Photo: SuperSport / Twitter screenshot
Photo: SuperSport / Twitter screenshot
Afrikaans musician Kurt Darren has had a tumultuous 24 hours. The singer shot to infamy on Monday night after his attempt to perform the National Anthem at the Varsity Cup Final went viral for all the wrong reasons.
He’s been accused of butchering the Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika after failing to prepare for the gig properly. While he had no trouble with the Afrikaans and English parts of the tune, he struggled monumentally when it came to dealing with the Xhosa, Zulu and Sesotho stanzas. In fact, he just skipped large parts of those sections:
Players from both Maties and Tuks burst into laughter when Darren stumbled his way through the song, with many unable to contain the sheer bemusement caused by the whole affair:
With his pride bruised and ego battered, Kurt Darren found the cojones to explain himself on Tuesday morning. That humility lasted for about a minute, though. He rang up Eusebius McKaiser on Radio 702 with his excuses to hand, blaming a large crowd for his “honest mistake”.
Darren maintained that performing in front of 20 000 people was “a different animal” for him, and wondered why his faux-pas was even newsworthy. He questioned why he was getting such a hard time from South Africans for “messing up one line” – that’s when McKaiser piped up…
The radio host bluntly told Kurt Darren he’s had 25 years in the business to prepare for this moment and learn the lyrics. Fuming with the response, the singer ends up slamming the phone down mid-conversation.
Darren failed to issue an apology and remained adamant that he did nothing wrong – yes, that’s something which still remains open to interpretation, but the standard procedure for a major f***-up is to apologise for the sake of common decency. By refusing to do this, he’s somehow managed to make things worse.