Sharon Katz and the Saga of the Peace Train
by Richard Cuccaro
It was November of 2001, probably about 2 0'clock in the afternoon. We'd just finished lunch at the
Northeast Regional Folk Alliance conference. I was talking with singer/songwriter Erik Balkey,
swapping notes, like baseball cards, about familiar performers who were at the conference. Then,
he threw me a curve. "I can't wait to see, Sharon Katz and the Peace Train," he said. "Whoa!
A new one! What an odd -- and long - name for a group," I thought. All I knew was that they
came from Africa. An African group led by a woman with a Jewish name? Very intriguing. I
eagerly waited for their appearance during the main showcases. I was not disappointed. Before
the first note sounded, I was struck by the visual kaleidoscope of colorful African robes adorning
the players. The band was a mixture of white and black and male and female players. Two women,
Sharon herself, on guitar, and Lynn Riley, on sax were the only white members. A black woman,
a backup vocalist at times, was primarily a dancer. She high-stepped and kicked her way through
African dance styles. The bassist and drummer were both black men. When the music kicked in,
we were greeted by an uplifting aural swirl of funk, jazz and African folk music. Between songs,
Sharon briefly spoke of the group's birth and its connection to Nelson Mandela's release from jail
and his ascendancy to South Africa's leadership. However, I remained unaware of the magnitude
of her connection. I saw her again at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 2002 and then recently at
a New York City nightclub. Afterward, we talked briefly and it finally dawned on me that there
was a wonderful story here that I'd been missing. Before we talked by phone, I checked her web
site and my introduction to the Sharon Katz saga began.
At turning points in history, key figures rise and walk forward while the rest of us lie sleeping.
In 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of jail in South Africa after 27 years of incarceration. He
had placed his life on the line to combat the evils of apartheid, sacrificing decades of personal
freedom. By 1993, on the brink of the push for the first democratic national elections, the factions
within the warring black population struggled for power. Mandela, leader of the African National
Congress, became the leading candidate for president. A major opposing organization, the Pan
Africanist Congress rejected Mandela's proposals for a multiracial government. Violence also
threatened from the primarily Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, which at the time was considered
to be a puppet of the white apartheid interests. When a unifying force was needed, it was
Sharon who stepped into the breach and, using the healing power of music, joining with ongoing
political efforts toward compromise, almost single-handedly tipped the scales toward cohesion.
She formed the country's first-ever, 500-member multi-cultural and multi-lingual performing group
and staged the production called "When Voices Meet" in the town hall of the city of Durban, on
South Africa's east coast. Sharon rehearsed members from different racial and cultural groups in
nine, separate areas for 3 months. She managed to bring them together for performances on three
separate nights within a week, before three thousand people each night, including high-ranking
officials from every political party including the ANC Chairperson and the King of the Zulu people.
To continue the idea of coexistence, Sharon took 150 of the "Voices Meet" performers and began
a railroad tour throughout South Africa. She called it "The Peace Train." As the performers played,
sang and danced to promote a peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa, TV and radio crews
rode on board and broadcast each event to the nation. At each stop along the route, they performed
their concert and encouraged people of all races, cultures, ages and political affiliations to put down
their guns and hostilities, to prepare for the country's transition to a peaceful democracy.
When Mandela was campaigning, she performed at all his rallies with her band in stadiums, before
70 to 80 thousand people, singing about unity and a peaceful transition to democracy in South
Africa. A few months later, Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first democratically elected
President. How was she able to do this? Her life gives the answer.
Childhood in Port Elizabeth
Sharon's path to becoming a musical ambassador for coexistence began in childhood. Her story
begins in the city of Port Elizabeth on the eastern coast of South Africa, at the edge of the Indian
Ocean. In the booklet that accompanies her latest CD, Imbizo, we read: "Born to white, first
generation South Africans, Sharon grew up within Port Elizabeth's Jewish community in a socially
conscious and music-filled household, (not particularly political, but with strong human values.
Her mother taught speech and drama, her father was in the timber business. Her grandparents
had emigrated from Eastern Europe to South Africa." She states: "When I was growing up, the
Apartheid system was really entrenched. Everything was separate. There was a separate radio band
for African music, too. My ear instinctively tuned in to that." Especially the choral stuff. She added,
"Well… I'm Jewish, so I had a lot of Jewish music influences." She recalled another important
stimulus. "Of course, the other major influence in my life was American protest folk music;
Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, and Joni Mitchell; they were my heroes. Their music
spoke to me because it expressed opposition to the type of cruelty and viciousness of the system
that I was living with." Putting her ear up to the radio, at the age of 11, she'd memorize notes of
songs and try to learn how to play them on the guitar. She bought songbooks of works by the
aforementioned artists plus songbooks from Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Bookends.
In elementary school, she exhibited strong leadership qualities, forming one band after another. "My
first group was called 'The Shalom Bomb,'" she says. "It was the name of a poem by a Russian
author. I was about 13 years old when I started that band. I was always a bandleader. We used to
play at weddings and functions, within the Jewish community. We'd also play at children's homes.
It was just a hobby then, having nothing to do with earning a living. However, it was also about
social change. I always believed I could try to make the world a better place, even when I was a kid."
When she was 15 years old, the path leading into the anti-apartheid movement expanded. "At that
time," she states, in her clipped British-sounding accent, "it was all very, very illegal to speak out
against the government. You could get arrested and never be seen again… many people did.
Somehow, I got invited to this private viewing of a play by [white South African anti-apartheid
author] Athol Fugard. Athol lived about 10 miles outside Port Elizabeth. I witnessed a piece of
theater that was so powerful and so moving that I felt I had to go up afterwards and make friends
with the actors. So I did." The actors she referred to were black. She'd visit the actors in their
homes in the black townships. "They had to hide me in the back of their car, throw a blanket
over me and then they'd cross through a checkpoint, like a border post." Whites needed a permit
to cross the border. The blacks were issued passes and were routinely stopped everywhere to show
them, not just at the checkpoints. "I used to go there with a black actor, John Kani," she said.
"He's a very famous actor these days. We laugh about it now. 'Sharon, I could've gotten arrested
because of you!' he says today."
After high school, Sharon continued playing music at the University of Cape Town. While getting
her degree in English and African Government, she also took music classes. Self-taught, she didn't
know music theory, so she learned how to read music and studied classical guitar. She started
writing her own songs at this point. She traveled extensively around South Africa as well, making
excursions into the townships. She was driving now, using the back roads to avoid the checkpoints.
"I had my ways and means," she told me. She'd attend choir competitions on weekends, absorbing
the remarkable harmonies. "I was collecting African music, singing and learning."
A particularly ugly facet of apartheid was the forcible uprooting of blacks from their homes. An
encyclopedia account states: "African townships that had been overtaken by white urban sprawl
were demolished and their occupants removed to new townships well beyond city limits. Between
the passage of the Group Areas Acts of 1950 and 1986, about 1.5 million Africans were forcibly
transported from cities to rural reservations." Sharon reiterated: "At that time there were a lot of
forced removals. The government would move people out of the townships and send them to what
were called 'homelands.' I used to spend all of my spare time with these people in these places. I
sang with them in their houses &endash; little shacks -- and in the churches for concerts and get-togethers.
They were singing about their own liberation. It was their protest music and it kept their spirit alive.
The African National Congress was banned and Nelson Mandela was in prison during these years.
There was a low-grade underground resistance going on. I was part of it and known in those areas.
I still have song recordings on cassettes from those years."
After graduating, Sharon worked as a guitar teacher and performed in clubs and coffeehouses. Her
foray into playing classical guitar was left behind, along with her college career. She realized that
she was at home playing folk and rock.
After she finished college, Sharon began traveling. After a trip to Israel, she traveled to Canada and
then entered the United States through Detroit. With her backpack and guitar she traveled around
the country, indulging in another favorite pastime, mountain climbing. Sticking out her thumb, she
hopscotched from Colorado to California, Oregon to Tennessee, and Indiana to New York. Although
she found life outside apartheid liberating, home still called and she returned to South Africa, to
continue building bridges reaching out to her black countrymen.
Next, Sharon spent a year in Lesotho, an independent country that sits like an island within the
borders of South Africa. She taught English to children in a mission school &endash; sixty to a class -- in
the mountain village of Seforong. At night, she sang with them in their huts. Quoted in the Imbizo
CD booklet she states: "It was a very enriching experience. I could see the power of the music &endash;
how it helped the people survive. Every aspect of their lives had music involved."
In 1979, Sharon got a part-time job at a government institution for the mentally retarded. She had
become aware of the concept of music therapy and wanted to develop more skill in that area. She
noticed how many depressed people couldn't talk, and would just sit and stare. Then, they would
suddenly sit up and become attentive at the sound of music. During this period, she also undertook
formal independent study in the basics of music. The Trinity College of Music of London would send
out examiners all over the world to test its correspondence students and upon completion of the
program, grant a "licentiate."
She was also playing solo in and around Cape Town in folk clubs, coffee houses, restaurants and bars,
singing everything from African pop to blues to jazz to covers by Bonnie Raitt. Things heated up,
however, when Sharon's impulses toward uniting people ran headlong into apartheid policy. She was
forming bands and choirs that brought whites and blacks together. As she was attempting to organize
a multi-racial concert, her government employer told her, "You can't do this," and threatened to fire
her. She was coming dangerously close to detention or worse. She explained: "A lot of our friends
were being arrested because they were involved with labor unions, which were banned. Some of my
political friends were under house arrest. Banned literature and music had to be smuggled in."
It was time for another move. No courses in Music Therapy were available in South Africa, so Sharon
applied to a masters program in the United States at Temple University in Philadelphia. She was
accepted on the basis of her studies and her experience, in spite of what she feels was her "unorthodox,
irregular background." She said, "I came over in '81. I loved it. I studied at Temple for 3 years and
got my masters degree. I stayed in Philadelphia for about 8 years. I was quite active, playing around
the Philadelphia area, performing the South African protest stuff and educating people about the
struggle there. A lot of people from Philadelphia remember me from those years." [Hmm… does this
refrain sound familiar?]
Sharon spent two years in New York City, as a music therapist in the public schools in Brooklyn.
Sharon remembered, "I had done my internship in the Philadelphia prison system. In New York,
I got really good at working with gangs and difficult, troubled kids." Sharon managed to convey
the value of music to them and got many of them to pick up instruments instead of knives and chains.
She taught performance skills, which helped build confidence and self-esteem.
In 1988, Sharon returned to Philadelphia for a year, working as a music therapist by day and playing
clubs at night. She then spent more than a year in Israel, where she discovered black African players
and dancers. She formed a band called Soweto Soul and wound up playing at Israel's most prestigious
venues along with well-known visiting bands such as the post-Bob Marley's Wailers and Burning Spear.
1991 was a momentous year. Sharon had returned to Philadelphia and was performing on the club
and festival circuit. After a concert one evening she met Joseph Shabalala, the leader of the South
African band, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, made internationally famous through collaboration with
Paul Simon on his Graceland album. She said "I stayed and waited for Joseph after he did a show.
I gave him a demo that I had made. He phoned me about 2 weeks later. He was doing a play in
Chicago. He said 'Sharon, I love your music. When are you coming home?' I was pining to go home.
Mandela had just been released. I'd done all this studying, teaching and performing. It was time to take
it all home." After a meeting with Joseph in Chicago, her mind was set and she convinced her manager,
Marilyn Cohen to accompany her to South Africa. Marilyn planned to stay for 6 weeks and wound up
staying for 9 years! They arrived in Durban in June of 1992, and Sharon began performing solo in a
lunch hour concert series on the steps of city hall. The audience started at a few hundred and kept
growing. Sharon saw how well she was received and felt that she was finally home.
The scales of time were now ready to tip Sharon's combination of musical and teaching skills into
her moment in history. She got her career going again starting a new band called Afrika Soul, finding
gigs and doing a new recording. She began to '"get discovered." Her talent for working with groups
led the Performing Arts Council of Durban to invite her to undertake a major choral work. Seeing this
as an opportunity to celebrate the end of apartheid, Sharon proceeded to assemble the 500-member
multicultural choir. All her talent in subduing the tough kids of Brooklyn would be brought to bear as
she inspired black children from rural regions to sing "The Time is Right Today," next to white children
they weren't sure they could trust. After three months of rehearsals in nine separate cultural
communities and only one week of practice together, the first concert for "When Voices Meet" was
performed on May 16th 1993. Half the songs were arrangements of traditional African music. Sharon
wrote the other half. One of these was titled,"We are the Children of South Africa." Broadcast in its
entirety on radio and shown in clips on television, the message to South Africa's leaders, presaging the
Peace Train, was clear: "Get on board or get out of the way!"
Unfortunately, it took a tragedy to finally jolt everything into motion. A few weeks after the concert,
while elections were being discussed, respected ANC leader Chris Hani was assassinated outside of his
home by white supremacists. The country threatened to explode in rage. Elections were finally
scheduled for 1994. The time had arrived for the concept of the Peace Train to continue the message
of "When Voices Meet." Sharon and Marilyn embarked on a fundraising drive and convinced
Ladysmith Black Mambazo to accompany them on the tour. At the tour's inception, Sharon's band
was still known as "Afrika Soul." This changed as the tour made its way through South Africa, on its
way to being seen by 200,000 people and receiving major media coverage. The journey was not
without some rough spots, despite the euphoria of the 150 performers aboard the train. At the town
of Ladysmith, warring factions ordered the train stopped. Vans were sent ahead, using loudspeakers to
announce the performance and urge everyone to put aside their differences and attend the show.
Two hours later when the train pulled into town, they were greeted enthusiastically by thousands of
people of different races and political positions. They received a police escort to an indoor arena and
performed to a exhilarated audience. Talk about dodging bullets!
Following this, Sharon was commissioned to write songs in various South African languages to
teach people to vote for the first time in their lives. She was shown by CNN, arriving by helicopter
to teach her songs in a remote area. She said, "It was like being on the crest of a wave. I feel very
honored to have been part of South Africa's transformation."
Not enough has been said here about Sharon's music. She says, "I've got quite a bit of fusion in
my work." using the term "Mbaquanga" to distinguish its type. She also includes the term "Marabi"
to refer to the Afro-jazz element that resulted when rural Africans moved to the city, much as the
music of the Mississippi Delta became Chicago blues here in the U.S. Some say her guitar work
reminds them of the Nigerian master, King Sunny Ade. Her joy is infectious as she weaves and
sways while staccato, twinkling notes fly from the frets of her guitar, all while maintaining a muscular
rhythm.
Imbizo, Sharon's first American release on the Appleseed Recordings label, earned a Grammy
nomination for Best World Music Album. Since then, Sharon and her band, The Peace Train, have
performed from coast to coast, including Carnegie Hall in NY and The Getty in LA. On June 12
at 7:30, Sharon will perform a rare solo set at the Tuscan Cafe, 5 South Street in Warwick, NY
(845) 987-2050. Then she's off overseas again, returning for a West Coast tour with her band in
August and back to New York for the Puffin Festival on September 18 in Teaneck NJ (201-836-8923
for tix and info). Check out www.SharonKatz.com for more information and perhaps even plan to
travel with the band to South Africa in summer 2005! Continue to check Acoustic Live for further
details.