12 ENTERTAINMENT
PEOPLE'S POST | ATHLONE Tuesday, 10 February 2015
GAMMIE LAKAY
Lighting up Carnegie Hall GARY VAN DYK @gvdcapejazz
him joining the Kramer/Petersen family. “I always knew Taliep (Petersen) from working with the minstrels and he always loved my playing. For many years he would tell me that he wanted to work with me but both of us were always busy with other projects. “Eventually Howard Links (bass player for Kramer/Petersen) rocked up at my place and just said: “Kom, Taliep soek vir jou.” And that was that.
T
he journey from a blikkitaar in Athlone to stepping onto the stage at Carnegie Hall started when Gammie Lakay fell in love with the sounds that surrounded him in his neighbourhood. If you’ve been to a David Kramer concert or production over the past 25 years, you’ve experienced the musical magic that happens when he gets that guitar groove going, he’s been in the band for that long. While working with Kramer and the late Taliep Petersen in their productions, touring the world has been a dream come true for Gammie. And it’s a journey that is still continuing. In December last year Gammie was part of the band that went to Carnegie Hall in New York. He said when he stepped onto that stage he thought back to his roots. “I was very emotional,” he says. “Was this laaitie who learnt his music on the streets really standing on this stage? “As I plugged in for the sound check and the first notes of my guitar rang out I knew it was not a dream; my passion for music had paid off.”
Right moves Gammie points out that growing up in 7th Avenue in Athlone you could not help having music influence you. “This is the same road as the famous Butler family,” he says. “Music came to you from the corners where guys were singing, the langarm bands, the Christmas Choirs and, of course, the Minstrels. When I first heard the sound of the guitar with the choirs I knew that I
Musical journey This relationship has also seen some of Gammie’s original material featured in the Kramer concerts. “A particularly proud moment for me was when David included my tune Ons jol innie Heideveld for the concert in Carnegie Hall. “Of course we eventually sang Ons jol innie Carnegie Hall and watching the people get up and dance made me realise how proud I was to be working with the best in the South African music industry.” The musical journey is far from over for Gammie and there is still much he is doing and wants to do. Recording is high on that list of getting his original material on an album, he wants to teach more youth music, and he still loves doing gigs when he is not working on a Kramer production. He has formed a group Fantacy with singer Vincent Carlindt and they do a regular gig at the Ground Coffee Restaurant (4 Denver Road, Lansdowne) on Thursdays from 20:00 and on Saturdays at Cafe Royale (also in Lansdowne Road) from 17:00. V Gammie Lakay can be contacted on 083 776 5092. Check Gammie in action at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rBjnakTmWA. akTmWA.
The guitar groove of Gammie Lakay has taken him all over the world and onto the stage at Carnegie Hall. PHOTO: GARY VAN DYK
wanted to play.” There was no money for an instrument at that time so some ingenuity saw him making his own guitar from a tin can. “I just had to play something,” he laughs. “There were no formal lessons so I just watched. My ‘guitar’ may not have been in tune, but my fingers were making the right moves and in my head I was a star.” Eventually he got a real guitar for his birthday when he was 13 and he started taking his music more seriously learning from those around him and getting involved with the minstrels. “My music school was the streets, the radio and gramophone. There was always music around me and I wanted to play every-
thing from The Shadows and Beatles to Jimi Hendrix.” Eventually word of his talent spread and he was invited to join the band Harold and the Hippies (eventually shortened to just The Hippies). “We were very popular on the local scene,” he remembers. “Richard John Smith was also part of the band at the time and we even had a bit of a hit with the song Storybook children, but the radio would not play it because hippies were supposed to be ‘bad’ at the time,” he laughs. Since then there have been many bands that he has played with. But it is the relationship with the minstrels that eventually got
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