The Real Review

“It is not the TRC cantata!” composer Philip Miller asserts firmly. He wants to put a misperception straight. Miller, known for his music for the films of artist William Kentridge, describes his latest work, REwind, as a personal artistic act. It would be insincere for any artist to pretend otherwise. Nobody can write the TRC cantata. To produce as art a statement of political representivity is a fundamentally flawed concept. Miller is unhappy with the way the M&G reported on his endeavor earlier this year – which he felt argued that there was something ethically wrong with producing art from the pain of the testimony. His criticism is valid. Great art is pain; art is one of the ways humanity deals with it. “Was Picasso wrong to paint Guernica?” he asks, prosecuting the politically correct argument to its absurd conclusion. What Miller has done is to talk to every one of the survivors whose recorded testimony “given in a very different context” forms part of the cantata, replayed in rhythmic repetitions. They all gave their permission, freely and gladly. Eunice Miya (a mother of one of the Guguletu 7) asked at her hearing, more than ten years ago, that something be done to commemorate her son. Nothing has materialized. Miller says she was glad to hear that the cantata commemorates him. Opening with a powerful choral version of the protest song Siyaya, the cantata is performed by the Sontonga Quartet – unfortunately their final performance before they disband, and the Cape Town Opera Vocal Ensemble. The soloists are Fikile Mvinjelwa, Zanele Gumede, Kimmie Skota and Arthur Swan. A particularly chilling section uses Jeff Benzien’s voice, methodically describing – “as if he were baking a cake” as Miller puts it – how he tortured people with the wet bag method. The cantata concludes with a bitterly ironical piece, Who’s laughing?, using the voice of PW Botha. As Miller’s idea originally came from a Chilean cantata about their national reconciliation, the recent death of Augusto Pinochet, another president who got away with a brutally repressive regime, seems appropriate.

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