HAENERTSBURG – Tamla developed her love for music in her mother Julie’s womb. Her father, Mark, a heavy metallist as well as ‘old-school’ music fan, would play music daily during Julie’s pregnancy. Tamla started to play guitar at the age of 10 and, while still at Stanford Lake College, started a band and developed her style of music in the heavy metal genre.
Sisters of Metal was formed three years ago and it consists of women in their early 1920s. They all have their own bands and so decided to form a ‘super group’.
The other members of Sisters of Metal are Robyn Ferguson and sisters, Callysta and Roushan van Niekerk. Robyn’s band, Adorned in Ash, is a Christian metal band commonly known as white metal. Robyn was born in Cape Town but has lived most of her young life in Pretoria. Callysta and Roushan are from Johannesburg and in a band called ‘Posthumous’.
Unfortunately with a scarcity of female drummers, Sisters of Metal had to choose a male drummer, Alex Temperly, originally from Zimbabwe, and who now lives in Johannesburg. Tamla plays rhythm guitar, Callysta lead guitar, Roushan is on base and the small and petite Robyn is the singer. “Robyn sounds like she’s possessed when she growls and one can’t believe the powerful voice coming out of such a tiny individual. She also does ‘clear’ vocals,” Tamla said.
The festival in Angola meant Tamla got her first taste of flying. The band flew the three hours from O.R Tambo International Airport to Luanda on SAA and flew another 45 minutes on a charter plane to Catumbela in Benguela province. The Catumbela River flows into the sea and Catumbela has a beautiful white beach. The band was put up in the five-star Hotel Riomar and in Luanda they stayed at the three-star Hotel Pyrimide.
The two-day Rock No Rio festival featured 20 bands with many Latino bands and talented drummers with bongos. The well-known band Rish from Kenya performed on the first night and the atmosphere throughout the festival was electric with everyone in the audience dancing.
Tamla loved her brief time in Angola and said the people were so friendly and the food was particularly delicious. She enjoyed the fish called bakalya, akin to cod fish, and a Portuguese soup called chinchada made with olives and lots of wine.
Recently a friend from Pretoria presented her with a beautiful sounding Epiphone SG guitar worth at least R15 000. “It’s a gentle instrument compared with my other five guitars,” she said with a smile. Besides practicing her music for a minimum of an hour a day, Tamla is also in her final year of horticulture studies at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria and is doing her practical at Martin Dale nursery outside Tzaneen.
