Music. It’s the closest thing we have to magic, writes Cape {town} Etc’s Robyn Simpson. It can send us through time and space. It carries us to our past memories and allows us to create fantasies of the future. It’s both limitless in its capacity and binding by nature. Experiencing music is the quintessential human experience. And I for one, am feeling alien.
Nothing beats the pulse that vibrates through your chest at a live music event. That indescribable oneness with the strangers that surrounds us, all colliding in a common experience.
It’s been over a year since COVID-19 has allowed us to gather in celebration of music and the musicians that we love, and the effects have been more devastating than anyone could have imagined.
The arts and artists have by no means been placed as a priority throughout the pandemic. And its absence can be described as nothing less than harrowing and isolating for musicians and the general public alike. The difference being, our musicians are left without their livelihoods.
“Nationally, there has been no – and when I say no – I mean almost zero support for our industry. We have been prevented from working for almost 18 months, and our government and the private sector have not provided any form of significant support or even so much as a timeline or game plan for the recovery of our sector.
“The R300 million that was earmarked as relief funding for arts and entertainment was ‘lost’ and even that would have been a drop in the ocean if it had been distributed. We are the forgotten industry.
“I hear stories of people who have long thrown the towel in and some who have tragically taken their own lives because the financial stress became too much to bear,” writes GoodLuck’s singer/songwriter, Jules Harding in an open letter on Facebook.
I was fortunate enough to sit down with South Africa’s beloved GoodLuck gang – Jules Harding, Ben Peters, and Tim Welsh – to discuss their new album, Up Close. The acoustic rendition, which includes some of their top radio hits repurposed, is something we’re not used to from the electronic band.
The band has taken some of our old favourites like, Together Like Rum & Cola and Back in the Day We Used to Run, and stripped them back completely. The results? Raw, vulnerable, and achingly appropriate considering the South African context right now.
The album has fine-tuned the balance between the comfort of familiarity and the joy of something fresh, all while raining sensitive to the realities of pandemic life.
It saddens me that as a country, we cannot celebrate the milestones and works of our creatives as we could once before. And while great things, like this album and the musical collaborations that sparked within it, have been birthed from the desperation that clouds the industry, it just isn’t enough for our suffering artists.
“I know that pandemics and live events don’t exactly go hand in hand, but at what point are we given just a small respite? I can tell you that we are going to have to look at our business and make some decisions over the next few months, but I sincerely hope they [these decisions] don’t have to take us too far away from our music,” says Jules.
What can you do to help the industry, then?
“If you aren’t in a position to single handedly rescue an entire industry (which most of us aren’t), then just be conscious. If you have a friend who works in the live events or music industry, phone them to check how they are doing.
“When an artist announces a streaming concert, BUY A TICKET, and when you aren’t watching their show just put their music on Spotify on repeat (life-hack, you can turn the volume down). And when events do eventually happen again, do NOT ask to be put on the guest-list – that is going to become a swear word,” says Jules.
Up Close is released independently on their own record label in partnership with The Kartell in the UK and will be available for download on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Deezer and Joox here. Up Close has been nominated for a SAMA for Best Engineered Album of the Year.
Get to know more about GoodLuck, and all things Up Close right here (trust me, they’re pretty cool – and they have a cat with double-jointed knees. His name is George Harrison).
