The Oxford University Student Union’s VP Women, Ellie Greaves, has resigned from her role this afternoon. She states that she has done so “to prioritise my health and wellbeing” and will officially leave the post on 17th March.
Following the SU’s reshuffle of sabbatical officer roles last year, the position of VP Women will be replaced with VP Liberation and Equalities next academic year. In Michaelmas 2022, Greaves told Cherwell“I think there’s a risk that the removal of VP Women will send the message that “sexism is solved”, when it really isn’t”.
However, she subsequently issued an apology that her comments in the article contributed to a “bio-essentialist, narrow-minded narrative of what being a woman is”.
In her resignation today, Greaves said: “My time as VP Women has been challenging and I have learnt an incredible amount along the way.” She added, “I hope that we continue to see a culture of respect and kindness grow throughout the Oxford student body … I wish nothing but the best for the entire SU team and for the newly elected officers in their upcoming year.”
Last week, Kennedy Aliu was elected to the new role of VP Liberation and Equalities.
This article will be updated as more information about the resignation of VP Women becomes available.
For the second time in a fortnight, I find myself in the Pilch, sat in the round, looking at a stage littered with random, domestic-feeling clutter. This style of play seems to be in vogue at the moment; and it is not without its merits. The effect of this is to very competently reflect the chaotic and troubled relationship between the two characters in Martin Crimp’s Play House, adapted in this production to be centred around two women.
Play House is divided into several scenes, vignettes of the relationship between the two characters, but it was difficult to see what relation they bore to each other, temporally or emotionally. By the end of the play, the actors were producing something like the requisite emotional pitch, but there was little sense of emotional continuity between the scenes. Indeed, one of the final scenes sees Simona speaking about another relationship, and using it as a vehicle to discuss the problems with her own. This is conveyed skilfully and with a startling intensity by Imogen Boxall, although the key flaw remains that none of these problems have been visible to the audience. Very little reason is given in the performance for the characters behaving the way they do: their motives, if they exist at all, are obscure. Nevertheless, the individual scenes themselves were entertaining and intriguing. Good use was made of the set, and the music helped, on the whole, to create atmosphere and delineate scene changes.
Definitely the Bahamas was, on the other hand, a consistently funny and coherent piece of theatre. Strong character choices were made and committed to by both actors – Susie Weidmann’s Frank in particular was an exemplary exercise in physical acting. Undoubtedly it is a stronger script, and the characters are perhaps more caricatures, but nevertheless both the performances and direction were much stronger in this section of the double-billing. One oddity: it was clear that the in-the-round configuration suited Play House (in which the whole stage was used) much better than Definitely the Bahamas. In order to serve the configuration, the actors repeatedly swapped where they were sitting, but there was no internal logic to these movements. However, against the strength of the performances in this half, this was a minor flaw. Unlike in Play House, where the dynamics and narrative of the relationship were obscure and unexplored, Boxall and Weidmann presented them here clearly and compellingly; and not only that, but also the flaws in their own characters. Particularly lifelike was Boxall’s Milly, whose self-importance and narrow-mindedness visibly drove everything she said, underpinning skilfully the dramatic irony in the text.
The problem of changing from one play to the other, without an interval or blackout, was one Lawrence dealt with very competently, by having her actors alter their costumes and behaviour in muted, coloured lighting, on stage. There is some skill in correctly choosing the moments at which to reveal the mechanics of theatre to an audience, and Lawrence has chosen them well. Watching the actors become the second pair of characters contributed to the force and strength those characters had; there was a sense in which the terms of the performance had been defined. The combination of plays together was interesting too, as was the choice to change the male character in Play House to a female one but maintain the original gender of Frank in Definitely the Bahamas: Lawrence’s intentions here were not entirely clear, as far as they relate to the themes of the texts, though no particular harm was done by this choice. Overall, the plays made an entertaining pair; but my lasting impression is that Definitely the Bahamas was definitely the better of the two.
Student voter turnout in the Oxford University Student Union elections last week was just 10%, despite numerous pledges by past and present sabbatical officers to “improve SU engagement”. Similar to previous years, this figure amounts to just 2762 students out of a total student body of 26,000 at Oxford University. So what does the SU actually do for the average Oxford student, and why is there such a significant failure to engage with it?
In a series of polls set up by Cherwell to gauge SU engagement, 69% of the 122 students who responded felt that the SU’s engagement with the student body was either poor or non-existent. A mere 3% voted that it was good, and 28% that it was passable.
With six sabbatical officers, each paid £25,000 a year, pay costs the SU about £150,000.
At present, SU’s primary methods of communication with the student body as a whole are through weekly emails, social media, and four council meetings held each term. However, of the students who engaged with Chewell’s polls, 52% said they immediately delete SU emails. While 45% said they read SU emails occasionally, only 3% of voters said that they read SU news in detail. In addition to this, of 157 voters, 138 claim never to have been to a student council meeting.
One student who participated in the survey told Cherwell that they find the SU “completely pointless, as JCRs fulfil all the functions an SU would in a unitary university.” They raise the question: Is a student union necessary in a collegiate university?
When asked whether people found the SU important in a collegiate University almost 10% of those polled claimed to not know what the Student Union was, and were therefore unable to answer the question. 51% voted that they didn’t, and just 15% agreed that the SU was important in a collegiate university.
Cherwell also polled college JCR presidents, receiving responses from the presidents of Balliol, Brasenose, Exeter, Jesus, Keble, Merton, Oriel, St Catz, St John’s and St Peter’s. 60% of the JCR Presidents who responded to the survey felt they could “definitely” do their duties without SU input. The other 40% voted it was ‘likely’ they could.
One JCR president said, “systemically the SU is pretty useless when it comes to fighting colleges, or pushing the central university to control the colleges more (which in my own opinion is why we have so many of the systemic issues that we have in Oxford).”
Meanwhile, another JCR President told Cherwell: “I’d love for there to be more SU engagement, there’s potential for it to be a really strong student voice, but right now it’s so detached from JCRs that I don’t think it’s representative or useful for most students.”
80% of the JCR President respondents said that the SU engagement with their JCR is ‘poor’.
One JCR president told Cherwell, “The Oxford SU clearly has a massive engagement issue… If all the SU can provide is occasional workshops for JCR Committee members, it’s hard to see how this benefits the whole of the Oxford student body, and justifies paying the sabbs wages.”
JCR presidents, when asked what support they received from the SU, mentioned rent negotiation training, college comparisons, and the option to access more general policy and procedure advice. Yet some JCR presidents told Cherwell that even the rent negotiation workshops were poorly organized. One claimed they were given only 2 hours notice before the workshop took place, characterising this as “negligent organisation”. Some colleges missed the workshop. Another JCR President told Cherwell the rent negotiation training came “a little late” for them as they had already negotiated with college and come to an agreement just as the help had been advertised.
60% of JCR presidents who responded voted that they did not find SU services and communications efficient. The SU writes on its website that they “work closely with JCRs and MCRs across the colleges with lobbying support, training, wellbeing products, and more,” with eight student-led campaigns “fighting to improve [the] student experience and build communities along the way.”
However, when asked how supported they felt by the SU, 98% of the students surveyed by Cherwell said they felt unsupported. The reaining 2% felt somewhat supported.
Despite student dissatisfaction with current SU-JCR relations, 70% of the JCR Presidents who responded voted that they would still prefer to ‘support initiatives for greater SU engagement’ as opposed to the options of disaffiliating the JCR from the SU, or keeping the relationship as is.
Responses among the JCR Presidents about what the SU could do to improve engagement included ideas about improving convenience of the student council; in its current form, it is “too long and feels too ineffective to motivate people to attend.”
Further thoughts focused on “making their presence better known with students,” with one President saying there needs to be “more outreach and visibility on what the SU actually is.” They suggested hosting an introduction to the SU in freshers’ week. However, they added “the JCR communications channel selectively, by picking projects for which engagement is essential. This gives the SU a means of getting to students more efficiently, but only works if it is not overloaded.”
One JCR president feels the SU would benefit from having “a more unified goal each year” as, whilst they recognize that the sabbs and SU are working hard, they feel they may be doing “too many things,” so “it feels like none of them are truly meaningful.” This “creates an environment where students are unsure of what they even do, which drives engagement down.” Another mentions the idea of “more involvement towards common goals that are set out as a whole” to improve SU engagement, and “for them to be more proactive in fighting colleges than the central university.”
When asked for comment on how they could improve engagement, the Sabbatical Officers told Cherwell they would “encourage any student to come along and see first-hand the work that we as a team are doing.” During these student council meetings “student members can come along and ask questions, pass motions and hold sabbatical officers to account.”
Performing in Birmingham on the resumed Dance Fever tour, Florence Welch stopped to address her audience: “I will bet that in here there are probably some chaperones, unwilling partners dragged along to some random concert – and you’re probably thinking, what the hell am I doing here?”. A few people reluctantly cheered, which was met with a wave of laughter around the arena that included Welch herself. “I get it. You’re probably thinking, have a joined a cult? Am I safe? My advice to you is… just let it happen. And remember to do everything I say.”
If being a fan of Florence and the Machine is equivocal to being in a cult, I have probably been indoctrinated for an unhealthy amount of time—despite all signs from the universe which have tried to dissuade me. In 2019, my post GCSE celebrations, which revolved around seeing the band perform at Boardmasters, were compromised by the festival’s cancellation. In November 2022 (my second attempt to see them live) Welch broke her foot whilst performing, an event which is easy to understand once you have had the privilege of witnessing her stage presence. Reluctantly, the tour was postponed until 2023 to give the lead singer time to recover—and I pondered the fact that perhaps it was my fate to never see her perform live.
Walking into the packed venue, the sense of the unreal was definitely about me, heightened by the unearthly chandeliers, draped in cobwebs, which were suspended from the stage’s ceiling. Once the band finished setting up and the harp (an iconic instrument in their discography) was added to the stage, the show truly looked as if it was taking place in a dilapidated mansion. When Welch materialised to greet the screaming crowd, dressed in gorgeous white chiffon with a beaded cape to match, she instantly commanded her stage—the fascinating wraith everyone ventures to the haunted house to catch a glimpse of. The set started off with King, the first single to be released off Dance Fever, and the powerful leading line “I am no mother/ I am no bride/ I am king” reverberated around the arena. The selection of songs included most of Dance Fever—Daffodil and Dream Girl Evil gave Welch the chance to bring to the stage the essence of her latest album, which ruminates on witchy, powerful femininities, self-destruction, and what it means to be addicted to performing. Her movements whilst singing were hypnotic, sometimes using hand and arm movements to command her voice with an air of regal authority, sometimes running around the stage or slithering on the floor. Classic tracks from earlier albums were also graciously performed, such as Dog Days are Over, Kiss with a Fist and Cosmic Love. Throughout Welch’s voice was pristine, spiralling from her with the apparent ease of breathing- singing along at times felt like an offence because all I wanted to do was listen to her.
Attending the concert felt like finding a family, an ethos which Welch stressed throughout as she asked people to hold onto one another for June, dance together for Dog Days and, if you could manage it, pop someone on your shoulders for the closing number Rabbit Heart. This tension between the hyper-social and utter isolation is a key theme across the band’s projects. In High as Hope Welch confesses to “hiding from some vast unnameable fear” through performance; Dance Fever details “crying in the cereal at midnight”, locking yourself in rooms you don’t think you will ever leave, making solitary visits to the hospital. The satisfaction that comes with gathering these moments of despair and turning them into something you can share with others is palpable to anyone that listens to the band’s music, and as the lyrics “if I make it to the stage/ I’ll show you what it means to be spared” rang across the venue I became convinced that this show, this tour, is really about healing, especially in the post-COVID era.
It takes a powerful vulnerability to shoulder the burdens and joys of helping others, through art or any other means. Welch does it beautifully, confessing in her first song “I was never as good as I thought it was/ But I knew how to dress it up”. She stayed true to her words throughout; my highlight of the evening was an understated rendition of Never Let Me Go, an incredibly vocally challenging song from Ceremonials. Welch admitted to avoiding the song for over a decade- because it is so hard to sing, because she was “so young and sad and drunk” when she first wrote it. Releasing it to an adoring crowd was positively therapeutic, I imagine. What I know for sure is that it was a privilege to witness, and the band’s return to touring has been triumphant.
In response to the ongoing environmental disasters caused by recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, Oxford’s student societies have sought to raise funds for aid and greater general awareness.
The ‘Turkey-Syria Earthquake Bake Sale’, spearheaded by the Oxford University Turkish Society and Oxford Syria Society, was an initiative with mass student participation that raised huge donations in order to help assist the relief efforts. Between the 10th and 13th of February (9 am to 5 pm), in the Radcliffe Square, over £9000 was raised. Further funds have been raised through QR codes displayed on posters, allowing people to directly donate to the AHBAP and White Helmets charities.
Individual colleges, too, have taken independent action to support Turkey and Syria. Initiatives such as pantry fundraising by the Balliol JCR hope to be able to make a meaningful impact for those on the ground.
For those at Oxford, issues concerning the wellbeing of affected students has been recognised by the administrative body of the university. The university’s official email of support illustrated external points of contact for help and guidance, as well as offering internal welfare and counselling services.
Mina Yücelen, an active member of the Oxford University Turkish Society, told Cherwell that she appreciated the email from the university and the support she was getting from tutors. Nonetheless, she wishes that more diverse, proactive and instant access to mental health professionals would be made available to all those who are adversely affected by the earthquakes.
The devastation of the earthquakes in large parts of Turkey and Syria has continued to be felt in the week following their occurrence.
The first, striking with a magnitude of at least 7.8 on the seismic magnitude scale, followed hours later by another of 7.5, are already being considered as some of the most destructive earthquakes of the modern period. The reported death toll has already far exceeded 35,000 and is expected to continue rising amid international rescue efforts.
Recent UNICEF analysis indicates that in Syria alone, the earthquake has affected more than 10.9 million people with as many as 5.3 million people displaced and totalling an estimated 23 million people directly affected.
In an official message sent out by the University of Oxford, the university offered their ‘deepest sympathy’ and the provision of support to any students affected by recent events.
The Sustainable Careers Week, an initiative organised by Oxford’s Careers Services, has come under fire from the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign (OCJC) due to greenwashing concerns. Despite an initial collaboration, OCJC decided to boycott the programme as a result of the Careers Services’ “continued refusal to engage with fossil free career demands”.
Spanning across last week, various panel discussions and information sessions took place to help students explore sustainable career paths in sectors such as conservation, policy, energy, food, development, and law.
OCJC acknowledge that the Sustainable Careers Week was “well-intended and introduced a variety of environmental careers to students here”, yet they claim that the Careers Service continues to promote careers in the fossil fuel industry, citing British Petroleum, Equinor, and Glencore as examples.
The Careers Service collaborated on their events with multiple societies, including a number of environmental ones. Their ‘Careers in Energy’ panel discussion, was jointly organised with Oxford’s Energy Society, who is, amongst others, sponsored by British Petroleum. OCJC said that this blatantly emphasised “the refusal to sever ties with the fossil fuel industry”.
Their boycott can further be explained with a talk during the week titled ‘Can a Corporate Career Ever be Sustainable?” OCJC calls this both “somewhat insensitive and somewhat callous”, given the current climate emergency.
According to OCJC, the greenwashing runs “much deeper than a superficial plenary discussion”; they allege that the Careers Service is “exploiting and transferring the virtue associated with sustainability onto themselves, without taking sufficient action to move towards the goal of Net-Zero”.
The Careers Services’ refusal to accept the Fossil Free Careers motion, which would demand that all new relationships with oil, gas, and mining companies should be denied, is another reason for the boycott. Both OCJC and the SU, who were mandated to support this motion following a Student Council vote last year, have been lobbying for this.
OCJC told Cherwell that halting complicity with the fossil fuel industry is a “reasonable and wholly feasible process which the [C]areers [S]ervice can quickly and easily undertake with sufficient willpower”. In the past, the University has already split with the tobacco industry and therefore fossil fuel companies “equally, if not more so, warrant a similar severing of ties”.
Oxford’s research guidelines for collaboration with fossil fuel companies also violate the University guidelines of receiving funding from “illegal or unethical activity” according to OCJC, due to the industry itself being “unethical at its core”.
The research guidelines entail that working selectively with companies that are committing an increasing and meaningful part of their resources towards decarbonising their products will allow the university to contribute positive ideas and innovations to the climate crisis. However, they also acknowledge that any collaboration in this regard will lead to accusations such as greenwashing.
Another initative, Oxford’s first Green Action Week, is set to run from the 20th to the 24th of Febraury. Organised by the Universities Environmental Sustainability Team, over 50 events to empower and celebrate environmental action will take place throughout Oxford. OCJC believes that this “shouldn’t just be another opportunity for greenwashing”. Anna-Tina Jashapara, the SU VP for Charities and Community, told Cherwell she hopes that the Green Action Week will be “a chance for lots of students to engage with sustainability”, without losing sight of the essential institutional change.
Oxford Student Union announced this week that it is to hold a referendum on NUS disaffiliation on Monday 27th February.
Polling will be open at 8 am on Monday 27th February and will close at 6 pm on Wednesday 1st March. According to Oxford SU there will be at least one Open Meeting where both the proposition and opposition campaigns can be heard and questioned. Two Campaign Leaders will be announced on the Oxford SU website once selected. Anas Dayeh is likely to run the YES campaign in support of NUS affiliation, while Ciaron Tobin, proposer of the motion, and Caleb van Ryneveld, NUS delegate elect and former Oxford SU Presidential candidate, will run against each other to determine the leader of the campaign to disaffiliate. The two successful chairs will both be given £50 by the SU to run their respective campaigns.
The results of the binding referendum will be announced at 7 pm on Wednesday 1st March.
This is the second attempt to call a referendum after the first such motion was withdrawn by the proposer Ciaron Tobin, and the seconder Mundher Ba-Shammakh, both elected NUS delegates from Oxford SU.
The first attempt was dropped in the Hilary Term 2023 Week 1 meeting after members debating the proposal reached a consensus that withdrawing the motion would allow for consultation with students likely to be affected. The 3-hour debate in Week 1 brought to the fore the lack of communication between the proposers and JSoc representatives.
At the Hilary Term 2023 Week 3 meeting, Ciaron Tobin and Mundher Ba-Shammakh again proposed a motion to hold a referendum and this time it passed, with amendments, 26 votes for, 3 against and 2 abstaining. The motion acknowledged that: “The report of the independent investigation led by Rebecca Tuck KC into allegations of antisemitism in the NUS found that it had failed to sufficiently challenge antisemitism and hostility to Jewish students within its organisation.”
Asked whether he thought the new motion had addressed concerns of a lack of communication with JSoc from the Week 1, the motion’s seconder Munder Ba-Shammakh told CherwellI: “The motion as it stands is outlining a broad range of important concerns and putting forth a motion to disaffiliate. The subsequent campaigning is where I feel the wider consultation must now take place, the work done by Ciaron and I was to bring the disaffiliation motion to Oxford students and we have achieved that goal. It’s now the work of the campaign leaders to ensure a diverse range of opinions and concerns are addressed in the lead up to the vote to ensure all student voices are heard and voters can make more informed decisions.”
Jojo Sugarman, President of the Oxford Jewish Society (JSoc), speaking after the referendum’s announcement, told Cherwell:“Antisemitism within the National Union of Students has been a deep concern to members of Jsoc, with very many feeling unrepresented.”
He said there had been a consultation on the Week 3 motion, which was appreciated.
Discussion at the meeting focused on presenting the referendum “in a way that allows neutrality” and “reiterates the importance of purely stating facts and leaving the judgement to the votes”. One member expressed concern on antisemitism being used as a driving force for the disaffiliation of the SU to NUS, while another stated that “there are many reasons to leave NUS”. The motion passed in week 3 was rephrased to say “this council believes it is it’s duty to refer the question of affiliation to the whole membership.”
Anas Dayeh, an Oxford SU NUS delegate, told Cherwell: “The SU should be impartial to each side in order to allow the fair campaigning of both sides.”
However, Dayeh himself is emphatic that the SU should remain affiliated with the NUS. He told Cherwell: “It campaigns for the issues we care about, connects us with other students who share our values, and provides us with resources, training, support, and opportunities. It has achieved some big wins for students in the last two years alone, such as securing more hardship funds, rent relief, grade fairness for A-level and BTEC students, and ending NDAs in sexual misconduct cases in 54 institutions so far!
“The NUS is our union, and we can make it better by staying engaged and involved. If we leave the NUS, we will lose our voice, our power, and our impact. It is the best way to ensure that we have a strong, united, and unstoppable student movement that can make a difference for ourselves and students across the UK.”
The motion passed in Week 3 makes clear that “[SU] Members have the right to be properly informed in any referendum by the campaigns as to the advantages and disadvantages of affiliation, and the consequences of disaffiliation.”
The selected campaign heads will have to identity “alternate arrangements, to the extent they exist, for representation of students at a national level; the extent to which it is politically feasible to address the concerns above both within and without the NUS; how resources could be used within the SU after disaffiliation; and the extent to which historical problems in the report continue”.
Ba-Shammakh told Cherwell he will not be participating in the campaigning as he is “currently rusticated and working a very demanding full time role”, and feels he could not “give this task the dedication it deserves”.
The motion that passed also noted that “Oxford SU contributes £4,095.60 to NUS Charity and £20,478 to NUS UK in membership fees”. While debating the first motion in Week 1, some members of the council meeting spoke with frustration of limited SU budgets, especially for the Disabilities Campaign and the LGBTQ+ Campaign. However, others expressed concern that disaffiliation would dilute the SU’s influence on student issues that extend beyond Oxford.
Asked what he would suggest as a new way forward for national representation of the SU, Ba-Shammakh told Cherwell: “This is a question that I feel must be asked of all students first and foremost and of the new wonderful team we have just elected to the SU. But on a personal level I feel there needs to be a greater focus paid to issues concerning financing for students, rent reductions on a more organised basis and increasing in lobbying for student support. There’s too much time and effort currently dedicated to national issues concerning social campaigns and general divisive matters, which while important in their own right, they often aren’t directly related to students which is what the SU ought to be concerned about.”
Joe Bell, Oxford SU Returning Officer, commented on the announcement “[i]t is my sincere hope that all debate remains respectful at all times, and I look forward to the passionate, sensitive and reasoned discussions which will doubtlessly play out in the next few weeks”.
He noted that “if the student body vote not to remain affiliated with the NUS, Oxford SU’s membership would likely only cease at the end of this calendar year, for contractural reasons”.
It was an absolute pleasure to revisit the Indian restaurant Tribe on Cowley Road, nearly a year on from my first review. Last time I loved the chance to try so many different dishes and now that opportunity is open to all weekend visitors.
Thali
On Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes, customers are offered the Thali for £13.99 or £14.99 depending on whether you opt for the vegetarian or meat option.
Ours was a mix of vegetable and meat curries as well as the traditional Gulab Jamun desert, jeera rice, and a parotta. I must say that the vegetarian dishes were definitely less flavourful than their meat-based counterparts. The red lentil daal was slightly lacking the punch that you might expect but chickpea chole was better and the chicken achari was a standout.
Saag paneer is always one of my favourite Indian dishes and the spinach in this one is superb — the paneer itself though felt like it could have been cooked a little longer to soften and bring out the flavour. The salad, pickles and bhaji were the perfect accompaniments to all the curries and when paired with the parotta really did enhance the flavours with their spices.
As well as the Thali we did also sample two starters. The first was Aloo Bonda which was slightly stodgy in the middle but came with a brilliant chilli garlic sauce. The other was Sabudana Vada and far more unique. These pancakes came with the same sauce and were stuffed with tapioca pearls to create a fascinating sweet/savoury combination of a dish.
Aloo BondaSabudana Vada
The mango lassi is without a doubt the soft drink of choice. A classic Indian yoghurt-based smoothie, it is full of fresh flavours and a great balance to the mains if you struggle with spices!
What Tribe is now offering up on Cowley Road with their Thali is a brilliantly unique Indian experience that you can’t get anywhere else in Oxford. Only lacking my favourite Kerala fish curry (see last year’s review!), it offers the chance to sample several different options in a more than generous portion size at a great price. For a special weekend lunch, Tribe is carving itself out as quite the attraction on the Oxford restaurant scene.
If you weren’t keeping an ear to the ground this week, you might not have noticed that Jockstrap was the hottest ticket in town. However, in the days prior to their long sold out Bullingdon date, I got the sense that they have a hidden network of fans who, like the music they love, are often quiet and unassuming—but also know the right time to really go for it. When discussing the gig in the Turf Tavern, I was approached by three such victims of ‘Jockstrapmania’ who had travelled from Barcelona without tickets, purely on the off chance of securing one outside the venue. Sure enough, the queue was inundated with desperate pleas from concertgoer hopefuls, offering over the odds for a date with demented electropop glory.
For the lucky 300 of us inside the venue walls, anticipation was palpable. An expectedly genre-hopping support set from pablopablo succeeded in warming up the crowd with an impassioned performance, while also highlighting how difficult it is to pull off a backing track based live set without a hitch—something which he didn’t quite achieve. Then, it was go time. The room flooded with blue light and our ears were graced with a house playlist consisting exclusively of post-WAP, sex-positive hip-hop. Shortly, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye took the stage and ethereal falsetto filled the air.
The most immediately striking element of Jockstrap’s live show is frontwoman Georgia’s inimitable stage presence. Alternately floating like an angel and prowling like a demon, but invariably conducting a front row orchestra of black nail varnish to the sky. What next becomes apparent is the duo’s sheer mastery of a notoriously precarious medium. Much of what you hear at a Jockstrap gig is pre-recorded, but the human touch is never far away. When a violin line needs just the right amount of vibrato, Georgia grabs a violin. When a subwoofer demands to be brought to the brink of death in such a way that you feel it in your chest, Taylor reaches for an effects pedal. On ‘Glasgow’, an outrageous contrapuntal harp line is played live on keyboard, with the occasional wrong note putting the audience at ease: these modern-day virtuosos are indeed fallible, just.
The set was incredibly dynamic, pulling things out of the Bullingdon’s PA that its usual Garage Fridays have never aspired to. At times Jockstrap invoke a folk festival, at others an underground rave. Georgia, with nothing but her voice and an acoustic guitar, could grab the room in a chokehold. On occasion, during such moments of pin-drop silence, hand dryers blared through open bathroom doors or pints conspicuously clanged to the floor. Yet, with eyes closed, such noises could well have been welcome additions to the music—such is the eclecticism of Jockstrap’s sonic universe. Glitchy, distorted cuts, such as fan favourite and set closer ‘50/50’, truly overwhelmed. Lights strobed furiously as the contents of Taylor’s water bottle was flung over the ecstatic front few rows. A swift exit ensued – the duo don’t mess around.
At the end of the night, I felt that Jockstrap had thrown down the gauntlet for a new breed of hyper-versatile, terminally online music. They write breath-taking pop songs, only to douse them in petrol, light a match, and hear them magnificently combust. They strive to innovate, relentlessly questioning notions of genre and the conventions of live performance. They exist to confound the people making the futile attempt to put their music into words. But, after watching them hold the Bullingdon in the palms of their hands, I’m convinced they have one true goal which transcends such things: to ensure that you have an obscene amount of fun at the most enthralling club night of your life. If that sounds appealing, put your faith in Jockstrap—you won’t be disappointed.
Rock’n’roll revolution is a volatile thing. Not all cultures were ready for electric riffs and transgressive lyricism when the genre originated in the mid-twentieth century. For white Afrikaans speakers, it wasn’t until the late 1980s that the genre truly took off. During the false utopia of Apartheid, the government-aligned media promoted the sanitised music of conservative and sappy ballad singers such as Bles Bridges. But by 1989, five years before the end of Apartheid, a group of young Afrikaners capitalised on the revolutionary spirit that was sweeping the nation and went on a legendary cross-country tour, singing rock songs in Afrikaans. So the Voëlvry Movement was born.
Voëlvry literally translates to “free as a bird”, and also hints at the idea of a ‘jailbird’. This latter meaning was all too relevant as the group of singers associated with the movement were banned and pursued by government forces at every step of the way. Their pseudonyms included Johannes Kerkorrel (think “Johnny Churchorgan”), Bernoldus Niemand (“Bernoldus Nobody”), and band names like “Die Gereformeerde Blues Band” (“The Reformed Blues Band”) which parodied the name of the Dutch Reformed Church.
One of the most famous songs from the Voëlvry Movement, “Sit Dit Af” (Switch it Off), exemplifies the catchiness of the music: lyrics divided into short, snappy lines, a repetitive chanting chorus, heavy electric guitar, and a punchy political message. The song calls for the television to be switched off whenever conservative state leader P.W. Botha–a regular target of Voëlvry protest–appears on screen. Outspoken criticism of Botha’s Afrikaans-majority government from within the Afrikaans community was a radical departure from the past, and even though the tide was turning against the ageing politician by the late 1980s, the Voëlvry Movement’s provocative lyrics were still controversial enough to have their performances banned and their movements followed by the security service.
The rock artists were unperturbed. Koos Kombuis, one of the few figures still alive, even argued against labelling their music as alternative, saying that the mainstream was “unimaginably more weird than we could ever have dreamt of being.” Their music continued to satirise the state, with songs like “Wat ‘n Vriend het Ons in PW” (What a friend we have in PW) and “BMW” taking on conservative Afrikaners’ perspective in order to mock them. “BMW”, for example, opens with a long wailing saxophone solo imitating the annoying sound of a BMW engine, as these cars were associated with the conservative white middle class.
Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), the irony of these songs were lost on some of their Afrikaner audience. During one performance in Potchefstroom a group of the audience–presumably of the BMW-driving variety–infamously cheered in support of the satirical lyric “We drive a BMW / Must we give everything to the black people?”. This raises the question of whether the Voëlvry artists could effectively protest the Apartheid government in the very language of the oppressors. As Audre Lorde argued in 1979 (a decade prior to the Voëlvry tour), “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Since the 1976 Soweto uprisings where several students lost their lives protesting against the use of Afrikaans in schools, it was clear that Afrikaans was the master’s bloody tool. In light of this, music from the likes of Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Dorothy Masuka, which popularised traditional African music, afropop, and jazz genres are more representative of truly revolutionary anti-Apartheid music. The Voëlvry artists have also been criticised for their male-centric music. Karla Krimpalien was the movement’s only female singer, and her absence on streaming sites and Voëlvry Tour albums is notable.
It might be more accurate to say that the Voëlvry Movement protested against the Apartheid government than Apartheid itself, drawing on aspects of their rule other than their racist policies. For instance, songs like “Hou my vas, Korporaal” (Hold me, Corporal) were profound criticisms of systems like the conscription of young, white Afrikaans men into the armed forces from 1967 to 1990. The song has a playful tune and lyrics such as, “I play war with my best days […] me and all my playmates together,” allegorising the Angolan Civil War in which South African men were forced to participate as a childhood game. It also employs the Voëlvry’s trademark use of refrain as the song repeats “yes yes yes” dozens of times to refer to the obedience and respect for authority deeply ingrained in Afrikaner culture.
Another defining characteristic of their music was concerned with redefining what it meant to be a male Afrikaner. This is illustrated in songs like “Boer in Beton” (Boer/farmer in concrete) about the adjustment of city living and urbanisation for a people whose identity was deeply ingrained in farming the land. While dismantling Apartheid was certainly part of their punk message, their scope was limited to their own privileged demographic, which unsurprisingly reflected in the demographic of most of their audience.
This is not to diminish their role in forging a new, less restricted Afrikaans consciousness. For all their swearing and references to drugs and sex which categorised them as punk and caused many an old Afrikaner tannie to clutch at her sakdoek (handkerchief), the movement produced beautifully nuanced music. “Ossewa” (ox wagon), for example, reclaimed the ox wagon that had been a symbol of Afrikaner identity since the Groot Trek, reimagining it as “funky new rock’n’roll” car blaring Elvis songs, instead of completely abandoning their heritage. The Voëlvry artists clearly aimed to provide an example of a way to be both distinctly Afrikaans and disagree with the conservative government: it was now possible to be proudly Afrikaans with one’s Afrikaans-ness rooted in a cause worth fighting for, in liberal protest, in rock music.
