistic world that makes everything we do filter through that lens. It becomes extremely difficult to stand for values if they are in anyway lucrative. But that's a big conversation but I’ll take it to a place where it relates to the video. What we’re trying to achieve with it is to spark something in people’s minds and remind them of the fact that Yizo-Yizo wasn’t controversial because it was influencing kids to get into all kinds of nonsense; it was influential because it gave names and characters to that nonsense that the kids identified and it became a scapegoat for things happening prior to Yizo-Yizo even existing. It became a sore spot because of how brutally it depicted these things and it gave form to things that parents might have wanted to imagine were only ghosts that whirled around in their children’s heads. But if someone now said “ndingu Chester”, if a kid ‘ichappa’ uPapa Action in his arm; these things are tangible and people who are looking for something to blame will say "Yizo-Yizo is doing this and that" when essentially its a symptom of what's already been there, its a symptom of things that have been happening.
The first scene of the video lands itself as another cinematic voyeuristic male gaze. If you were to re-shoot the scene, would you shoot it differently or not, and how would that affect the message/narrative you were trying to push forth?
Using love as a concept was a very deliberate choice. Yizo-Yizo is known for proliferating a lot of hate, we just wanted to show people that its always a nuance, like you said, and that this binary moral perspective breaks our ability to look deeper into things and see that pain, pleasure, love, hate, freedom, oppression, they are so inextricably linked that they live in the same space. I’m a firm believer in the idea of ying-yang and that this universal balance plays itself out in front of us, we’re part of it, we’re an expression of it. This is something I’m always trying to configure into my music; to show people that these things coexist, they live together in a strange kind of harmony, that needs proportion if you want to really understand it.
Pain, pleasure, love, hate, freedom, oppression, they are so inextricably linked that they live in the same space
If you notice something about the first scene Thiza is the only dude who doesn’t say any of those things about Hazel; he simply stands there and looks in awe. That says a lot about his perspective; he was the shining light of a more human, a more gentle, a more feminine and, as a result, a more sensitive approach to love while amajita were busy bemnyela about how he’s too much of a pussy to really step up aye kulomntana. But when eventually he did, he did it in a way that, just the vulnerability was what related to Hazel. These are the things that speak to us, we can’t help but put our guards down when people are that honest, when people are that vulnerable because it shows us in a way that they are sincere; sincerity above all else! If we can’t be sincere to each other, for each other, then it all becomes one bad lie.
Are there any plans to create more similar creative projects, because I’m sensing a potential series here. . .
Will there be more projects like this? I don’t know man, but maybe the question will inspire that!
Follow VJ Nakasa:
Twitter: @VjNakasa
IG: @vj_nakasa
YouTube: V.J Nakasa
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