It’s been 19 years since UK band Skunk Anansie began their unforgettable career in the rock world, and yet they sit in front of little old me, fresher than ever, ordering ice tea and Coke in the afternoon Johannesburg sun.Skin, the band’s enigmatic lead singer with the best vocals in the past 20 years of music, takes off her shades and looks me right in the eye. I shiver at her presence. She’s slight, but she’s no wilting flower. She’s a powerhouse.
She talks about the journey of Skunk Anansie being very interesting.
“We started off as kids in a band not really knowing what we were doing, just blundering around the music business, lucky to get a lot of success very quickly.
“Cut to now, we’re a grown up the band running our own label, having really grown up together and knowing each other so well.”
She says from then to now, the band has grown up approach to what they do. “We’re now business people as well as being artists, and as artists, we’ve come in leaps and bounds.”
Bassist Cass Lewis is equally powerful. A big man, he seems like he’ll eat your children for dinner and wipe his face with his dreadlocks, but he’s really one large – bloody talented – bag of laughs.
“I actually painted myself into a corner because Skunk Anansie is the only band I can play with happily. I mean, my reason for playing music is to be in this band.”
He talks about their lifespan and says he knows from experience what they need to do.
“I’ve realised that what’s important as far as longevity in playing music is concerned is that it’s all about your relationships we make as people, because that’s what defines your music, defines the atmosphere of your music and defines how much you enjoy your job.”
Skin, her presence still sending shivers down my spine, says it really is a job.
“That’s the beauty of it. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a plaything. It’s something we treat very seriously. It stopped being a hobby a very long time ago.
“But I don’t mean that like a swear word, but in a positive way, because everyone has to work but you want your job to be so exciting.
“It all comes together when you enjoy what you do and you choose to do that which you’re good at. That’s what our job is. It’s a really positive thing that we managed to find a job we love.”
She’s talking like we’ve been friends for years but I’m still breathing like I’m in space.
Always on the go
Having been around for so long, the band has evolved and morphed from the angry, heavy side to Brit Rock, to being one of the most respected bands in history with five albums of different styles.
Skin says it’s important for them to keep changing and developing because “the worst thing you can say to us is why are all your albums the same, Because that shows no growth or development… no imagination no kind of ability to look at yourself and move on from somewhere.
“A band just doing something and getting successful at it, and repeating to stay successful… Well, Life isn’t like that.
“We’re very excited by and in touch with what’s going on.”
She says she is a house DJ, Cass has a dubstep label, guitarist Ace is always producing and drummer Mark Richardson is always running around the world doing photography, filming and getting on motorbikes.
“We are all interested in now. For us, the music industry is what have you done for me lately and If you don’t keep Developing yourself and moving on, you’re going to be stuck in the 90s being a band going around the world playing songs from he 90s.
“That wouldn’t interest us.”
The band released a new album called Black Traffic last year, which both Skin and Cass say was experimental.
Skin is very excited about it. “It was a process of breaking down what we’ve done and building it up again.”
The latest acoustic album, however, was a bit of an accident.
“It started as being asked to do an acoustic gig and that was the beginning. Six months later, it ended up being an album and live DVD and that tends to happen with SKunk Anansie – we will have an idea and it will snowball into something much bigger.”
Cass says he likes to call that organic evolution.
“It’s the same process with our music. It’s not really plotted and planned… It seems to have a little catalyst that ignites an idea for something to change and then it snowballs and becomes its own animal.”
With a voice like silk, Skin makes my skin tingle when she talks about the music. I think I may just have one brig lesbian crush on her. In fact, I do.
“I think the basic reason why our albums are very different is that you have four different people with different influences who are every excited about new music and trying something different.
“We are brave. We’re not scared.”
I believe that. With courage of conviction in their performances, composition and lyrics, it’s no wonder nobody has lived up to their example since 1994.
We talk about the ’90s and both of them look at each other and laugh. I’m clearly missing a joke here.
“I think sometimes being a band from the ’90s is a stone around our neck, especially for our new albums,” Skin says.
We’ve actually done more work in the years we’ve been back together than seven years before. For us, it’s just important to have new life and new blood in our music.”
Skin and Cass of Skunk Anansie perform at Vodacom In the City 2013.(Photo: Nikita Ramkissoon)
The band split in 2001 and reformed in 2009 to what Cass calls a whole new Skunk Anansie.”To be honest,” Skin says, “the break was fresh air. We were about to implode with various issues. Some of them to do with addiction and other things that were going on.”We needed a break from each other. The wonderful thing is we didn’t destroy each other and then had to have a break. We stopped just before – a pre-emptive strike so to speak.
“We didn’t fall out with each other. Everybody went away to fix themselves and then we came back together a completely different band mentally, spiritually and emotionally and the maturity we had! We were four different people than we were before.
“We learnt so much. We would have definitely not been together now if we didn’t split up then and we’d have had much worse of a break up.”
I say that I didn’t even realise they had split until I looked them up after not hearing anything new and I was like whaaaaaat?!
Skin laughs and says yes. “The public memory of us was clean. Some bands split and get back together then people say ‘but, you hate each other’. We didn’t do that. We didn’t have a public fallout. They still loved us. It wasn’t hard for us to get back together again because they didn’t know about any issues. We’re a private band … we’re not tabloid.”
Cass, downing his drink says they didn’t have any big issues.
“We were still working with each other and intermingling with each other. It was not a clean break. It was just a need for fresh air.”
Diverse and determined
Skunk Anansie, which is made up of the four of them, Skin, Cass, Ace and Mark Richardson, are a racially and culturally different band that came together in London. Skin says that is one of the reasons it’s easy to be diverse.
“The natural thing to diversify. We’ve never over analysed the beauty of Skunk Anansie. We have never over analysed the positive or negative things that have happened to us.
“We’ve always tried to be individual and have our own sound and tried to not be too concerned with what everyone else is doing. We came out in the Britpop era and we are not Britpop.”
Cass says they are inherently diverse as well as a naturally diverse band just from the blend and cocktail that is Skunk Anansie.
“I don’t think it’s a conscious decision to be diverse. It’s something that happens naturally, hence the blend of music we have and eclectic range of songs we do.”
Skin says that they come from different places culturally. “Cass and I are similar as we got some West Indian culture behind us so we have those similarities. At the same time we have different experiences. Cass is from a different era.”
Cass laughs. “You milk that, why don’t you.”
Skin ignores his obvious jibe and says their influences are different. “I had to learn his influences. He was a teenager when some of the great rock was going on.”
Cass shakes his head. “Yeah, I don’t feel that old.”
Relevance after the ’90s
Speaking of age, Cass says that the Miley Cyruses and Justin Biebers keep them relevant.
Skin says: “I think you’ve got to have a lot of confidence within your band. We’ve got our chemistry and thing going on.”
She’s very adamant about the fact at it is not up to others to decide whether they are relevant or not.
“If you think Bieber and Cyrus are relevant, then it’s up to you. It’s not up to others to decide anything about us. We decide what we want to do and how we go about being our own band.
“You stick with your opinion and that’s fine, but you do not own my own idea of myself. For us we stay relevant because we are. We are still the only black female-fronted rock band in the world, and the most successful.
“Culturally, there’s nothing more relevant musically, because we’re still on our own. We’ve had a lot of racism but you and I know that it’s amazing that we’re still here and very relevant. We were one of the first and we’re still doing it.”
Cass laughs out loud and says that even when they stopped and gave the world space to fill the gap, nobody did. “That kept us relevant. We had to come back to fill our own gap!”
I tell Skin that my parents enjoy the music and she says that’s actually real.
“This kind of response – young people, people our age, older generations listening to the music – is not something someone faked.
“The whole Miley sex thing is to sell records. We are doing real things. Our music deals with real problems and issues and who we really are.
“I think that touches people. People get us. They are us. There isn’t a line between our fans and us.”
Black feminist rage
The term ‘black feminist rage’ has been used to describe the band’s style and even though Skin says she never said it, she is very feminist and political with her lyrics.
“I’m definitely a feminist and I’m black and some of the songs are very angry but it’s clichéd to peg it as just that.”
It’s much more than black feminist rage, says Cass. “We have different characters represented in all of the songs.”
Skin says the band is not just her, and that there are three other members, which people tend to forget. “I think it’s a perspective that people describe me as and look to me as,” and thus prescribe the sentiment to the whole band.
Though it is one unified band, the power is driven by Skin, and the band keeps up with her frantic energy. Her vigour transfers to the crowd and she commands attention.
Having just played South Africa’s Vodacom In The City and Rocking The Daisies, they rocked out like no other festival headliner I’ve ever seen.
As their tour manager comes in, Skin is talking about how much she loves festivals.
“You get to check out other bands, hang out with them… I love the vibe. It keeps us young, too,” she says with a laugh.
“And it reminds me we’ve still got what it takes.”
Cass agrees. “So many bands no longer exist, and yet we’re still here. Some may think of us as a bad penny. No. We’re fine wine.” – Nikita Ramkissoon
