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THE HARRY & JIM SONG
Tom Hark
07-04-05
The tune of the frequently-sung Harry & Jim song (listen) comes from a soulful song called Tom Hark. Here is the story of how Tom Hark came to be.
Whilst the cover by Piranhas is the version played at football grounds, the original is by Elias & His Zig Zag Jive Flutes, from 1954.
When he was only eight, Jake ran away from his home in Alexandra
Township ("Dark City") north of Johannesburg. He took the six-holed tin
pennywhistle he'd pestered his uncle to give him, and went to the city
to play for white pennies on the street corners with other kids, dodging
the police when they tried to catch him, sleeping at night in the
backseat of a wrecked car on a disused lot.
They did catch him in the end, but by then he'd had six months of
playing music for a living, and he was hooked for life.
His mother hugged him when the police brought him back to her, and then
she beat his bottom with a straight and narrow stick until they were
both howling. Then she sent him to school, in a place he couldn't run
away from - Moria, Mount Zion, three hundred miles north of
Johannesburg, Holy Land to a million Black Zionist Christians. And she
sent his brother Elias ("Shamba"), also a pennywhistler, with him.
The brothers spent the mornings in the classroom with the priests and
their lessons, and the afternoons herding goats in the hills near the
holy city.
One afternoon they were sitting under a tree talking about Johannesburg.
After a time they fell silent, each longing for the racy life of the
townships.
Jake took his flute and began to play, and Elias joined in. It was a new
tune, vibrant with the fast freedoms of the street corners, and it swept
them away. They played on and on, with only the goats to hear, until it
was dark and they were breathless.
Jake stayed at Moria for five years, and then he and Elias went back to
Johannesburg, and the streets. Soon they had a band: three
pennywhistles, a bass made from an upended teabox, a bit of rope and a
broomstick, and a skiffle guitar. Jake thrived - this was better than
the church choirs of Moria. And it could pay twenty pounds in an
afternoon.
A year later a record company scout heard the band playing in the street
and offered them a chance to make a recording. They went to the studio
and recorded the tune Jake had composed that day in the hills of Moria.
They called it Tom Hark.
The record started with the sound of money clinking down onto a
pavement. Dice rattle, streetwise young voices call bets and argue, the
dice stop rolling, cheers and groans as the coins are scooped up again.
Feet come running and an urgent voice calls: "E Bops, kom maak gou -
hier kom die kwela kwela van!" ("Hurry up, here comes the police van").
"Tom Hark" has been watching for police at the corner.
Jake rehearses his band in 1997 - on the right is Zeph Ncabinde, who'd
played on the streets with Jake 45 years earlier.
Dice and cash vanish, out come pennywhistles and guitars, and the
gambling school becomes a kwela band (the music named after the police
van) and they swing into the irresistible tune of Tom Hark. The police
rumble past in their van. All clear - the music stops, dice rattle
down, a new Tom Hark takes his stand at the corner.
Tom Hark earned Jake and Elias studio fees of six guineas each (about US$12). Jake signed over the royalties on the record to Elias
as a gift because Elias was broke at the time. Elias was always broke -
everyone was always broke. Except the whites - so Elias sold the rights
to a record company executive and bought himself some snappy new
clothes.
The record sold a million copies, and then a million more, finally
levelling off at about five million sales worldwide. It was even used as
the theme of a BBC TV thriller series.
But the two young stars had already had all the money they would get out
of it, and they stayed broke, still living the street life they'd
described on the record.
"The police didn't like us playing in the streets," Jake remembers.
"When they caught us they beat us up. But I didn't care - the money was
good.
"But on Christmas Day in 1958 I was playing in Hillbrow. The street was
crowded with people listening to me. The police came. They beat me up,
they kicked me in the face and broke my jaw. You can't play kwela with a
broken jaw. Then they fined me for disturbing the peace."
After that he was too frightened to play in the streets again. He turned
to the record companies for a living. They robbed him, but they didn't
break his jaw.
For thirty years Jake's music has been his mistress. He worked in jazz,
soul, pop and mbaqanga (township jive), always with success. There was
the incredible thrill of playing by royal command to the Zulu king and
to the King of Swaziland, of travelling to Europe and adventure, of
having many names, and all of them famous. But he never managed to break
the big-time barrier again.
He started whole new directions in music - mbaqanga, the townships jive
that swept Africa, was largely his origination. He helped and influenced
scores of musicians, his music thrilled generations. He recorded about
250 records, many of them best-sellers - but always for others to get
rich.
The same golden wind that he wafted round the world still blows through
Jake's music, whether he's blowing jazz on his flute, jive on his tenor
sax or his alto, blues on his harmonica or kwela on his pennywhistles -
still his favourite, and he still has the original one his uncle gave
him when he was knee-high.
When he plays it these days it's no kid that's blowing, though sometimes
an old kwela tune among friends can shed his years until he looks
sixteen again. He's deeper now, more subtle - yet his pure and simple
kwela sounds simpler and purer than ever.
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