tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/hugh-masekela-19470/articles
Hugh Masekela – The Conversation
2022-05-12T14:06:45Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182702
2022-05-12T14:06:45Z
2022-05-12T14:06:45Z
Jazz: South Africa’s Shane Cooper and his band Mabuta make borders irrelevant
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462251/original/file-20220510-20-k7vw2d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shane Cooper (striped shirt) with his Mabuta band members. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Aidan Tobias courtesy Shane Cooper</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African jazz seems to be having another international moment. Recently, for example, the Blue Note jazz label launched a new imprint, <a href="https://www.bluenote.com/announcing-blue-note-africa/">Blue Note Africa</a> dedicated to the continent’s music. Its first release – and his second for the label – will be South African pianist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/nduduzo-makhathini-mn0003068518/biography">Nduduzo Makhathini</a>’s <a href="https://www.bluenote.com/nduduzo-makhathini-returns-with-in-the-spirit-of-ntu/">In the Spirit of Ntu</a>. In the same month, <a href="https://2022.jazz.org">Jazz at Lincoln Centre</a> hosted a South African season. </p>
<p>Even the UK’s annual BBC Proms this year will dedicate a night to <a href="https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-2022/prom-56-the-south-african-jazz-songbook/">The South African Songbook</a>, with trumpeter <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/marcus-wyatt/">Marcus Wyatt</a> conducting the international <a href="https://www.mo.nl/en/the-orchestra">Metropole Orkest</a> and the voices of South African vocalist <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/node/6283">Siyabonga Mthembu</a> and Zimbabwe-born UK singer/songwriter <a href="https://nataal.com/eska">ESKA</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, such exposure is not unprecedented. South African painter <a href="https://www.gerardsekotofoundation.com/artist-overview.htm">Gerard Sekoto</a> was playing jazz in Paris bars in the late 1940s. The international careers of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-iconic-singer-miriam-makeba-and-her-art-of-activism-178230">Miriam Makeba</a>, <a href="https://abdullahibrahim.co.za/biography/">Abdullah Ibrahim</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a> are only the best known of a raft of musicians who sought exile from <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>. The South African band <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-the-blue-notes-south-africas-first-generation-of-free-jazz-83824">Blue Notes</a> were massively influential on European jazz scenes from the 1960s onwards.</p>
<p>There are risks in being “fashionable” – not least that straitjackets of international audience perception may be created about what “South African jazz” is. Many of today’s international showcases have a nostalgic focus on the greats of the past such as Makeba and Masekela. However, multiple legacies inform the sound of South African jazz and contribute to the rich lexicon from which it can draw. But none of them defines it.</p>
<p>Today, South African jazz speaks in multiple, diverse voices. Its internationalism, thankfully, is no longer driven by hideous repression at home and, in the digital age, doesn’t always even require physical journeys. One example (and there are many) is the new album <a href="https://mabuta.bandcamp.com/album/finish-the-sun">Finish the Sun</a> from the group <a href="http://www.shanecoopermusic.com/mabuta/">Mabuta</a>, led by bassist <a href="http://www.shanecoopermusic.com">Shane Cooper</a>. </p>
<p>Finish the Sun is only the latest demonstration of how South African jazz simultaneously looks inwards and outwards and communicates with listeners and fellow-players everywhere. </p>
<h2>Finish the Sun</h2>
<p>Mabuta takes its name for the Japanese word for “eyelid”, opening a door between the conscious and the unconscious. Liminality – crossing borders and the interrogation of boundaries – was on Mabuta’s agenda from its first release <a href="https://mabuta.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-to-this-world">Welcome to this World</a> (2018). Cooper himself is a bassist who also skips the border into electronic club music; the 2018 personnel was all-South African, with the addition of UK saxophonist <a href="http://www.shabakahutchings.com/biography/">Shabaka Hutchings</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An album cover showing an illustration of a person floating on their back in a pool surrounded by rocks under a round sun." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artwork courtesy Shane Cooper.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On this 2022 outing, South Africans Cooper (on guitars and synths as well as bass), keyboard player <a href="https://blackmajor.co.za/artist/bokani-dyer/">Bokani Dyer</a>, trumpeter <a href="https://weekendspecial.co.za/robin-fassie-kock-quintet-rfk5/">Robin Fassie</a> and reedmen <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/buddy-wells/">Buddy Wells</a> and <a href="https://www.newframe.com/home-is-where-the-music-is-for-sisonke-xonti/">Sisonke Xonti</a> work with guest drummers from Switzerland (<a href="https://www.juliansartorius.com">Julian Sartorius</a>, <a href="https://www.arthurhnatek.com">Arthur Hnatek</a> and Mario Hänni); Sweden (Christopher Castillo); the Netherlands (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/jamespete/?hl=en">Jamie Peet</a>); <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lmaduna/?hl=en">Lungile Maduna</a> (South Africa); and <a href="https://splice.com/sounds/splice-sessions/ss_congolese_drums_andre_toungamani">Andre Toungamani</a> (Senegal), some recorded at a distance.</p>
<p>Like its predecessor, Finish the Sun is “<a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/shane-coopers-mabuta-and-the-obscenity-of-walls/">a bassist’s album but not a bass album</a>”. Cooper created all the compositions but the instrumental solos come from everybody – although the track Spirit Animal is quintessential Cooper. It is never clear whether he is the bass’s spirit animal or it is his. His concept sounds as much through his guitar and through his use of effects and washes. These shape the mood of the eight tracks, sometimes creating a feel that irresistibly invokes a time or place.</p>
<p>The album employs markers of national identity in surprising and often subtle ways so it speaks fluently across all musical borders. Nevertheless, it does draw deep from our lexicon.</p>
<p>The first two numbers, the title track and Where the Heart Is, are where South Africa speaks most explicitly. The title words can’t help recalling the classic song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-YSx21p9S4">Lakutshon’ Ilanga</a> (When the sun sets, I’ll remember you). Here, the album notes say, it alludes to “the energy (that) was felt by all the musicians in a way that sounds as though we were in the same room after finishing some sun together”. It’s a fast, cyclical, galloping Eastern Cape sound, but layering modernity and tradition in its juxtapositions of electronic and instrumental voices. Where the Heart Is maintains the pace, with a classic South African bass line, call and response and chorusing behind the solos; it can’t wait to get home.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cv-aeVhtfyM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The video off the first album.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, Umshana carries a vibe of South Africa’s Afro-Soul era, with Xonti’s solo chanelling the spirit of saxophonist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/basil-coetzee">Basil Manenberg Coetzee</a>, while Kucheza has Dyer’s organ reminding us of Black Moses and the <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-soul-brothers-mn0000044338/biography">Soul Brothers</a>, and Cooper’s bass recalling bassist <a href="https://www.bakithikumalobass.com">Bakithi Khumalo</a>. None of these are obvious copycat quotes. Rather, the musicians are using a pinch of this and a dash of that to magick up some time-travel to where South Africans will recognise the scenery. </p>
<p>But if you’re in a club in Basel, you can just relish Umshana’s gorgeous rhythmic complexity or Kucheza’s chiming, joyful guitar and keys: you don’t have to have been where we’ve been. Nor do you need to know Johannesburg to recognise the moody urban vibe of Joburg Poem; Cantillo’s Swedish drums perfectly catch its feel.</p>
<p>Rather than retreating behind idiomatic musical borders, or spending energy explicitly fighting them, Mabuta simply make them irrelevant.</p>
<p>In many ways, that is the essential legacy of South African jazz on its international journeys from the 1940s onwards. And that, rather than any externally-curated definition, from however prestigious a platform, is what continues to keep the music vibrantly breathing and growing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The album Follow the Sun shows how South African jazz draws from diversity to speak fluidly across borders.
Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/178230
2022-03-02T14:26:29Z
2022-03-02T14:26:29Z
The legacy of iconic singer Miriam Makeba and her art of activism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449553/original/file-20220302-19-vs81hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by James Andanson/Sygma via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s world famous singer and activist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a> (1932-2008) would have turned 90 on 4 March 2022. Born Zenzile Miriam Makeba in Johannesburg’s Prospect township, she had a life of remarkable global impact. She contributed to black people’s struggle for liberation and defended the integrity of African identity and artistry while living in a land absent of her ancestry. </p>
<p>Despite being banned from her home country for her outspokenness and resistance to apartheid, Makeba went on to build an illustrious international career, performing on some of the world’s most prestigious stages. She would be celebrated – and persecuted – in the US and invited to perform at the independence celebrations of numerous African countries before eventually returning to South Africa later in life.</p>
<p>In commemorating what would have been Makeba’s 90th birthday, it is fitting to pay tribute to her legacy of activism not only as a black African woman often living in exile in a western society but also as an artist who used her craft to teach and conscientise the world about Africa. </p>
<h2>Early years</h2>
<p>Her musical beginnings in the 1940s were at Kilnerton College, a Methodist elementary school where she sang in the school choir. The school’s alumni include South Africa’s former chief justice <a href="https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judges/former-judges/11-former-judges/70-deputy-chief-justice-dikgang-moseneke">Dikgang Moseneke</a>, <a href="http://www.unizulu.ac.za/unizulu-celebrating-the-legendary-musical-icon-professor-khabi-mngoma/">Professor Khabi Mngoma</a>, a hugely influential figure in music education, as well as struggle icon <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lilian-masediba-ngoyi">Lilian Ngoyi</a>. </p>
<p>Makeba’s break into the professional circuit was with the singing group the Cuban Brothers. She later joined the well-established <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/manhattan-brothers">Manhattan Brothers</a>. They sang vernacular verses over what was a predominantly American swing and ragtime sound. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VDFznqweUTQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Come Back Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She was a founding member of the famous all-woman singing group <a href="https://www.allaboutjazz.com/miriam-makeba-and-the-skylarks-vol-1-miriam-makeba-and-the-skylarks-vol-2-miriam-makeba-teal-records-review-by-ed-kopp">the Skylarks</a>. In 1952, she was cast in Alf Herbert’s <a href="https://soulsafari.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/african-jazz-variety-alfred-herbert-1952/">African Jazz and Variety</a> production showcasing black talent. It was presented mainly to white audiences except on Thursdays when black audiences were allowed. This is where film producer Lionel Rogosin spotted Makeba and persuaded her to feature in his controversial documentary film, <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049087/">Come Back Africa</a></em>. </p>
<p>This film depicted the harsh conditions under which black South Africans were forced to live by the apartheid government. Makeba’s short appearance attracted attention, including an invitation to attend the film’s premiere in Italy. Naturally, she agreed, never imagining that because of her role in the movie she would be banned by the apartheid state from returning home, not even to bury her own mother. This marked the beginning of her exile.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and woman hold one another, smiling against a blue backdrop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449501/original/file-20220302-21-1whx1ff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">RCA Victor</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Promoting the film in London, Makeba met African American folk singer and activist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harry-Belafonte">Harry Belafonte</a>. He would play a significant role in her career in the US, forming half of the duet on their <a href="https://www.grammy.com/artists/miriam-makeba/4292">Grammy-winning</a> album <em><a href="https://www.miriammakeba.co.za/releases/An-Evening-With-Belafonte-Makeba-1965">An Evening with Belafonte & Makeba</a></em>.</p>
<h2>Art as activism</h2>
<p>Her artistry extended beyond the stage, beyond her impeccable vocals and her sophisticated interpretations of international and South African repertoire. Her very presence in the United States stood as a form of activism against the apartheid government who had attempted to silence her and erase her from the consciousness of her people. </p>
<p>Makeba’s life in the US coincided with the parallel experiences of black people in America and South Africa suffering immense injustice, marginalisation, racism and inequality. Like the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement">Civil Rights Movement</a> in the US was a vehicle through which black Americans protested. Academic Barber-Sizemore <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2012.715416">describes</a> Makeba’s voice as being “a surface onto which Americans projected their own narratives about Africa and American race relations”. </p>
<p>Her artistry, always informed by the circumstances in South Africa, served as a razor-sharp awareness tool. In journalist Gwen Ansell’s book <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Soweto-Blues%3A-Jazz%2C-Popular-Music%2C-and-Politics-in-Ansell/55a1e1246a1e98828e11447f7e347f76520cf11f"><em>Soweto Blues</em></a>, the late <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a> concurs that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s nobody in Africa who made the world more aware of what was happening in South Africa than Miriam Makeba. This was because of the way in which she described the songs…unwittingly she educated African American artists.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Makeba would describe life in apartheid South Africa when introducing her songs and would use every opportunity to address inequality. As analysed by academic Louise Bethlehem, Makeba’s work <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-6917766">resisted</a> the apartheid state’s threat to dismantle the very place of African art and culture in the world.</p>
<p>African Americans saw in Makeba not only what they were but also the possibilities of what they could become, expressed through song, dance, dress, language and ideology. Makeba found commonality with artists such as <a href="https://www.ninasimone.com/biography/">Nina Simone</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/15/abbey-lincoln-obituary">Abbey Lincoln</a>, who historian Ruth Feldstein <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-it-feels-to-be-free-9780195314038?cc=za&lang=en&">referred</a> to as “an emergent collective of black women performers who combined their music with civil rights activism”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zz-n2cQ2ex8?wmode=transparent&start=136" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mama Africa the documentary.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Aesthetic as activism</h2>
<p>What I appreciate most about Makeba is the way in which she not only embraced but leaned into her sexuality and sensuality. The way she moved her body on stage was often provocative, drawing the audience into her world. She understood acutely the power of her black body and its curvature. </p>
<p>Her aesthetic of natural hair and minimal make up (if any at all) communicated eloquently her strong sense of self, rooted in her African identity free from the expectations of western notions of beauty and acceptability. </p>
<p>In remembering Makeba, we must guard against confining her activism to the anti-apartheid speeches she delivered at the United Nations in <a href="https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/2553/2553678/">1963</a> and <a href="https://africanactivist.msu.edu/image.php?objectid=210-809-1981">1976</a>. Her activism was far more nuanced than that. It was interwoven in her music, her delivery of melodies, lyrics and artistic sentiment. Her artistry was a lantern that burnt vigorously through one of the darkest eras in history.</p>
<h2>A legacy spanning generations</h2>
<p>Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, <a href="https://lithub.com/mukoma-wa-ngugi-what-decolonizing-the-mind-means-today/">believes</a> that Africans singing in their native language is an international act of decolonisation and a marker of Pan African identity. Academic Aaron Carter-Enyi <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332734100_Decolonizing_the_Mind_Through_Song_From_Makeba_to_the_Afropolitan_present">acknowledged</a> Makeba’s influence on other African singers to sing in their mother tongues. Like Benin’s <a href="http://www.kidjo.com">Angelique Kidjo</a> who sings in Yoruba, Mali’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oumou-Sangare">Oumou Sangare</a> who sings in Mandinka and Nigeria’s <a href="https://npl.ng/team_members/onyeka-onwenu/">Onyeka Onwenu</a> who sings in Igbo. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older woman in an orange and black dress sings into a microphone, smiling, in front of a full orchestra." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449513/original/file-20220302-15-112ld6a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Makeba performing in Johannesburg in 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">LEXANDER JOE/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Makeba’s influence transcends generations to reveal itself in contemporary cultural practices. We are because she was. Makeba’s legacy is too often suffocated by the complexity surrounding her <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/who-owns-miriam-makeba-20180617">intellectual property</a> as well as her relationships with the men in her life. </p>
<p>Makeba was not just the wife of musician Masekela or <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party">Black Panther</a> leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stokely-Carmichael">Stokely Carmichael</a>. She was not Belafonte’s “discovery from South Africa”. She arrived in America a consummate professional fit for purpose.</p>
<p>The role of these male figures in Makeba’s life may have been meaningful but it is also grossly overstated. Makeba’s legacy is strong enough to stand on its own two feet. Her name needs no co-anchor. She fought more with her “artivism” than many a man did with their armed weaponry. </p>
<p>It’s time to move beyond her widely-adopted nickname “Mama Africa”. Makeba was a stalwart and an icon of African liberation and identity. Her legacy carved the way for future generations to live a life of authenticity, fearlessness and bravery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nomfundo Xaluva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Makeba, who would have turned 90 on 4 March 2022, was a hugely influential artist and an icon of African liberation and identity.
Nomfundo Xaluva, Lecturer, South African College of Music, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164702
2021-07-20T14:42:42Z
2021-07-20T14:42:42Z
The spirit, life and art of Tsepo Tshola, pastor of South African pop
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411835/original/file-20210719-15-sru9ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tsepo Tshola during the memorial service of Hugh Masekela in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frennie Shivambu/Gallo Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I grieve to start this way. No sooner had I struggled to find some means to say my goodbyes to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-magnificent-mabi-thobejane-master-south-african-drummer-162231">Mabi Thobejane</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/steve-kekana-an-80s-south-african-pop-star-and-much-more-164141">Steve Kekana</a>, than South African music lost singer and composer <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-village-pope-has-passed-remembering-tsepo-tshola-lesothos-musical-giant-164650">Tsepo Tshola</a>. </p>
<p>These three masters of the nation’s musical soul were famous, but not celebrities. Because they never acted like that. Complex personalities and talents, they all possessed that son-of-the-soil joviality that made them ever accessible and “simple” in the reverent way South Africans use that adjective. </p>
<p>I remember, in 1978, during one of my many research tours in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Lesotho">Lesotho</a>, a mountainous kingdom encircled by South Africa, I was hanging with the brilliant guitarist and composer <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/frank-leepa-biography-brutal-history-personal-beefs-and-brilliant-music/">Frank Leepa</a>, drummers Moss Nkofo and the one and only Black Jesus (passing around the herb), and Tsepo, in a ramshackle old storefront across from Maseru Market.</p>
<p>They were Uhuru Band back then, and flushed with the success of their first hit song, simply entitled <em>Africa</em>. The song merely praises and celebrates the mother continent, yet so repressive was South Africa’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> regime that the band was banned from performing there. Their manager, Peter Schneider, pondered what to do. Shuffle the personnel a bit and change their name, I shrugged. And so eventually did they re-emerge as <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/ode-sankomota">Sankomota</a> – Lesotho’s most famous Afro-fusion pop ensemble. </p>
<p>Tsepo would go on to bridge Lesotho and South Africa in a time of political tumult. What drove his life and his music would be his fierce sense of belonging to both nations as one.</p>
<h2>The life</h2>
<p>He was born in 1953 in the Berea district of western Lesotho, in the “one-street” but scenic town of Teyateyaneng or TY. Tsepo, however, had other inspirations for his musical vocation than the late-night dances at TY’s famous Blue Mountain Inn. </p>
<p>His father Mokoteli was a pastor with the African Methodist Episcopal <a href="https://www.ame-church.com/our-church/our-history/">Church</a>, and both the Reverend Tshola and his wife MaLimpho were stalwarts of the double vocal quartet the Vertical 8. Tsepo always emphasised this church as his musical alma mater, with its liturgical roots in African-American hymnody (the singing or composition of hymns). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="On a live music stage, a balding man in a tunic with cloth over his shoulder holds a walking stick. He is bathed in blue and silver stage light." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tsepo Tshola performs at a jazz festival in South Africa, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vathiswa Ruselo/Sowetan/Gallo Images</span></span>
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<p>By 1970 he had already joined Leepa, and they would form Uhuru in 1975. In the late 1970s, now as <a href="https://shifty.co.za/records/sankomota/">Sankomota</a>, they were the house band at Maseru’s Victoria Hotel, entertaining luminaries such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>, exiled from South Africa by their politics.</p>
<p>1983 was their breakout year, with South African producer Lloyd Ross of <a href="https://shifty.co.za/records/shifty-story/">Shifty Records</a> recording their first album, <a href="https://shifty.co.za/records/sankomota/"><em>Sankomota</em></a>, and the release of Leepa’s hit composition <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Hugh-Masekela-Pula-Ea-Na/release/2420893"><em>It’s Raining</em></a>. With Masekela, Tsepo toured southern Africa and ventured to London, where the rest of Sankomota joined him in 1985. </p>
<p>Returning from London as Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the end of white minority rule approached, Tsepo then joined Masekela for his epochal homecoming <em>Sekunjalo</em> tour of South Africa in 1991. Masekela was stunned by the massive adulation with which he was greeted by audiences (including me) that he feared had forgotten him. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-village-pope-has-passed-remembering-tsepo-tshola-lesothos-musical-giant-164650">The Village Pope has passed: remembering Tsepo Tshola, Lesotho's musical giant</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Tsepo seized the opportunity to begin what would be his legendary solo career, one that would last until his heartrending departure on 15 July 2021. Collaborating and leading the vocals for countless top artists and ensembles, his gravelly “Louis Armstrong” baritone would drive gospel, traditional and pop songs in Sesotho and under the name The Village Pope.</p>
<h2>The spirit</h2>
<p>The intertwining of inner spirit, life and art in Tsepo Tshola’s odyssey cannot be overemphasised. Let me illustrate this through the songs. </p>
<p>Tsepo was astonishingly prolific, and he continued composing, recording and performing almost until his death. Of this monumental catalogue, however, a few are sure to be played as long as the turbulent, ebullient decades leading up to and following the turn of the 21st century are remembered. These include one of the earlier works, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s4jbA3TUgQ"><em>Papa</em></a>, from Sankomota’s album <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Sankomota-The-Writing-On-The-Wall/release/4311445"><em>Writing on the Wall</em></a> (1989). </p>
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<p>Religious in tone, as ultimately with all of Tsepo’s music, the song includes a solo verse as much intoned in prayer as sung in his raspy voice:</p>
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<p>You’re waiting for your name to be called (What do you say?) Your body is shaking with disbelief (Tell us more)…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1994, a newly democratic South Africa witnessed the release of Tsepo’s signature album, <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Tsepo-Tshola-The-Village-Pope/release/10838218"><em>The Village Pope</em></a>, the one that forever gave him his name as iconic pastor of South African pop. </p>
<p>Most of the tributes that have poured forth in print and on social media have included this jaunty, iconoclastic alias. Yet it is not at all an attempt at self-congratulation or promotion, nor a reference to his sometimes harshly paternalistic admonition of his musicians in rehearsal and recording. It is rather an honorific proclaiming his unwavering commitment to kith and kin; his home in Lesotho, his close friends and family, his bi-national identity. </p>
<h2>Upliftment</h2>
<p>Avoiding the trappings of fame and shallow, transactional relationships, Tsepo was a devoted husband who never got over the passing of his wife in 1984. He never remarried, but remained, as many a Mosotho patriarch will sigh, “everyone’s father”. He was back in Teyateyaneng for a family funeral when he fell ill with COVID-19 and passed away.</p>
<p>Other songs of special significance include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoN1rudM-2s"><em>Holokile</em></a> (All Right) from 1994, based in hymnody and virtually a hymn in itself. Indeed, Tsepo’s style has often been labelled “traditional gospel” but this is definitely the wrong music store bin. </p>
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<p>Tsepo’s style comes from a blending of the Afro-pop fusion of “black consciousness” groups such as <a href="http://www.music.org.za/artist.asp?id=170">Sakhile</a>, <a href="https://www.newframe.com/stimela-the-train-and-south-africas-musical-heritage/">Stimela</a>, and of course Frank Leepa’s Sankomota in the 1980s, and his own hymnodic upbringing. That is why his songs are more inspirational than celebratory, and more “step and sway” than danceable. They are ballads to uplift an African nation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3ykfbkFuv4"><em>Stop the War</em></a>, from 1995, is not a religious tune at all, but an upbeat, pop injunction to South Africans not to fight one another over the spoils of the victory over apartheid. During the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-have-south-africans-been-on-a-looting-rampage-research-offers-insights-164571">looting and insurrection</a> that was taking place on the very day of his death, <em>Stop the War</em> was the song heard on radio stations nationwide. </p>
<p>Finally, there is his rollicking, township-jiviest song (no gospel here), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyEtgQoxxzc"><em>Akubutle</em></a> (Don’t Ask), from 2003, the one that never fails to bring listeners to their feet at a restaurant, club or party. </p>
<p>BT, as Bra Tsepo was popularly known, we can’t blame you for leaving us, but how are we going to get through all this without you? Akubutle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Coplan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Schooled in music through church, he was driven by a fierce sense of belonging to Lesotho where he was born, and neighbouring South Africa.
David Coplan, Professor Emeritus, Social Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145390
2020-09-01T14:02:25Z
2020-09-01T14:02:25Z
Jürgen Schadeberg: chronicler of life across apartheid’s divides
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355782/original/file-20200901-16-4fcxp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jürgen Schadeberg in 1955 with trainee photographers at Drum, Peter Magubane, left, and Bob Gosani. Both became well-known photographers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I read about <a href="https://www.jurgenschadeberg.com">Jürgen Schadeberg</a>’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/arts/jurgen-schadeberg-dead.html">death</a> while listening to Abdullah Ibrahim’s song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77tTAjFrxJM"><em>Threshold</em></a> and thought about how, in the last two years, so many of the great photographers whose work helped us to see not only apartheid’s divides, but also beyond them, have crossed the threshold from life to death. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/david-goldblatt-photographer-who-found-the-human-in-an-inhuman-social-landscape-98984">David Goldblatt</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/capturing-the-soweto-uprising-south-africas-most-iconic-photograph-lives-on-98318">Sam Nzima</a> died in 2018; <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cloete-breytenbach">Cloete Breytenbach</a>, <a href="https://www.traceyderrick.co.za">Tracey Derrick</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/herbert-mabuza">Herbert Mabuza</a> in 2019; <a href="https://theconversation.com/santu-mofokeng-master-photographer-who-chased-down-shadows-131065">Santu Mofokeng</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-liebenberg-masterful-photographer-of-life-and-war-in-southern-africa-132772">John Liebenberg</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/george-hallett">George Hallett</a> and Schadeberg in 2020. Collectively, their work provides us with a critical mirror with which to interrogate the catastrophe that was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, and the long struggle to bring about its end. </p>
<p>And their photographs also make it possible to see the magic in this place, and to marvel at how hope and beauty persist in South Africa, even in the darkest of times. As historian John Edwin Mason <a href="https://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2014/04/j%C3%BCrgen-schadeberg.html">writes</a> of the group of photographers that Schadeberg mentored at the iconic <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668"><em>Drum</em></a> magazine – a team that included <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-cole">Ernest Cole</a>, <a href="http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/NAM/sophia/writers/gosani/gosaniS.htm">Bob Gosani</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/alfred-khumalo">Alf Kumalo</a> and <a href="https://www.newframe.com/peter-magubane-a-photographer-against-apartheid/">Peter Magubane</a> – “It’s impossible to imagine South African photography without them.” The International Center for Photography awarded the <a href="https://www.icp.org/infinity-awards/j%C3%BCrgen-schadeberg">Cornell Capa</a> Lifetime Achievement Award to Schadeberg in 2014 for his career, which spanned over six decades.</p>
<h2>Striking images</h2>
<p>I cannot look at Schadeberg’s startling photograph of Hans Prignitz performing a handstand with just one hand, precariously balanced on a rain-slicked ledge high above the city of Hamburg, half obliterated by mist, without a shiver going through me. It was taken three years after the end of the Second World War and two years before Schadeberg left Germany for South Africa, where the photographer was to play a key role in documenting the first two decades of apartheid.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit doing a one-armed handstand on a rain-wet balcony railing high above a city, his legs curling over towards the city." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Prignitz’s handstand on the St Michaelis Church, Hamburg, 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
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<p>Schadeberg’s photograph of Constance Molefe, bounding over a tennis net, racket suspended in mid-air, gives me a corresponding shudder. This time not only because she appears so close to catching her foot in the net and falling painfully to the ground, but because of the knowledge that her hopes for a career as a professional athlete will soon be dashed. <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/leg19550706028020069">The Group Areas Development Act</a> was made law in 1955, the same year the photograph was taken, and the ruinous <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/leg19531009028020047">Bantu Education Act</a> had been passed two years before.</p>
<p>The caption that accompanied the image of the tennis player in the June 1955 issue of <em>Drum</em> reads as follows:</p>
<p>“Transvaal’s little Mo – Constance Molefe, junior tennis star, who aims to take the senior title. Few African women ever reach the tennis limelight, even if they do, it’s usually at a late age. But there is today a steady flow of girl learners, under expert guidance, and we can expect a tennis boom for our ladies in the near future. Topping Transvaal’s junior is pretty Constance Molefe, a 16 year old primary schooler from Orlando. She’s fresh and young, energetic, a glutton for hard court practice, and shows remarkable ability for a girl of her age.”</p>
<p>Constance Molefe’s joyful leap towards the freedom that lay outside the ever-tightening restrictions of the apartheid state was not to be realised for 40 years. In Schadeberg’s image, she is fixed in flight, reaching for the future. The image can be seen <a href="https://www.baha.co.za/item-detail/?q=42_846">here</a> in the Bailey’s African History Archive.</p>
<p>Schadeberg took what he considered his <a href="https://flashbak.com/the-world-as-he-sees-it-an-exclusive-interview-with-legendary-photographer-jurgen-schadeberg-430449/">first “real” photograph</a> in an air raid shelter in Berlin in 1941, at the tender age of 10, and went on to produce iconic images of many of the most important individuals and events in South African history. </p>
<p>He is sometimes, incorrectly and in a manner that is somewhat patronising towards the photographers he worked alongside, referred to as “the father of South African photography”. </p>
<p>In truth, he was not much older than the photographers he trained and who, in turn, inducted him into South African life. Schadeberg was just 20 when he took up the position of chief photographer and photo editor at the newly established <em>Drum</em>. He was also one among many photographers who left Europe as a result of the war. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Journalism of Drum's heyday remains cause for celebration - 70 years later</a>
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<p>Many of those who arrived in South Africa before him, during the 1930s and early 1940s, were Jewish refugees who had no choice but to flee. They, like Schadeberg, brought along new techniques and ways of seeing that coincided with the advent of popular “picture magazines”, like <em>Life</em>, <em>Look and Picture Post</em> in the US and the UK, and <em>Drum</em> and <em><a href="https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/4208130">Zonk! African People’s Pictorial</a></em> in South Africa, which published photo-essays and provided photographers with regular work.</p>
<h2>The Drum years</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smartly dressed male and female couple dance, hands and feet in the air, the male dancer mid-air, with their shadows against a white wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dancing at the Ritz, Johannesburg, 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As curator and documentarian Candice Jansen has <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-10-27-00-casting-history-to-his-own-drum-beat/">noted</a>, <em>Drum</em> was just as central to the making of Schadeberg as a photojournalist as he was to the making of South African visual history. The magazine’s photographers captured images of famous and not-yet-famous people, immortalised life in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sophiatown">Sophiatown</a> and resistance to forced removals, and recorded the new forms of popular culture – fashion, jazz and dancing – that defined what has come to be known as the <a href="https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Drum_Decade.html?id=XfdZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">“<em>Drum</em> decade”</a>. </p>
<p>Schadeberg worked alongside Magubane and documented the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance Campaign</a> and the famous <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1956-womens-march-pretoria-9-august">Women’s March</a> to protest against being forced to carry passes in 1956. They were both arrested (Schadeberg once and Magubane four times) for taking photographs of the <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/what-happened-at-the-treason-trial-africa-media-online/PwJS8md1REM3Iw?hl=en">Treason Trial</a>, which took place between 1956 and 1961.</p>
<p>Schadeberg and Magubane were among the photographers who documented the aftermath of the <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/the-sharpeville-massacre">Sharpeville Massacre </a> on 21 March 1960, when police opened fire on a gathering of approximately 7,000 unarmed people who were protesting against pass laws. In just two minutes, the police shot 13,000 bullets into the crowd and 69 people were killed, most shot in the back as they were running away, and more than 300 wounded.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial view of five trucks carrying rows of coffins in the centre of a field. Mourners and clergy stand at a distance on either side, alongside dozens of graves, some still empty." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharpeville Funeral, 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg chartered a plane to photograph the mass funeral and took a chilling image of hundreds of mourners watching as flatbed trucks carried the coffins of those who were murdered across a field in the Phelindaba cemetery at Sharpeville. In the foreground of the image is a row of priests standing before the dark, symmetrical, empty graves. The photographer donated this <a href="https://ccac.concourttrust.org.za/works/jurgen-schadeburg-sharpeville-funeral-1960">photograph</a> to the art collection of the South African Constitutional Court.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with greying hair leans his arm against a window sill as he gazes out through bars on the window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nelson Mandela in his cell, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg is justifiably best known for his portraits of Nelson Mandela, and of jazz greats like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, but his oeuvre includes many images of everyday people whose stories would otherwise have gone untold. </p>
<p>The gift of the work that he created alongside his compatriots lies in their depiction of the social worlds that apartheid sought to destroy, but that live on through their photographs. <em>Hamba kahle</em> (go well), Jürgen Schadeberg, 1931-2020.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The gift of his images lies in their depiction of the social worlds that apartheid sought to destroy, but that live on through the photographs.
Kylie Thomas, Research fellow, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119044
2019-06-20T13:20:40Z
2019-06-20T13:20:40Z
Farewell to Ndikho Xaba – a little known genius of South African music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280208/original/file-20190619-171222-iany9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Musician Ndikho Xaba.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by the Xaba family.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s the late 1990s at the Windybrow Theatre in Johannesburg. I’m with an American-born friend whose jazz tastes were shaped by the Chicago free music scene of the 1970s. On to the stage walks a slight, goateed figure in a blue African shirt, who proceeds to draw astounding music from… a water-cooler. My friend responded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Damn! Why didn’t I know this guy before?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Too many people didn’t know <a href="https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/ndikho-xaba-and-the-natives">Ndikho Douglas Xaba</a> – multi-instrumentalist, instrument-maker, composer, actor, teacher and revolutionary. Hopefully, it isn’t too late for them to learn about the legacy and contribution of this musician’s musician. Xaba died peacefully on June 11 aged 85.</p>
<p>Xaba’s journey took him across South Africa – from the streets of Pietermaritzburg in the province of KwaZulu-Natal to Queenstown in the Eastern Cape and the musical ferment of Johannesburg’s <a href="http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/dorkay-house-hangs">Dorkay House</a> – all the way to Broadway, the jazz lofts of San Francisco, Chicago and New York, the training camps of the African National Congress in exile in Tanzania, the streets of post-liberation Soweto and, finally, back home again. </p>
<p>His music spanned a similarly broad canvas, for he drew no artificial boundaries between styles or genres. </p>
<p>He was as comfortable imagining fearless cosmic explorations – he shared a stage with avant garde musician <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sun-ra-mn0000924232/biography">Sun Ra</a> – as with crafting instantly catchy hits such as <em>Emavungweni</em>, first covered by <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/hugh-masekela-mn0000830319">Hugh Masekela</a> on the 1966 album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/grrr-mw0000041930">Grrr</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5IHxYhKGND4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s version of the Xaba song, ‘Emavungweni’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Covert ANC operative</h2>
<p>Xaba was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1934, the youngest of six sons of a Methodist minister, James George Howard Xaba, who was a covert ANC operative and founder of the Natal African Teachers Union. His mother, Emily Selina Dingaan Xaba, was a schoolteacher as well as an organist and choir leader. But, as Francis Gooding’s excellent biographical notes on the Matsuli Music <a href="http://www.parisdjs.com/index.php/post/Ndikho-Xaba-and-The-Natives">“Ndikho and The Natives”</a> album explain, his family hoped their son would study towards a profession. They did not encourage him in music, so he picked up a penny-whistle. He often subsequently described himself as “proudly self-taught”.</p>
<p>Later he, and at least one brother, were active in the ANC. Their activities led to a great deal of ducking and diving, until finally the police’s Special Branch interrogated him. For his family’s sake, it was clear he must move.</p>
<p>And so Xaba left for Johannesburg where he picked up sporadic music-related work. He commuted to Durban at times and in 1960 was part of the production of author Alan Paton’s <a href="https://andrewharvardphotography.com/2012/12/22/cato-manor-a-history-of-oppression-riots-and-now-hope/">“Umkhumbane”</a>, with music by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/todd-tozama-matshikiza">Todd Matshikiza</a>.</p>
<p>Increasingly, not only police-state oppression but also the rigid cultural categories of apartheid and the denial of black originality and excellence became intolerable. His ticket out came with a role in another Paton play, <a href="https://archive.org/details/spononoplayinthr00pato">“Sponono”</a>, with music by Gideon uMgibe Nxumalo and an all-black cast. In 1964, the play was invited for a short Broadway run. When it ended, Xaba stayed. It was the beginning of 34 years of exile.</p>
<p>In America, Xaba hooked up again with Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and others. Their musical campaigning, he recalled, had a clear agenda: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One: we are black. Two: we have been colonised. Three: we were enslaved. Four: we were victims of imperialism. We are victims of racism collectively – so how can you divorce yourselves?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He had no illusions about racism in America. On arriving at Kennedy Airport on a snowy day, and being forced to pose for photographs in scanty Zulu attire he said,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… our African-American brothers who worked in the airport didn’t want anything to do with us. Because to them, here was Tarzan – live! … but after we had changed into our suits those same people are like ‘Hey, my brother! How ya doin’ man?‘</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Xaba created a powerful sonic evocation of those days in the track “It’s Cold in New York” on his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sunsets-Anthology-Creative-Ndikho-Xaba/dp/B008JEJVS6">Sunsets album</a>.</p>
<p>But Xaba found a great deal in common with the underground <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-free-jazz">free jazz</a> scene across the US, and its discourse of post-civil rights African-American liberation. After New York, where he taught himself piano, he worked in San Francisco where he met his wife, poet and activist Nomusa Xaba while giving Zulu lessons.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LM5zDZeVIUk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ndikho Xaba and The Natives’ dedication to Nomusa Xaba.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The band he formed, <a href="https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/ndikho-xaba-and-the-natives">Ndikho and the Natives</a>, played solidarity concerts and community events, mixing far-out improvisation, re-enactments of anticolonial history, solid, funky groove, spoken word and more in a single performance.</p>
<p>Xaba’s late 1960s/early 70s work was part of the countrywide radical cultural and political movement best known through the 1966-founded <a href="http://www.akamu.net/aeoc.htm">Art Ensemble of Chicago</a>. Xaba is the only South African exile whose creativity in this context went on record; his music is compelling, surprising and unique. And it was influential.</p>
<h2>Teacher</h2>
<p>Xaba continued teaching for the rest of his life. He established musical instrument-making facilities and created a music curriculum for the ANC’s refugee school in Dakawa, Tanzania. On his return to South Africa from exile in 1994, he held music and instrument-making classes at his Soweto home, before moving back to Durban.</p>
<p>He began to perform increasingly rarely in South Africa. He had little enthusiasm for an unimaginative and often reactionary commercial music scene. He retained the power to make a conventional music scene – and society – uneasy. His music could bowl you over with its inventiveness and the breadth and erudition of its cultural references. </p>
<p>His life enacted the rejection of boundaries, including the bourgeois boundary between aesthetics and politics. He lived and played what he believed, uncompromisingly, and he imagined beyond any category towards a world where all peoples were family, and where oppression could and would be overcome. </p>
<p><em>Hamba Kahle.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119044/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Musician Ndikho Xaba rejected boundaries. He lived and played what he believed – uncompromisingly
Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118792
2019-06-18T13:47:39Z
2019-06-18T13:47:39Z
Jonas Gwangwa’s music and life embody the resistance against apartheid
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279964/original/file-20190618-118543-1vjuhx7.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Karmann/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently sent <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-wishes-jonas-gwangwa-full-recovery-5-jun-2019-0000">good wishes</a> to hospitalised trombonist/composer Jonas Gwangwa, it represented far more than a routine official courtesy. Even before he became president, Ramaphosa relished the South African jazz that spoke for and of the country’s liberation struggle. So it was no surprise that during inauguration speech in 2018 he famously <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-12-20-cyril-ramaphosas-2018-thuma-mina-moments/">invoked</a> a Hugh Masekela song, <em>Thuma Mina</em>, isiZulu for “send me”. And there are few musicians whose opus embodies the political spirit of South African liberation more vividly than the 81-year-old Gwangwa.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kzDGhMO3LSc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s ‘Thuma Mina’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Resistance was the sub-text of Gwangwa’s early musical endeavours. The Jazz Epistles, the first outfit to foreground his voice as composer and player, was also the first black ensemble in South Africa to record an LP. Black bands had previously been confined to the territory of the single, for the country’s equivalent of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/race-record">“race records”</a> market. Race records were made exclusively by and for African Americans, especially from the 1920s to the 1940s. </p>
<p>The Jazz Epistles’ repertoire asserted many characteristics that apartheid cultural policy suppressed: non-tribalism, originality and urban sophistication. But it also spoke of musicians’ conditions of production, in the Kippie Moeketsi track <em>Scullery Department</em>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mhdW0wLh9QQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jazz Epistles track ‘Scullery Department’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This song was a dedication to themselves and their peers: good enough to play for elite white patrons, but forced to take their interval meal on the steps of the back kitchen.</p>
<h2>Dinner apartheid</h2>
<p>That meal-break apartheid was only one aspect of much broader repression. Gwangwa was born in 1937 in Orlando East, the first township of Soweto, formally founded six years earlier. As Gwangwa grew up, Orlando exposed him to both the oppressions suffered by every black community – police raids, arbitrary arrests, pass laws and impoverished amenities – but also to an intensely political cultural milieus. </p>
<p>Orlando writers, visiting journalist Anthony Sampson noted in his essay <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/asjul59.9/asjul59.9.pdf">Orlando Revisited</a>, were very clear about their African nationalist identity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘We don’t just want to be writers,’ said Zeke [Ezekiel Mphahlele], ‘we want to be non-white writers’ – using the word in the proud way of people who are used to being non-every thing – non-Europeans, non-voters, non-travellers, non-drinkers, non-starters.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Gwangwa began to work regularly in music, he was exposed to the routine brutality of the police. He recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes those <em>boere</em> boys just get so mean and take [your pass] from you… Otherwise they would make you perform in the middle of the night. In the middle of the street you’d be tap-dancing at 3 am.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The vivid memories of that and more –- the segregated audiences for the musical King Kong; the privilege of white producers and promoters –- travelled with Gwangwa into exile first in London and then at the Manhattan School of Music. </p>
<p>When he arranged singer Miriam Makeba’s Grammy-winning 1965 <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Belafonte-Makeba-An-Evening-With-BelafonteMakeba/release/2544923">duo album</a> with American artist Harry Belafonte, he was not simply supporting a fellow South African; he was participating in the politics of the project. He became impatient with the sometimes shallow understanding of the music’s American patrons: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because it was those back-to-Africa days, so you had to explain that it takes more than an Afro and a dashiki to be an African, you know? You have to think it and feel it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>ANC talent</h2>
<p>So when in the early 1980s then ANC President OR Tambo called him to Angola to help develop the raw performance talent with which the ANC training camps teemed into a touring performance show for the movement, he did not hesitate. He brought everything he had learned about production and stagecraft in the States to bear on the project: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I knew I could create a show that would have universal appeal: the musical structure is very simple, the rhythm will get you, the dances are attractive…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Initially, the thought was to have a presentation of struggle songs; but Gwangwa and his team created a full musical. Theatrical interludes sandwiched the songs; the script was updated when political events (or musical fashions) in South Africa overtook it. </p>
<p>After a camp vehicle accident seriously injured his leg, Gwangwa began to spend more time in Botswana with his other band, Shakawe. There were politics there too: the politics of nonracialism and African regional solidarity, reflected in the mixed personnel of players, the outreach activities of Shakawe’s umbrella parent, the Medu Arts Ensemble, and repertoire. That spoke of both current regional events, political themes, and the rich wellspring of Setswana tradition in songs such as the wedding anthem <em>Kgomo di Tsile</em>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BKiuQGTmh_4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Kgomo di Tsile.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>South African military raids and death squads in the mid-1980s had forced Gwangwa away once more, to London. It was appropriate that Gwangwa was George Fenton’s collaborator on the soundtrack to the Steve Biko movie, <em>Cry Freedom</em>, which went on to be nominated for an Oscar and to win an Ivor Novello and other awards.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7QUGWhxD8cw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Cry Freedom.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Exile</h2>
<p>The politics of Gwangwa’s music have stayed constant over the years, and are also apparent in the eight albums he has released in South Africa since returning from 30 years of exile. Reflecting on that, he <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2011-09-17-what-ive-learnt-jonas-gwangwa/">told</a> journalist Nechama Brodie: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Miriam Makeba organised me a Guinea passport. When that expired I got a Zambian travel document, then a Tanzanian one, then a Ghanaian passport. At airports you get immigration queues for ‘locals’ and for ‘others’. I had always been one of the others. Then, one day, I got my South African passport. And it was valid for 10 years. It was like: wow, you know, yeah. Hallelujah!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OA4gAy8_jTA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa’s ‘Freedom for some’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But his lyrics have never been uncritical praise singing. As he regularly sang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Freedom for some is freedom for none.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps that, as much as <em>Thuma Mina</em>, could also be a leitmotif for the Ramaphosa presidency?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The politics of Jonas Gwangwa’s music have stayed constant over the years, and are also apparent in the eight albums he has released in South Africa since returning from 30 years of exile.
Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/110443
2019-01-24T10:04:00Z
2019-01-24T10:04:00Z
Tribute to Oliver Mtukudzi – Zimbabwe’s ‘man with the talking guitar’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255330/original/file-20190124-135160-1qb9902.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oliver Mtukudzi</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Musician <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/oliver-mtukudzi-mn0000471887/biography">Oliver Mtukudzi</a>, who died at the age of 66, was a great cultural ambassador for Zimbabwe. Known to his fans as Tuku, he was a cultural icon for the southern African country. His aura and presence had a global resonance with fans around the world, yet the man remained humble and magnanimous.</p>
<p>I once boasted to some international colleagues that he was Zimbabwe’s gift to the world. But on closer scrutiny, he was the perfect gift for Zimbabweans especially during their <a href="https://www.voazimbabwe.com/a/death-of-music-icon-oliver-mtukudzi-unites-troubled-zimbabwe/4756022.html">tumultuous times</a>.</p>
<p>Mtukudzi died in Harare after a long battle with diabetes, ironically enough on exactly the same day as his friend, the musician <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hugh-masekela">Hugh Masekela</a>, who passed away on 23 January 2018. </p>
<p>He was also a businessperson, activist, philanthropist and a goodwill ambassador for Unicef in the southern African region. But it was his innovative music that made him deeply loved. Dubbed “Tuku music”, it was a <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/oliver-mtukudzi-mn0000471887/biography">blend</a> of southern African music traditions, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>including mbira, mbaqanga, jit and the traditional drumming styles of the Korekore.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tuku released his debut single in 1975. As a solo artist, Mtukudzi had his first successes shortly after Zimbabwe declared its independence in 1980. His debut solo album, Africa. The prolific Mtukudzi released his 67th album in 2018 – <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/01/tuku-release-67th-album-65-years/"><em>Hanya’Ga (Concern)</em></a>, saying it was “meant to share a message of introspecting and I’m hoping people learn a thing or two from it”.</p>
<p>Celebrated as “the man with the talking guitar”, Mtukudzi <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/01/tuku-release-67th-album-65-years/">learned</a> by experimenting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I looked for a sound the guitar couldn’t make in a guitar – that is how I learned to play the guitar. Professional guitarist at the time use to laugh at me. I used to look for a mbira (music instrument) on the guitar strings. I’ve always been experimental. But it was a blessing in disguise because I went on to pioneer a sound that was later labelled Tuku music.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A wide canvas</h2>
<p>But Mtukudzi was more than just a popular singer. In his song “Todii” (What shall we do?), Mtukudzi reflects on the challenge faced by communities as a result of the scourge of HIV/AIDS. The song gives cadence and sympathy to those who provide care. At the same time it magnifies how despicable those in positions of authority are for violating their responsibility. </p>
<p>He ends the song with a solemn appeal for help and for ideas in view of this challenge. This is Mtukudzi, the social activist. </p>
<p>In another song “Mabasa” (The works) Mtukudzi paints a dire picture of how young people are the first to die, leaving the elderly to fend for themselves. For me this song attests to Mtukudzi reminding us all to be cognisant about how we live. </p>
<p>Mtukudzi also acknowledged the existence of deity and spoke against the attribution of success to luck or happenstance as he did in the song “Raki” (luck).</p>
<p>Conversely, in “Ndagarwa nhaka” (Inheriting) he brought attention to a Shona cultural practice of a widow being married off to the late husband’s elder or young brother. In this song Mtukudzi, using the voice of the widow, appears to praise the status quo as enabling the widow to get solace and protection given her loss.</p>
<p>A stark contrast, though, is found in the movie “Neria”. Mtukudzi crafted the soundtrack detailing the tribulations of a widow trying to survive past patriarchy in all its forms.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Oliver Mtukudzi’s ‘Dzoka Uyamwe’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the song “Dzoka uyamwe” (come and suckle) Mtukudzi bemoans the experiences of a person suffering prejudice based on how they look. Given this sad experience, the mother urges her child to come back home and suckle. The song then becomes philosophically charged, reminding us all that the core of all prejudice emanates from the mind and the heart. This theme of a concerned parent appears to reverberate in the song “Chengetai” meaning “to keep”. </p>
<p>This time, a role reversal: children are being urged to take care of their parents.</p>
<p>Some of Mtukudzi’s songs were sources of contention and deemed anti-establishment. For instance “Wasakara” (You are old) was interpreted by some as a reference to former President Robert Mugabe, given that a character in the song was in denial of age creeping up on them. In later years as a consultant, I would use the song in driving home the importance of succession planning for effectual and efficient organisations.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">One of Oliver Mtukudzi’s greatest hits, ‘Wasakara’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mtukudzi also continues to give the same admonition to the elderly in the song “Mkuru mkuru” (the elderly leader).</p>
<p>Mtukudzi would also pen “Mutserendende” (the slide) and draw comparisons between two generations. From the first generation, Mtukudzi idolises how life was easy and pleasurable for children, a stark contrast to his generation’s life of toil and hardship in climbing the mountain. The solace, as argued by the song, is continued perseverance and determination. </p>
<p>In “Magumo” (the end), Mtukudzi raises some poignant life lessons on the importance of ideals such as humility. The most important question we should ask in everything we do, Mtukudzi argues, is: what will be the end of this that I am doing?</p>
<p>In the song “Kunze kwadoka” (the sun has set, it’s dark), Mtukudzi presents the questioning parent and the precarious situation of a child who has stayed out on a date for a long time. Giving advice to the boyfriend, “perekedza mwanasikana, perekedza bhebhi iro zuva ravira kunze kwadoka” translated “accompany the girl, accompany that babe the sun has set, it’s dark out”.</p>
<p>Now the sun has set on Oliver Mtukudzi. He leaves the world his greatest prized possession, the gift of song. Thank you, maestro par excellence.</p>
<p><em>Chinyamurindi is an avid narrative researcher. This piece was written using Oliver Mtukudzi’s Greatest Hits album – The Tuku Years (1998-2002).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Willie Tafadzwa Chinyamurindi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Oliver Mtukudzi has left the world his greatest prized possession – the gift of song.
Willie Tafadzwa Chinyamurindi, Associate Professor, University of Fort Hare
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/95794
2018-04-30T10:39:50Z
2018-04-30T10:39:50Z
The best anthem for Workers’ Day? ‘Stimela’ – a tale about apartheid’s migrant labour system
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216813/original/file-20180430-135840-lxpr02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela performing in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Esa Alexander/The Times</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is the ultimate song to celebrate Workers’ Day? Many will suggest <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/30230">“The Internationale”</a> which had its roots as a poem written in the aftermath of the Paris Commune in 1871 by Eugène Pottier, a transport worker. Set to music a few years later, it became the anthem for the wider progressive movement. It served as the Soviet Union’s anthem after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, making it more closely associated with the communist movement.</p>
<p>But I would argue that trumpeter Hugh Masekela’s iconic and internationally popular song <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2007/07/hugh-masekela-stimela-coal-train.html">“Stimela”</a> – the coal train – is perhaps a more appropriate anthem for Workers’ Day in southern and Central Africa. The song speaks about local history and the <a href="http://africanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-93">migrant labour system</a> on the mines. </p>
<p>“Stimela” reminds everyone that South Africa’s wealth and infrastructure was built on the back of labour from all over Africa. They were the force that modernised the country. But the song is also internationalist in focus.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s iconic ‘Stimela’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later recordings of the song typically begin with bass rhythms and percussion mimicking the sound of a train on its tracks. Then the instruments retreat to the background and Masekela announces:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi</p>
<p>there is a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe,</p>
<p>There is a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique,</p>
<p>From Lesotho, from Botswana, from Swaziland,</p>
<p>From all the hinterland of Southern and Central Africa.</p>
<p>This train carries young and old, African men</p>
<p>Who are conscripted to come and work on contract</p>
<p>In the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg</p>
<p>And its surrounding metropolis, sixteen hours or more a day</p>
<p>For almost no pay.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Early morning commute</h2>
<p>Until recently I was responsible for teaching an introductory course in sociology to first year university students. The auditorium in which I delivered the lectures had a beautiful sound system.</p>
<p>I’d plug in my computer and play music before lectures started. The music served two purposes. I liked to imagine that it allowed students to find some calm after their early morning commute from the city’s periphery on dilapidated trains.</p>
<p>It was also a way to introduce debates about key topics covered in the first year course.</p>
<p>I always started the first lecture of the year with Masekela’s “Stimela” because it was the perfect opening to a conversation about the forces that modernised South Africa.</p>
<p>South Africa’s was not a slow, organic growth of <a href="http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10539/8405/ISS-11.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">industrialisation</a> that characterised the European transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism, the great transformation that gave rise to my discipline of sociology, with Karl Marx as one of its key contributors.</p>
<p>The emergence of modern South Africa was brutal in a different way. It came about as a result of the discovery of diamonds and gold, and the need for cheap labour to extract metals from the seams that ran through the Witwatersrand’s rock formations.</p>
<p>This was a story of labour shortages and the intervention of colonial administrations and armies across southern and Central Africa. They dispossessed pastoralists of their land and imposed hut and poll taxes on traditional leaders so that Johannesburg could be supplied with the much needed <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Gold-Mozambican-Proletarian-Peasant/dp/0312083181">“Black Gold”</a>, as journalist-activist <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/people/slovo/ruth.html">Ruth First</a> described the system.</p>
<p>The song describes what’s on the minds of mining recruits on a steam train as it makes its way to Johannesburg: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They think about their lands, their herds that were taken away from them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Masekela, writing “Stimela” must have been, in part, a reflection on his own life. Born in the coal mining area called Witbank, he was raised by his grandmother who made her livelihood from a shebeen (an illegal bar) for mineworkers.</p>
<h2>The legacy lives on</h2>
<p>Up until the 1970s, when Masekela composed “Stimela” while he was in exile, South African mineworkers typically spent only a few years on the the mines, saving up money or buying cattle to return to their lands. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Remembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But the 1970s was time of great change in South Africa’s mining industry.</p>
<p>In 1974 <a href="http://opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/534/1980_horner_swp29.pdf?sequence=1">72 Malawian mineworkers</a> were killed in an aeroplane crash. A year later, <a href="http://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/mozambique/history">Mozambique</a> became independent. Both Mozambique and Malawi were major suppliers of migrant workers to South African mines and these events put the steady flow of labour at risk.</p>
<p>In the case of Mozambique, the apartheid state was able to strike a deal with the new Mozambican government for the continued supply of labour. But Malawi withdrew permission for the recruitment of workers from their country.</p>
<p>The result was a <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?id=65-258-5&page=1">shift</a> to recruiting more South African workers and the emergence of career mine workers with much longer contracts. This change in the mining labour market eventually led to the <a href="http://num.org.za/About-Us/History">founding</a> of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1982.</p>
<p>The successful organisation of workers who were at the heart of South Africa’s economy was one of the most important pillars of resistance against apartheid.</p>
<p>Sadly, the mining industry’s contested legacy and its migrant labour system remain challenges in the post-apartheid period. This is evident in a number of ways. The massacre of mineworkers at <a href="http://marikana.mg.co.za/">Marikana</a> in 2012 was a stark reminder of the acute vulnerability and exploitation of workers. </p>
<p>On top of this is the inability of the mining companies and the state to <a href="http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_187783/lang--en/index.htm">provide</a> many mine workers – now often employed through subcontractors – with decent housing and services. And finally, the issue of land dispossession still haunts the country, and remains unresolved.</p>
<p>Steam trains no longer crisscross southern Africa. Yet “Stimela” remains as much a song about present and future aspirations, as it does of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andries Bezuidenhout does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The protest song “Stimela” remains as much a song about present and future aspirations, as it is of the past.
Andries Bezuidenhout, Professor of Development Studies, University of Fort Hare
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91670
2018-04-09T14:54:29Z
2018-04-09T14:54:29Z
An appreciation of South Africa’s jazz stalwart Jonas Gwangwa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212255/original/file-20180327-109175-tz2jim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C338%2C1985%2C1730&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performing in Germany in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music galore marked the passing early in 2018 of two South African titans of culture, Poet Laureate <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a> and trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>. Notable at their memorial events were powerfully moving tributes by two veterans still living: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/biography-caiphus-semenya">Caiphus Semenya</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>. They have shared stages and the perils of exile with both. </p>
<p>Semenya and Gwangwa’s histories raise a persistent question – why, given the scale of their achievements, are they not more famous? The answer may be rooted in the prominence of live performance over composition: everybody remembers the man or woman on stage. Fewer enquire about who wrote – let alone arranged – the song.</p>
<p>So the 80-year-old Jonas Mosa Gwangwa can command instant warmth and recognition on stage, singing or playing trombone. That music has won him friends and fans around the world. The democratic South African government acknowledged his role in, as they termed it, “singing down apartheid” with the Order of Ikhamanga (Gold) in 2010. But even the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/jonas-gwangwa">citation</a> for that award omitted much about the scope of his work as composer, arranger and director of stage shows.</p>
<p>Gwangwa was born in Orlando East, outside Johannesburg in 1937. As a student, he became a founder-member of the influential Huddleston Jazz Band alongside Masekela. And, like his contemporary, he also moonlighted wherever there was band work – for example, in trumpeter Elijah Nwanyane’s Rhythm Kings. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa often performed in Elijah’s Rhythm Kings.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When American pianist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/05/obituaries/john-mehegan-jazz-pianist-wrote-4-volume-textbook.html">John Mehegan</a> visited South Africa in the late 1950s, Gwangwa was one of the improvisers with whom he chose to work.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a2HU70zFxl8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa performed with John Mehegan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those and other collaborations led, in turn, to the 1960 release of the <a href="http://revive-music.com/2011/06/21/the-jazz-epistles-jazz-epistle-verse-1/">“Jazz Epistles, Verse One”</a>. It was the first LP released by black modern jazz players in South Africa. It also featured <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a>, Masekela, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abdullah-ibrahim">Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim)</a> and more. As Gwangwa told me in my book <em><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/soweto-blues-9780826416629/">Soweto Blues</a></em> (2004):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kippie got interested in both Hugh and I because we were attempting all those Charlie Parker things, and Kippie said: ‘Oh, so you like this music? Come here, let me teach you…’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was during the making of the Jazz Epistles album that Gwangwa began to compose: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I sat at the piano, messing around until I came up with this tune <em>Carol’s Drive</em>… a style was being formulated, of course, only I was not aware of this… I was thinking that I could improvise so why can’t I compose?</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Jazz Epistles with the Gwangwa composition, ‘Carol’s Drive’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His music writing skills grew when he was engaged as a copyist and pit player for the famous musical <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">“King Kong”</a>. When the production toured abroad in 1961, Gwangwa was one of many cast members who chose not to return to apartheid South Africa after the show’s run concluded. He ended up with Masekela at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. </p>
<p>Gwangwa played a pivotal role in selling South African music to initially uninterested US audiences. He was arranger and orchestra director on Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba’s 1965 Grammy winning album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/an-evening-with-belafonte-makeba-mw0000453025">“An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte”</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Train Song’ from ‘An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the following decade, he also had his own projects, touring with Masekela and Semenya in the band, Union of South Africa, alongside American jazz band, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-crusaders-mn0000136075">The Crusaders</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Union of South Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gwangwa also released infectious Afro-pop with his band African Explosion.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa’s band African Explosion.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politically meaningful</h2>
<p>But, increasingly, the necessity to do something more politically meaningful with his music was becoming. As Gwangwa told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I figured that before I became an Americanised African, I have to go home and… grab a little kryptonite.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the early 1980s he was summoned by the president of the then banned <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> to assist with a group of young musicians in the ANC training camps in Angola who wanted to perform. The result was a musical, called <em>Amandla!</em>. With its slick, disciplined stagecraft, varied programming, comedy, dance routines and original as well as traditional and struggle songs,<a href="http://www.peripherycenter.org/music/music-anti-apartheid-south-africa"> <em>Amandla!</em></a> was light years away from simplistic agit-prop.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The track ‘Sasol’ from the original musical ‘Amandla!’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The script-line was kept sharply up to date:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always added or changed something to tally with whatever’s happening inside the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Between tours, Gwangwa spent as much time as he could in the ANC’s military camps, rehearsing, scouting new talent and sharing the risks. After a vehicle accident in Angola shattered his leg, he spent more time in Botswana, working with the Gaborone-based Medu Arts Ensemble. It was there that much of his best loved <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/pure-sounds-of-africa/987954418">material</a> was developed.</p>
<p>The physical perils of exile manifested tragically on 14 June 1985 when the South African Defence Force <a href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/gaborone_raid.htm?tab=report">raided Gaborone</a>, killing more than a dozen people, many connected with Medu. For weeks afterwards, unmarked vehicles with South African number plates spied on Gaborone. One hunted Gwangwa through the streets until he evaded it in the narrow alleys of an informal settlement.</p>
<h2>Shortlisted for an Oscar</h2>
<p>In 1987, Gwangwa worked with UK composer George Fenton on the soundtrack for the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092804/">“Cry Freedom”</a>, based on the friendship between newspaper editor Donald Woods and civil rights activist, Steve Biko. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cry-Freedom-Original-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B000002O5E">music</a> was shortlisted for an Oscar and multiple other international awards, winning both an Ivor Novello and a Black Emmy award. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The title track from the soundtrack of ‘Cry Freedom’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Gwangwa continued to perform – he played at both the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/british-anti-apartheid-movement-hosts-concert-mandela">1988 Nelson Mandela Birthday Concert</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b78f7">1990 Mandela release concerts in London</a> – that exposure opened additional doors to composing opportunities. Back home, by the mid-1990s his name was both a regular feature on music festival programmes, and a regular pop-up on film in composers’ credits. Since his return home, he has released eight albums.</p>
<p>Although composing now dominates his time, Gwangwa is still a powerfully compelling live artist. It may be a cliché, but one that is sometimes true: Gwangwa’s music at two memorial services for Kgositsile earlier this year – reprising songs that Medu veterans remember well from Botswana – really did not leave a dry eye in the house.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gwangwa at a memorial service for Keorapetse Kgositsile.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
South African jazz veteran Jonas Gwangwa has been getting recognition for the pivotal role he played in ‘singing down apartheid.’
Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91029
2018-02-11T08:17:45Z
2018-02-11T08:17:45Z
How Masekela’s journeys in exile shaped his music and politics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205530/original/file-20180208-180816-733hl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela's 30 years of exile began shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lee Celano/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The world continues to pay tribute to the legendary <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hugh-masekela">Hugh Ramapolo Masekela</a> who died on 23 January 2018. His journeys have reminded us that the itineraries of South African exiles — writers, journalists, performers, photographers, and political activists — have much to offer transnational histories of anti-apartheid resistance.</p>
<p>Masekela knew some formative moments during his own long exile. Radical black internationalism, pan-Africanism and anti-apartheid resistance were all woven into the texture of his sound. Masekela traversed these universes without ever relinquishing his claims to musical autonomy and creative agency as a black artist who made a living through his art.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Remembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Masekela’s 30 years of exile began shortly after the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> in March 1960. That is when the apartheid regime’s police opened fire on a group of black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg, killing 69 people.</p>
<p>The young Masekela was already a rising star in the <a href="http://www.afribeat.com/sajazz/history/sophiatown.htm">Sophiatown jazz scene</a> when he left his motherland. Once in New York, Masekela dreamed of blending into the golden era of black jazz as a virtuoso <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-bebop-2039578">bebop</a> trumpeter.</p>
<h2>Game-changer</h2>
<p>Although Masekela’s entry into the American music industry was relatively smooth thanks to the mediation of his future wife, the already exiled singer <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a>, his career veered away from bebop. </p>
<p>After his separation from Makeba, Masekela moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1966 in the slipstream of the relative success of his third album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/americanization-of-ooga-booga-mw0001304086">“The Americanization of Ooga Booga”</a> (1966). </p>
<p>This decision was a game-changer. Masekela was invited to participate in the prestigious <a href="https://montereyinternationalpopfestival.com/">Monterey International Pop Festival</a> in California in 1967. He then released his first hit and chart-blazer “Grazing in the Grass” (1968).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qxXZF60EPdM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s chart-topping ‘Grazing in the grass’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Around this time, the first signs of radical black internationalism came to the fore in Masekela’s music emerging on his 1969 album, “Masekela”, arguably the first politically direct album in his oeuvre. </p>
<p>In his 2004 autobiography Masekela defined one of the songs in the album in question, “If There’s Anybody Out There Who Can Hear Me”, as,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a lament about police brutality, racism, and unfair imprisonment of black males, the suffering of the Vietnamese, and the conscription of innocent young men into the army to fight and kill people who had done nothing to harm them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stylistically an American blues-rock song, it is performed from the point of view of a black South African responding to the experiences that shaped America during the late 1960s. Masekela screams “from down here below” in the hope that he will be strong enough to finish his story.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0Q9KcWcfE04?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s ‘If There’s Anybody Out There Who Can Hear Me’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pan-Africanist inspiration</h2>
<p>Dazzled by the fame of “Grazing in the Grass” <a href="http://www.racpro.com/grid.php?pid=4&sid=10656&type=ht&from=chhistnet">topping the US charts</a>, the young Masekela spent much of his new fortune on drugs and alcohol. Still, he recorded two notable albums during the early 1970s in collaboration with fellow exiles, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/biography-caiphus-semenya">Caiphus Semenya</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hugh-Masekela-Union-South-Africa/dp/B000001A6T">“Masekela and the Union of South Africa”</a> (1971) and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/home-is-where-the-music-is-mw0000789812">“Home Is Where the Music Is”</a> (1972) both blended the sounds of South Africa with contemporary black musical production in the US. </p>
<p>In 1972 Masekela decided to travel to Africa in search of musical inspiration. His friendship with the Nigerian political activist and pioneer of <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/style/afro-beat-ma0000004495">Afrobeat</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/fela-kuti-mn0000138833">Fela Anikulapo Kuti</a>, would leave a deep imprint on him as he developed an awareness about the vibrancy of music-making on the continent. </p>
<p>During his travels through Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia, Zaire and Ghana, Masekela was exposed to energetic political debate pivoting on competing pan-Africanist agendas, anti-imperialism and the consolidation of nation-building initiatives in decolonising Africa. </p>
<p>Back in New York with the esteemed Ghanaian band, <a href="https://soundwayrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hedzoleh-soundz">Hedzoleh Soundz</a>, Masekela was able to restore his reputation. He fully committed himself to a new vision: raising awareness of contemporary African music on the other side of the Atlantic.</p>
<h2>Rumble in the Jungle</h2>
<p>With record producer <a href="http://www.stewartlevine.com/">Stewart Levine</a>, Masekela quickly went on to produce the famous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jun/21/soul-power-documentary-ali-frazier">“Zaire ‘74”</a> festival. This three-day black music event was intended to precede the famous boxing bout known as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/15/-sp-forty-years-rumble-in-the-jungle-kinshasa-muhammad-ali-george-foreman">“Rumble in the Jungle”</a> between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.</p>
<p><a href="http://africasacountry.com/2016/06/the-rumble-in-the-jungle/">“Zaire '74”</a> juxtaposed Black Power and Soul Power with dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s violent campaigns to consolidate Zairean nationalism. For their part, Masekela and Levine orchestrated the event to create a deliberately crafted transatlantic dialogue between Latino, African American and continental African musical traditions.</p>
<p>The festival fell short of Masekela’s expectations of producing a “black Woodstock” in Africa, not least because boxing match was postponed due to Foreman’s injury which deprived “Zaire '74” of its function as curtain-raiser. </p>
<p>Masekela did not himself appear at the festival. Yet “Zaire '74” would be crucial in consolidating his prominence as an icon of the anti-apartheid struggle.</p>
<h2>Anti-apartheid resistance</h2>
<p>Anthems showing acute political involvement began to emerge from Masekela’s oeuvre from this point onwards. One of his most famous anti-apartheid anthems, “Stimela”, was written one gloomy evening in a Woodstock club during a drinking session back in 1971. It was recorded in March 1974 as part of Masekela’s album “I Am Not Afraid”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/650IZTWZa50?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s ‘Stimela’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Masekela’s opening monologue lists all the places from which labour migrants travel to Johannesburg to work in the city’s mines. The song poignantly emphasises the pain of travelling to a place from which there is no easy return. The mechanical scream of the train functions as the moment when the body of the exiled Masekela becomes a weapon of protest: with exquisite drama the voice of the displaced musician serves to introduce the artistry of his trumpet solo.</p>
<p>Over the years Masekela’s courageous voice against the injustices of apartheid was loud and clear. There are numerous examples, but we cite two.</p>
<p>“Soweto Blues” was written in the aftermath of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto Uprising</a>. It was when young black people in the township rose up against the apartheid government’s directive to make Afrikaans compulsory as a language of instruction in schools. </p>
<p>Then there was the 1985 hit “Bring Him Back Home” triggered by a birthday card <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/song/bring-him-back-home-nelson-mandela-mt0004189288">smuggled</a> out of Pollsmoor Prison from then incarcerated ANC leader Nelson Mandela to Masekela.</p>
<p>In September 1990 Masekela <a href="https://www.news24.com/Books/book-extract-still-grazing-masekela-on-coming-home-from-exile-20180123">returned</a> from exile. This concluded his physical journeys. But as musicologist Lindelwa Dalamba has pointed out, addressing Masekela’s pan-Africanist musical indebtedness after his death:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The journeys that Masekela mapped for us as a nomad in exile cannot be said to have ended.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ron Levi and Louise Bethlehem receive funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP / 2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 615564.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Bethlehem and Ron Levi receive funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP / 2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 615564.
</span></em></p>
Hugh Masekela’s itinerary-in-exile was loud and clear in his songs.
Ron Levi, Ph.D. fellow in European Research Council (ERC) project "Apartheid- The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation 1948-1990", led by Prof. Louise Bethlehem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Louise Bethlehem, Associate professor in Cultural Studies and English, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84531
2017-09-28T12:27:44Z
2017-09-28T12:27:44Z
King Kong: legendary South African musical returns to a fragmented country
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187988/original/file-20170928-1488-13bkro7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Andile Gumbi beats down his opponent Given Mkhize in the King Kong musical.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Hogg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After an absence of over half a century, the courageous musical <a href="https://www.kingkongstagemusical.com/about">“King Kong”</a> has smashed its way back into the collective South African consciousness. On tour in South Africa, “King Kong” is one of the most successful and controversial musicals ever to have been produced in the country.</p>
<p>Back in 1959 the jazz musical toured the country’s major cities to, at times, sold out venues. It was seen by roughly 200,000 people before moving to London’s West End. Set to music of composer <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/todd-tozama-matshikiza">Todd Matshikiza</a>, it launched the international careers of musical greats, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hugh-masekela">Hugh Masekela</a>, among many others.</p>
<p>The narrative, which does not involve any giant apes (as in the <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/king-kong-years-how-giant-gorilla-has-evolved-1933-982360">film</a> with the same name), follows the life story of 1950s heavyweight boxer Ezekiel Dlamini, who was better known by his ring name “King Kong”. Briefly stated, Dlamini becomes something of a township hero in the darkening days of apartheid by rising to boxing superstardom. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">story</a> follows the highs and lows of his life, his fall from grace, and eventual suicide in a hard labour camp. Presenting the harsh realities of life in South Africa’s townships, gangsterism and the belligerent indifference of the apartheid state, the production quickly rose to notoriety. It was a collaborative effort that ignored the racial boundaries so vehemently enforced by the apartheid government. It also drew critical acclaim from multiracial audiences.</p>
<h2>Kong in the era of Fallism</h2>
<p>The timing of this latest production is interesting. Aside from a failed revival attempt in 1979, “King Kong” has been absent for almost 60 years. The musical was originally performed within the historical backdrop of the construction of so-called <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">“grand apartheid”</a> under then prime minister <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-frensch-verwoerd">Hendrik Verwoerd</a>. </p>
<p>The 1950s saw a flurry of legislative activity on the part of the apartheid government, affecting everything from education to land, labour and love. The decade also saw 156 people, including Nelson Mandela, put on trial in 1956 and charged with High Treason for their alleged actions against the state. The proceedings, which culminated in charges being dropped in 1961, would become engraved into South Africa’s history and known simply as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/treason-trial-1956-1961">“The Treason Trial”</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qn7cmLYc9D4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">From the original 1950s ‘King Kong’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the fall of minority rule, Kong showed no signs of returning throughout the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/nelson-mandela-robben-island-rainbow-nation-marian-pallister-0">“Rainbow Nation” years</a> of the late 1990s under the moral, political, and spiritual leadership of figures like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. No, Kong has returned at an historical moment of unprecedented social strife in the post-liberation era. </p>
<p>Despite over two decades of democracy, over the past two years South Africa has witnessed <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=feesmustfall">protests</a> against colonial and apartheid monuments. Demands for decolonisation across the country’s education system and student protests have been seen unlike anything in recent memory. In the digital age of hashtag student movements and demands for radical transformation, King Kong’s themes of harsh living conditions, socioeconomic immobility, corruption and gangsterism are unsettingly familiar and contemporary for many South Africans. </p>
<p>The country’s relatively peaceful transition from institutionalised racism and disenfranchisement to fully democratic state is often held in high esteem, and rightly so. It was indeed a remarkable achievement, given that many other post-colonial African nations suffered immense turmoil during the colonial withdrawals of the 1960s and 70s. </p>
<p>But South Africans must be careful. In the haste to celebrate the atmosphere of reconciliation, truth and amnesty that largely characterised the transition, the troubling lack of social and economic mobility that the country has experienced since then is often overlooked. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lesser-known-and-scarier-facts-about-unemployment-in-south-africa-83055">Unemployment</a> remains startlingly high, with young black South Africans bearing the largest burden. </p>
<p>Despite a drop in relative poverty in recent years, the country continues to display some of the highest levels of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-needs-to-fix-its-dangerously-wide-wealth-gap-66355">economic and social inequality</a> in the world. What these issues illustrate are the enduring legacies of white minority rule and the lack of socioeconomic transformation in the post liberation era. “King Kong” has come home after an almost 60 year absence to find that the country does not look so different.</p>
<h2>A tale of two South Africas</h2>
<p>“King Kong” embodies the germinating seeds of two potential and mutually exclusive South Africas. Writing about the opening night in Johannesburg, one columnist for the city’s <em>The Star</em> newspaper mused: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>All I know is that by the end of the evening every one of us in the audience could have leapt up and danced and sung with the cast, such was the magic of the evening.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This column was not written about the 2017 opening night. It was written in 1959. It shows the extraordinary capacity of the arts to transcend the toxic racial politics of the time. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187989/original/file-20170928-1466-yhjxa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miriam Makeba playing the role of the Shebeen Queen in the 1959 production of King Kong.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Irene Menell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During its long absence, the production became emblematic of what could be achieved through collaboration across racial lines. In the post-liberation and post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission age, “King Kong” has the potential to help resuscitate debate around the now fatigued rainbow optimism of the late 1990s.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187993/original/file-20170928-8391-p9911.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187993/original/file-20170928-8391-p9911.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187993/original/file-20170928-8391-p9911.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187993/original/file-20170928-8391-p9911.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187993/original/file-20170928-8391-p9911.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187993/original/file-20170928-8391-p9911.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187993/original/file-20170928-8391-p9911.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nondumiso Tembe as the Shebeen Queen in the 2017 production.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Hogg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The moral tale of “King Kong” still resonates in contemporary South Africa. As such, the production can just as easily be considered as a poignant reminder that South Africa is still socially and politically fragmented.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84531/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Robert Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The returned musical “King Kong” embodies the germinating seeds of two potential and mutually exclusive South Africas.
Gavin Robert Walker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ethnomusicology, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/63848
2016-08-15T15:09:51Z
2016-08-15T15:09:51Z
Billy goes to Marikana: the staged lives and times of two mining towns
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134100/original/image-20160815-15238-kcssmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Meshack Mavuso played the role of 'The Man with the Green Blanket' in 'Marikana the Musical'</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">@marikanathemusical</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I had the opportunity to watch a performance of “<a href="http://billyelliotthemusical.com/">Billy Elliot - The Musical</a>” in Bradford, UK in June 2016. The story explores the experiences of mining communities in the 1980s in northern England. The story of Billy Elliot, a young orphan boy growing up in a mining town during the miners’ strike in the mid-80s in the UK took me to South Africa. Specifically to Marikana, the Lonmin mine north west of Johannesburg, where South African police shot and killed 34 striking mineworkers on Thursday 16 August, 2012. </p>
<p>The emotional response I felt in the middle of a very British audience in Bradford was in fact the memory of Marikana, a tragedy that also led to a play, <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/entertainment/2014/10/10/marikana-the-musical-hits-the-stage">“Marikana the Musical”</a> in 2014. I realise that is what theatre is meant to do: the arts aim to evoke feelings over and above appreciation of the artistic piece.</p>
<p>Billy Elliot took me on a journey back home to the familiar losses of lives, work and sense of community when mining suddenly dies. The long term effects of the loss of livelihoods when mines shut down in northern England in the 1980s are still felt to date. I also remembered the more recent losses in Zambia and <a href="http://www.africanindy.com/business/mining-woes-rock-botswana-1520740">Botswana</a>’s northern cities when <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/06/economy-zambia-hard-times-on-the-copperbelt/">copper prices</a> crashed. Communities whose lifeline was dependent on the mines have gone from surviving to grinding poverty.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134111/original/image-20160815-27210-t81vtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134111/original/image-20160815-27210-t81vtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134111/original/image-20160815-27210-t81vtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134111/original/image-20160815-27210-t81vtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134111/original/image-20160815-27210-t81vtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134111/original/image-20160815-27210-t81vtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134111/original/image-20160815-27210-t81vtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actor Trent Kowalik from ‘Billy Elliot, The Musical’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gary Hershorn /Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Billy Elliot was a boy who wanted to do ballet. Billy kept his secret from his father and brother, pretending that that he was taking boxing lessons. </p>
<p>In a community steeped in mining traditions and a strong sense of masculinity a boy doing ballet was a no-no. With help from his ballet teacher, he triumphs and eventually realises his dream.</p>
<h2>Mining cultures</h2>
<p>Southern Africa is no stranger to mining cultures. For over 200 years men journeyed to the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/first-mines-are-proclaimed-johannesburg">gold</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/all-glitters-rock-which-future-will-be-built-emilia-potenza">diamond</a> mines of Johannesburg and Kimberley respectively. When <a href="http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-a-brief-history-of-mining-in-south-africa">platinum</a>, which was discovered in South Africa in 1924, became the new gold many more came. For boys going to the mines was part of their rite of passage. They fashioned their dreams and manhood around mining. Many came from far and endured long separation from their families. Their remittances kept communities alive. </p>
<p>In the mines they formed strong bonds of brotherhood to survive. Music and dance became their outlet and to date the gumboot dance remains a popular artistic act. Musicians like <a href="http://www.hughmasekela.co.za/">Hugh Masekela</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a> have done award winning songs about the life and times of miners.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cPxmmMpfG88?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s song ‘Stimela’ about the lives of mineworkers.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marikana brought a new awakening to the brutality of mining life. Following months of strike action the miners of Marikana tragically encountered a brutal police response on August 16 four years ago. Many who saw it broadcast live on television still ask – why? A <a href="http://www.marikanacomm.org.za/">commission of inquiry</a> has <a href="http://www.wwmp.org.za/index.php/2-uncategorised/161-the-struggle-for-justice-and-restitution-the-bodymaps-of-the-widows-of-marikana">come and gone</a>. Many lost their jobs and returned empty handed to their communities. Marikana will never be the same again.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Thirty four mineworkers were killed in the Marikana massacre.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tears and emotions in the theatre</h2>
<p>Director <a href="http://gq.co.za/2015/07/aubrey-sekhabi/">Aubrey Sekhabi</a> brought Marikana to stage. I was fortunate to attend the premiere of the <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-15-marikana-musical-wins-big-at-naledi-theatre-awards">award winning</a> “Marikana the Musical” in 2014. The vivid representation of the “Man with the green blanket” – Mgcineni “Mambush” Noki, one of the miners killed in 2012, was one of the strikers’ leaders – brought me to tears and elicited emotions I had not felt since watching the news on that fateful evening in August 2012.</p>
<p>A year later the award winning documentary “<a href="http://www.minersshotdown.co.za/">Miners Shot Down</a>” (2015) brought a reminder of Marikana’s unresolved questions. The widows, survivors and families live with the physical, emotional and mental scars of those fateful days. Miners lost their lives and jobs. Communities lost lifelines. Hopes died particularly for children who dreamt of going to school, getting a new chance at life to break the cycle of poverty. All those dreams have been deferred or are dead and buried.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134104/original/image-20160815-15253-jfwboj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134104/original/image-20160815-15253-jfwboj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134104/original/image-20160815-15253-jfwboj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134104/original/image-20160815-15253-jfwboj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134104/original/image-20160815-15253-jfwboj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134104/original/image-20160815-15253-jfwboj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134104/original/image-20160815-15253-jfwboj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mgcineni ‘Mambush’ Noki talking to the police hostage negotiator - from the documentary ‘Miners Shot Down’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.minersshotdown.co.za/">Miners Shot Down</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many questions have been asked about the role of leaders in the Marikana affair. Like the UK miners’ strike, the economic livelihood of the miners and their communities were at stake. They were pitted against big business and a changing capitalist world. </p>
<p>In the case of Marikana <a href="https://www.lonmin.com/">Lonmin</a>, a listed mining company, was calling the shots with vested interests of the newly rich black middle class who had acquired shareholding through the policy of <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/business/trends/empowerment/bee.htm#.V7GLlfl97IU">Black Economic Empowerment</a> (BEE). With its roots in Lonrho (the amalgam of London and Rhodesia) Lonmin was no stranger to mining and doing business in Africa. The huge divide between executive pay and wages for workers was a bone of contention. The conditions of miners including the use of hostels brought to the fore issues of inequalities and poverty.</p>
<p>The platinum mines are located in areas of <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-08-18-marikana-i-dont-see-any-difference-in-living-conditions/#.V7GMYfl97IU">rural poverty</a> with small isolated villages in South Africa’s North West province. Small shanty and shack settlements quickly form around mines and with them come the negative impacts of crime, diseases and other social ills. Mining executives live in cities in exclusive neighbourhoods like Sandton, north of Johannesburg. Today, <a href="http://www.miningweekly.com/article/lost-narrative-of-silicosis-tb-among-mineworkers-post-marikana-2012-11-09/rep_id:3650">TB</a> and HIV/AIDS haunt mining communities like Marikana and families of miners who have returned home.</p>
<h2>Trapped in poverty</h2>
<p>Some communities and parts of others in the north of England were to an extent salvaged by government social protection albeit with varied degrees of success of commitment from the UK’s politicians. The people of Marikana, however, are still trapped in abject poverty.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134107/original/image-20160815-15277-1c4oxzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134107/original/image-20160815-15277-1c4oxzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134107/original/image-20160815-15277-1c4oxzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134107/original/image-20160815-15277-1c4oxzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134107/original/image-20160815-15277-1c4oxzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134107/original/image-20160815-15277-1c4oxzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134107/original/image-20160815-15277-1c4oxzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A child sits outside a locked shack in Nkaneng township, Marikana’s informal settlement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters</span></span>
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<p>In southern Africa, the lives of communities dependent on mining are shattered. The miners wait for answers, compensation and for someone to do something. Through art we encounter their pain and anguish with no signs of hope at the end of the dark tunnel.</p>
<p>Unlike Billy Elliot, the <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-04-12-in-pictures-the-children-of-marikana/#.V7GRUfl97IU">children of Marikana</a> are doomed. Leaving the theatre after watching “Billy Elliot” I thought of home … and how different life can be for a boy called Billy in England. </p>
<p>In Marikana, a boy – let’s call him “Bashi” – could be in the dusty alleys of Marikana. Billy realised his dream. “Bashi” looks at the dark night. He stares at the stars and wonders where help will come from.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63848/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alinah Kelo Segobye received funding from the Rotary Peace Centre for her visiting scholar term at the University of Bradford in 2016. </span></em></p>
Two musicals set in working class mining communities – one in the UK and the other in South Africa – have diametrically opposed messages: one of hope; the other, despair.
Alinah Kelo Segobye, Associate Professor (Archaeology), University of South Africa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41278
2015-08-14T03:57:18Z
2015-08-14T03:57:18Z
South African musicians in the eye of party political storm
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90862/original/image-20150805-22488-17tzvzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In a track called Bring it Back Home, Hugh Masekela bemoans the tendency by politicians, who after ascending to power, discard the people who helped them get there.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrea De Silva/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The dawn of a democratic order in South Africa necessitated a switch from liberation politics to multiparty politics. This change affected almost all spheres of South African life, including the music scene.</p>
<p>In the past, the primary goal of political activities was to dislodge the common enemy that was apartheid. Music was integral to the <a href="http://stichproben.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_stichproben/Artikel/Nummer14/Nr14_Schumann.pdf">liberation effort</a>.</p>
<p>The message was <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/18725/dissertation_durbach_dj.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">clear</a>. Legends such as Miriam Makeba and Jonas Gwangwa vociferously spoke out against apartheid while in <a href="http://theculturetrip.com/africa/south-africa/articles/rhythmical-resistance-musicians-from-the-apartheid-era/">exile</a>. South African greats such as Stimela, Chicco Thwala and Brenda Fassie’s music contained covert anti-apartheid sentiments. It clearly was “the people” against an evil and deplorable system. Against this background, the phrase “my people” carried some relevance.</p>
<p>But when politics inevitably led to intra-party politics, the mismanagement of the process of shifting focus to internal party matters gave rise to splinter camps. The “my people” phrase gradually metamorphosed into referring only to political cadres. Cadre deployment became the unashamed policy of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC). </p>
<p>The music fraternity suddenly realised that the government, through the many functions it hosts, was becoming one of the biggest promoters of live music performances. This was also guided by government’s generally stated commitment to the promotion of local musicians in the face of diminishing performance spaces.</p>
<p>Its financial support for major music festivals such as the <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-sa/arts-culture">Joy of Jazz</a>, or its role in staging free concerts during important calendar days, has established its role as one of the primary sources of performance opportunities. By extension, it provided a livelihood for musicians whose income depended more on live performances because of the stagnation of the record industry.</p>
<h2>Conditional contracts</h2>
<p>But what began as a genuine opportunity gradually became the bane of the music industry. Events companies, which previously enjoyed some autonomy, began to compete for government contracts. Often these contracts came with alleged tacit or underhand conditions devised by some government officials who dictate which musicians are desirable to perform at what <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2014/05/20/musicians-fear-isolation-by-parties-cwusa">event</a>.</p>
<p>The act of prescribing musicians for government events was not as straightforward since all African musicians were ANC-aligned until proven otherwise. The coming into existence of splinter political parties revealed the musicscape muddied by <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2015/03/14/dj-merlon-snubs-eff---muso-won-t-play-at-party-s-gig">party politics</a>.</p>
<p>Musicians harbouring different opinions about political developments in the country, irrespective of their apolitical intentions, are <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2014/05/05/rapper-ifani-gets-caught-up-in-party-politics">sidelined</a>. Political patronage in the music industry has thus been encouraged. The fear harboured by musicians in the face of economic exclusion in this time and age is real and understandable. </p>
<p>In an open letter to L’vovo Derrango, DJ Merlon and <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/goodlife/2015/03/17/open-letter-to-lvovo-derrango-dj-merlon-and-dj-shimza">DJ Shimza</a> published by national newspaper the Sowetan, Zuma wa EFF, a social commentator, highlights the dilemma of mixing politics with party politics. Zuma wa EFF suggests that artists forget that their popularity is not linked to their political affiliation, but their God-given talent.</p>
<p>What is noteworthy is that the seemingly apathetic attitude of the <a href="http://www.grocotts.co.za/content/born-frees-dont-care-democracy-06-08-2012">“born frees”</a> to politics, plays itself out in music as well. The disc jockey (DJ) phenomenon has taken over. House music, unlike rap in the US, is largely devoid of political commentary. The DJs rather choose to sing about apolitical life experiences or personal relationships. In short, the notion of resistance or protest music has all but subsided.</p>
<p>The alleged role played by a company called the <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/10years/10years-inauguration.htm">Creative Collective</a> in staging the inauguration of Thabo Mbeki for his second term as president at the Union Buildings in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/freedom-day-pres-thabo-mbeki-inaugurated-his-second-term-president-same-day-rsa-celebrat">2005</a> was a sign of the times. It left many sidelined artists worried. The collective included musicians such as Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Caiphus Semenya and Sibongile Khumalo. </p>
<p>Also, during the Mbeki era, Solly Moholo appeared at most of the ANC’s rallies. The trend continued with <a href="http://www.sundayworld.co.za/news/2014/05/07/chomee-flees-arthur">Chomee</a> known for her gyrating moves at ANC events into President Jacob Zuma’s reign. </p>
<p>But things came to a head during the 2009 general elections when some artists, including Thandiswa Mazwai, her poet sister Ntsiki and Ringo Madlingozi refused to compose and sing <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XKnSdaa5e0EJ:www.mio.co.za/article/musos-refuse-to-sing-for-ruling-party-2009-05-04/+&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;gl=za">ANC campaign songs</a>. Madlingozi – and others who supposedly refused to be associated with that particular campaign – were allegedly blacklisted by the ruling party.</p>
<p>In a track called Bring it Back Home from his 2009 album titled Phola, Hugh Masekela eloquently bemoans the prevalent tendency by politicians, who after ascending to positions of power, discard the very people who helped their course. It is ironic that Masekela himself was an alleged <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Inauguration-to-cost-millions-20040212-2">beneficiary</a> of contracts during the Mbeki era as a member of the Creative Collective.</p>
<p>For all intents and purposes musicians today have become timid. Not for fear of persecution as it was the case in the past, but for fear of economic exclusion. Avenues that used to support the music that expresses the anguish of “the people” no longer exist. The notions of “freedom of expression” and “poetic license” ring hollow today. </p>
<p>Only the internationally acclaimed artists can still afford to have their contending views about such unfortunate happenstances known. But, it is worth noting that Thomas Mapfumo, dubbed “the father of <a href="http://www.zambuko.com/mbirapage/resource_guide/pages/music/chimurenga.html">Chimurenga</a> music”, has not returned to his motherland, Zimbabwe. Those who returned, but maintained their apolitical stance, have witnessed their stars waning and eventually fading into obscurity.</p>
<p>Be that as it may, it takes the courage of conviction from enlightened artists such as Ringo Mdlingozi, Ntsiki and Thandiswa Mazwai to protect artistic independence even against the ruthlessness of the ruling party. Whereas I sympathise with the ideals of the current political dispensation, it remains my contention that erosion of artistic freedom is diabolical.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Mapaya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Concert organisers began to compete for government contracts. Often these contracts came with conditions as to who, among musicians, was desirable at government events.
Geoff Mapaya, Associate Professor, Department of Music, University of Venda
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.