Topic: Botswana Ronnie's Playing

[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.