This is Mangosuthu Buthelezi, resplendent in his gold braid as South Africa’s Minister of Home Affairs. Welcome to Princess Magogo, the world’s first African opera.
In the stalls are dozens of African princes, one of whom makes a speech of thanks after the show. The singing on stage alternates between Zulu song and township choral, while the accompaniment from the pit has a Puccinian gloss, except for those moments when all instruments are hushed for the ugubu – a one-string bow, whose notes steal through the air like a spooky whisper. But this culture-shock is no stranger than that on stage, where boys in township-chic jostle with elders in tribal robes, and women parade in a glorious blend of fabrics and styles evoking West-African-village-cum-colonial-pomp. Given the ethnic make-up of the city it serves – substantially Indian, polyglot African, a smattering of Afrikaans – Durban’s Playhouse is a surprise, because both inside and out it’s a faithful half-timbered replica of Shakespearean London. Andrew Martin’s novel ‘The Necropolis Railway’, is published by Faber & Faber in August. Jon Dudley, the in-law, puts it nicely: “It’s like marrying into the bloody royal family,” he says, striding up to the bar for more beer all round.’Come Write Me Down’ by The Copper Family is on Topic Records.
But one of their favourite lines is that the music “is better than it sounds”, meaning that the history in it is as important as its beauty; that the legacy must be carried on. Their songs are performed with compelling, full-throated relish and none of the piety of those middle-class folkies more at home in an archive than a tap room. “You’ll get 15 types of cheesecake, though,” says John, rolling his eyes. The family play a gig every couple of weeks, mainly at folk clubs.The Coppers also perform regularly in America, where they are not given enough, or sometimes anything, to drink. Television researchers are “sniffing around”, and Bob recently appeared on a well-received Radio Four programme, on which he swapped notes with his friend, the American folk singer Pete Seeger.
The latest CD, comprising material from early-Fifties and Sixties recordings, is the most important release since then; and it is being accompanied by a fourth burst of publicity. Bob remembers his mother sometimes questioning his dad’s cap-doffing deference to the land-owning Browns, and his father replying that he “didn’t know where the hell we’d be without them”.The publication of the book was accompanied by the release of a four-album set of Copper songs. Of the songs on the new collection, only “Hard Times of Old England” is anything like a protest song. The Copper’s southern English folk is not radical like that of the north, and it would be hard to imagine a Yorkshire folk singer joining the police or showing much respect to a lord.
At this memory, the other Coppers shout out: “And he bloody curtsied!”There is a serious point here. It won the Robert Pitman literary prize, and during the prize-giving ceremony, Bob was presented to Lord Longford. None the less, it was back to relative obscurity for nearly 20 years, until, in 1971, he came out with the first of his five memoirs, “A Song for Every Season”. That was the plan, but after the performance, uncle John was found lying in a corridor singing.By now Bob, in middle age and recently retired from the police force, had come to realise the importance of his musical legacy.
