One of the important parts of a moppie is called the “gimmick”; many coaches assume that the singularity of the gimmick plays a decisive role in the assessment judges make of the performance of a moppie. The gimmick must introduce an element of surprise and make the audience laugh. “Die Son”, composed by Anwar Gambeno in 2005, provides a very good example of gimmick. It is musically based on “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”; referring to Elvis Presley’s version. Anwar Gambeno took the catch-phrase: “I said shake it, baby, shake it” and replaced it with “Shaik Zuma Shaik”; on stage, the whole body of the soloist emulated Elvis Presley’s antics. He explained that he was inspired by the phonetic closeness of
“Shaik” and “shake”, which he found quite amusing and thought he could use it to make a particularly sensational gimmick:93
Ou Shaik is daai ou, hy sê hy’s van
Zuma sê Shaik het hom niks gegee (Shaik Zuma Shaik Shaik Zuma)
En ons sê, Shaik Zuma Shaik (x4)
Shaik is a big shot, he says he’s from He is only guilty if the court finds so
(Shaik Zuma Shaik Shaik Zuma) But he is no longer in our Parliament
And we say, Shaik Zuma Shaik
A few years later, as the Schabir Shaik affair was no longer in the news, Anwar Gambeno decided to change the gimmick and to poke fun at an old-time friend, Melvyn Matthews, chief executive officer of Kaapse Klopse Karnaval Association, who also sings with Anwar Gambeno’s Cape Traditional Singers. The composer explained that, in the moppie spirit, laughing at a friend amounts to paying him tribute. The new words were:
Ou boeta95 Mellie wat het jy gemaak?
Die Son het jou gevang is jy dan vaak Allie mense staan nou op (nou op) Hulle was soe diep geskok (geskok) Ou Mellie skree “hou nou op” (hou op) My vrou gat my nou uitskop (uitskop) Toe hy byrie huis ankom (ankom) Was sy vrou soe dom vestom (vestom) Slaan hom met ’n biesemstock Ja ou Mellie bly ma dom
Brother Mellie, what have you done?
Die Son has caught you, were you asleep
All the people are now rising to their feet (to their feet)
They were so shocked (shocked) Old Mellie shouts “stop it!” (stop it!) My wife’s gonna kick me out (kick me out)
Dom, dom, dom, Dom dom, dom Daar was ’n hele skelery
(kyk hoe haloep Mellie, kyk hoe haloep Mellie)
Toe Mellie op die frontpage daar veskyn (kyk hoe haloep Mellie,
kyk hoe haloep Mellie)
Hulle het hom in die Main Road nous sien ry
Other examples of gimmicks are the inclusion of excerpts of “La Bamba” in
“Fiesta Tyd” by Ismail Dante and the reference to toyi-toyi in “Die Toyi Toyi/Ons Hoor”. In a gimmick, the song from which borrowings have been made should remain identifiable and the relationship between the melody, the original words and the new words constitute one of the mechanisms on which the comic of the moppie is based.
When performing a moppie, singers dance to attract the attention of the audience. Choirs now tend to develop sophisticated choreographies involving everyone, but the soloist still plays an important role. He has to bring forward the comic in the song, both by his singing (choice of timbre and range, stops and new departures that should not break the song’s momentum) and his body language that still includes hand movements (made more visible by wearing white gloves) inherited from 19th-century blackface minstrels. The words are brought to life through his performance: The soloist has to be funny and to imagine antics embodying the text. In “Die Vlooie”97 (The Fleas) by Adam Samodien, he wriggles and scratches endlessly where fleas are supposed to have bitten him. According to Ismail Dante, the soloist may move as he feels it, but he must mime the moppie. Mujait Booysen, who was a soloist with the Kenfacs, explained: “You have to carry over the comic, for the ghoema dance you have to show the dance […] You can’t really explain what is going to happen.”98 That is, the soloist may improvise his movements on stage, keeping in mind his role as mediator between the song and the audience. However, his moves are usually finalised during practices, the more so since they now have to match the pak’s choreography. In every case, both the singers in the pak and the soloist must always follow the tempo. In “Die Son”, the soloist
“is” at the beginning the boy who sells the tabloid in the streets and shouts the main titles:
Ons sien ’n laatie staan op die hoek stan en rook
Hy is die laatie wat die koerante verkoep
Hy skree, Die Son, die skinder koerant!
Ja, jy kan jou mind opmaak Die Son sien nou alles raak Dis laat die mense praat
Die Son, Die Son, die skinder koerant
We see a youngster standing smoking at the corner
He is the youngster that sells the newspapers
He shouts Die Son, the gossip newspaper
Yes you can make up your mind Die Son now sees everything It makes the people talk Die Son, Die Son, the gossip newspaper
Comes the gimmick, he shakes his whole body and moves his legs in a parody of Elvis Presley’s stage attitudes. In “Die Toyi Toyi/Ons Hoor”, he dances the toyi-toyi, leads the protest march and pretends to smoke when he proclaims: “Daar’s VAT op vleis and reis/Maar niks op n’ stompie nie” (There’s VAT on meat and rice/But nothing on spliffs).
Yet, from the point of view of the adjudicators, the role of the voorsinger is very important, not so much because of the way he “dances” the song, but rather because of the way he sings and establishes his relationship to the choir. Felicia Lesch,99 who used to adjudicate the Cape Malay Choir Board competitions, explained:
We don’t judge the antics of the lead singer. You know what hap-pened? There was a time when the lead singer focused entirely on the judging panel, only looked at us, never looked at the audience, never connected with the audience and the antics became sugges-tive and just too horrible, too lewd to look at, and there were small children in the audience and we found it was inappropriate. There were sexual overtones because of the lyrics and then, the rest of the choral singing disappeared behind the antics. Then we had a work-shop and we [the judges] explained that we are really not interested that much in what the voorsinger does, we want the choir to be a unit, and what they do has to be supporting the voorsinger. The voorsinger must have a voice. If the moppie is solely a choir and the voorsinger always only sings with the choir and you don’t hear him singing his solo, then that’s not a good moppie. We need to know that the voorsinger can sing and that he can do the leading and that the choir can follow him, and the rhythmic changes, you know, they do it so naturally, what other choirs would struggle with, they fall in so naturally, from slow into fast, into the ghoema rhythm, it just flows from one to the other […] we do judge the balance of
the choir because sometimes the choir gets excited and then the voices get louder and they shout and then we can’t hear what they are saying. So we do expect them to still articulate […] The choir and the soloist MUST be as one. They MUST stick to the theme of the moppie. If the moppie is not comic, it gets a low mark, even if it was really well sung.100