I’m not sure you’re really married.
Last weekend, I attended the wedding of some of my very close
friends. It was a beautiful wedding and it was so nice to see them finally marry, but as I was leaving I realised that they forgot a vitally important part of
the wedding ritual. – A ritual specific
to white people throughout the whole of South
Africa , and most likely practiced by expats in the
UK and New Zealand as well. Yes, they walked down the aisle, exchanged vows, rings and
kisses. They signed the registry, were announced under their new name and we
all threw confetti at them. But something was missing. It’s such an ingrained
white tradition (among Afrikaans and English alike) that most people don’t even
notice its presence. However, ever since a Sotho friend pointed it out to me a few
years ago, I’ve become aware of this ever present wedding tradition and
was shocked, shocked, by its absence! No one in my generation has ever skipped this ritual before
and without it, well, I’m not sure you’re really married.
You see, somewhere between the time when they opened the
dance floor for the couples first dance and the time when they left for their
honeymoon they forgot …to play …Mandoza’s "Nkalakatha".
I know! How is that possible?
"The Macarena" doesn’t always get a spin, "The Time Warp" went
away and came back, and thank heavens people finally got bored of "The Cha Cha Slide",
but "Nkalakatha" has been an ever present item on all wedding reception playlists
since its release in 2000. Yes, 2000! – That’s how old it is! Other songs that
were released around the same time were "Breathe" by Faith Hill, "Bye Bye Bye" by
N’Sinc and "What a Girl Wants" by Christina Aguilera. - And no one ever listens to those any more! I danced to this song at my
matric dance more than 10 years ago and even then it wasn’t a new release.
How did this Kwaito song infiltrate white culture to such an
extent and stay there? And what does it even mean? Does anybody know? For all
we know it could mean “save the children”, it could mean “at least you’re
almost as hot as the maid of honour”, or it could mean “You should really get
that chicken-shaped mole on your face seen to”, but it doesn’t matter, us white
people wouldn’t care! We love "Nkalakatha"!
As strange as it is that this song has become the white
people wedding anthem of the century, what I can’t get over is the fact that
after all this time we still haven’t figured out how to dance to it. Heck, we
still can’t even pronounce it properly! It has to be the most awkward of
wedding rituals - second only to drunken disapproving father of the bride
speeches - but more necessary. How could they forget it?
I’m going to post a link to the song here, partially
because according to the map thing on this blog I have quite a number of
international readers and I’d like them to understand what I’m talking about.
(If this is not humourously strange to you I would like to remind you that
South Africans also refer to traffic lights as “robots".) But the main reason is because I’d like appeal
to white people everywhere to play it, turn it up and dance awkwardly and out
of time to this in honour of my friends. It’s not too late - we can save that marriage!
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