What started in 2019 as a group of male students and friends who met weekly to be creative together, led to the formation of the Boek Klub music group.
The group, which songs such as “Erste dates”, “What are you?” and wrote and released “Best Friend” together, in the meantime realized that it takes sacrifice and hard work to build a music career.
The group mainly consists of Anru Vorster, Inus Prinsloo, the brothers Christiaan and Rudolph Hartman and Jan-Hendrik Labuschagne, and four other members who are part of what they describe as a cultural movement.
Inus tells in RNews’s studio that although the group is currently scattered around the world, they still often try to make music together when they are in the same province.
Their single, “Eerste dates”, was received with great praise by Afrikaans music listeners. The song is about the pain of an unknown first meeting, says Inus.
“The song tells the story of all the uncertainty and doubt that rages inside you before you finally meet that person. In the modern times in which we live, many meetings take place through websites such as Tinder and Hinge, and one cannot always be so sure of what you will get, or whether the person will even show up.”
Inus says that most of the group met as students at the University of Pretoria in the Sonop men’s dormitory.
“We wanted to be creative in our home language, sometimes we got together to make music or draw, and so that our girls didn’t think we were just sitting around drinking, we dubbed the group Book Club, and it stayed that way. We only realized afterwards that there was a TV program with the same name.”
According to Inus, everyone in the group walks their own path, but they cherish the common dream of making music for a living.
“Unfortunately, it is not that easy. It’s a difficult process, but we’ll have to see what comes out of this for the guys.”
If they have to single out a highlight in their career so far, it is a performance just after the Covid pandemic at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. They performed with big names like Coenie de Villiers, Refentse and the Heuwels Fantasties, and the people were incredibly friendly and really hungry for live music.
Jan Blohm and Ryno Velvet count among the group’s greatest musical inspirations. “Artists should sing and write about the things they are experienced in and not try to make it too complex.”
“First Dates” is available on all major digital platforms.
- Listen to the full studio interview with Inus Prinsloo from Boek Klub at the top of the report.
