Building bridges with help of music

Cape Town-based Dutch singer Stef Bos will perform songs off his Afrikaans, Xhosa and Khoi San language album, Kaalvoet, at the Castle of Good Hope in the city later this month. Picture Supplied Reporter Yazeed Kamaldien

Cape Town-based Dutch singer Stef Bos will perform songs off his Afrikaans, Xhosa and Khoi San language album, Kaalvoet, at the Castle of Good Hope in the city later this month. Picture Supplied Reporter Yazeed Kamaldien

Published Feb 15, 2015

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Cape Town - Dutch singer Stef Bos uses language and music to build bridges between the people in his homeland and adopted country, South Africa.

He has recorded his third Afrikaans album, Kaalvoet, and will perform in Cape Town next Sunday.

The album includes Xhosa and Khoi San-speaking performers on some of its tracks. These musicians will join Bos on stage at the Castle of Good Hope.

Bos, now in his 50s, first travelled to South Africa after apartheid because he was “interested in what was happening here”. He befriended local musicians and recorded songs with them.

He met and married a Capetonian woman – they have two children who attend school here. As a result, he lives between his adopted city and Belgium, from where he works and travels in Europe.

Over the years he has also explored Cape Malay music and culture after befriending Cape musician Taliep Petersen before he died.

“When I met Taliep he had the same Indonesian face as guys I grew up with,” said Bos, a result of a shared history after Dutch colonialists during the mid-1600s enslaved Indo-Malay people and shipped them to Cape Town, Surinam and the Netherlands, where their descendants still live.

“How the coloured people in the Cape speak Afrikaans is very much like the people (speak) in Amsterdam with a Surinam background,” Bos said.

While living in Tamboers-kloof in recent years Bos was inspired to record an Afrikaans album called Kloof Straat.

Among the local stories on this album is a tale of a bergie who lived in his neighbourhood.

He has been meticulous about recording in Afrikaans because “it sounds like our mother tongue, but you can make horrible mistakes”.

His Castle of Good Hope performance aims to give the Dutch colonial landmark “another dimension”.

“The Castle was a place of war. We want to bring love,” said Bos.

“People were in jail at the Castle. To make music on that spot is very interesting. It’s also part of Dutch history.

Coming to South Africa was a chance to discover my history that I didn’t know very well. It’s also about decency and apologising.

“The Dutch never apologised for the major slave trade they did.

“The first time they apologised was eight years ago.”

History books tell chilling stories of the slave boats. “They burned people. And people remember this genetically.”

Two years ago, Bos was awarded the Jan van Riebeeck Medal of Honour, for his musical efforts.

Weekend Argus

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