Afrikaans music extravaganza, Skouspel, upset by tweeting rappers

Two Afrikaans rappers, Jack Parow and Snotkop have upset the organisers of Skouspel, Afrikaans music’s biggest festival, with their Twitter updates. Traditionally, the lineup at Skouspel is a well-guarded secret but just after one o’clock today, Afrikaans music icon Snotkop revealed, via Twitter, who he was busy rehearsing with.

Snotkop deleted his tweet minutes after it had been sent when he realised the trouble he could get into for doing this, but it had already been re-tweeted by some of his nearly 1 000 followers. It might sound like nothing, but in the very lucrative Afrikaans music scene, this is very damaging to the prestigious Skouspel brand.

And barely 48 hours earlier Rapport, the “biggest Afrikaans Sunday newspaper in the world” revealed that the princess of Afrikaans music, Juanita du Plessis, was threatening to not take part in this year’s Skouspel, if the controversial rapper Jack Parow was part of it. Huisgenoot hastily claimed that Parow wasn’t part of the show, but it was reported that he was only left out due to pressure from Du Plessis.

Following this news Parow caused further embarassment by (@JackParow) tweeting that Du Plessis is a “judgmental d**s”.

Skouspel is the most profitable annual musical event in Southern Africa and has been running for over 10 years. Every October the best-selling magazine in the country, Huisgenoot, pays the most successful Afrikaans singers of the previous book-year (in terms of sales) to perform in seven consecutive concerts which take place over two weekends at Sol Kerzner’s Sun City.

Tickets for the event are hard to come by and when they go on sale, more than six months prior to the actual event, they sell out faster than soccer World Cup tickets. And they’re not cheap either. The cheapest tickets on Computicket go for R315 and rake in anything in online resales from R1000 to R6 000.

Snotkop (@francoishenning) tweeted to his nearly 1 000 followers that he was rehearsing for Skouspel with @emoadams, @RomanzMusic @wicusvdm, @chereelarge and @SuzanneRentzke – all big names in the Afrikaans music industry. The tweet was deleted minutes later after, we can only assume, after one of the online savvy Huisgenoot employees pointed it out to him.

This year’s Skouspel (translated “Spectacular”) takes place from the 1st to the 11th of October when the entire Pilanesberg region is transformed by thousands of Afrikaans families. Tradition dictates that nobody knows who is performing at each year’s Skouspel and it’s only revealed on the first night’s concert. Huisgenoot keeps it quiet because there are many artists and record companies that profit from the event and are often sworn to secrecy not to reveal the line-up.

Conflict between artists is also something which organisers spend a lot of time managing because they often feel left out. Despite much pressure from record companies, Huisgenoot tries to keep the line-up as representative as possible and often includes one or two unexpected artists in the line-up to add some flavour to the event. But thanks to Twitter, and some loose fingers, part of the secret 2010 line-up is out.

A Facebook Page called “Let Jack Parow sing at Skouspel” was hastily put up in response to the weekends events.