I was more than a little nervous when we arrived 10 minutes early at the monument for our 4.30pm interview – which began dead on time. Zolani Mahola, Peter Cohen and Kyla-Rose Smith, three of the seven members of Freshlyground, are just as cool and friendly in an interview situation as they are on stage.
I was more than a little nervous when we arrived 10 minutes early at the monument for our 4.30pm interview – which began dead on time. Zolani Mahola, Peter Cohen and Kyla-Rose Smith, three of the seven members of Freshlyground, are just as cool and friendly in an interview situation as they are on stage.
All the band members were milling around, but they had decided that the three would do fine for the interview. I was thrilled to have this opportunity. Freshlyground was in Grahamstown – one show only – as part of South Africa’s premiere band’s 10th-year birthday, Love, No Hate tour.
The two-month tour around the country includes a number of smaller venues such as Colesberg, Upington and Grahamstown, as the band says thank you to South Africans by making seats affordable and giving six free shows in township areas.
Zolani and Peter lounged against each other affectionately, joking and laughing their way through the interview, while Kyla sat serenely to one side and listened most of the time, allowing the other two to respond. They looked perfectly relaxed, but they confided in me that they were worried about the turnout for the evening show.
I was surprised that such an immensely talented and popular band could doubt for a second that they would have anything less than a full house at the Guy Butler Theatre. The interview took the form of a brief informal chat about the show and their music. Sometimes their answers we serious, while others were quite frivolous.
He are some extracts:
Question: What can we expect from the show? Zolani: You are going to hear a lot of our songs across all of our albums. And we’re going to be talking a little bit through some of our songs, themes and a little bit about how we write our songs. Peter: Some of our history – 10 years of it.
Q: I remember some of your history. I remember when you were the supporting act for Johnny Clegg at Emmarentia Dam in Johannesburg – and the supporting act stole the show. Zolani and Peter in unison, in the exact same tone: “Exceeeelleeent”. Zolani: I remember that gig
Q: How do you go about writing songs? Do you have a formula? Z: Not exactly, but basically we… it ends up being a jam session. We all write together, usually. It’s a workshop kind of process.
Q: But does one of you take the lead? Peter: Not really, We don’t have a leader. Simon sometimes takes the lead off the stage. We don’t really have… well I guess Zolani.
Q: Are you the leader, Zolani? Z: No, no, no… P: She writes the lyrics Z: We’re a bit headless
Q: How do you decide what to write? P: There isn’t really a formula. Z: It just comes. Q: How do you choose themes? Z: It’s also a bit of whatever we’re feeling… love does win a lot. Love wins out. P: Not hate.
Q: Do you have any politics in your themes? Z: Every now and again. P: It’s creeping in, but it’s getting harder now with the Information Act
Q: New albums? Z: We’ve just released our 10-year, 10-track, best-of album and we are going to be working on a new album next year.
Q: Will that follow what you normally do? P: I don’t know. Do we normally do what we normally do? Z: We don’t have a normal. P: We’re gonna try and not do what we normally do. In a normal kind of way.
Q: Do you worry about whether your music is commercial or not? P: Ja, sometimes. The minute we start thinking about it, it’s a problem. We do think about it sometimes, but we try not to. Zolani: We’d land up in a bit of a hole if we started thinking about what we need to make it commercial. The commercially successful songs that we have made, we never planned it.
Q: Is it hard to predict what is going to be commercially successful? Z: Mmm, definitely. P: It’s a bit like trying to win the lotto.
Q: I read one interview where you said that you didn’t want to do Doo-be-doo because it was too commercial? Z: We weren’t going to put it on our album. P: We thought that it… Well, I didn’t think that, but some of us in the band thought it wasn’t right. They were wrong. Z: Entirely wrong.
Q: And your message for Grahamstown? Z: Love, No Hate.
