South African Road Songs

For many people music and road trips are synchronous. Hardly ever is a road trip portrayed in a film without accompanying music as a soundtrack to the road stretching out ahead into the unfolding landscape. Music creates travel moods which cannot be captured in any other way. It can make one want to go on a road trip or perhaps it’s the other way round: road trips require music. Certainly, for many music lovers a road trip is cause for long deliberations over what music to pack in the cubby hole or add to a digital playlist. In the days when cassette players were regular features in cars, some of us spent ages putting together mixtapes, searching for that perfect road trip soundtrack. We knew to be careful to avoid songs with lots of ultra-quiet segments which were easily drowned out by the hum of the engine, or with volume swings that would necessitate continual groping for the volume control. One could become an expert in the road trip mixtape.

Clearly, car trip mixtapes can include music about anything and which capture any mood. But for this South African road trip mixtape we have chosen twenty songs by South African musicians which specifically refer to road trips in one form or another. From Bright Blue’s reference to “Taking a trip on a freeway, trying my best to escape” to All Night Radio’s song about driving at dusk, “with my windows open wide, lights are getting brighter as the sun is going down. There’s two more hours until I stop.”

Perhaps the song which most captures the spirit of road trips on this mixtape is “Lifetime On The Road” by Josie Field and Laurie Levine. These two singer songwriters formed a duo and promoted their debut and subsequent album by embarking on several road trip tours, travelling from town to town, day after day. The song captures the freedom of the road: “Rolled down the window, turned on the radio”, but at the same it expresses the drudgery of too much time on the road, travelling from gig to gig: “Left a town I barely know … so many places I’ll never call my own. A lifetime on the road.”

The tv show Going Nowhere Slowly romanticised the South African road trip, as the presenters journeyed from place to place, travelling down tar roads and gravel tracks, often to the accompaniment of music. It is therefore fitting that two songs from that programme are featured here: Liesl Graham’s “All Roads” and Seven Day Story’s “Going Nowhere Slowly” both of which capture the feeling of travelling on the road, music in our ears.

Many of the songs featured here use travel and the road as metaphors for aspects of our journey through life. Juluka often sang in metaphors and in this instance Johnny Clegg sings, “Spirit is the journey, body is the bus, I am the driver from dust to dust … Across this distance, this divide, I will be with you forever.” In “The Road Is Much Longer” Roger Lucey also uses metaphors to express his desire to cross the distance between himself and a loved one, although in this instance he is on the side of the road, trying to thumb a ride: “And now the night’s fallen and I’m nearer to home. And I hear you calling are you feeling alone? Well it’s up and down highways always returning.” The Gereformeerde Blues Band and Big Sky also sing about hitchhiking along the road while the unfortunate character in David Kramer’s “Matchbox Full of Diamonds” has to settle for walking along the road for hours, “under a sky that never cries”, yet he is nevertheless “happy as a hotel in the springtime, when the flowers bloom again.”

Also featured on this mixtape are Jack Hammer’s “Stay At The Wheel”, “Automobile” by the Blues Broers, Baxtop’s “Golden Highway”, Falling Mirror’s “Highway Blues”, “Rearview Mirror Blues” by the Radio Rats, McCully Workshop’s “Fast Car”, “Seat By The Window” by John Kongos, “Kelly’s Song” by Bobby Angel, Johnny Clegg’s “Ride In Your Car” and “Padkos” by Tony Cox, which is his acknowledgment of that very South African road trip tradition: of packing or stopping to buy food for the road.

If you can’t listen to this mixtape in your car we hope you can at least grab some padkos, sit back, imagine the road ahead of you and escape into the music.

  1. Window On The World – Bright Blue
  2. Hopetown 1975 (Stolen Gasoline) – All Night Radio
  3. Stay At The Wheel – Jack Hammer
  4. Ry – Gereformeerde Blues Band
  5. Hitch-Hike – Big Sky
  6. Automobile – Blues Broers
  7. Golden Highway – Baxtop
  8. Highway Blues – Falling Mirror
  9. Rearview Mirror Blues – Radio Rats
  10. Fast Car – Mccully Workshop
  11. Seat By The Window – John Kongos
  12. Spirit Is The Journey – Juluka
  13. Padkos – Tony Cox
  14. Life Time On The Road – Josie Field & Laurie Levine
  15. Kelly’s Song – Bobby Angel
  16. The Road Is Much Longer – Roger Lucey
  17. Ride In Your Car – Johnny Clegg
  18. All Roads – Liesl Graham
  19. Matchbox Full Of Diamonds – David Kramer
  20. Going Nowhere Slowly – One Day Remains

Songs About South Africa

Our theme of South African places continues. This mixtape features songs about South African towns and cities performed by foreign musicians. As expected, during the apartheid era there were many songs which linked South African places to apartheid human rights violations. This mixtape begins with those before ending with a series of songs released in the post-1994 era.

In most of the apartheid era songs the name of a specific urban area is used to represent apartheid South Africa more generally, with the exception of Mari Pavone’s “Sharpeville” which is a mournful tribute to people slain by the apartheid police at the Sharpeville massacre. Some of these songs used lyrics to draw attention to apartheid atrocities and supported the struggle against the unjust system including songs by Gil Scott Heron, the Anti-Nowhere League, Love Like Blood, Little Steven, Sonny Okosun, Jeffrey Osborne and Pierre Akendengue. While in “Tears For Johannesburg” by Max Roach, Abey Lincoln’s sorrowful vocals draw attention to the pain caused by apartheid atrocities.

Malcolm McLaren’s “Soweto” and Harry Belafonte’s “Paradise in Gazankulu” do not focus on apartheid injustices but “Soweto” itself was an injustice, with McLaren plundering the music of the Boyoyo Boys for his own gain. Nevertheless, the song drew the attention of many listeners to Soweto and to South African music.

The end of the apartheid era brought with it a new musical attitude towards South Africa, where places can be celebrated for their way of life and sense of space rather than for the injustices they represent (even if injustices do continue). The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger sing about missing a flight to Johannesburg while Clubfeet sing “Let’s fly to Cape Town, baby” as both cities become part of the international leisure globetrotting circuit.

Instrumental pieces by Herman Benjamin, Plaid, Soothsayers, Lawson Rollins, Brink Man Ship and Werken capture post-apartheid South African spaces through music. They can take you on a journey without specifying what that journey entails. Although Werken’s “Port Elizabeth” doesn’t sound like you will necessarily enjoy your stay …

  1. Johannesburg – Gil Scott Heron
  2. Johannesburg – Anti-Nowhere Road
  3. Johannesburg – Love Like Blood
  4. Johannesburg Blues – Les Baxter
  5. Tears For Johannesburg – Max Roach
  6. Sharpeville – Mario Pavone
  7. Pretoria – Little Steven
  8. Fire In Soweto – Sonny Okosun
  9. Soweto – Jeffrey Osborne
  10. Espoir A Soweto – Pierre Akendengue
  11. Soweto – Malcolm Mclaren
  12. Paradise In Gazankulu – Harry Belafonte
  13. Johannesburg – The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger
  14. Durban Poison – Herman Benjamin
  15. Durban Pain – Plaid
  16. Umtata – Soothsayers
  17. Cape Town – Clubfeet
  18. Cape Town Sky – Lawson Rollins
  19. Gugulethu – Brink Man Ship
  20. Port Elizabeth – Werken