28 October 2020: Quinton Goliath, aka Jitsvinger, featured in the documentary Afrikaaps. “My work celebrates the culture of Afrikaaps through the rhythms and cross-generational borrowing of idiosyncrasies that stems from my goema, kwela, jive and classic musical roots … This young language never stopped evolving, not since the indigenous folk, slaves, merchants and traders started hybridising their various tongues to formulate what we call Afrikaans today. Jitsvinger describes seeing more pride being shown in the language as views of its history change, and his own career since Afrikaaps reflects the complexities and aspirations of Afrikaans speakers. One of the cast members, vernacular spectacular performer Jitsvinger, explains that because the production set out to debunk stigmas and stereotypes about the Afrikaans narrative, it was perceived by some as too revolutionary: “Some local festival board members even rejected it as ‘Khoi nationalism’, refusing to screen the film.” What Afrikaaps was doing back then was a decolonisation project, even if we never framed it as such because we didn’t have the vocabulary then.” Celebrating the language of home Reflecting on the documentary a decade later, Valley observes how interest in decolonisation was very different at the time: “It seems weird to say this now because it has become such a big part of everyday discourse if you’re working in the arts or academia or film, but decolonising wasn’t really something we ever spoke about then. An extra layer of narration is provided by revolutionary scholar Neville Alexander and Patric Tariq Mellet, author of the recently released The Lie of 1652: A Decolonised History of Land. Then starts a journey to liberate Afrikaans from its awful reputation as the cast develops the production, taking it on tour around the country. In the first few minutes of the film, viewers are reminded that “the language had become totally disconnected from its history”.
0 kommentar(er)
