Prologue: I am always amazed that people are surprised at our crime rate, I often ask, how could we not, when such conspicuous and vulgar consumption is so unashamedly paraded in the face of abject poverty, with impunity? This piece is not about wealth, its about the lack of respect and the deep insensitivity of certain sectors of our population. What is so deeply sad, is that this is reflected now by the very people who are supposed to be the vanguard of our humanity, our musicians. On top of it, it is then sponsored by a community television station and beamed into the shacks of millions.
Today dear reader, two things caught my attention, the first on a plane, when I read that South Africa’s unemployment rate was just better than Gaza, a war torn sort of country under occupation, regularly bombed and cut off from the world by walls of concrete and ideology. It left me somewhat breathless.
Not quite as breathless as the South African Music Awards, which greeted me on a tabloid twat program appropriately called “Flash”, almost as soon as I got home. The South African Music Awards, or SAMA, is about honouring our musicians. You know, those very important people in society who talk to us through the artistic medium of music.
Part Academy Awards and part Disney World, with a dose of Donald Trump and a huge heap of bling-bling and conspicuous consumption gone psycho crazy, the SAMA event blazed across our screens in an unabashed and self indulgent display of wealth and ignorance that has to be seen to believed.
Our deeply committed artists and their heavily botoxed and uber coked up guests fell from their limousines onto the red or was it yellow, carpet in an orgy of self involved Romanesque inappropriateness of Caligulan proportions.
No comment on society, no art as a medium for dissent. Hell not even a glimmer of intellect or integrity. Just bling, labels, stupidity and then again more bling.
Even Karl Lagerfeld would have blushed.
Live from Sun City, a simple stones throw away from the kind of abject poverty and the terrible circumstances of our country that made the headlines only moments before, these trusted visionaries and so called artists gushed and oohed and ahhed over each other with the whole world watching.
Oh yes, our little trash tabloid magazine programme was on site, to ask these our esteemed musicians, the cream of our talent the question on everybody’s minds.
They too gushed over the winners and their guests, the glitterati, the A list.
What, dear reader, I ask you with tears in my eyes, did they want to know from the newly fortunate with the mantle of artiste?
What are you wearing?
And was it expensive ? (Rhetorical)
And they gushed and giggled in response, “Armani”, “Jimmy Choo”, “Dolce darling”, “Kurt Gieger”, “Gucci” .
One particularly hideous example of plastic surgery, consumption, vanity and stupidity spat from her red lips and diamond encrusted monument to excess “Its on loan, they flew it in just for me, its going back to Paree for Vogue…so I’m so proud.”
No doubt.
Gospel singers in diamante, gushed about their success. Black Africans dressed like US ghetto gangsters along with white boys who could only say “Awesome dude”, all paraded along in a tribute to excess that was as painful to watch as it must have been to wear.
They spoke in glowing terms about each other, about their “struggles” (no doubt with booze and benzodiazepines) and their artistic integrity. They threw awards at each other, they compared shoes, and rings and ties and suits and statistics.
Oblivious to their inappropriate behaviour, the context of their wealth, or the money that poor people had spent to make them rich, they lauded their ghastly fashion, and brand consciousness over the viewing public. They toffed it up and swished it around with scant regard for anything, but the after party list.
In a single 30 minutes of gargantuan vanity and disgusting vulgarity they delivered the most terrible message I have yet seen on our shores. Their message was simple, blunt and unmistakable.
I’m OK, so f%*k you too.
Mr Hitchens if you are looking for savages, they were at Sun City this week.
Proudly South African.
[...] Original post by thetroublemakertimes [...]
Bizarre, really. Just how do these practitioners of junk culture make their money? The CD/DVD market is in tragic decline, as Internet music use renders the standard retail model not only defunct, but well on the way to bankruptcy, too. So maybe these proud folk in your excellent story get their bucks from … sponsorship? Live shows? Cultural cash grants from the ANC? Nigerians? Tell me, somebody. I need to know.
Indeed David
Let me explain though, through the medium of Rabecca Malope, our home grown Gospel star, for whom every second word is “Halelaww jah”.
Mrs Malope goes platinum when she farts.
Millions of devoted fans, for she sings beautifully, shell out their hard earned money, for her gospel songs. They need her to touch their hearts.
And she does. so very beautifully.
Then she buys diamante shoes and hallelujahs herself off to Babylon, appropriately dressed.
Its just a shame.