bios

You people won’t believe the Ballie Jols I have seen.

I’ve watched a Britisher on fire, claiming to have brought the blues to Africa.

I’ve seen middle-aged women dancing outside the Zacks on the Waterfront.

None of these moments will be lost in time.

Like Tears in Heaven.

The Ballie Jol persists across time: from the Cape Town Folk Club and jazz gigs at the music schools, from Zacks in the 2010s to The Hangout in Troyeville and blues nights in Sandton -aunties and granddads dance while sitting, as their fourteen-year-old nephews or grandchildren help them turn on the camera app. To understand the Ballie Jol is to understand how music works.

There’s often no cover charge, and it’s never packed. The music is formulaic, and there are always guests in their mid-to-late careers. The tiny crowd eats cheese fries and checks their watches as the ballies play. Watching them is baffling. Think seasoned musicians, playing the blues with dedication and a skill that’s grounded in the basic joy of playing.

The songs are milk-toast standards; everyone who’s picked up a guitar has noodled at some point in time. The songs that are original sound like any other blues or rock song. There’s nothing musically boundary-pushing or revolutionary here. I’ve seen one particular musician play the same three songs at these Ballie Jols since at least 2007. No one is here to get famous. This is, in and of itself, a revolutionary act.

For the tween sitting on the floor in front of the stage, sipping on their slushy, this is often their first experience of live music up close. They’ve never been to a club or even a stadium. To them, watching some old fart knock out a fucking stellar version of “Smoke on the Water” like he’s at Wembley can be transcendent. Mainly because the old fart isn’t trying to impress anyone or make anything new. He just loves playing “Smoke on the Water”…and he’s fucking good at it.

The Ballie Jol exists across all genres. In Kalk Bay, the last refuge of the troubadour, you’ll find folk musicians quietly plying their trade, fading in and out of the public imagination, unconcerned. There are jazz gigs in suburban restaurants, mid-level franchise burger joints hosting rock and acoustic metal shows, and young men beatboxing for lack of drums while someone plays a Skunk Anansie cover. There are established musicians trying out new material to a forgiving crowd, while a broke music student shares a meal with a broke journeyman musician, comped by a venue owner who will later play unnecessary guest bass on Piano Man.

It doesn’t have the flash of a Barnyard revival show, yet it exists in the same difficult conceptual territory. It’s easy to see these musicians as also-rans, as burnouts…the once-creators of top-ten hits decades ago. And sometimes they’re the never-weres, ne’er-do-wells, the session musos, those who’ve played in a million bands but never received wider credit for their part in the creation and who give that lack of credit no more than a passing thought. These are the unsung heroes, the backbone, the very joy of music for its own sake. When they pass into the night, they so often do it unnoticed, except in the hearts of their friends and fellow musicians.

Raise a glass to those venue owners who hire the gear and hope to sell a few extra plates of cheese fries to cover the musicians’ comped meals. Raise a glass to the musicians who keep their heads down, keep a foot on the hi-hat pedal, put their backs into the keys and shred their fingers without fretting. These are humble places where, every Sunday, somewhere around four p.m., people gather to hear that one guy play his three usual covers, warmed by the familiarity and skill. Support your local Ballie Jol.