In the time keeping of Western tradition there is a period of happenings before and after Jesus Christ. For us fans of Brenda Fassie there is her career with and after the Big Dudes.
Everyone who has been in love with the music of this incredible singer surely remembers the year they first heard the hit single, ‘ Week end Special’. I was in my final year of primary school in the town of Selibe Phikwe when Radio Botswana jolted our taste in township pop music with its heavy rotation of this song that would introduce the girl from Langa to disco halls and boarding school record nights to our part of the world. I was always fond of the radio.
Unlike today when kids, after school, plonk themselves on the sofa to watch any channel of choice on satellite television, during our time it was playing football on dusty grounds where the game took interminably long and didn’t end until a pre-determined number of goals was scored. If it was not football, then for me it was the radio. We did not have television, and back then you had to ensure you were on the best of terms with the kids of the nearby family that owned a television set. If you did so much as to upset any of them then you were promptly banished from coming to watch. We learnt the art of servility at an early age.
If you behaved nicely enough you could even graduate from watching through the curtain slit to sitting on the floor in the living room. For those of us without telly , we could enjoy mini celebrity status if we could manage to weasel our way into the living room and kept quiet. No excessive exuberance lest you offend the hosts. Stardom was reserved for the children of the owners of the television set. For the have nots the substitute for television was radio and I spent many hours listening to the radio which introduced me to new places and events via the news as well as to new sounds in music.
That is how I got to hear Weekend Special. It was a song unlike any I had ever heard. My mother had kept a big collection of music albums featuring diverse artistes and I was fairly acquainted with the sounds of the popular singers of that era. But when I heard Brenda’s smash hit I realized this was something out of the world I inhabited. The track took off like a tsunami and soon everyone was singing it with its simple, easy to remember lyrics and catchy beat. But most remarkable was the voice of the singer. A soaring high octave voice delivered Weekend Special signaling the arrival of Brenda and the Big Dudes on the scene. By the time I arrived at boarding school our Saturday record nights pulsated to the beat of Brenda, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Chicco, Zizi Kongo, Chimora, CJB, Mercy Pakela and all the big guns of that time.
Television was now common place and we heard as well as feasted our eyes on our idols. But head and shoulders, above them all stood Brenda and her boys, gap toothed, sporting dripping curls and sequinned stage attire. They kept the hits coming. Soon, Let’s Stick Together and Tender Care became my tracks of choice. The voice soared higher and higher in celebration and it was clear that for Brenda it was nice to be with people because umuntu umuntu ngabantu. She sang of promises, as we waited in anticipation for the next slew of hits, which came fast and furious. For consumers of popular magazine titles such as Drum, Bona, True Love and Pace, Brenda was the first celebrity we looked forward to reading about every month. She showed off her new cars and outrageous outfits and introduced us to her world of glitz and glamour. Then she came to Phikwe for a show at Area One arena. The town came to a standstill.
I did not attend the show but those who snuck out from boarding hostels would regale us for months on end with her amazing performance. Those who listened from outside, which was common because Area One was an open air venue, would claim they were in the hall and saw her in the flesh. With The Big Dudes riding shotgun, Mabrrr as he was known called was at the apex of her career and Southern Africa was on fire. We fed on news of her extravagant marriage to some hot looking dude who apparently would later end up in jail and then the loony asylum. Only Brenda could chronicle her nuptials with a hit song, Wedding Day which even today is played more than any song as the wedding caravan arrives for the climax of the party.
Next to the brilliance were legion reports of Brenda’s increasingly erratic behaviour. She was sassy with oodles of chutzpah, giving attitude in huge doses. Some years before her marriage we were told she had given birth to a boy called Bongani, and soon there was an eponymous hit song as she celebrated her bundle of joy. I think baby Bongani was the most loved infant in our universe the day he was born. We the fans lapped it all up. Apparently the father was the pianist for The Big Dudes, one Dumisani Ngobeni. As the first truly genuine celebrity, Brenda played the part with aplomb and we loved her even more because she filled our lives with excitement. Then the news arrived that she had split from The Big Dudes and gone solo. How could she? What was Brenda without her boys.
I joined the mutineers by throwing a big sulk. How could she do this to her fans and her loyal group. Apparently she had joined up with ace producer Chicco Twala and they were working on a new sound and artistic direction which The Big Dudes could not interpret. It was the time of work such as Black President, her album heralding the political changes looming over South Africa. Brenda had ceased being a singer of catchy, saccharine hits and was now heavy on political messaging. This was a more sophisticated and socially aware artiste moving with the times. And then I saw Brenda live during my third year at varsity. That was the time of the national stadium concerts hosted by the one and only original impresario sired on these shores, the legendary Tebogo Chillies Sekgoma of STS Promotions fame. I still vividly remember the show because it was held on a cold Saturday with revellers wrapped up warmly and the drinks going down nicely.
Preceded by a gaggle of of lacklustre acts, Brenda swept onto the stage and all my love for her came flooding back as she dished out hit after hit, including the old favourites of my primary school days. The crowd, as they would say in showbiz lingo was eating out of her hand. When Brenda was done, the festival, for all intents and purposes as over because no one could match her in terms of sheer talent and a larger than life stage presence. Our Brenda was mesmeric and absolutely loved her art. I would see Brenda live for the second time years later when I was now a working man.
This time she was at Bodiba Country Club. She looked hauntingly emaciated and a troubled and tormented soul. This was clearly the end days; the diva of all divas was shuffling off her mortal coil. The excesses of drugs, booze, rehab, more rehab and other forms of destructive behaviour had taken their toll. My Brenda who had made and lost millions, was broke and reduced to playing in dingy little venues which wouldn’t have had the guts to book her during her heydays. By the time of her death watch in 2004, after she collapsed from a cocaine overdose, stricken and comatose in hospital, I was one of those who felt it was better for Brenda to die at her relatively young age so that we could treasure the good memories.
Others willed her to recover. For me there was no way she could ever resuscitate her career to the golden heights of my days at boarding school. In any case aren’t all great artistes supposed to die young and in tragic circumstances? The street cred of a legendary performer is affirmed by the manner of their death. And so Brenda, in life and in the manner of her death played to the script. The night after her death, I listened on SAFM to the producer Hendrick ‘Koloi’Lebona who narrated an account of how he was told raving stories of this sixteen year old girl in Langa, Cape Town who possessed an angelic voice like no other.
He drove over to see her, couldn’t believe his ears and brought her back to the bright lights of Johannesburg; the city where all dreams and fortunes are made. And pop music in Southern Africa was never the same again. In the year she could have turned 50 years old, I say thankfully she didn’t. All of them, Mabrrr and her Big Dudes are playing a wicked set up in the sky, together for ever. Thanks for the music and the memories my Weekend Special!
