Saturday, September 02, 2006
Robbie Wessels Leeuloop
Coming from a mixed cultural background with historical ties to Germany in the 1600's, the French add-in's in the 1700's, more Germans arriving in the late 1800's, and my father arriving here in 1969 from the Netherlands, of course there is some Afrikaaner blood coursing through my veins.
I like to refer to myself as a 'half-bloedje' - half of me is Dutch and the other half filled with other halves. But I have never seen myself as an Afrikaaner, and even at boarding school in Franschhoek I was one of the Soutie's (referring to the amount of salt that collects on certain appendages that hang in the ocean if one has one foot in England and the other foot in South Africa - unlike a true Afrikaaner ancestor of mine, President Jan Brand 1823 -1888 pictured right).
So in our musical focus at Peak, it has only been the last couple of years that we have started giving attention to one of the most powerful musical forces in South Africa - Afrikaans language music - in all its genre's.
It still shocks many people at its popularity; such as at the 2004 SAMA's when comedian David Kau was to announce the Best Selling artist of the year, and on opening the envelope and calling out Steve Hofmeyr's name the audience bursts into hysterical laughter! But it was so. He had beaten all the top Kwaito, Rock & Pop acts to the top spot by selling way more CD's than anyone else. And we sat up and took notice!Robbie Wessels is an artist who has taken the country by storm, and Peak Performances secured 3 gigs with him, before we had a dispute with his management about what fee's we could charge for our services - we have since decided to part way's, and focus our attention on other artists.
So a little bit of advice to the clients out there hoping to party away to the likes of Dozi, Kurt Darren, Nicholis Louw, and all the other wonderful artists on our database - plan well in advance!
Here Robbie is featured in the Leeuloop Vodacom ad.
(UPDATE 06/10/04: It seems that Vodacom has bowed to pressure from some rather more conservative members of the South African public by pulling the Leeuloop ad from television, as there were a number of complaints. Some even went so far as to say that it is 'embarrassing to watch', and that it makes Afrikaaners seem 'common' - I find it very sad! UPDATE 06/11/23 Robbie seems to be cashing in on his Leeuloop fame - he has a tour of lots of dorpies in the Western Cape planned - read more)
Labels: Afrikaans, David Kau, Dozi, Kurt Darren, leeuloop, Nicholis Louw, Robbie Wessels, SAMA, Steve Hofmeyr
