As I stood there, mouth slightly ajar, listening to Bittereinder spew out lyrics of defiance and love at Oppikoppi, it suddenly hit me that what I truly loved about this eccentric band was its fearsome Afrikaans-ness. This was an unapologetic and proud Afrikaans band.

What’s more, Bittereinder aren’t idiotic about it. They’re angry without being bitter, and they are proud without being supremacist about it.

You don’t get that very often.

And it’s not just Afrikaans – Jaco van de Merwe spits mad rhymes about being from Pretoria in his collaborative work A Tale of Three Cities.

You can tell that they know what they’re doing because they’re also willing to mock the sort of totems of Afrikanerdom: in a particularly memorable Oppikoppi moment, Jack Parow (this really could have been a column about him) sang one song with Bittereinder, his right fist raised defiantly in the air and a Bible in his left. I imagine the spit of every Afrikaner beyond the age of fifty would curdle at the sight of that.

That is a quality I’ll appreciate in any band. Plus, Jaco, Peach and Louis make excellent music.

Then there is Mr. Cat and the Jackal. They make Balkan-sounding music. There’s precious little of South Africa in it. Should I care about that? I feel as if that should offend me, but that feels like I am being too precious about my music.

The crowd at Oppikoppi would certainly accuse me of pretentiousness. They loved Mr Cat and the Jackal.

Luckily for all, I got to sit down with the band (all of them) at Oppikoppi to ask them about all of this.

Sipho: Why this particular style?

Mr Cat and the Jackal: We got the idea from the different kind of instruments we have. We like playing different kinds of instruments, and making different kinds of instruments. It’s a concept, you know. We just built on it.

S: Are any of you classically trained?

MC&J: Some learn it in the schools, some learn it on the streets. We’re street.

S: The sort of Balkan influence in your music. Are any of you guys actually from there?

MC&J: (They laugh) No. If you listen to different music, it will come through in your music. We just dig that style. If we pick up an instrument and start jamming, I go where the instrument goes. It’s like that. We let the instruments guide us.

S: Am I wrong in thinking that there is just so little of South Africa in your music? Are you guys cool with that?

MC&J: We’ve recently started getting this vibe where people say “You’re making European music. Where is [sic] your roots?” But I think we do incorporate our surroundings in our music. A lot of the percussion stuff is African. It’s something new, man. We can’t deny where we’re coming from and that element will never fall flat in our music. But other than that, why do we need to pronounce South African? We’re Afrikaans singing in English. It’s a show, man. A concept. It’s not like we’re ashamed. We’re fucking Afrikaans kids from Cape Town singing in English.

S: Who listens to you?

MC&J: We recently did a gig for old people at a church, and they loved it. That went well. One of our friends’ little daughter loves us. It’s just anyone who likes to be entertained.

S: Take me through the “pirate” motif.

MC&J: There is no “pirate” motif. One of our songs relate to a story about a pirate. Only one of our songs. It’s funny that they don’t see us as being a travelling story band, because we’ve got that a lot in our music. When we play live, it’s normally the song with the story about the pirate that gets people moving, and it sticks in their heads. It’s also because we sing rough, people think it’s a pirate thing.

S: You’ve cut two albums now. How long do you think Mr Cat and the Jackal will last?

MC&J: As individual musicians, we’re focused on the music. But as Mr Cat and the Jackal, we’re very much an entertainment entity. We’re visual inventors. We want to have live plays and visuals when we’re playing. If we could make people smell the ocean while we’re playing, we would do it.

Read more:

Mr Cat and the Jackal in Chris Roper’s blog.

[Images : Sipho Hlongwane]