Our mayor has called it his new favourite song that gives him goosebumps. It’s a new track by a Cape Town entertainment veteran with a slick music video that anyone with doubts about visiting here needs to see. And Gasant Abarder writes that, after giving it just one listen, it should be playing on all our radio stations.
It’s called ‘The Cape Town Song’ – A Musical Love Letter to the Mother City’ and it is recommended listening for anyone sitting in traffic and battling this winter funk.
We all know that Cape Town is the playground of many but also a tough place to live and work for many others. We know the score: we’re often told the Joburgers are paid better, and our cost of living is much higher.
For thousands of Capetonians, a journey to work and back can be a four-hour commute on the daily, and they’re usually the residents who bear the brunt of the Cape of Storms we’ve experienced recently. Add on top of these woes these bugs that have been going around making us sick and which eerily remind us of the not-too-distant Covid onslaught days. We need this song now more than ever.
On this vibrant track, Fagrie Isaacs has managed to bring the two worlds of Cape Town together in a way that celebrates our fair city, warts and all.
At the launch last week and watching the music video for the first time, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis posted on Facebook: ‘Congratulations to Fagrie Isaacs for this incredible new Cape Town anthem. I love it!’
The mayor added, ‘It captures so much of what makes Cape Town so special. Let’s make this song famous.’
Fagrie, of course, needs no introduction for the millions who follow the klopse carnivals. But if you haven’t heard, he is a celebrated artist whose career spans almost 35 years in the music industry. He has performed for audiences locally and abroad and holds the record of 25 first-place awards in the Kaapse Klopse solo category.
He has performed at prestigious venues like Carnegie Hall, and his acclaimed Luther Vandross tribute show has sold out in major cities around the world. He has also been an opening act for legendary acts like Peaches & Herbs and Atlantic Starr.
To match Fagrie’s soulful voice and stage presence, he collaborated with Cape Town’s finest creatives like Ameer Williams, who produced the song set for release on radio at the end of June. For the music video, he turned to Live4Ever Productions’s Malick Abarder (he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother!) to produce and direct with a screenplay by the talent Saarah Warley. Then he got TikTok dance sensations The Street Kings to make a special cameo in the video.
It is a fusion of sound that is fronted with the unmistakable ghoema sound that can’t be replicated anywhere else in the world. And the visuals don’t only show Clifton and Table Mountain, but also Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain and the vibrancy of the city, with even a taxi journey thrown into the mix.
‘This latest single is an expression of the love and joy I have for my beloved city, Cape Town. It’s my love letter to the Mother City,’ says Fagrie.
‘This song is a showcase of what Cape Town means to me – a place of beauty, resilience and rich culture. I hope it inspires people to see the magic of this city the way I do.’
If you’re yearning for sunshine, then give the track a spin in the car. It’s the antidote we need to remind us we live in the most beautiful city in the world. I’m tired of listening to Sabrina Carpenter, Drake and Chris Brown on rotation on our local radio stations. I want to get sick on Fagrie Isaacs’s ‘The Cape Town Song’.
Also read:
Picture: Supplied (Music video producer and director Malick Abarder, left, with artist Fagrie Isaacs)
