KNYSNA NEWS - PJ Powers got the sixth Knysna Literary Festival off to a great start on Thursday, March 19.
PJ Powers is famous not only for her voice and music, but for her fearless love of South Africa which, in the 80s, took her into Soweto and other places where no white woman would have dared to go. It is this magic that she brought to Knysna.
She started by telling a captivated audience that, three years ago she woke up and thought, "I am going to write a book." Then she would have been unable to believe that she would one day be honoured to be a part of a literary festival.
"I wanted to tell my story, so I picked up the phone and dialled Penguin and said I wanted to speak to the boss. The switchboard operator was confused, asked me which boss and who I was." Eventually she was put through to Frederik de Jager.
De Jager asked her if she could write and Powers said that she could not. This phone call however resulted in a meeting that afternoon at Penguin's offices and there her book, Here I Am, was born.
Here I Am is more than a story about journey of one of South Africa’s most beloved music icons; this extraordinary memoir is set against the turbulent backdrop of South Africa’s recent political history.
On Republic Day 1982, a white rock-and-roll band called Hotline, wearing stonewashed jeans and sporting big hair, took an accidental left turn into Soweto – a detour that forever changed the life of their lead singer, PJ Powers.
Hotline became the first all-white rock-and-roll band to ‘cross over’ into highly segregated apartheid South Africa and made international headlines in the process.
The prolific Powers went on to accomplish extraordinary heights as a solo artist with countless gold and platinum discs Here I Am, ghost written with Marianne Thamm, is an intimate and hilarious account of the life and times of one of this country’s most recognisable and enduring performers.
In the hour that Powers had with her Knysna audience, she made her book come alive, but also shared much of herself.
She revealed that Thamm had helped her find her voice and helped her to dig deeper into her life than she initially intended.
Here I Am relates the story of the dizzying heights of international stardom to the dark depths of her struggle with alcohol, mixed with the politics and music of the time. Powers told little anecdotes about her childhood and had the crowd laughing at her candour. "I was born six years after two brothers and then a sister, so don't tell me I wasn't a mistake, and I felt like one. My sister told me she stopped smiling from the time I was born!
"Not only that, but when it came to looks and a body, at the age of 12 I didn't want to hear what a lovely personality I had," she said about being a 'big girl' all her life. "But this did, from an early age, make me focus on entertaining people and making them happy since I couldn't count on my figure."
She says that her appearance was also perhaps one of the reasons why she so loved singing in townships because black people loved her regardless of the size of her behind.
Powers says she was living the high-life, flying friends all over the world and thinking she could write best-selling songs forever.
"One day, I sat down and couldn't write a song, and song-writing was always my greatest asset. It was downhill from there on," she said. She lost her expensive car and eventually she was singing in furniture stores and buying bottles of Vodka she could not pay for. PJ Powers was penniless.
She wowed the audience with her passionate and humorous retelling of her story, interspersed with her best songs. She sang Jabulani, which ahe famously sang at a stadium in Soweto on May 31, 1982 and also treated the audience to a song that she sang for the British queen at the Royal Albert Hall.
But perhaps the most poignant moments of the event was when she put her glasses on and read the emotionally charged first chapter of her book on how she came to the lowest point in her life. Her disarming sincerity evoked many a tear from the rapt audience.
She concluded the evening by saying: "This book is about what I would have told my 17-year-old self. Don't go through life so fast. Live one day at a time. Stop rushing."
At the end of the hour, she received a standing ovation. The founder of the Knysna Literary Festival, Ling Dobson of Pam Golding Knysna, said that Powers' performance was "beyond awesome!"
The founder of the Knysna Literary Festival, Ling Dobson (left), welcomes PJ Powers to the stage at Sirocco.
ARTICLE: ELAINE KING, KNYSNA-PLETT HERALD JOURNALIST
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