I was born in the fifties in apartheid South Africa. In our house we listened to Uncle Eric Egan on Springbok Radio and occasionally he’d play some of the new rock ‘n’ roll music. Songs by Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Eddie Cochran and Elvis Presley. It was like receiving a message from another planet. I started dreaming of being a rock ‘n’ roll star and wanted to play the guitar. My grandfather bought me a ukulele and I begged my mother for a pair of bright pink socks. When my father brought home a Topaz record player, my brother bought our first records at MN Smuts ? the only shop in town that sold EPs and seven?inch singles. Little Richard, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry were my favourites. A lifelong love affair with this music had begun.

In 1986 I started work on the musical DISTRICT SIX with Taliep Petersen. I became fascinated with the stories he and the older cast members and musicians told of their experiences growing up in the fifties in District Six; of the iniquities of being a so?called “coloured” entertainer in an era when the apartheid regime was at the height of its power. One of the actors in our musical was singer Salie Daniels who told me how he had grown up on the streets of District Six; how he and his friends had formed a vocal harmony group called ‘The Rockets’ and how they were befriended by a white woman called Eugenie Bleuler who wrote their songs and managed to secure them a recording contract.

Never for one moment denying the cruel realities of apartheid and its legacy of destruction, listening to these story tellers relate their experiences of life in the District and on the road, I was struck by the humour, the resilience, the romance and the larger-than?life quality encapsulated by these reminiscences. KAT AND THE KINGS was inspired by these stories. It is an attempt to capture the magical quality of being young and bursting with energy and talent; of being full of hope and dreaming big dreams, and believing that anything is possible despite their situation.

Taliep and I wrote this musical in 1995 to provide work for some unemployed actors and singers. Salie Daniels was one of them. What to do with five young guys and a man in his late fifties? I thought it would be interesting to explore the idea of a has?been entertainer being confronted by his younger cocky self.

Salie Daniels never gave up on his dream. As a boy he ran away from home and lived on the streets of District Six. All he wanted to do was sing. And he did: with ‘The Rockets’, with other bands and variety shows that toured southern Africa. When he died in 1999, he was proudly clutching his Laurence Olivier award for Best Actor in a Musical that he had just received. Salie’s dream came true, playing the role of Kat Diamond, telling his story of a singer whose life was so much like that of his own.

David Kramer