Adam Small
The folk singer Randall Wicomb died on December 27, 2015. I have reason for mentioning the singer’s death. He and I had a long relationship in art. One outcome was Oos Wes Tuis, a CD bringing us some wonderful songs – Randall’s and that of Zenobia Kloppers: As she moves her voice up, one fears for her. Would she “get there”? She does, every time!
While writing these words, I was out at Stellenbosch, attending a church service in honour of Randall, to say goodbye (not “farewell”). It was a moving afternoon. It was also good for me to see how people of ordinary unchurchy human sentiment have come to be accommodated by the church.
Condolences, as usual, “poured in” – well meant, if only of the one-minute-of-silence kind. I was pleased also to note a message of sympathy from former state president FW de Klerk.
Randall Charles Wicomb’s engaging story is, in summary: He was born “coloured”. His mother Wicky was “white”. She managed to have him “classified white”, single-handedly subversing the regime of the time. Things also fell out so that no one later knew exactly what date to put down for Randall’s birth (ostensibly 1949). Wicky was obsessed with “protecting” her son. She did not want him to be always “trying for white”: it would be much better for him to simply be white.
It strikes me again, how “white” – one of God’s pleasing colours – has also become a thing of evil in the world, alienating and dividing; aspired to by some, for every wrong, uncalled-for reason.
Wicomb was advantaged in life by having a golden voice, and equally golden guitar-playing hands: literally, his guitar was blue (it became characteristically, Wicomb’s “blou kitaar”).
During the time of his last illness and his dying, I thought of Randall’s musical rendering of Hans du Plessis’s adaptation of the Griqua Psalm:
I cast up my two eyes
and,
just beneath God’s skies,
they caught the highest rise.
In this spirit, I wrote Randall a poem in tribute, to which I later added a short preamble. The latter I called Beauteous is Death(following NP van Wyk Louw’s immaculate line, “Mooi is die lewe, en die dood is mooi”):
Wait for me there.
I’ll be arriving soon
in the square just by the Concert Hall
where you are on the Stage already
(sorting out your every move,
almost aloof).
The Show will go on now,
on and on forever.
I’ll be part of the audience, Randall,
applauding,
and also giving thanks
for the work we did together.
I hear your voice now
full-volumed and clear,
singing from the Valley of Death
which, you well know, we fear
– yet need not.
Perhaps, before or after the Show,
I might come into your dressing room
and steal a moment
– no-one will bar me –
just to caress the blue guitar!
In all of life’s strife
we need small interludes like these:
else there’s no Faith, really, and Fate
will haplessly deprive us even of Death
which, truly (seven times seven),
is as beautiful as life.
Why all art is not considered folk art, I wouldn’t know. Is any art form so uppish that it lives beyond “folk”?
“Folk art”, following sources, “is a term that refers to the work of painters, sculptors and craftsmen, who have little or no training as artists”. The creators are ordinary people who put out their work “for ordinary people” – the latter being distinguished from “wealthy collectors (of art)” and museums.
Everything dates well back. The interesting form known as scrimshaw resulted from sailors’ boredom at sea, on long voyages sometimes to who knows where, and they passed the time making “small carvings and engravings”.
Whatever objects came to hand, from kitchen utensils to loose pieces of wood, or whalebone, would be lined with some sharp hand implement, the lines then painted in with coloured inks: the pictures were imaginative, but also of pretty things in nature, like flowers and birds.
Folk is about love and hate; about kindness and unkindness; and humour, and living life as paradox.
Wicomb’s work traverses these emotions handsomely. It abounds in humour, but is also compassionately full of regard for sadness and sorrow in life.
American folk “is noted for its energy”, informed, among other things, by the bitterness of the black slaves of yore – the so-called negro spirituals come to mind: “Oh my babby”, “Going down Jordan”; or think of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, of course. Universally speaking, the very phrase, “Once upon a time” is founded in folk – “Es war einmal” reminds of the Brothers Grimm and their lasting stories.
Works by great writers who may not have thought of themselves in terms of folk, are related to it nonetheless: Chaucer’s tales; Shakespeare’s magnificent melodramas (even King Lear is founded in folk tale); Goethe; The Upanishads.
The same holds for musical artists: Dvorák’s From the New World; Mozart, too, who used the (simple) melody of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in a great creation… Wicomb was a pleasant diversion from the pretentious preciousness which abounds in the artistic world. Happily, there are artists whose work refuses self-centredness – John Steinbeck is an outstanding instance. (This, we can talk about another time.)
Randall was mostly not counted as a dancer. However, though he might not have moved much on stage, even just standing dead still, (his body moving ever so little), he appeared to me to be dancing – hence at times I have described him as a “singer-dancer”.
He certainly was no “mere” singer either. He was South Africa’s greatest folk personage, and neither only Afrikaans or English. In this sense, he was “bevare”. The naval term, “Able” (bevare) is most appropriately descriptive in his case: he was an “Able” artist, like a totally “Able” seaman. I wrote Bevare Sanger, hearkening to WH Auden’s unforgettable, hard words (which my daughter reminded me of when I told her I was writing about Wicomb).
Silence the pianos
and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin,
let the mourners come.
The Afrikaans morning paper in Cape Town would not publish Bevare Sanger, for reasons enigmatically their own.
By way of contrast, the Afrikaans press in the north, as part of a column by myself, published it with express appreciation.
The poem was read to Randall, and was by his bedside when he died. It also refers, of course, to his famous lyric Duitsweswals, with its moving refrain of “Die Rooi Rok”.
Shall we silence the pianos?
Randall, shall we, really?
And with muted drum,
let the mourners come?
No, this is not saying ‘farewell’.
These may well be
the last words you will ever read,
but then, so be it ...
You’ll be with us always anyway,
a-singing your songs.
The sun and moon
won’t set on them
– instead they’ll fill our concert halls
(with overflowing stalls)
and our blue-open skies
on, and on – and on.
You’ve won the day completely.
We honour you accordingly:
you who, even when just standing still,
would be dancing ably,
with the plainest body’s rise and fall.
You have now entered the Great Concert Hall.
The doors have closed already
upon the audience, now anxiously awaiting
the arrival of the great folk singer
with the blue guitar.
The pianos have started playing
and the scene is set for
your greatest Show to date.
Listening with care, I hear the music rising now over the words about the singer:
Now he is here.
(I’m just reporting now):
escorted, under an arch of honour,
to the Stage.
A great Respectful Silence falls overall
(which will be broken soon
by thunderous applause).
Oh-o-o,
The red dress, the red dress,
the red dress a-blowing,
the red dress is showing
and we all are now a-dancing
with the red dress’s flowing,
a-turning and -turning,
with nobody consciously knowing
the joy of it all!
(Miss Monroe, for sure, would
– right around the clock
have us entranced
with a swinging red dress,
the same as with that blowing-up
white frock of hers!)
Oh-o-o, the red dress,
the red dress,
the red dress a-blowing...