October 11, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Will teach workshops in local church Mt. Airy ‘living legend’ helped end apartheid
by LIZ MILNER

Sharon Katz and Shophi, one member of The Peace Train, have performed South African music in many nations and continents.

Writing about a living legend can be a bear. There’s all the back-story to contend with and the problem of separating the warm, fuzzy feelings I have for Sharon Katz’ many good works from her work as a musician. (Katz will be teaching workshops on South African music and dance  for Mt. Airy Learning Tree starting Oct. 15, every Monday, 7 to 8:30 p.m., through Nov. 19 at Mt Airy Presbyterian Church, 13 E. Mt. Pleasant Ave. Call 215-843-6333.)

Let’s begin with the back-story. Sharon Katz, a South African from Port Elizabeth who wound up living in Mt. Airy after coming to the U.S., distinguished herself as an anti-apartheid activist who formed South Africa’s first multicultural and multilingual musical group in 1993. She and her performers tirelessly toured the country on “The Peace Train” promoting tolerance and a peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa.

Her work received international attention in 1994 when “she was commissioned by the Independent Electoral Commission to write songs in many of South Africa’s languages to teach people how to vote for the first time in their lives. CNN caught Sharon jumping from a helicopter to perform the songs in a remote area of KwaZulu because there was an urgent need to inform people quickly.” (Quote is from the Concert Program.)

She has since become an unofficial good will ambassador for South Africa, and is engaged in numerous projects that use music therapy to heal people’s lives. I saw Sharon Katz and The Peace Train perform at Reston, Virginia’s CenterStage on January 25, 2004, a night when a blizzard  was accompanied by the Washington, DC area’s dreaded “winter mix” (i.e., icy slush that sticks like Krazy Glue).

From Ms. Katz’ description of her early influences, (Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, and Simon & Garfunkel), I was expecting a somewhat somber evening: a little guilt and a little angst blended with outrage at the state of the world. Instead, we were treated to high energy, upbeat Afro-pop fusion music. The Peace Train is rousing and fun and not a bit preachy. (Well, at least not the bits that I could understand, for The Peace Train performs songs in all 11 of South Africa’s official languages.)

The look of the band was even a treat; the five performers were dressed in bright orange, purple and turquoise embroidered robes, which, combined with the fuschia drum kit and the colored theatrical lights, gave the stage the air of a tropical Christmas. In no time at all, the audience became thoroughly relaxed and happy, cheerfully clapping out polyrhythms, chanting in African languages and  singing enthusiastically, the snow apparently forgotten.

After the show, Sharon Katz was kind enough to give me a short interview. She is a slightly built person with close-cropped red hair who speaks soft, lightly accented English. Born in Port Elizabeth, she is of Eastern European Jewish background. I asked her how she came to oppose apartheid.

“I’m Jewish,” she replied, “and I grew up within the Jewish youth movement that is called Habonim. It’s a Zionist, Socialist movement. My whole peer group was about civil rights and human rights, and I got exposed to the music of Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan, and I just loved the lyrics. The lyrics would really speak to me, and as a young person I hated apartheid. It was so wrong ; I just couldn’t understand it. You could see the suffering, you could feel the suffering ,and as a child it hurt me. So I resonated with these songs. All of those songs were about changing the world, and I really believed in that.”

At age 11, she taught herself to play guitar from books and immediately formed a band called Shalom Bomb. “Shalom Bomb,” she explained, is from a poem by Russian poet, Yevgeni Yevtushenko. Shalom Bomb was the first glimmering of what would later become The Peace Train.

At the age of 15, Sharon met several black musicians. “They took me out to the townships . They hid me at the back of the car, covered me up with blankets ; we used to go watch them at rehearsals. When my parents were at work, I used to invite these players to our house; it was strictly illegal to do this. You could not have black people in your house. It was against the law. I loved African music with a passion since I was very young. I started to spend more and more time out in the townships making friends with African people and learning their music.”

During South Africa’s State of Emergency in the 1980s, Katz came to the U.S. to study music therapy at Temple University. She gravitated to working with emotionally disturbed teenagers and also worked as a music therapist in the prison system. She was very homesick for South Africa and when Mandela was released, she decided to return home.

“When I got home, there was such a groundswell of change that I felt I had to do something big. I started traveling to all the outlying areas, to the villages, to the townships, and eventually I persuaded a company to sponsor me to a vehicle, and I got commissioned by the performing arts council to put on a multicultural choir, and they almost fainted when I said I wanted to put 500 voices together. But they said ‘okay, go ahead,’ though they thought I was crazy. That was in 1992, two years after the release of Mandela but two years before the elections. So, I was quite ahead of the times because there was still a lot of resistance to change in South Africa.

“Our first concerts were incredibly successful. It was the first time there had been such a huge mixed crowd in the Durban City Hall. I mean, Durban City Hall was white, white, white! Beaches, restaurants were white, white, white ; all those laws were still in place in 1992. But then everything started changing. By the time we did our first show in 1993, things were really starting to change. And then they set the date for the elections, which was going to be 1994, and we decided in December  of1993 we were going to rent a train, and we would ride around South Africa on it. We were going to be a moving billboard for peace. By the time we actually rode around South Africa on the peace train, we were talking about elections . It was almost

like an unofficial paving the way for elections in South Africa. We did not

have government support because it was the old government.”

Now based in Philadelphia, Katz is involved in several projects in addition to performing with Peace Train. She’s been taking Americans on tours to South Africa to show them what it’s really like now. There is an incredible spirit in South Africa. People who have been so abused by the system have not been beaten down. They are an example to the whole world. Right now they are working in their communities to make things better and there’s an amazing love between black and white. There isn’t racial hatred in South Africa as you would expect there would be. People work together.

Future projects include collaborating on a CD and U.S. tour with Miriam Makeba’s mentor, Dolly Rathebe. Katz also is setting up the Peace Train Foundation. Its mission will be to help educate youth and promote job creation and leadership development. The foundation will also establish orphanages in South Africa.

Two recordings of Sharon Katz and The Peace Train are available. Her most recent recording is Imbizo. Crystal Journey is the title of her other CD. The group can also be heard on Carnival: Rainforest Foundation Concert, alongside internationally renowned performers such as The Chieftains, Annie Lennox, James Taylor, Paul Simon and Tina Turner. To learn more about Sharon Katz and The Peace Train, visit  www.SharonKatz.com