When actor and musician Ian Roberts’ friends heard he would be visiting family in Port Alfred this Christmas without his Radio Kalahari Orkes band, they were disappointed.
After a successful Sunshine Coast tour last year, fans were hoping he would be back again with his unique brand of “Sefrikan” sound.
“Ja boet,” he explains in a typical Eastern Cape twang. “It’s great to be back home.”
Born and bred in Fort Beaufort, the grizzled actor became a household name using local Boet and Swaer humour in the long running Castrol can of the best oil adverts on TV.
Already planning to visit his mother, Lynn, in Port Alfred, Roberts decided to put on a few shows in the area after an old schoolmate twisted his arm to play.
“My friend, BJ Ford, who is an electrician in Grahamstown, called me and said: ‘listen Boet I hear you coming to visit your mother for Christmas, why don’t we do something’. I was OK with that.”
What “sounded like a good idea at the time” quickly turned into a five-piece band as Roberts roped in Kenton-on-Sea bed-and-breakfast owner Norman Light and others.
Although Roberts now stays in Joburg, he has deep Eastern Cape roots and went to school at St Andrews before going on to study Xhosa and drama at Rhodes University where he graduated in 1979.
On the first day of shooting the iconic Castrol adverts somewhere in the Kalahari in 1988, Roberts suggested they use flattening of the vowels style East Cape speak instead of just talking in English with a thick Afrikaans accent as originally suggested.
“I just used the Lower Albany way of speaking that I had grown up with and the rest was history. It was an instant hit,” he recalled.
If you think acting and making music is all glitz and glamour, then think again.
After almost 40 years in the game, Roberts admits that he has been so bankrupt at times he had to borrow money from friends.
Although he has worked on stage, TV and the music industry, Roberts has not let fame go to his head.
“No matter what we do on the planet, our biggest creation is actually nothing…you can leave a legacy behind but it’s nothing at the end of the day.
“If you do not allow this stupid preoccupation with achievement to govern your life then you are on healthy wicket and can live a fairly satisfied life.”
Content to drive around in a knocked up old Land Rover he bought in 1989, Roberts looks and speaks a lot like Boet from the oil adverts.
“I call it my Mozambique mud leveller, my Kalahari Ferrari goes anywhere.
“I drove it here from Joburg bru, sometimes people scold me for driving such a battered old car but I love it, it only has 735000km on the clock.”
Although Roberts and the Radio Kalahari Orkes are busy recording another album, he is looking forward to getting out of the studio and playing with friends – often in front of other friends.
Instead of bowing to the demands of record companies the band raised R100000 to finance it themselves through crowdfunding.
“It is going to be an unbound piece of creativity, it has been great to have complete freedom.”
Unable to categorise the unique songs he plays, Roberts says it is inspired by everything from rock, quickstep, the polka, waltzes, bluegrass, ragtime, reggae and even the oil can guitar sounds he played with farmworkers as a child.
All the songs are lyric driven and can feature everything from English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and even Portuguese – picked up from countless Mozambique road trips – that merge together to create a distinctly “Sefrikan” flavour.
Roberts and friends will play in Bathurst tomorrow night before doing a three-night run in Kenton from Saturday.
‘Boet’ teams up with old friends
After a successful Sunshine Coast tour last year, fans were hoping he would be back again with his unique brand of “Sefrikan” sound.
“Ja boet,” he explains in a typical Eastern Cape twang. “It’s great to be back home.”
Born and bred in Fort Beaufort, the grizzled actor became a household name using local Boet and Swaer humour in the long running Castrol can of the best oil adverts on TV.
Already planning to visit his mother, Lynn, in Port Alfred, Roberts decided to put on a few shows in the area after an old schoolmate twisted his arm to play.
“My friend, BJ Ford, who is an electrician in Grahamstown, called me and said: ‘listen Boet I hear you coming to visit your mother for Christmas, why don’t we do something’. I was OK with that.”
What “sounded like a good idea at the time” quickly turned into a five-piece band as Roberts roped in Kenton-on-Sea bed-and-breakfast owner Norman Light and others.
Although Roberts now stays in Joburg, he has deep Eastern Cape roots and went to school at St Andrews before going on to study Xhosa and drama at Rhodes University where he graduated in 1979.
On the first day of shooting the iconic Castrol adverts somewhere in the Kalahari in 1988, Roberts suggested they use flattening of the vowels style East Cape speak instead of just talking in English with a thick Afrikaans accent as originally suggested.
“I just used the Lower Albany way of speaking that I had grown up with and the rest was history. It was an instant hit,” he recalled.
If you think acting and making music is all glitz and glamour, then think again.
After almost 40 years in the game, Roberts admits that he has been so bankrupt at times he had to borrow money from friends.
Although he has worked on stage, TV and the music industry, Roberts has not let fame go to his head.
“No matter what we do on the planet, our biggest creation is actually nothing…you can leave a legacy behind but it’s nothing at the end of the day.
“If you do not allow this stupid preoccupation with achievement to govern your life then you are on healthy wicket and can live a fairly satisfied life.”
Content to drive around in a knocked up old Land Rover he bought in 1989, Roberts looks and speaks a lot like Boet from the oil adverts.
“I call it my Mozambique mud leveller, my Kalahari Ferrari goes anywhere.
“I drove it here from Joburg bru, sometimes people scold me for driving such a battered old car but I love it, it only has 735000km on the clock.”
Although Roberts and the Radio Kalahari Orkes are busy recording another album, he is looking forward to getting out of the studio and playing with friends – often in front of other friends.
Instead of bowing to the demands of record companies the band raised R100000 to finance it themselves through crowdfunding.
“It is going to be an unbound piece of creativity, it has been great to have complete freedom.”
Unable to categorise the unique songs he plays, Roberts says it is inspired by everything from rock, quickstep, the polka, waltzes, bluegrass, ragtime, reggae and even the oil can guitar sounds he played with farmworkers as a child.
All the songs are lyric driven and can feature everything from English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and even Portuguese – picked up from countless Mozambique road trips – that merge together to create a distinctly “Sefrikan” flavour.
Roberts and friends will play in Bathurst tomorrow night before doing a three-night run in Kenton from Saturday.
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