Who Are … BLK JKS
BLK JKS are a five-piece band — if you count “the spirit,” that is. The rowdy South African art rockers credit that mysterious spirit — plus ghosts, charlatans and Johannesburg street culture — with all the chaos and revelry on their debut full-length, After Robots. Considering the unlikely path that BLK JKS took to fame, and the difficulty of making it as a band in South Africa in general, it's no wonder they credit higher powers with their unexpected ascent. Now that they're gracing the covers of music magazines and touring the world over, the band spoke to eMusic about where they — and the spirit — came from.
On starting a band with a childhood friend:
Mcata: It's an unfortunate situation. You feel like you're not moving on in life. Actually I'm just kidding — it's really quite something. We always say that the BLK JKS is something that began like 6,000 years ago, it was always coming here. Everything feels natural. It all makes sense.
On teaching yourself to play guitar:
Mcata: We didn't pick it up to learn how to play, necessarily. We were fiddling with it as much as we were fiddling with the soccer ball or a pair of dice. It was either the guitar as a career or the dice.
On the sound of South Africa's streets:
Buthelezi: What was going on in South Africa in the streets was definitely kwaito, that was happening, electronic, house-y, hip-hop-y, dance-y. That was basically the tone. I think in some way peddling upstream for us, like little salmon, was as a result of that sound and that space and trying to connect to a more nascent part of being an African and a human being and so on. That's what informs our sound more than anything: growing up on the streets of South Africa, listening to party music.
On the “spirit” behind their music:
Mcata: There's a spirit that comes to us every now and again and it gives us a message, a message that we try to decipher when we sit down with paper, sit down with the record. It's just charlatans/spirits/ghosts that we always talk about — we've got five members in this band, the spirit included. And in the world in general, with the globalization and the speed of the Internet and everyone flying everywhere and doing this and doing that and modernization, you know, if we are honest with ourselves, we are all aware of all those signals. It's a good thing to leave oneself open to it. As far as our interpretations of the space we're in, the universe we're in — I think one needs to take in every part of it. It's a wonderfully powerful experience to be. In music, I think the result may be similar to After Robots.
On the weirdest show they've ever played:
Mcata: I think the first one we played is pretty high up there. It was in an old jail cell in Grahamstown, South Africa, which is 11 hours from Johannesburg near a university called Rhodes. There are a lot of ghosts there. To be playing in an old jail cell that used to hold natives back in the day, to be coming there to do what we do, was quite amazing. And later they played a drum and bass, and to hear that drum and bass was a seriously tribal vibe.
We also had to carry the drum kit from Johannesburg to Grahamstown in a public bus at like three in the morning the day before. We walked around Grahamstown with guitars and drum kit in hand, and nobody knew who we were… It was just a really grungy, punky, crazy situation that kind of really bonded the band together and we kind of realized that this is going to be something real.
On breaking down barriers for African bands:
Makananise: When we sit down and do what we do, we really don't think of any barriers that are there to be broken. We just want to do what we do. And if [barriers are broken] as a result, you know, that's just a bonus. We just do what we like doing and play the kind of music that we hear in our heads.
Mcata: I think even for us, by virtue of just being here, however you feel about the music, or whatever your opinion of us as people is, just the fact that this thing is happening is valid. Yes, in some ways it will affect the situation, though I don't know how. That remains to be seen.
On other South African artists you need to hear now:
Mcata: There are a lot of great musicians in South Africa — bands like Impande Core, Kwani Experience, 340ml, and Simphiwe Dana. And even older guys, like Harare, Malombo, Samkomota, Mahlatini, Stimela and the Mahotella Queens, and guys outside of South Africa but from the African continent itself, people like Fela Kuti … you've got to look at their legacy.
