Bonjo - I just want to play

Thalefang Charles
Staff Writer | Friday August 23, 2013 00:00

 

He was wearing a black beret, white T-shirt and playing his cover version of a song by Dolly Paton. With his dark wrinkled face contrasted by the white T-shirt, bloodshot red eyes, the constant flushing of white teeth and his red tongue sticking out during song breaks after a long sip of a Black Label beer that was placed on the speaker nearby, I rued myself for not bringing the camera.

A year later - after disappointments of missed appointments for the interview - I tracked him down and found him back at that small bar in Serowe. He was already playing when we arrived and he agreed to do the long overdue interview during his next break. It is bad day for him because there is big football match on TV - Champions League encounter between South Africa's Orlando Pirates versus Egypt's heavyweight Al'Ahly.  So most of his supposed audience is giving him their back.  But the music must go on and his guitar continues to compete with cheers and jeers of football fans watching the small screen.

At the break, he lights a cigarette, takes long puffs and lets out a big smoke.  He pushes away the beer bottle as I take a few pictures. Interestingly, he does not mind the cigarette smoking picture.  I ask why and he laughingly says 'Eric Clapton style', before pulling on another long puff. And this shows how far he has been around with this music thing - since the days when smoking was legal in closed areas, days when musicians were smoking during their performances and interviews.  He was born Bonjo Godfrey Keipidile in Serowe in 1954.  He played his first guitar when he was around nine years at Tshosa ward in Serowe. The music instrument belonged to John Ratshosa who was using the instruments to recruit children to come and explore their musical talent.  'We were just boys and we used to fool around with instruments after Thare-se-Tala band finished their gigs' said Bonjo.  At tender age Bonjo realised that music was his calling. He said he dropped from primary school to focus on the band.  'Bra John (Ratshosa) saw my enthusiasm and keen interest to this music career and I was made caretaker of the instruments,' he recalls.

At 16 years he was made the bandleader of their new group called 'Heads'.  'We used to play at Maphatshwa Club (Serowe).  Our music was not very well appreciated because our sounds was too complex for them and that is why we didn't play at the popular Chicks Disco but the laid back Maphatswa,' remembers Bonjo.  The search for greener pastures led him to Francistown where he met the late South African musician Ricky Molefe of the group Every Mother's Son. Molefe accepted him into the band where he was playing lead guitar and doing vocals.  Bonjo identifies Molefe as the catalyst behind his move to Gaborone.Bonjo moved to Gaborone during the heightened struggle for freedom in South Africa by African National Congress (ANC).  He arrived in a city that was trapped in the Catch22 situation of posing as an ignorant neighbor and a frontline state to dismantle apartheid.  Music and performing arts were used by the ANC to fight the apartheid regime in Botswana.  Bonjo met the duo of South African musician and exiles Jonas Gwangwa and Hugh Masekela in Gaborone.

Gwangwa and Masekela were part of the Medu (an organisation for writers, artists, and performers for South African exiles).  The music unit comprised of two leading bands Kalahari (led by Masekela) and Shakawe (led by Gwangwa). Bonjo was inducted into the Shakawe Band. Shakawe comprised of Gwangwa, Steve Dyer, Dennis Mpale, Tony Cedras, Bonjo Keipedile, Rampholo Molefhe, Gabriel Selato, Whyte Kgopo, Tsholofelo Giddie and Japie Phiri.  Shakawe Band was the highlight of Bonjo musical career. 'If there was any group I enjoyed playing for, and which defined what I wanted with this music, it is definitely the Shakawe days,' he said.   He recalls how the two bands defined the Gaborone city sound. They used to play at either Bluenote in Mogoditshane and Woodpecker, south of Gaborone.   He adds, 'If our group Shakawe was at Woodpecker, then Bluenote was hosting Kalahari band (comprising of Hugh Masekela, John Selolwane and bassist Aubrey Oaki).'But things ended abruptly with Shakawe after the notorious apartheid regime launched deadly raids in Gaborone in June 1985.  The raids targeted ANC/Medu personalities and after escaping by a whisker Gwangwa, who was Bonjo's band leader, ran for his life.  The band was shattered and left in pieces almost overnight. This was very emotional for Bonjo because it happened just when they were planning an overseas tour with Amandla organised by the cultural arm of ANC.

The Shakawe aftermath was very hard and emotional for Bonjo.  He looks up, stares into darkness, then hand on the face, and tries to remember what really happened after Shakawe. The story sounds disjointed and hard to follow. He starts talking in a more philosophical sense.He says: 'I decided to be by myself, I started pushing on my own. Things got really rough. I didn't have anything of myself and so I started travelling. I hussled in areas like Francistown, Kasane and Maun.'  Things got better after he was hired at Riley's Hotel in Maun where he played for number of years. Years have gone by for Bonjo, South Africa is now liberated, Jonas Gwangwa and Hugh Masekela are celebrated in their country but Bonjo is still struggling.  He is back in Serowe - where it all began - playing in small crowded bars to unappreciative crowds while competing for attention against a television.  Earlier this year, he landed a lucrative gig in Botsalo Hotel in Palapye but it was shortlived and he went back to Pat Kay Bar.  He regrets ever going to Palapye because he now gets an even meagre income since returning from the unsuccessful bout at Botsalo Hotel.With five decades in music Bonjo still has dreams to take his music somewhere.  He refuses to accept that maybe he is a spent bullet that helped liberate South Africa and provided soundtracks in hotels, bars and night joints.  He says he has ready material to record his first album but the problem is that he is too broke.  He mentions talks with some prominent local recording studios but begs to put if off record since talks still aren't finalised. 

Even though it is his only income at the moment, Bonjo hates playing in bars, he says: 'I'm tired of playing in these places, not being well paid, not being well treated because I have played with audiences that respected me, I shared the stage with the best of artists, poets but in bars you meet audiences as well as some bar-owners that sometimes do not appreciate the hard work you do.  You end up playing like you're a beggar.'  He gets emotional and we try a little deviation from the music to personal life but here too is another unfulfilled dream, broken family and tales of a neglected son and late wife-to-be.  Before long we are back at emotional Bonjo as he shares a sad story of a 'beautiful woman' who he wanted to marry and that is when I switched back to the music.  Recently, Bonjo was invited to watch his former band mate Steve Dyer at Botswanacraft in Gaborone.  The quality and the milestones that the local music has travelled impress him.  On what is his biggest wish is,  he quickly responds with: 'I just want to play!'

Bonjo gets nostalgic again saying: 'I wish for a jam session with Bra John, Bra Gwangwa, Bra Steve and Chamza.' This would take him to the golden years of Dashiki just before they formed Shakawe, when they used to meet in night joints and jammed.  He also wishes to travel and play with a big band.  Bonjo's love for playing music is evident when he is deep in a song.  'There is a moment when I am playing that I connect with the crowd, I can't really explain the feeling but the tears would just flow,' he explains. It is this image that every music photographer wants to capture.