Abstract
In the opening scene of the South African musical Kat and the Kings its narrator, Kat Diamond, begins to reminisce about his past. Kat is an elderly shoeshine man working in the St George’s Mall in Cape Town in the year 1994. Directing his narrative impulse at one of his clients, Kat asks, “Mister, do you remember these cigarettes, Cavalla Kings?” Kick-started by this mnemonic artefact, he starts to take his audience into the past with him. Yet even before Kat can begin to tell the story of his youth, how he started a vocal harmony group in Cape Town’s District Six with his friends Bingo, Ballie, Magoo and the latter’s sister, Lucy, these characters appear on stage together with a younger version of Kat to help the old man tell his story. Conjured into life by him, the shades of his memory answer with a song: “Memories/ We’re just your memories/ As real as you want us to be/ Only you set us free/ ’Cause we are your memories” (Kramer and Petersen 1999).
Premiered in 1995, Kat and the Kings was the fifth collaborative project of David Kramer and Taliep Petersen. It was also their biggest international success – not only was this the first South African musical performed both on Broadway and on the West End, it was also awarded two Laurence Olivier Awards, for “Best new musical” and “Best performance in a musical”, awarded to the cast as a whole (De Villiers and Slabbert 2011:264, 267). Kat and the Kings charts the rise and fall of Kat’s former band, The Cavalla Kings, in apartheid South Africa – in doing so also staging the difficulties facing coloured musicians during those years. As is also reflected by the musical language employed by songwriter Petersen, Kat and the Kings is rooted in the milieu of the rock ’n’ roll-crazy 1950s District Six. Through its focus on this popular singing culture, Kat and the Kings also serves to broaden the musical identity that has historically been associated with District Six and underlines the fact that its mainly coloured population was formed through diverse cultural meetings and transformed through processes of creolisation.
Yet even though the major part of this musical appears to be set in and around the historical District Six, Kat and the Kings operates through the prism of memory. In other words, it is set in the mind of its protagonist. Kat, as a character, clothes his memories in flesh and blood and projects them on to the stage. Kat and the Kings thus becomes a performance of his memory. This device has a certain parallel in the creation of the musical as it is partly based on the lived experience of actor Salie Daniels, a singer from District Six who portrayed the role of Kat Diamond from 1995 to 1999 (Front Row 1999). In his youth, Daniels had started a vocal harmony group with his friends in District Six. Calling themselves The Rockets, they achieved considerable commercial success despite discriminatory and restrictive apartheid legislation. The Rockets provided the inspiration for Kramer and Petersen’s fictional Cavalla Kings, as is reflected in the broad storyline of Kat and the Kings. Some elements of the story were also drawn from the experience of other District Six singers with whom Petersen and Kramer regularly worked – including Petersen himself – individuals who would share their memories with librettist and lyricist Kramer in informal conversational settings (Kramer 2014).
With reference to both its creation and content, this article is concerned with the multiple roles that memory plays in Kat and the Kings. Drawing on oral history discourse, it explores the nature of memory and, with specific reference to the legendary area of District Six, the power of myths over individual and collective consciousness. Memory is regarded here as an active and creative process, an action that is performed in front of an audience. As such, the telling of life stories – both on and off stage – becomes a performance. As a musical that draws on the performed and mediated memories of real-life individuals in the performance of the memory of a character on stage, this article regards Kat and the Kings as a performance of the performance of memory. Read against this background, the action in Kat and the Kings does not attempt to reflect the historical District Six with any authenticity, but rather, in its exuberance and larger-than-life quality, to be faithful to the nature of memory.
Moreover, the performance of memory in Kat and the Kings has certain implications in the present – both on and off stage – and can thus be regarded as performative. In the exploration of performativity in Kat and the Kings,this article takes as its point of departure J.L. Austin’s (1962) speech act theory and the intertwined traditions that were developed in response to it. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler (1988), as well as the work of Liedeke Plate and Anneke Smelik (2013), memory is regarded here as performative and therefore also constitutive of individual identity due to its facilitation of a confrontation between the past and present.
The article probes the implications of this encounter for Kat and the King’s characters – particularly for Kat and the younger version of himself who appear simultaneously on stage – before it turns its focus on to the figure of actor Daniels.
Regarding the phrase “Yes, today is my lucky day” as a synecdoche of the performative in Kat and the Kings, the article traverses the blurred boundaries between the stage and life to read this phrase as one of Austin’s performative speech acts with specific implications in the life of Daniels. For Kat and the Kings,which started out as a vehicle to provide work for “down-and-out” performers like Daniels who had been marginalised by the apartheid regime, eventually ended up on the West End and on Broadway. As Daniels achieved his most notable success as an actor by dramatising the memories of past hardships in the present, his memories stand in the service of his future. Some of his last performances took place in London’s Vaudeville Theatre, a direct result of those first performances in the Dock Road Theatre in Cape Town, and hundreds of utterances later of “Yes, today is my lucky day”. With reference to Austin’s ideas surrounding locution, illocution and perlocution, this phrase is read as one of those magical performatives that create the reality of which they speak.
Keywords: David Kramer, District Six, memory, Kat and the Kings, mythology, performance, performativity, Taliep Petersen, Salie Daniels