So many different genres of music originate from African music, yet a lot of African music as an entity of its own never quite gets the recognition it deserves. This week’s artist originated in South Africa and are only one of 23 wholly South African acts to make the UK singles chart. Many of those acts only ever had one UK hit, in fact, Troye Sivan is the most successful with 10 hits to his name. His biggest hit was One Of Your Girls which reached number 11 in 2023. Elias And His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes were the first with their one and only hit Tom Hark. It’s been a UK hit five times and although Elias’ was the biggest, reaching number two in 1958, it’s not the most well know version. Who was Tom Hark anyway?
This song was probably the unlikeliest hit of the decade. Elias and his Zig-Zag Jive Flutes were a 10-piece outfit led by Elias Lerole and included no less than seven flute players, one of which was Elias’ brother Jack. It was an instrumental and was supposedly recorded live after playing a game of dice on the streets of Johannesburg in late 1956. The music they played on the street was known as Kwela. Kwela is best described as lively and upbeat and very much based around the pennywhistle. Locally, another name for the pennywhistle was a jive flute, which, in sound and style, is a cross between traditional South African music and jazz.
Tom Hark was not a person. It was a slang term used for the police vehicle that used to go around picking up the dice players as it probably wasn’t legal. When the police were bundling the dice players in the vehicle they often used the word kwela as a means of hurrying them up. Kwela in Zulu has another meaning which is ‘climb on, get up’ which may explain why the police used it. Traditionally, it was shouted out on the street when joining in with the songs.
The musicians used to play jive flutes on the street for money and in order to protect themselves from being robbed or attacked, they used to carry knives and tomahawks for protection. It’s also believed that the title was possibly as mis-hearing of tomahawk.
One day, Elias and Jack, along with two other flute players, Zeph Nkabinde and David Ramosa, were playing on a Jo’Burg street when a music producer and talent scout named Rupert Bopape came by, heard them, liked their sound and offered them a chance to record at a newly-formed black division of EMI records. Either way, they went into the studio and recorded Tom Hark.
Getting music out of Africa from difficult. As the renowned broadcaster, author and musicologist Charlie Gillett once wrote, “During the 1950s and 60s, it was rare for music to travel beyond the continent. In most African countries, recording studios were technically ill-equipped, and record companies rarely had any system for exporting records even to neighbouring countries, still less to the major markets of the West. In 1956, however, South African singer Miriam Makeba, as guest singer with the Manhattan Brothers, had an isolated American hit with Lovely Lies. Eleven years later, in exile in the United States, she had a Top 20 hit with Pata Pata, and the following year her ex-husband, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, topped the chart with Grazing in the Grass. In 1973, Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango made the Top 40 with Soul Makossa, a pioneering disco hit that sold more than 100,000 copies in the United States despite negligible radio airplay.” Michael Jackson was a fan of Soul Makossa and used part of it in his hit Wanna Be Startin’ Something.
Tom Hark was an easy-on-the-ear tune and was picked up by band leaders including Ted Heath who took a version to number 24 and also by Paul Gayten, an American R&B pianist who recorded a version under the title Windy both in 1958. Gayten went on to play piano on some of Chuck Berry’s songs. The Alan Tew Orchestra recorded a version in 1973 and Bert Kaempfert & His Orchestra laid down their version four years later. Millie and Georgie Fame both recorded a version in 1964, with Fame’s being re-titled Tom Hark Goes Blue Beat and there was even a real-life whistling version by Whistling Jack Smith in 1967.
One man who was very influence by African music was Paul Simon and recorded his 1986 album Graceland which was partly recorded in South Africa and featured the South African vocals groups Ladysmith Black Mambazo or the Boyoyo Boys.
Fast-forward to the 1980s and we come to most well-remembered version by the Brighton-based ska band The Piranhas. Their version carried two slightly erroneous writing credits on the label with Bopape spelt as Bopeape and someone called Good. Good was actually The Piranhas frontman ‘Boring’ Bob Grover, yet on the sleeve of the 45, it correctly credits Grover.
Grover claimed he wrote the lyrics on the way to the studio. It was produced by Peter Collins and the executive producer was Pete Waterman. Grover’s lyric opens with, ‘Does anybody know how long to World War III? I wanna know, I wanna book me holidee, They want me in the Army but I just can’t go, I’m far too busy listening to the radio’ but it’s the four-line chorus that is most memorable, ‘You have to live, or else you die, you have to laugh, or else you cry’
The song became a football chant among fans of Brighton and Hove Albion. but naturally, in the football world, lyrics got changed when the team weren’t doing so well and the ‘enemies’ began chanting, ‘your team is shit, I don’t know why, but after the match, you’re going to die.’
In 2005, a new version was recorded by a Campaign group to support the building of a new stadium for Brighton & Hove Albion in the nearby village of Falmer. The campaign led to the building of The Amex, now a Premier League ground. The Piranhas gave their permission for the song to be remade as the lyrics has been altered again to ‘We Brighton fans are angry, we’ve been messed around, since the wayward Archer sold the Goldstone ground, we’re stuck in this athletics track we really hate, like playing in Albania division eight. ‘ The chorus that followed explained, ‘Our ground’s too small, the costs too high, without Falmer, our club will die’. That version went to number 17 in 2005 and 18 months later, yet another version by the Talksport Allstars called We’re England (Tom Hark) fared less well when it stalled at number 37.
Jake Lerole died in Soweto in 2003 from throat cancer and Bob Grover died on Christmas Eve 2024.