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Originally uploaded by Christo Doherty

Marcel van Heerden - photographed at the launch of The Black Tape CD at the Warren Siebrits Gallery in Johannesburg on 18 March. The CD contains previously unattainable recordings made by the  legendary noise-protest group, Koos, in 1989 with Shifty Records. The new release of The Black Tape was produced by Warren Siebrits for Paul Riekert’s One F label.

 Better known as one of the great Afrikaans actors of his generation, Marcel van Heerden was the founder and vocalist for Koos.  He explained the background to starting the group during the darkest days of Apartheid in South Africa. in the late 1980s he travelled through Namibia (then South-West Africa) as part of an Afrikaans theater troupe. He had been exempted from military service; so he had no idea of the severity of the war, until his group arrived at the northern military town of Oshikati near the Angolan border. To his amazement there were trenches and bunkers on an enormous scale around the entire town. He hadn’t realised this was happening. Like most of the white population in South Africa, he had been screened from the reality of the war by the state controlled media. That night the troupe performed their play in the town and shortly afterwards the sky lit up with arcs of tracer fire and the ground shook with the percussion of motar bombs. Marcel ended up having to take shelter in one of the bunkers, shaking through a long night of automatic fire and explosions.

When he got back to South Africa he decided he had to do something - what else could he do? he started a band - Koos.
After three years of playing they released a single cassette, sold in a brown paper bag at their performances - The Black Tape.