David Kramer (2)

Guitarist/singer-songwriter/playwright/director/producer David Kramer is little short of an institution in his native South Africa. With his trademark guitar, bilingual songs, sardonic yet funny lyrics, "rooi vellies, dikwiel fiets and baggy pants" image, the idiosyncratic performer has managed to irk the tempers of the then-apartheid government, champion the causes of the small-town populace of the Western Cape, as well as secure himself the reputation as a truly local curiosity in the minds of anyone else that's ever watched television. Of Dutch/Lithuanian heritage and born June 27, 1951 in the Karoo town of Worcester, Kramer played in a band called The Creeps in the sixties before moving to the UK to study textile design at Leeds University in 1971. An Honours Degree later he returned home and to music, portraying himself as a rural everyman who traveled the dusty roads of small town South Africa with an old bicycle and a cheap guitar. Debut album "Bakgat!" was released in 1981 on Mountain Records (2) and promptly fell foul of the SABC censors on account of its political content and supposedly vulgar mixture of English and Afrikaans. David Kramer did, ironically, become quite the household name as the face of the SA Volkswagen Microbus advertisements after being recruited by Volkswagen in 1983 for a campaign that lasted over a decade. In 1986 Kramer attained the rights to his catalogue from Mountain Records and released the seminal "Baboondogs" album under his own "Blik Records" (BliK Music) banner, and the following year the hugely successful stage musical "District Six" (a politically-influenced telling of the forced resettlements) was openend at the Baxter Theatre. The first of many such collaborations with Taliep Pietersen, this partnership was to last two decades (before Pietersen was murdered) and spawn multiple award-winning plays -- both locally and abroad. In December 2007 Mr. Kramer was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Literature by the University of Cape Town.