Kamagurka

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Kamagurka (real name: Luc Zeebroek) (May 5, 1956) is a Belgian comedian, cartoonist, painter and singer, best known for his absurd cartoons. He often works together with Johan De Smet.

He is a huge fan of Frank Zappa, The Residents and Captain Beefheart. He used to play their music to his children before they went to sleep.

Collaboration with Frank Zappa

In 1977 Kamagurka met Zappa backstage at a concert in the hall Vorst Nationaal in Brussels, Belgium [1] [2]. Kamagurka represented the magazine Humo, from whom he drew comics and cartoons, and wanted to interview Zappa. Zappa refused interviews that day, but Kamagurka had made a comic strip with empty text balloons too. He asked Zappa if he could at least fill the speech balloons in. Zappa thought up his own texts, wrote them down and the comic was published in Humo a week later, under the name "Zappa in Zoeloeland". [3] The comic strip references a few Conceptual Continuity gags: Sofa, Arf! and "the diatonic system." (See: Progress? on Ahead Of Their Time).

A scene from Kamagurka's 1976 comic strip "Zappa in Zoeloeland" with text by Frank Zappa.


The comic strip

A man is watching television. Suddenly his face transforms into Zappa's face. ("What's this? I'm growing nubs... no, hair!") After the transformation ("Ah, that's more like it") Zappa rises from his chair ("Now to rise from this consensed form of a "vliegende vette" sofa") and walks to the door. He opens it and shouts: "The diatonic system lives! The diatonic system still thrives, even in bilingual communities." (Kamagurka is Belgian and Belgium is a bilingual community.)

While the people in the neighbourhood react unimpressed Zappa and a girlfriend sit upside down in their sofas while Zappa laughs: "Blew their fucking socks off with that one, heh!" Then his face changes again while he mutters: "Arf". In the last panel the man is back his usual self and he mutters: "Orff?" (The caption mentions that Carl Orff is a "very diatonic composer".)

Notes

See also