Sounds of Soweto go straight to the heart

By GREG DIXON

There's a lot of love in the house of Mammon tonight.

As the rhythms of Africa stomp to a crescendo on the stage of the Showroom at Sydney's Star City Casino, the happy, clappy crowd has gone just a little bit bonkers as it whoops and whistles.

On stage, it's a mirror reflection. The 34-strong cast of the musical Umoja beam like so many Cheshires told to say cheese.

Yes, this 2 1/2-hour musical telling the story of South Africa's music and dance seems to have gone to everybody's satisfaction - indeed for some, 150 minutes haven't been nearly enough.

The young woman sitting next to me at one of the many tables that fill the vast dungeon of the Showroom yells to her friend that she wants to see it again. They spend long moments rustling through bags to find something telling them when the next show will be.

As I file out towards the casino's gigantic, gaudy gaming floor, I notice that Umoja T-shirts, caps, programmes and CDs are selling like frosty pints to thirsty men.

If this reaction is a little more than I expected before taking my seat, it's not so surprising as I leave it.

While Umoja hardly asks its audience to engage the grey matter, it is undoubtedly something from the heart.

With its big production numbers taking South Africa's music and dance from pre-European villages to Sophiatown to Soweto through traditional and gumboot dancing, gospel and kwaito (a sort of SA homebrew stew of hip-hop, R&B, disco and reggae), it is joyful, human and passionate - much like its co-creator, Todd Twala.

"If you don't feel good walking out of this show," she tells me with her rumbling laugh a couple of hours before show time, "you must consult your specialist because there's something wrong with you."

Umoja - the word is Swahili meaning the spirit of togetherness - is a three-year-old show which began life as a series of workshops for the young and the restless of Soweto more than a decade ago.

Twala and Umoja co-creator Thembi Nyandeni, who had met at school in Soweto during the early 70s, both found careers in music and dance and both had long involvement with the celebrated touring dance production Ipi Ntombi. Fame and success followed. But, as the 90s began, they decided to give something back to the communities they had left.

One reason for this, Twala says, is that she felt South Africa's rich tradition of dance and music had been forgotten or was being ignored by the country's young people in favour of American music and fashion.

"I thought these kids don't know our music. We have 11 official cultures in South Africa - can you imagine the kind of music that comes from all these cultures? So I thought it's about time we educated our children about their music."

At the same time both Twala and Nyandeni were aware South Africa's huge post-democracy problems with drug addiction, prostitution and poverty were taking their toll on the nation's young.

"The sad part is that all these crime lords, they use the youth to conduct their crimes for them. Hungry stomachs know no law, the hungry child will do anything as long as you're going to feed it.

"So I thought, as a black mother, what can I do to help the situation? I said let's educate our youth with our music and at the same time taking them off the streets and empowering them financially, physically, spiritually and emotionally, as we were empowered."

But it was not until 1999 that the pair created a show to use and promote the talent - some found on the streets of Soweto - they had long nurtured.

Together with scriptwriter and director Ian von Memerty, they developed a full-length musical telling not only South African music's story but also dealing with, in a unsensational way, the social strife that tore the country apart for 50 years. Oddly, however, the word apartheid is never used in the show.

Umoja was an instant hit in South Africa and the pair soon moved it to Britain where it opened at London's Shaftesbury Theatre last November to rave notices.

Success in Britain led to the formation of a second cast for shows in Australia and New Zealand.

The reaction at the Showroom is pretty much what the show gets everywhere, Twala tells me.

"People are so used to show business that is all glitter and glamour, tits and bums. But what makes this show so special is the naivety. It's just ordinary people telling their ordinary story.

"And they are telling it honestly. The dances are the way they were and the story the way it was. We're not trying to cut corners or trying to make anybody look bad. It's about how the music kept us human, that's all."

* Umoja, Civic Theatre, Wednesday-Sunday.