Kaburu: "Een, Twee"

Written by Kaburu
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 17:46

This publication has in its possession an astounding recently completed research paper, and we’re proud to be among the first to release this document to the world. The thesis contains undeniable evidence of interaction between higher-order mathematical, biological and musical disciplines, resulting in actual physical manifestation. The author is Dr JC Beukes, an Afrikaner from Germiston, who studied at the University of Southern Northern Limpopo. He is, in our view, a leader in his field. Herewith a summary of the findings of his ground-breaking thesis.

Doctoral candidate: JC Beukes

Thesis title: “Een, twee!”

“One of the most misunderstood, indeed under-valued forms of music is sakkie-sakkie, an iconic concertina-driven genre widely associated with braaivleis, rugby and two-tone shirts. It is musically and mathematically speaking lethally difficult to play. It was only when I tried to play it myself that I understood why certain extremely complex events occur when it is played.

Here I speak not of the sudden mass eruption of the two-step, which requires lurching with outstretched right arm and upward-pointing thumb (hence the two-tone shirts: to dance in time, you look at your chest, then boep, chest then boep, and so on. The colour coding helps.) No, I speak here of what happens to the facial expressions and physiology of the orkes and its leader, the concertina player.

A convivial character, he will introduce a song with a broad smile and animated bearing. “En nou, dames en here, die Bloukrans Vastrap!” Behind him, the equally animated and broadly smiling band will be counted in by the drummer, thus: “Een, twee!” A blistering concertina intro, and the groove kicks in. This groove goes “rung-chukka-rung-chukka-rung”, and it is at this point that something remarkable happens.

Such is the steaming concentration upon which the orkes now engages that, with the precision of Japanese kabuki, their postures and expressions change with an instant, horrible but awe-inspiring unity. The former joviality upon the visage of our orkes leader is replaced by a look of indescribable agony. Head tilted slightly and obliquely to the side, he stares viciously and cross-eyed into an ill-defined middle distance.

His mouth, abruptly abandoned by a totally overwhelmed brain, sags gapingly in the opposite direction, and drool emanates from this orifice.
Now comes a truly astounding event. Amidst the awful amount of high-end musical mathematics going on, it is logical that chaos theory will emerge, this evolving to string theory, and therefore leading to the orkes beginning to flounder. At this point, in a supreme achievement of multi-dimensional cogitation, the band leader whips his contorted body through a 45° arc.

This is the mathematically accepted signifier for “bliksem, kêrels, we’re lost!” In a mind numbing leap, the orkes applies unification theory, and in a mathematical algorithm called the “gear change” they change key. This goes “ka-rung-chung-chung!”
Now thundering ahead in uncharted territory, the orkes is an incredible assembly of problem-solving savants, each searching independently for a mathematical outcome that will not lead to the horrible genetic mutilation of the assembled swirling and stomping chest-boep nodding herd. Unaware that they are too late to prevent this chemical/biological event, the orkes valiantly and in total panic screams “Balke toe!”
This is a signal for the man behind the bar, in a validation of cross-disciplinary fusion of musi-mathe-biology, to quickly start opening the mampoer jugs in anticipation of the rapidly approaching event horizon. At this point, in a finite example of ordered random mathematics, a mathematical conflict occurs among the two-tones – a fight breaks out.

Variant causes exist, but generally it will be between a Bulls fan and anyone else within arm’s length. This causes a re-ordering of the complex musi-mathe-biology involved, ie the re-ordering of the problem-solving priority order of the bass player’s reasoning: he snaps his G-string. Without this string, in theory, there is nothing going on. And so, in a cataclysmic, despairing resolution, the orkes crashes to an end. There is silence.
And the drummer shouts: “Een, twee!”

(Editor’s note: This publication regrets the fact that the Dr Beukes was discovered too late to be included in our previous edition’s list of top 20 South African leaders. Next time.)