Topic: Botswana Ronnie's Playing

[Stumblin]

It wouldn't be anything like this, now would it?

(Link followed following facebook prompt from fellow Weenie.)
There seems to be a lot of Ronnie's music about this week. Some people think he's female, not sure why, perhaps they have privileged information to which I am not privy. Speaking of which, I've got to go...

[Gumbo]

Wowza  

[bnemerov]

This vid's been floating around for a while, but I hadn't paid close attention (a chronic condition with me, just ask my wife) until it turned up here.
Look at the stringing of the instrument: No 5th string.
Years ago when my friends Gerhard Kubik and his Malawiian brother-in-law Moya Malamusi were visiting--they were both part of Donald Kachamba's Kwela Band at the time--Moya put my jumbo guitar in east african mode to play some parts for me to learn.
He removed the 5th string and tuned the rest as:
6th--G
4th--D
3rd--F#
2nd--A
1st--C#
all up 1 semi-tone

What he played wasn't exactly like this fellow (who sounds like he's in a consonant open tuning rather than Moya's D maj.7 with 4 in the bass) but had the same loose loping rhythmic pulse.
I'm not sure what to make of this "missing 5th" convention. Anybody?
best,
bruce

[lindy]

FYI, Ronnie is a woman, see page #23 in the "Country Blues-related Videos on YouTube" thread. She has become a bit of a Web star since that first video appeared.

I will venture a guess about the missing 5th string, with no evidence to go by except for listening to a lot of African music over the years. The sound she is trying to achieve is very common in the indigenous and pop music of that part of Africa (Botswana, South Africa), with the bass string only used as a punctuation to end phrases. She may view the fifth string as getting in the way of being able to freely wail on the top four strings, and removing it as a way to really keep the 6th string separate. I don't think there's any theory involved, it's just Ronnie being very practical in terms of setting up the strings to match her unusual approach to playing the instrument, and to sound like what she hears being played in her part of the world.

L

[Alexei McDonald]

FYI, Ronnie is a woman, see page #23 in the "Country Blues-related Videos on YouTube" thread. She has become a bit of a Web star since that first video appeared.

"Ronnie Moipolai from Kopong village in the Kweneng district 50 km west of the capitol Gaborone. He is 29 years old and goes around the shebeens selling and playing his songs for 5Pula each (80dollarcents). He learned guitar from his now late father, has 3 brothers that also play guitar (KB is one of them), has also a big sister and plenty of kids in the yard. Nobody has a formal job and his mother sells Chibuku beer and firewood they get from the bush trying to make ends meet."

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/18/happy-new-year-luie.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[lindy]

Alexei--

When I first saw your post it got my dander up, but after looking around, I have to say thanks for instilling doubt in me. I saw the vid just a few days after it was first posted, and I went with my first physical impression--I immediately thought female. Also, Ronnie was described as a woman in the earliest responses to that initial vid. Looking at those comments today, after a while they start to waver between male/female:



Also, I never saw a vid with Ronnie singing until today, and the vocals sound more male.

Some non-YouTube posters and bloggers are really careful about writing their comments to keep them gender-neutral. Note that one of the people who wrote a response to the boingboing post that you linked us to wrote: "Can someone not make a plan and send him a new guitar? Can you image what she could do with it!!!" Cover all your bases, as they say.

If the boingboing comment is truly from the guy who shot the original vid, I guess I'll have to go with that.

L

[Pan]

FWIW he seems to be quite at ease with 6 strings as well:



or only with four, and/or with playing with the conventional left hand position::





which IMO doesn't make his playing sound any less entertaining.

Cheers

Pan

[Alexei McDonald]

It's a combination of Ronnie's gracile features and the headscarf that confuses people, I think (and I know, I was one of the confused), but after watching a lot of the videos, I changed my own mind since I'd heard how he spoke and how he held his body, and had read a lot of the comments.   I should also apologise for getting your dander up - that really wasn't my intention.

[lindy]

That's the weird thing about communicating via email or on forums, your first reaction is often based on how you're feeling at the moment, not on the writer's intention, with no facial/physical cues to go by. The good side is that you have time to look around and see what's been updated, and change your opinion. The danger comes when you hit the "reply/send" keys too quickly.

And thanks, Pan, for posting vids featuring some of the nastiest guitars ever to appear in public.

L

[Parlor Picker]

The guitars may be nasty (and I agree here), but clearly this shows it's what you do with 'em that counts.

[Stumblin]

So he's definitely a bloke then?
I just went with the youtube title.

[Parlor Picker]

So he's definitely a bloke then?
I just went with the youtube title.

I think the topless video confirms that, Andy.

[Stumblin]

So he's definitely a bloke then?
I just went with the youtube title.

I think the topless video confirms that, Andy.

Ah. I haven't seen that one.
Now I'm not sure I want to...

[Parlor Picker]

Ah. I haven't seen that one.

It's the top one in Pan's set of three up above.

[Stumblin]

Ah. I haven't seen that one.

It's the top one in Pan's set of three up above.

I guess you're right, thatdoes kind of clinch it. Thanks. Must take brain in for service...

[apocryphilia]

(New guy here- I posted a brief introduction in the introduction thread)

I am utterly enchanted by Ronnie and other dudes on that channel "Bokete7," which is worth checking out further.

I lived in Botswana as a kid (parents did Habitat for Humanity for 3 years) and I wish I could say I saw these guys playing stuff like this and it made me nostalgic, but really I was just enamored with rap and dancehall back then. The style of music is really familiar to me, but I can't say I remember seeing guys with guitars hustling songs for 5 pula. (I do remember a guy who would pick up a railroad tie with his teeth for 2 pula - about 50 cents)

That Southern African guitar style is something I'd like to explore more, and I'm curious if anyone else has tried to play this stuff. It kinda reminds me of the Zimbabwean guitarist George Sibanda, who some of you might know. Plus, I have a kind of a strange affinity for beautiful music coming from shitty guitars.

The style seems pretty simple, but I can't figure out how the guitars are tuned. I'm sure there's not a uniform tuning, but does anyone have any basic idea? Here are a couple more of my favorites from that Youtube page:

[Gumbo]

apoc - check bnemerov's post earlier in this thread

http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?amp;Itemid=128&topic=7640.msg61304#msg61304

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I just re-watched the first post on this thread and really tried to pay attention to get Ronnie's tuning.  It turns out that apart from missing his fifth string on that tune, the tuning itself is remarkably un-exotic from a Country Blues point of view:  It is Vestapol, just a hair flat of F, so that his open strings are tuned F-__-F-A-C-F, or Root-void-Root-3rd-5th-Root.  Some of the little two-fingered partial chords that Ronnie uses in the treble would suit blues guitar-playing just fine, and you virtually never see them used.  It's interesting that a lot of his stunts are virtually identical to those you can see Furry Lewis doing on the films of him that were made in the late '60s.
All best,
Johnm
Edited to add:  Ronnie is playing Vestapol on all of the videos, in either its six or five-string version.  One interesting wrinkle:  In the post Pan did with three different videos, in the second video, Ronnie is playing in Vestapol in the key of the IV chord.  So if you imagine him being tuned in Open D, for that particular tune, he would be playing in G, and his home position would be a fifth fret barre, which is what he keeps resolving to.  All of his songs are three-chord songs using only the I, IV and V chords, which gives you some idea of the richness of his musical imagination to get so many different sounds and melodic ideas with that pared-back chordal vocabulary; once again, much like the blues.

[craigmulcahy]

How awesome is this?!
If seen some people playing around with bit's over the top of the guitar neck but this is awesome.

Thought I'd share.

[Johnm]

Hi Craig,
Since there was already a thread on Ronnie, I merged your new thread with that one.  He's a great player, isn't he?
All best,
Johnm

[uncle bud]

If youtube paid royalties, Ronnie would be rich. I have seen his videos everywhere, shared by quite disparate groups of people. I hope he's made a little extra cash somehow off his internet fame. (I'm sure Zuckerberg shared as recompense for all the viral Facebook entertainment Ronnie has provided people.)

[craigmulcahy]

Thanks John,

Blew me away. It's awesome.