Coons, Klopse and Carnival

colourful minstrel costumes

I visited the Bo-Kaap Museum last week before I set out to explore the quarter of the same name where we usually stay when we are in Cape Town. In addition to some interesting displays on the history of the Cape Malay population of the Western Cape, I also found out about an American-Malay connection of which I was totally unaware.

Apparently when the British came on board in the eighteenth century to join the Dutch who were prospering just fine thank you in the Western Cape, they brought some of their own slaves with them. Many of the slaves were most recently from the West Indies and other Caribbean Islands where they had been working on plantations. (Of course they were originally from West Africa.) This created a meeting of cultures among the black and coloured populations of Cape Town with some interesting cultural results.

After the British freed their slaves in their holdings all over the world in the early nineteenth century, the Cape's former slaves were acutely aware that the tide was turning on the whole slave ownership concept in America too. People in the Cape were watching the American Civil War play out with great interest. One of the most popular songs at the time in the Cape Colony was a song called "Alabama" about a warship from the North in pursuit of a warship from the South called the Alabama. (It still is a folk favorite actually. A little South African boy visiting the museum starting singing it in Afrikaans when he recognized the ship in the display!)

display at the Bo-Kaap Museum

Malays in Africa started to exchange traditions with their Creole and Caribbean neighbors and the whole culture of Mardi Gras and Carnivals came to Cape Town.

They were also influenced by the American Minstrel Shows who traveled to Cape Town to perform. These traveling minstrel shows, like the Christies, were composed of white performers in black face. Local troupes of musicians called Coon Societies or Klopse began to form their own minstrel shows and would perform at Carnival time as well as at the Christmas and New Year's  festivals called Kaapse Klopse. Their music of choice? Ragtime. Al Jolson. Minstrel songs. Different societies dressed in their own distinctive colours and competed with each other for best performance, just like the Krewes do at Mardi Gras.

The holiday performances and competitions culminated on January 2 for Tweede Nuwe Jaart. January 2 was traditionally the only day off for slaves and servants after a working holiday season so they partied in the streets all day!

The Bo-Kaap Museum had a whole room dedicated to this phenomenon including costumes and props and other visual displays. Coons? Minstrels? Black Face? Wow, I had no idea! Coming from a place where a person's career could be destroyed by even performing in blackface as a spoof, this acceptance and celebration was a little hard to fathom.

a Kaapse Klopse

But since we will be spending New Year's in Cape Town this year, I made a note and decided I would look into the tradition a little further. It might be a fun way to celebrate my first New Year's Eve in South Africa.
 
I did not have to wait for long to start my research! When we got back into town Sunday night we went back to our room at the hotel overlooking Bo-Kaap. As we were unpacking, we could hear what sounded like a marching band outside our window. Lots of brass and drums and singing. We went out on the balcony and we could see that there was a little festival going on in the street right below in celebration of Heritage Day on Tuesday!








Vince went downstairs to check it out up close and personal.















He came back with an invitation to view the parade from one of the societies' headquarters on New Year's Eve!

Going to be a rockin' New Year's!