Bankin' off the North-East Wind

Cape Town's mid-stream radio-station, KFM, touts its mix of "the best hits and memories" as a reason to tune in whilst trekking off to join the daily grind. I generally find little to inspire me in the very over-played pop-centric "hits" - seemingly overrun with girl groups empowering/objectifying themselves with banal post-feminist lyrics about how their asses are just the best thing in town and how their men don't appreciate them despite that. I seriously missed the bus on how all that works.

Nor do I get that excited about most of the stock selection of "memories" - usually from a small pool of 70s to 90s classics which anyone over 25 would likely be able to sing along to word-for-word by now. Safe, honest and unoriginal; no interesting b-side tracks or knowledgable commentary, just the kind of common-denominator fare to be expected from a station targeting that median, middle-class member of the community (Cape Town politicians and media love the rosey, homogenising image of "the community"). Competitions, jokes, vox-pop, endless phone-ins with frequently tedious left-of-median outliers...

Listening-in, it's easy to drift benignly along in the main, bypassing the fringey inlets, the more demandingly rewarding, and complicatedly satisfying by-ways of this burgeoning, diverse and quite unique African city. Tune in, switch-off and float away.

...which is exactly what I do every morning. Who am I kidding? Maybe we're all uniquely deviant, but just like to succumb to bovinity and swish our tails in the pastures for a while every day to re-synchronise with society and be happily uncomplicated for a bit. Maybe Matt from Plumstead calling-in to say how much he loves the show and that he is going to Plettenberg Bay with the kids for Easter used to hold the body-count record for sharp-shooting insurgents during the Bush War. And perhaps Mary from Blouberg who can't believe she just got 2 out of 12 for the general knowledge challenge and who is celebrating her 20th anniversary tomorrow participates in pre-Christian era fertility rituals while her family thinks she's at bookclub. Perhaps Quarkman from Cape Town, singing along with the common people as he gears down for the speed trap on Eastern Boulevard has in fact been clandestinely labouring day and night on behalf of his dark masters from a distant planet.

KFM lets us listen to world as we'd like it to be when we're too busy or tired or overworked to indulge our depravities. Simple, sanitised, it celebrates and straddles the centre of the bell-curve - give or take a deviation or two.