HA!Man is a true
original who takes the art of the cello to new places
You don't meet people like Francois le Roux every day. And when you do, the
encounter is unforgettable.
I met Le Roux in 2000, in Grahamstown, where I was studying drama at Rhodes University. I remember him arriving for an early morning dance class, armed with a cello. Le Roux was to accompany our class with his spontaneous music.
Most likely wearing a pair of worn-in jeans and probably something as theatrical as a peasant top complete with a drawstring, he sported quite romantic facial features. He had wild dark hair, a defined jaw line, intense, piercing eyes and an overall playfulness that seemed to say, "C'mon, let's have fun."
He really didn't seem to be of this time. With a diet that is pretty much restricted to a self-grown mix of raw sprouts, a life spent in the sleepy hollow of Hogsback in the Amatola mountains in the Eastern Cape or on the road, sometimes recording his CDs from the back of his car, and performances that see him improvising on his cello and suddenly breaking into interpretive dance and chanting strange noises with his haunting, primal voice, it can be easy to dismiss him as an odd creature completely out of touch with reality.
But when you hear his music- and dance to it, as I have-you very quickly discover, in its often lyrical and instinctual ebb and flow, quite an enchanting method to what many would think sheer madness. He goes by the name Ha!Man, which conjures a world in which creativity begins not with an intellectual idea but rather an instinctual breath from within. Le Roux comes to Johannesburg this week to perform in two concerts.
It's been years since I've seen the Ha!Man.
In an interview this past week he told me how he got to Grahamstown in the first place, and how he has managed to ensure that the Ha!Man is in demand the world over.
Le Roux was born to a religious family in Vanderbijlpark, in the then Transvaal, in 1966. His father was a Dutch Reformed church minister who died when Le Roux was seven years old. His mother was a music teacher.
Le Roux, the
second child of four, was considered a prodigy, improvising on the piano from
the age of four. He started playing the cello from age seven. By age 10, he
had a post as church organist in Cottesloe, Johannesburg. At age 11, he gave
his first solo performance
with an orchestra-the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra -when he played Vivaldi's
Cello Concerto in E minor.
While it seems
obvious to the outsider that Le Roux would grow up to pursue a musical career,
it didn't seem as obvious to him.
"My mother raised me to approach music as secondary to one's faith. Music
was for God."
And so he followed
in his father's footsteps and decided to become a minister, pursuing studies
in theology at the University of Stellenbosch.
However, his other major at university was philosophy, which, he said, encouraged
him to start questioning his own upbringing and his faith and realise the
political realities of apartheid South Africa in the late '80s.
"A lot came tumbling down," he said. "I started to question
things much more deeply... The whole traditional religious framework was just
not holding together for me any more."
Thereafter, he met a music teacher who took him back to the basics of music and awakened the notion that the body was not a mere tool with which to play a musical instrument--but itself a "carrier" of the soul essential to expressing oneself. Shattered was the Western "dualism" that separated the material from the spiritual, he said. The body itself was an integral starting point of expression.
The '90s saw Le Roux abandoning the traditional path of classical musicians. He resolved to live on the bare minimum while hitchhiking from small town to small town, giving performances to small audiences, surviving on money collected from busking. What was important to him, he said, was to be able to "survive on my art".
At first audiences were very small and the response to his work wasn't always positive.
"Some people
would leap out of their chairs and embrace me and say,
"You're a genius!" And others would walk out shocked or horrified
by my shows, which were often an hour of improvising on the cello... those
used to really get me down and depressed."
What kept him going was an irrepressible desire to "give something of myself from within," he said. "I just wanted to keep playing that one note, continuously."
Things seemed
to turn around for the struggling musician when he bought a car and computer
in 2000, shortly before we first met.
"The car gave me independence and the freedom to move around."
Today, he said, he travels, on average, 70 000km a year, on four continents,
doing up to 200 shows and workshops. And
the computer has given him the creative freedom to enhance his cello performances
with a host of different sounds, as well as recording.
His latest album, he said, was recorded in the back of a van.
"I'm not a technician who freaks out when unplanned noise interrupts à recording... the atmosphere provided by this kind of recording environment, although a technically bad place, can be inspiring.
"And that is what you need for quality spontaneous creation."
As our interview drew to a close, he told me the story of when he gave a music workshop at a UK school, and the head of music at the school came up to him and commented on his artistic skills.
"I've been teaching for 20 years," he told Le Roux, "and I have never seen anyone demonstrate, quite like you, exactly what music is really about."