Research in Graaff-Reinet

Then a miracle. Come February 2020 the drought had finally broken. Nqweba Dam was 17% full. Skies of swirling grey thunderclouds danced overhead as the summer afternoon rains quenched the parched earth. Graaff-Reinet was green. Homes had running water again.Grass had returned to the farmlands, and farmers no longer had to feed their livestock with purchased grain. There was a tentative, yet palpable sense of rejuvenated hope and celebration in the air.

Graaff-Reinet has one of the richest choir traditions in southern Africa. Boasting a vibrant cultural asset base that is deeply embedded in all aspects of community life, there are an estimated 50 choirs in this historic Karoo town.

Choral music has a long history in the Graaff-Reinet and neighbouring towns, and is often described as the “glue” that binds many communities together, church-going and secular, alike.

During our second research trip to Graaff-Reinet we set about recording as many of these choirs as we could. Without much more than a brief introduction, much to our surprise, people warmly welcome us out-of-towners into their spaces of song. We spent our evenings and afternoons, and entire weekends, in reception halls and classrooms, people's homes and school quadrangles, garages and churches, recording over a dozen of the town’s finest choirs.

A shared love for music and singing is something that celebrated almost all residents of Graff-Reinet, a town a whose boundaries are still - as with just about every dorp and city in South Africa - haunted by the template of apartheid spacial planning. Yet singing is that which has the uncanny ability to form a bridge across the divide of race, class, sex, and religion.

Making a Film in the Times of COVID

In a pre-pandemic world, one of the most obvious ways to bring the people of Graaff-Reinet together through music was to create a mass choir event in the town square. We envisaged a choir of 2500 people amassing in Angel Park coming together to sing for rain.

The uncharted epoch of the with-Covid world came with new, unforeseen restraints. No longer could we the townsfolk of Graaff-Reinet gather to sing on mass. Yet constraints can be a fantastic vehicle for creativity. Pivoting, Our creative team chose instead to make Tears Become Rain into a film.

Coinciding with the lifting of South Africa’s hard lockdown, and when interprovincial travel was once again allowed, we packed our bags and headed to Graaff-Reinet it for a week long “creative residency”.

Firstly, we needed to put together a choir. We hand-picked twelve of the town’s best singers to form an all-star Mzansi Choir that reflected the many choirs, diverse choral genres and language groups present in Graaff-Reinet.

We commissioned the highly-acclaimed South African poet Ronelda S. Kamfer to interpret the story of Tears Become Rain, transforming this story from the Bleek-Lloyd Archive into an epic narrative poem.

In a week-long musical workshop hosted at the John Rupert Theater, our Director of Music, Raiven Hansmann facilitated a creative process whereby the newly-minted choir began to put Roldeda S. Kamfer’s poem to music. Different stanzas of the poem were given to choir members to interpret in their own unique singing styles. These stanzas were then put back together, forming a cohesive song which was rehearsed and then recorded in the mobile recording studio that we set up in the theater. This was quite a remarkable feat considering this newly-minted choir that had never sang together before and that for the majority of them, this was their first time recording music in a studio. This process was enlivening as it was challenging and it is an incredible accomplishment that the choir achieved so much in such a short space of time.

At the same time that music workshops were happening in the John Rupert Theatre, we shot a film in Graaff-Reinet and the surrounding landscape. The three main characters were all first-time actors and were cast by Anziske Kayster, the curator of the Reinet House Museum. Each of the ‘leads’ were important people from the town in their own right. Annie Nortjé is a respected community elder. Milriano Elias is the head boy and of the Narsingsraat Primary School. Allie Jafta is the chief custodian of the KhoiSan tradition in Graaff-Reinet.

This ambitious, multi-dimensional creative workshop showcased the transformative power of creativity and was equally elevating for the creative team as it was for the singers and actors from Graaff-Reinet. Within a week much took place. Having never been in front of a camera before, our ‘street-cast’ lead characters became confident actors. Graaff-Reinet’s most gifted singers came together to form a brand new choir, interpreted an epic narrative poem into a highly complex original song, and became first time recording artists. This is their story told in their words and their voice.