This is not a post about Die Antwoord. No. Gazelle (its both a band and the stage name of Xander Ferreira, its frontman) first came attention with his infectious single “Verlore Seun” last year and in his videos dressed in his faux African dictator garb.  Who did not sing along to lyrics that go: “Sorry pappa ek moet die plaas verlaat/Want ek mis die blinke ligte te veel.” (Sorry dad I have to leave the farm, ’cause I miss the disco lights too much).  We were a bit beside ourselves for that song’s infectious beats and  odd lyrics. At the time my friend Herman Wasserman wrote on my old site: “The title – ‘Verlore Seun’ (Prodigal Son) has a Biblical resonance as well, again echoing the religious metaphors from Afrikaner nationalist discourse, but now the feelings of Calvinist guilt are undercut by a playful irony, and the son also displays an ambiguous/camp gendered identity. This not just rejection, not just nostalgia – underneath the fun and exuberance, Afrikaans identity is still being negotiated, and it’s often more painful than playful.”

Now’s Gazelle’s has a new video, above, for his single, “Just Now.” The new video was film at the Art Basel Fair in Switzerland that’s maybe why the confused looks of the mostly white “extras” as a white man in Mobuto garb (as Robert Mugabe?) with two black “assistants” in tow, throw around fake money (that he got in a Swiss bank account?).

Not everyone is a fan. Roger Young, one of the most prominent music journalists in Cape Town, in particular. His review, on Mahala, of one of their earlier shows in November 2009, couldn’t contain the snark. Young thinks Gazelle is all show and no substance and probably, he didn’t say it that directly, like Die Antwoord: “Maybe I just don’t get it, but I was never a fan of people shouting over House music. Dressing it up in “pastiche” doesn’t make it anymore appealing.” Young doesn’t think it is all that deep or that the audience gets it: ‘… I get that Gazelle are playing with stereotypes, that they’re a pastiche band, that they’re theater, or any of the number of excuses people put forward to defend them but the bodybuilder looking guy down front with the mullet and the trucker probably doesn’t care about these things, because he doesn’t need excuses, he’s totally into it, looking deranged and air fisting (the more aggressive cousin of the air punch) the rows in front of the stage look like a rave in 1998 and it works to Gazelle’s advantage that their songs are not distinguishable from each other, for all their performance the only thing it seems that the audience wants is the house music. The genius of Gazelle is that those who don’t like the music can always fall back on the “But don’t you get what he’s trying to do, intellectually?” stance….’