tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/king-kong-25283/articlesKing Kong – The Conversation2023-06-08T16:28:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045922023-06-08T16:28:34Z2023-06-08T16:28:34ZJurassic Park at 30: how its CGI revolutionised the film industry<p><em>You can also read this article <a href="https://theconversation.com/jurassic-park-yn-30-ar-chwyldro-effeithiau-arbennig-ddigwyddodd-yn-sgil-y-ffilm-207439">in Welsh</a>.</em></p>
<p>This month marks the 30th anniversary of a film that changed cinema forever. 1993’s Jurassic Park used pioneering computer-generated imagery (CGI) to bring dinosaurs to life in Steven Spielberg’s adaption of the novel of the same name. </p>
<p>The film quickly became a must-see event and audiences were left amazed by the spectacle of seeing believable dinosaurs grace the big screen for the first time. Jurassic Park not only <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uWiWCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT6&dq=jurassic+park+cgi&ots=2GhA2wlixw&sig=lhUvmRpL2KYrbQWDfE1fRizz7FE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=jurassic%20park%20cgi&f=false">made giant leaps</a> in special-effects filmmaking, but it also paved the way for myriad subsequent productions that featured beasts of all shapes and sizes.</p>
<p>Jurassic Park originated in 1983 as a screenplay by Michael Crichton, whose previous foray into film as writer and director of Westworld (1973) featured an immersive amusement park where androids malfunctioned and caused havoc. But his dinosaur-themed story first found publication as the novel Jurassic Park, which was released in 1990 and became a bestseller. </p>
<p>That’s when it came to the attention of Steven Spielberg. By the early 1990s, Spielberg was no stranger to big-budget science-fiction filmmaking. The likes of Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) had demonstrated that he had a track record of making extremely successful effects-heavy but story-led films. That made Jurassic Park perfect for his next production.</p>
<p>Spielberg’s adaptation, written by Crichton and David Koepp, changed a number of aspects of the novel’s ending to provide a satisfactory conclusion to the film, yet leave enough loose ends for further exploration in the franchise.</p>
<p>Of course, Jurassic Park wasn’t the first time dinosaurs had been featured on the big screen. 1933’s King Kong is an early example of a film that pushed the boundaries of what was then possible by including sequences of the eponymous giant gorilla fighting with dinosaurs. </p>
<p>Creatures were brought to life for cinema goers by combining stop-motion animation with rear projection (where previously shot film is projected onto a backdrop and actors are recorded performing in front of it). Other feature films such as Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), The Lost World (1960) and The Land That Time Forgot (1974) had attempted alternative ways of bringing dinosaurs to the screen, including puppetry and even fitting live reptiles with prosthetics. </p>
<p>Of these methods, a combination of stop-motion animation for long shots and animatronic puppets for close ups were initially chosen by Spielberg for Jurassic Park.</p>
<h2>CGI and animation</h2>
<p>Stop-motion tests produced good results, especially in the development of go-motion, a technique which blurred models to provide a sense of movement similar to that of live action. But Spielberg and his team were still keen to go further with what was possible. Dennis Muren from the visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), provided an alternative approach by using CGI modelling and animation.</p>
<p>Off the back of pioneering CGI work in The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), Muren and his team produced a test sequence of skeletal dinosaurs. Additional tests featuring a <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> with added skin further cemented the realisation that this was the way to go for the film. This technique built the model of the dinosaur from bones, added muscle and then finally, the skin. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rc_i5TKdmhs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The T. rex escapes its paddock.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seemed the assembled stop-motion team had been made extinct by this innovative technology. However, the model makers and animators were the experts on dinosaurs and their movement, and they retrained as computer animators to continue to use their skills on the production.</p>
<p>Jurassic Park features 15 minutes of on-screen dinosaurs, of which approximately nine minutes feature Stan Winston’s animatronics and six minutes of ILM’s CGI animation. The success of this combination is seen in the iconic <em>T. rex</em> attack scene. A number of animatronic shots feature close-ups of the <em>T.rex</em> before the full-height shots provide the creature’s threat and power. </p>
<p>How Spielberg orchestrates the scene, from the atmospheric, tension building of the rain storm, through the initial reveal and reactions, the prolonged attack and subsequent escape, takes the audience through a range of emotions. Although the CGI sections are relatively short, they have a huge impact on the overall storytelling, not to mention the believability that the event is actually happening in front of us. It’s a true representation of the power of cinema. </p>
<h2>Impact</h2>
<p>On release, Jurassic Park became an instant box office success, becoming the highest-grossing film ever at that time. It also presented the perfect opportunity to develop and showcase the latest advances in CGI. The thrill of seeing the stampede of Gallimimus, the horror of the <em>T.rex</em> attack and the suspense of the Velociraptor hunt captivated audiences across the globe. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8hjB6UJ2kMU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“They’re flocking this way” - Jurassic Park’s Gallimimus chase scene.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Jurassic Park inspired a number of similarly themed movies such as Disney’s Dinosaur (2000) and the award-winning BBC television series Walking with Dinosaurs (1999). But more than that, it helped bring about a revolution in the use of CGI in filmmaking. </p>
<p>From those six minutes of animated dinosaurs, CGI has become so integrated into the industry to the extent that nearly all film and television productions feature some form of CGI practice. This can simply mean digitally cleaning up aspects of the filmed image with removals and replacements, set extensions, adding CGI set models or animated vehicles and props, to filming with green screen and compositing images, or merging actors within full CGI environments. </p>
<p>The film remains a significant point in the history of cinema that successfully announced that CGI creatures had arrived, paving the way for the following thirty years of fantasy filmmaking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hodges 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>Jurassic Park was released on the big screen in June 1993 and changed cinema for good.Peter Hodges, Lecturer in Contextual and Critical Studies for Visual Effects and Motion Graphics, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1581052021-04-01T18:47:35Z2021-04-01T18:47:35Z‘Godzilla vs. Kong’: Monster movies evoke adventure but also ‘dangers’ of tropics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393182/original/file-20210401-19-kx3hwy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C12%2C1349%2C679&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hollywood movies have historically represented the tropics as lush green coasts but lurking underneath is disease and danger.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For audiences stuck in their living rooms, the new monster film <em>Godzilla vs. Kong</em> offers an opportunity to do some armchair travelling. But before you imagine a tropical island getaway — perhaps a lounge-chair by a beach soaked in sunshine — this is a monster movie and so you must also make room for a scary lurking creature. </p>
<p>The duality of these images are with us partly because <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/hollywoods-hawaii">Hollywood movies have long leaned into colonial representations</a> of the tropics: imagined as romantic palm-fringed coasts full of abundance and natural fertility, but also scary places full of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9493.00060">pestilence, disease and primitiveness</a> and previously “undiscovered” creatures. </p>
<p>Through stories of colonial exploration, tropical landscapes become places where the western explorer can experience the unbridled sensuality of nature as well as the thrill of danger from the unknown. In this view, the tropics become a landscape where nature towers over man, a power imbalance that monster films seek to address. </p>
<p>Though these films start with tropical locales, the threat posed by mega-creatures does not become real until they cross into the realms of the western world. For example, Godzilla’s journey begins with former colonies and ends in New York. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book Cover: Contagious: Cultures, Carriers and the Outbreak Narrative" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393148/original/file-20210401-15-dk362f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Monster movies are about protecting western lands and people from exposure to strange lands, people and disease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Duke Press)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The problem in these monster movies then becomes one of protecting western lands and people from <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/bioinsecurities">exposure to strange lands</a> and the “aberrant” creatures and people contained in those lands. Non-western landscapes and people thus become endowed with the burden of embodying these threats, magnified many times over in monster films. The same trajectory is also invoked with narratives of disease transmission: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390572">from a “primitive” space to the metropolitan centre</a>. </p>
<p>Although <a href="https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/godzillas-island-origin/">Godzilla originated out of Japanese history and culture</a>, when it crossed over into Hollywood, the setting of the films relied on tropes from colonial history. So while monster films may be entertaining, they build on structures with long imperial histories and have implications for the way <a href="http://www.siupress.com/books/978-0-8093-2624-2">Hollywood audiences perceive the tropics</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Savage wilderness’</h2>
<p>The narratives of tropics simultaneously containing possibilities for paradise and pestilence can be traced back to the beginning of colonial scientific exploration.</p>
<p>These ideas come alive in <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/61933b5a4492e779/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2599">a 19th-century explorer’s account of a journey </a> to French Guiana. He writes about “virgin forests,” “tropical luxuriance,” “wild denizens” and their “gloomy recesses” and “the poetry of savage wilderness.”</p>
<p>The 19th-century British explorer, Joseph Banks, who accompanied cartographer James Cook on his voyage to the South Pacific, marvelled <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/joseph-banks-endeavour-journal">how nature had provided for the inhabitants of these lands in abundance. He even said the tropical land yielded fruit without labour</a>. These perceptions shaped the idea of tropics as a place of natural abundance, and gave rise to the trope of <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14096.html">tropical bounty</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-day-colonialisms-role-in-the-overexploitation-of-natural-resources-113995">Earth Day: Colonialism's role in the overexploitation of natural resources</a>
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<p>The “discovery” of new lands was combined with the impulse to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/history/regional-history-after-1500/green-imperialism-colonial-expansion-tropical-island-edens-and-origins-environmentalism-16001860">recreate the Biblical idea of an Eden, or paradise on Earth</a>, a phenomenon which played out with colonial explorers on tropical islands. </p>
<h2>The yellow filter</h2>
<p>Hollywood’s monster films like <em>Godzilla</em> (1998, 2014) and <em>Kong: Skull Island</em> (2017) have used similar ideas. In all three films, the tropical island is an important setting, a place where the story is set in motion. All three films fall into similar patterns and use similar techniques to depict the tropics versus the west.</p>
<p>The opening sequences in the 1998 and 2014 versions of <em>Godzilla</em> rely on footage of sepia-toned palm lined beaches, Indigenous Peoples and a warmly lit mine next to a lush forest in the Philippines. </p>
<p>The sepia tone in the 1998 <em>Godzilla</em> resembles Hollywood’s common use of the <a href="https://matadornetwork.com/read/yellow-filter-american-movies/">yellow filter</a> to show tropical locations. Critics like journalist Elisabeth Sherman have pointed out the use of the yellow filter as something western movie makers do to “depict warm, tropical, dry climates.” But she says, “it makes the landscape in question look jaundiced and unhealthy.” <em>Kong: Skull Island</em> also makes use of a warm yellow tinge for the scenes that unfold in the tropical jungle that is Kong’s turf.</p>
<h2>The photographic lens</h2>
<p>Modes of representation such as the camera and photography were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/magazine/when-the-camera-was-a-weapon-of-imperialism-and-when-it-still-is.html">part of the imperial apparatus</a>. As technology brought by the white explorers, photography provided a means to <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo15581095.html">capture the land, erase and arrange the people</a> being looked at through the camera.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two people, one with a gun raised and one with a camera search under dinosaur bones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from ‘Kong: Skull Island.’ Brie Larson plays the photographer and Tom Hiddleston is the tracker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p><em>Kong: Skull Island</em> features an “uncharted” island in the South Pacific. In the film, the inhabitants of the island are often shown through the photographer’s camera. The residents are mute in the film; the audience and the rest of the team in Skull Island need the westerner’s help to parse what they mean with their gestures.</p>
<h2>Depicting Indigenous Peoples as in the past</h2>
<p>In <em>Kong: Skull Island</em>, expedition leader William Randa (played by John Goodman) tries to get funding for his trip to the uncharted island by describing it as a place “where God did not finish creation” or, in other words, a place where time has stood still. </p>
<p>Indeed, the inhabitants of Skull Island are situated squarely in a <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/time-and-the-other/9780231169264">prehistoric</a> time-frame, separate from the contemporary time inhabited by the explorers.</p>
<p>Building on the colonial imagination that casts Indigenous inhabitants as being close to nature, the 2021 film features an Indigenous girl from Skull Island as the sole contact between Kong and the rest of the world. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UCRV1bU-sKY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Official trailer of King Kong vs. Godzilla/Warner Bros. 2021.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With its unknown creatures and lush forests, Skull Island occupies a different space-time. These sentiments of the Indigenous populations and flora and fauna were commonly expressed by colonial explorers. Ernst Haeckel, the famous naturalist and proponent of Darwinism, on his visit to Sri Lanka said the flora of the land reminded him of <a href="https://archive.org/details/visittoceylon00haecuoft">fossils from earlier geological ages</a>. </p>
<p>Reminiscent of the competition between various colonial powers to map “unknown” lands and resources, what gets Randa his funding is the assurance that Americans will “discover” the uncharted island first.</p>
<h2>Old texts still have everyday impact</h2>
<p><em>Kong: Skull Island</em> builds on the long history of colonial literature. Two characters in the film: the tracker, named Conrad (played by Tom Hiddleston), and Marlow (John C. Reilly) are a nod to the literary journey up the Congo river in the novel, <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310601/heart-of-darkness-by-joseph-conrad/">Heart of Darkness</a></em> about an explorer named Marlow and written by Joseph Conrad. The novel’s premise that the journey up the Congo river is a journey into darkness <a href="https://www.massreview.org/volume-57-issue-1">has raised many debates</a> about the racism in Conrad’s text. </p>
<p>Though the new <em>Godzilla vs. Kong</em> offers the two mega-creatures a common enemy, the film still traffics in established tropes of monster films. </p>
<p>For decades, these landscapes have been characterized as sites of abundance but also disease outbreaks. At the same time, they also become places full of resources that need extraction. In Hollywood and colonial literature imaginations, the tropics hold cures for disease, alternative medicines and other geological resources, building on the long history of collaboration between <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-bears-fingerprints-colonialism-180968709/">scientists and the colonial enterprise</a>. </p>
<p>Even though these tropes came into being centuries ago as a result of colonial expeditions, they still underpin how space gets imagined in contemporary pop culture, revealing the everyday impact of old literary texts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Priscilla Jolly 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>Hollywood movies have long leaned into colonial representations of the tropics: imagined as romantic palm-fringed coasts full of abundance, but also scary places full of pestilence and primitiveness.Priscilla Jolly, PhD student, Department of English, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1571012021-03-29T18:41:07Z2021-03-29T18:41:07ZGodzilla vs. Kong: A functional morphologist uses science to pick a winner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392328/original/file-20210329-23-c1eknf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C0%2C746%2C444&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hollywood has picked a winner, but what does the science say?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/godzilla-vs-kong#gallery">Courtesy of Warner Bros Entertainment</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2021 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/video/vi576962841?playlistId=tt5034838">“Godzilla vs. Kong”</a> pits the two most iconic movie monsters of all time against each other. And fans are now picking sides.</p>
<p>Even the most fantastical creatures have some basis in scientific reality, so the natural world is a good place to look to better understand movie monsters. <a href="https://www.formorphology.com/">I study</a> functional morphology – how skeletal and tissue traits allow animals to move – and evolution in extinct animals. I am also a huge fan of monster movies. Ultimately, this is a fight between a giant reptile and a giant primate, and there are relative biological advantages and disadvantages that each would have. The research I do on morphology and biomechanics can tell us a lot about this battle and might help you decide – #TeamGodzilla or #TeamKong? </p>
<h2>Larger than life</h2>
<p>First it’s important to acknowledge that both Kong and Godzilla are definitely far beyond the realms of biological possibility. This is due to sheer size and the laws of physics. Their hearts couldn’t pump blood to their heads, they would have temperature regulation problems and it would take too long for nerve signals from the brain to reach distant parts of the body – <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/godzilla-king-of-the-monsters-movie-size-too-big-2019-5">to name just a few issues</a>.</p>
<p>However, let’s assume that somehow Godzilla and Kong are able to overcome these size limitations – perhaps because of their radiation exposure they have distinctive mutations and characteristics. Based on how they look on the big screen, let’s explore the observable differences that might prove useful in a fight.</p>
<h2>Kong: the best of ape and human</h2>
<p>At first glance, Kong is a colossal primate - but he’s not simply a giant gorilla. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An upright human skeleton next to a gorilla skeleton on all fours." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391533/original/file-20210324-17-9g6tvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kong has a mix of both gorilla and humanlike physical traits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=100&offset=0&ns0=1&ns6=1&ns12=1&ns14=1&ns100=1&ns106=1&search=gorilla+skeleton+human+filetype%3Abitmap&advancedSearch-current={%22fields%22:{%22filetype%22:%22bitmap%22}}#/media/File:Human_(Homo_sapiens)_and_Gorilla_(Gorilla_gorilla).jpg">Cliff/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>One of the most striking things about Kong is his upright, bipedal stance – he mostly walks on two legs, unlike any other living nonhuman apes. This ability could suggest close evolutionary relationship to the only living upright ape, humans – or his upright stance could be the result of <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/convergent_evolution.htm">convergent evolution</a>. Either way, like us, Kong has thick muscular legs geared toward walking and running, and large free arms with grasping hands, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.04.001">enabling him to use tools</a>. </p>
<p>Humanity’s bipedal, upright posture is unique in the animal kingdom and provides a slew of biomechanical abilities that Kong might share. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9416">human torsos are highly flexible</a> and particularly good at rotation. This feature – in addition to our loose shoulder girdle – makes <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-humans-became-the-best-throwers-on-the-planet-131189">humans the best throwers</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0107">the animal kingdom</a>. Throwing is helpful in a fight, and Kong could probably <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12267">throw with the best of them</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A gorilla skull showing the tall saggital crest on top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391559/original/file-20210324-21-1j1ifks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The tall ridge of bone on top of a gorilla’s skull helps it bite with incredible force.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gorilla_Male_perspective_5.jpg#/media/File:Gorilla_Male_perspective_5.jpg">Didier Descouens/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kong is also, of course, massive. He absolutely dwarfs the largest known primate, an extinct orangutan relative called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23150"><em>Gigantopithecus</em></a> that was a bit bigger than modern gorillas.</p>
<p>Kong does have many gorillalike attributes as well, including long muscular arms, a short snout with large canine teeth, and a tall sagittal crest – a ridge of bone on his head that would be the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.12609">anchor point for some exceptionally strong jaw muscles</a>.</p>
<p>Strong, agile, comfortable on land and with the unparalleled ability to use tools and throw, Kong would be a brutal force in a fight.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A comparison between an upright Godzilla and a horizontal Godzilla." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=651&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391527/original/file-20210324-23-wyux78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Godzilla’s upright posture is unique among lizards and dinosaurs. Figure depicts what he’d look like with a dinosaur posture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Godzilla_Compare.jpg#/media/File:Godzilla_Compare.jpg">Kenneth Carpenter/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Godzilla: An aquatic lizard to be reckoned with</h2>
<p>Godzilla appears to be a giant, semiaquatic reptile. Like Kong, Godzilla has the traits of a few different species.</p>
<p>Recent Godzilla movies show him decently mobile on land, but seemingly much more comfortable in the water despite his lack of overt aquatic features. Interestingly, Godzilla is depicted with gills on his neck – a trait that land vertebrates lost after <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icm055">they emerged from the sea about 370 million years ago</a>. Given Godzilla’s terrestrial features, it’s likely that his species has land-dwelling reptile ancestors and reevolved a mostly aquatic lifestyle – kind of like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0406">sea turtles</a> or sea snakes, which can actually <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0300-9629(75)90387-4">absorb oxygen through their skin</a> in water. Godzilla may have uniquely reevolved gills.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An image of a Tyrannosaurus rex showing large tail muscles connecting to the upper leg and hip." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391846/original/file-20210325-19-1p3dr3u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dinosaurs like <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> had huge muscles that connect their powerful tails to their hips and upper legs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.skeletaldrawing.com/">Dr. Scott Hartman</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Godzilla’s tail is what really separates him from Kong. It is massive, and anchored and moved by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.21290">huge muscles attached to his legs, hips and lower back</a>. Dinosaurs like <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> stood horizontally and used their tails for balance and to help them walk and run. Godzilla, in contrast, stands vertically and keeps his tail low to the ground, probably for a different type of balance. This vertical posture is unique for a two-legged reptile and more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0381">resembles a standing kangaroo</a>. Godzilla stands on two muscular, pillarlike legs similar to those of a sauropod dinosaur. These would provide stability and help support his gargantuan mass but would also bolster the strength of his tail.</p>
<p>In addition to his powerful tail, Godzilla carries three rows of sharp spikes going down his back, thick scaly skin, a relatively small head full of carnivorous teeth and free arms with grasping hands, all built onto a muscular body. Taken together, Godzilla is a terrifying and intimidating adversary.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Godzilla shooting King Kong with his atomic breath from the 1962 film 'King Kong vs. Godzilla' " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1079&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1079&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391561/original/file-20210324-19-jhyqtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1079&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kong is faster and could use tools, but Godzilla is stronger and has armored skin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gameraboy/48298898271/in/photostream/">Tim Simpson/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ready, fight!</h2>
<p>So now that we’ve looked a little closer at how Godzilla and Kong are built, let’s imagine who might emerge victorious in battle.</p>
<p>Though Kong is a little bit smaller than Godzilla, both are more or less comparably massive in size and neither has a clear advantage here. So what about their fighting abilities? </p>
<p>Godzilla would likely favor his robust tail for both offense and defense – much like modern-day large lizards that <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2017.2299">use their strong tails as whips</a>. Scale up that strength to Godzilla’s size, and that tail becomes a lethal weapon – which he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO_utO644sk&ab_channel=Gigan2004">has used before</a>.</p>
<p>However, Kong is more comfortable on land, faster and more agile, can use his strong legs to jump, and possesses much stronger arms than Godzilla – Kong probably packs a walloping punch. And as an ape, Kong would also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030380">likely use tools to some degree</a> and might even capitalize on his throwing ability.</p>
<p>Both would have a gnarly bite, with Kong likely getting a slight advantage. However, Godzilla’s bite is by no means weak, and all of his teeth are flesh-piercing, similar to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2019.05.025">crocodile</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1666/0094-8373-35.4.525">monitor lizard</a> teeth.</p>
<p>On defense, Godzilla has the edge, with thick scaly skin and sharp spikes. He might even act like a porcupine, turning his back to a rapidly approaching threat. However, Kong’s superior agility on land should be able to offer him some protection as well.</p>
<p>I will admit I am #TeamGodzilla, but it’s very close. I may give a slight edge to Kong in broad terrestrial battle ability, but Godzilla’s general mass, defense and tail would be hard to overpower. And lest we forget, the tipping point for Godzilla is that he has atomic breath! Until researchers find evidence of a dinosaur or animal with something like that, though, I will have to reserve my scientific judgment. </p>
<p>Regardless of who emerges victorious, this battle will be one for the ages, and I am excited as both a scientist and monster movie fan.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to use more inclusive language</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kiersten Formoso receives funding from the National Science Foundation, Paleontological Society, and Evolving Earth Foundation. </span></em></p>Hollywood loves a good monster battle, and where better to turn for inspiration than the animal kingdom? Traits from real animals can provide clues about the fighting prowess of Kong and Godzilla.Kiersten Formoso, PhD Student in Vertebrate Paleontology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1574332021-03-18T16:25:38Z2021-03-18T16:25:38ZThe closing of South Africa’s Fugard Theatre points to systemic failures<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390380/original/file-20210318-13-mi5rdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Fugard Theatre's revival of the South African musical King Kong in 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Rutland Manners/Courtesy The Fugard Theatre</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>South Africa’s theatre fraternity has reacted with <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=Fugard%20Theatre&src=typed_query">heartbreak</a> to the <a href="https://www.thefugard.com">announcement</a> that Cape Town’s famous <a href="https://www.thefugard.com/about-the-fugard-theatre/">Fugard Theatre</a> has closed its doors for good. Named after the playwright <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harold-athol-fugard">Athol Fugard</a>, the theatre was established in 2010 and produced many landmark <a href="https://www.thefugard.com/past-productions/">productions</a> – such as the musicals King Kong (2017) and Kat and the Kings (2012). Actress and academic Fiona Ramsay is head of the department of theatre and performing arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. She asked <a href="https://soa.ukzn.ac.za/news/renowned-cultural-administrator-appointed-centre-for-creative-arts-director/">Ismail Mahomed</a>, a playwright and seasoned theatre and arts festival manager, about what forces aligned to see the theatre close – and whether this could have been prevented.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>What does it mean that the Fugard’s closing?</h2>
<p>The closing down of the Fugard means far more than just the loss of one more place where artists, technicians and arts administrators could have earned a living. The Fugard rose like a phoenix in democratic South Africa. It was located in an area that had once been demolished by apartheid’s bulldozers during the destruction of the mixed race suburb <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/district-six-declared-white-area">District Six</a> as a result of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act</a> of 1950. </p>
<p>The Fugard was shadowed by Table Mountain, located almost behind the Cape Town City Hall where <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> made his <a href="https://madiba.mg.co.za/article/1990-02-12-mandelas-speech-from-the-city-hall-steps">inaugural speech</a> after his release from prison. </p>
<p>It symbolised what was possible in South Africa – the return to our roots and the reclamation of our histories. The Fugard Theatre gave us the freedom to envision the now and the future. </p>
<h2>What is the theatre’s legacy</h2>
<p>One of the most poignant lines ever to have been spoken on the stages of the theatre was by Athol Fugard. At its opening he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are sitting on the laps of ghosts. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a fairly eerie thought but it meant more than just sitting on the laps of the ghosts of the people who lived in District Six. </p>
<p>We were sitting on the laps of Barney Simon, Ramaloa Makhene, Doris Sihula, Matsemela Manaka, Mavis Taylor, Lucille Gillwald and all those deceased artists who had used their creative voices to fight apartheid and censorship through theatre; and whose spirit had come to rejoice in the birth of a new post-apartheid mainstream, independent, free-thinking theatre. </p>
<h2>How much of this is COVID-19 – and could this have been prevented?</h2>
<p>COVID-19 restrictions severely impacted theatres and there were several initiatives launched at the commencement of the national lockdown to provide artists with immediate relief both financially and materially. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.news24.com/arts/culture/curtains-close-permanently-on-the-fugard-as-artists-protest-against-nathi-mthethwa-and-the-nac-20210317-2">growing crisis</a> in the performing arts sector has been caused by the <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za">Department of Sport, Arts and Culture</a>’s lack of vision and strategy and minimal understanding about the sector; and hence the artist relief fund offers <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-03-12-artists-camp-out-at-national-arts-council-over-lack-of-stimulus-payments/">little hope</a> for the rebirth of an industry after the lockdown. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An entrance to a venue, a metal sign reading 'Fugard', the camera pointing up from street level revealing a church-like old stone structure a few storeys high." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390366/original/file-20210318-13-18qxzyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The exterior of the theatre in Cape Town.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy The Fugard Theatre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How does this point to bigger problems?</h2>
<p>Since 1994, the South African government has failed at developing a well-structured arts and culture department. The sector has been endowed with one <a href="https://www.yfm.co.za/2021/01/27/nathimustgo-artists-call-for-ministers-resignation/">embarrassing</a> arts minister after the next. Performing arts institutions have become agencies of “official art” that is often anti-intellectual. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://markettheatre.co.za">Market Theatre</a> Foundation, which once was a hub of free thinking and progressive political engagement, is a shadow of its former self. This is mainly because more than 90% of the subsidy that it receives from the department is channelled into exorbitant salaries, operations and council (board) costs. There’s very little left for the creation of work by artists. </p>
<p>The Market Theatre’s lowest moment in its 44-year history was when its senior executives had to <a href="https://mikevangraan.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/now-that-the-market-theatre-disciplinary-processes-are-done-who-will-investigate-the-minister-and-the-dac-for-their-role/">blow the whistle</a> and invoke the Protective Disclosures Act against its governing council, appointed and defended by the arts minister. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/content/3rd-draft-executive-summary-revised-white-paper-ach">white paper</a> on arts, culture and heritage has been under revision <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/content/draft-revised-white-paper-arts-culture-and-heritage">since 2015</a>. It is still far from being implemented. The Living Legend project, initiated by the department to honour artists over the age of 70 has <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/mthethwa-shocked-by-alleged-theft-of-r8m-from-living-legends-account-20190122">lost millions</a> through fraud. Twenty million rand was <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-02-10-staff-steal-over-r20m-from-state-theatre/">stolen</a> from the State Theatre in Pretoria by some of its employees. </p>
<p>Against this background independent artists have been fighting to be recognised, respected and be supported. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An empty theatre, lights shining on rows of old seats, an air of vintage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390365/original/file-20210318-23-aq6crn.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">The interior of the main theatre auditorium.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy The Fugard Theatre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How has state intervention helped or hindered theatres like the Fugard?</h2>
<p>The Fugard received no support from the department of arts and culture. Even when it began to sound alarm bells last year that it would be mothballing there was no support from local, provincial or national government. While the closure of The Fugard Theatre is an indictment on the department for failing to see its national relevance, it is an equal indictment on the provincial and local governments that failed to see the importance of this theatre in boosting the local economy and cultural tourism. </p>
<p>The theatre survived on the generosity of a single philanthropist, Eric Abraham, and the theatre’s loyal supporters. This offered an opportunity to build a meaningful partnership for the sustainability of the theatre. But the powers that be apparently saw no value in building a public-private partnership.</p>
<h2>What role would the Fugard have played in future South African theatre?</h2>
<p>The Fugard, in the south of the country was a counter-balance to the Market in Johannesburg. Both theatres were founded as independent institutions. Both were founded by visionaries. Both were located in parts of the city that were being revitalised. Both attracted diverse audiences with unique South African stories. After the lockdown, the Market will survive in the shadow of its former reputation but now supported by a department whose reputation is <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/news/the-r100m-arts-funding-scandal-20190715-2">tainted</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A theatre poster in bright yellow and red featuring a man doing splits in the air and the words 'Kat and the Kings - opens 1 May 2012 The Fugard Theatre'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390430/original/file-20210318-17-z5wzn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=837&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">The Fugard Theatre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Fugard, unfortunately, will return to the ashes, locked, bolted and silenced. It will be a monument to how a failed department could not match public philanthropy. The department could not support the theatre to reclaim its histories and enable its patrons to return to their roots so that they could find healing. Yet social cohesion is a core mandate of the department. Furthermore, the marginalisation of the independent theatre sector in South Africa raises questions about the department’s commitment to the constitutional values of freedom of speech and freedom of creativity. </p>
<p><em>Mahomed was CEO of the Market Theatre Foundation at the time of the whistle blower crisis.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Ramsay received funding from the NAC for a production at the Market Theatre in 1994</span></em></p>The independent theatre will be a monument to how a failed department of arts and culture could not match state support with public philanthropy.Fiona Ramsay, Head of Department of Theatre and Performance and PhD candidate, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1356332021-01-23T15:12:43Z2021-01-23T15:12:43ZJonas Gwangwa embodied South Africa’s struggle for a national culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326055/original/file-20200407-96658-th1gf7.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">Moeletsi Mabe/The Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music is not a zero sum game with only one ‘best’. But if you seek to name one musician whose life embodies the South African people’s struggle for a national culture, it must be trombonist, composer and cultural activist <a href="https://theconversation.com/jonas-gwangwas-music-and-life-embody-the-resistance-against-apartheid-118792">Jonas Mosa Gwangwa</a>, who was born on 19 October 1937 in Orlando East, Johannesburg, and died on 23 January 2021 in Johannesburg aged 83.</p>
<p>Through 65 years on stage, Gwangwa’s playing <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-appreciation-of-south-africas-jazz-stalwart-jonas-gwangwa-91670">contributed</a> to every genre of South African jazz. Overseas, he was hailed as player, producer and composer. Yet he chose to step away from mainstream success for ten years, leading the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/amandla-cultural-ensemble-1978?page=2#!slider">Amandla Cultural Ensemble</a> of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress</a> (ANC) to win hearts for the anti-apartheid <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272460272_Jonas_Gwangwa_Musician_And_Cultural_Activist">struggle</a> everywhere and present a vision of what post-apartheid national culture could be. </p>
<p>He battled painful injury (accidents shattered the same femur three times), was hunted for his life by the regime’s forces and experienced both the heyday of South African liberation culture and the far more ambivalent times since. </p>
<p>Throughout, he cherished a half-century-plus, love affair with his wife Violet, and brought his family – scattered across half the globe – home intact to a free South Africa. Violet’s death, only a few short weeks before his, had left him and the rest of the family devastated. </p>
<h2>The little bebopper</h2>
<p>Gwangwa started his career in the 1950s in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/father-trevor-huddleston">Father Huddleston</a> Band at St Peter’s College in Johannesburg. When instruments were allocated he hoped for a clarinet, but was shy to object to the offered trombone. </p>
<p>There was music in the family, lessons at school, and from American jazzmen on the bioscope screen at the Odin Cinema in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/11/story-cities-19-johannesburg-south-africa-apartheid-purge-sophiatown">Sophiatown</a>. From <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dizzy-Gillespie">Dizzy Gillespie</a>, the schoolboy Gwangwa borrowed his lifetime trademark: a jaunty black beret. He became, in his own words “this little bebopper”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326501/original/file-20200408-118674-140prm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jonas Gwangwa on stage in Johannesburg in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Veli Nhlapo/Sowetan/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Politics shaped Gwangwa too. The 1954 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-education-and-racist-compartmentalizing-education">Bantu Education</a> Act ended Father Huddleston’s St Peters, but not before the band had played at the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">adoption</a> of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">Freedom Charter</a> in Kliptown. He said </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everybody shared a perspective – you didn’t even classify it as ‘being political’ … nobody separated the music from the politics.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Because <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/arts/music-an-essential-element-in-the-voice-of-jazz.html">trombone</a> was a scarce sound in African jazz bands, Gwangwa’s tricky <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/bebop">bebop</a> chops caught the ears of the elite <a href="http://samap.ukzn.ac.za/audio-people/jazz-dazzlers">Jazz</a> <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/benni-gwigwi-mrwebi">Dazzlers</a>. His vision expanded with the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525696698/the-legacy-of-the-jazz-epistles-south-africas-short-lived-but-historic-group">Jazz Epistles</a>, whose <em><a href="https://www.discogs.com/The-Jazz-Epistles-Jazz-Epistle-Verse-1/release/1934732">Jazz Epistles: Verse One</a></em> became the first modern jazz album from a black South African <a href="https://www.wbgo.org/post/jazz-epistles-holy-moment-revisited-abdullah-ibrahim-checkout#stream/0">band</a>.</p>
<p>That was the first of several firsts. Gwangwa was co-copyist for the first all-black South African stage musical, <em><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">King Kong</a></em>, travelling with the show to London and starting a lifelong love affair with the stage musical format: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Words, action, and music! I became fascinated with just how you … put all those pieces together.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Seven curtain calls</h2>
<p>London contacts helped Gwangwa secure a place at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. There, sharing a flat with <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>, his meagre allowance went as often on gig tickets as food, as he imbibed mainstream classics and the new ‘<a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-free-jazz">free jazz</a>’. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326566/original/file-20200408-152974-6rzbrz.jpg?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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Continental Records</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Equally active in politics, he helped organise South African students in America, and served as first eye on the text drafted by old schoolfriend, poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a>, of Miriam Makeba’s 1963 anti-apartheid <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2008-11-10/miriam-makebas-historic-speech-remembered">address</a> to the UN.</p>
<p>He worked with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/nov/11/miriam-makeba-obituary">Makeba</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/harry-belafonte-and-the-social-power-of-song">Harry Belafonte</a>, most famously as arranger, adapter and conductor for the 1965 Grammy-winning Best Folk Album <em><a href="http://www.miriammakeba.co.za/releases/An-Evening-With-Belafonte-Makeba-1965">An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba</a></em>: another first. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326564/original/file-20200408-16182-jlrgyw.jpg?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>Then came residencies, film scores, multiple recordings across genres, musical direction, and tours; with the Union of South Africa, and with <a href="http://www.herbalpert.com">Herb Alpert</a>, when the trombonist won seven curtain calls for a barnstorming solo on his own <em>Foreign Natives</em>. Despite its painful interruption midstream by the reckless driver who first crushed his leg, Gwangwa’s American jazz star was rising.</p>
<p>But he had loyalties bigger than the stage. </p>
<h2>This is a liberation movement!</h2>
<p>In 1980, Gwangwa answered the call from ANC President <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-reginald-kaizana-tambo">OR Tambo</a> to scour the <a href="http://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/4828">military camps of Angola</a> for young talent to establish the campaigning Amandla Cultural Ensemble. The call was too politically important to ignore, and the opportunity to create an entire stage show excited Gwangwa so much that “sometimes … I couldn’t sleep”.</p>
<p>He spent most of the next decade between Amandla (rehearsing in Angola and touring the world) and Botswana (with his family and <a href="https://learnandteachmagazine.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/the-jonas-gwangwa-story/">contributing</a> to the local cultural scene with the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/medu-art-ensemble">Medu Arts Ensemble</a>). In both settings he was an innovator. Botswana musicians say he helped build their professionalism and shifted their focus towards indigenous inspirations. In Amandla, he consciously re-visioned traditions, casting female performers in previously all-male traditional dance roles: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why not? … this is a liberation movement! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some cynical analysts suggest Amandla’s winning musical arrangements and dramatic stage interludes simply prettied-up struggle culture for overseas audiences; they miss the point. Gwangwa’s love for the struggle was genuine and deep, never cosmetic – and he couldn’t have written an unattractive tune if he tried.</p>
<p>Gwangwa believed that political theatre deserved exactly the same high aesthetic standards as any other stage performance, and according to the memories of other Amandla performers, he enforced these relentlessly at rehearsal. Audiences everywhere responded to that combination of passion and professionalism. </p>
<p>Amandla’s impact put the Gwangwa family home on the SADF hit list for the <a href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/gaborone_raid.htm?tab=report">1985 raid on Botswana</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326582/original/file-20200408-179754-ld65lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=811&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">MCA Records</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was razed (fortunately the occupants were elsewhere) and the regime’s hunt did not cease. Roots were pulled up again, for London, then America. During that uneasy, unsettled time, Gwangwa scored another first: an Oscar nomination (and more) for his <em><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/cry-freedom-1987">Cry Freedom</a></em> film score, co-composed with George Fenton.</p>
<h2>For the people</h2>
<p>Finally <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2011-09-17-what-ive-learnt-jonas-gwangwa/">home again</a> in 1991, some recognition arrived: <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/order-ikhamanga-0?page=14#!slider">Orders of Ikhamanga</a> for both him and Amandla; commissions for various official and pan-African causes; honorary degrees and more. </p>
<p>Yet he still constantly struggled to earn from tours, shows and recordings, encountered record label problems over material deemed “political” – and ‘state composer’ was not who he wanted to be. Although he was committed to the new South Africa and happy to contribute, he really “wanted to be on the ground with the guys,” he told me in 2019 from his sickbed, “doing something important”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jonas-gwangwas-music-and-life-embody-the-resistance-against-apartheid-118792">Jonas Gwangwa's music and life embody the resistance against apartheid</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>He was saddened by globalised, commoditised official perspectives on the arts, and by the sidelining of everything Amandla had tried to build. His music had always explicitly been his weapon, and </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are still within an era of struggle.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326504/original/file-20200408-98792-kxfdht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gwangwa in 2007 in Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In June 2019, Gwangwa was struck by a serious illness that left him bedridden. He struggled valiantly towards recovery and was never bitter. </p>
<p>Interviewing him for his forthcoming biography, I asked him what he was proudest of. “Amandla. Because it involved all the things in music that excited me the most, and gave me the opportunity to bring them together … for the most important reason possible: it was for the people.” <em>Hamba Kahle umkhonto</em> (spear). </p>
<p><em>Ansell is the editor of a planned authorised biography of Jonas Gwanga.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell has been assisting the Gwangwa family in editing a biography of Jonas Gwangwa which has not yet been finalised for publication.</span></em></p>The revered trombonist, composer and cultural activist never wished to be ‘the state composer’ but remained political until the end, in service of the people.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1187922019-06-18T13:47:39Z2019-06-18T13:47:39ZJonas 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 PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/864142017-10-29T11:12:40Z2017-10-29T11:12:40ZRemembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192191/original/file-20171027-13340-27cnqe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela performing during the 16th Cape Town International Jazz Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Esa Alexander/The Times</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Trumpeter, flugelhorn-player, singer, composer and activist Hugh Ramapolo Masekela <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2018-01-23-breaking-legendary-musician-hugh-masekela-has-died-report/">has passed away</a> after a long battle with prostate cancer.</p>
<p>When he cancelled his appearance last year at the Johannesburg Joy of Jazz Festival, taking time out to deal with <a href="https://www.enca.com/media/video/hugh-masekela-cancels-future-shows-as-he-battles-cancer?playlist=112">his serious health issues</a>, fans were forced to return to his recorded opus for reminders of his unique work. Listening through that half-century of disks, the nature and scope of the trumpeter’s achievement becomes clear.</p>
<p>Masekela had two early horn heroes. </p>
<p>The first was part-mythical: the life of jazz great <a href="http://www.redhotjazz.com/bix.html">Bix Biederbecke</a> filtered through Kirk Douglas’s acting and Harry James’s trumpet, in the 1950 movie <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/young_man_with_a_horn/">“Young Man With A Horn”</a>. Masekela saw the film as a schoolboy at the Harlem Bioscope in Johannesburg’s Sophiatown. The erstwhile chorister resolved “then and there to become a trumpet player”.</p>
<p>The second horn hero, unsurprisingly, was <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/miles-davis-mn0000423829/biography">Miles Davis</a>. And while Masekela’s accessible, storytelling style and lyrical instrumental tone are very different, he shared one important characteristic with the American: his life and music were marked by constant reinvention. As Davis reportedly said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t want to be yesterday’s guy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much has already been written about Masekela’s life and its landmarks: playing in the Huddleston Jazz Band in the 1950s on a horn donated by Louis Armstrong; performing in the musical <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">“King Kong”</a> in the 1960s and at the Guildhall and then Manhattan schools of music with singer <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a>; US pop successes in the 1970s and then touring Paul Simon’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/paul-simon-graceland-acclaim-outrage">“Graceland”</a> in the 80s and 90s. </p>
<p>What is less discussed is the <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/search?q=Masekela">music</a>, and the innovative imagination he has periodically applied to draw it fresh from the flames.</p>
<h2>Breaking new ground</h2>
<p>The Huddleston band, plus time as sideman and in stage shows, were the traditional career path for a young musician. But then Masekela broke his first new ground. With fellow originals, including saxophonist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a>, pianist <a href="https://abdullahibrahim.co.za/">Abdullah Ibrahim</a> and trombonist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>, as <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525696698/the-legacy-of-the-jazz-epistles-south-africas-short-lived-but-historic-group">The Jazz Epistles</a> they cut the first LP of modern African jazz in South Africa.</p>
<p><a href="http://tonymcgregor-tonysplace.blogspot.co.za/2008/02/jazz-epistle-verse-1.html">“Jazz Epistle: Verse One”</a> (1960) featured band compositions marked by challenging improvisation – “a cross between mbaqanga and bebop”. <a href="http://www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/south-african-sound-mbaqanga">Mbaqanga</a> is form of South African township jive and <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-bebop-2039578">bebop</a> an American jazz style developed in the 1940s.</p>
<p>Masekela had also joined the pit band and worked as a copyist for South Africa’s first black musical, “King Kong”. </p>
<p>This exposure attracted attention to his talent from potential patrons at home and abroad. Pushed by the horrors of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> when the South African police shot and killed 69 people on 21 March 1960, and pulled by donated air-tickets and scholarships, Masekela left for London, and then New York.</p>
<p>In the next two decades, Masekela’s re-visioning of his music took many forms. He found America hard, but with wife Miriam Makeba (the marriage lasted from 1964 - 1966), the production skills of Gwangwa, and the support of American singer <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/harry-belafonte-mn0000952794/biography">Harry Belafonte</a> he proactively introduced audiences to South African music and the destruction of apartheid. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young Hugh Masekela in the 1950s blowing his horn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Johncom</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the ironically titled 1966 live <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/americanization-of-ooga-booga-mw0001304086">“Americanisation of Ooga Booga”</a>, he demonstrated the creative possibilities of “township bop”. Masekela did this by mashing up repertoire and playing styles from the South Africa he had left and the America he had landed in. </p>
<p>But he was also looking in other directions: in collaborations with other African musicians; towards fusion (with <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-crusaders-mn0000136075/biography">The Crusaders</a>), rock (with <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-byrds-mn0000631774/biography">The Byrds</a>) and even pop at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/16/masekela-shankar-play-monterey">Monterey Pop</a>, festival. </p>
<p>That list captures only a fraction of his projects in the 1960s. Some bore instant fruit: his 1968 single, <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=8369">“Grazin’ In the Grass”</a>, topped the Billboard Hot 100 list and sold four million copies; the previous year’s “Up Up and Away” became an instant standard.</p>
<p>In 1971, he teamed up with Gwangwa and Caiphus Semenya for another pan-African vision: <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/hugh-masekela-the-union-of-south-africa-mw0000625550">The Union of South Africa</a>. In 1972 he explored a stronger jazz orientation on <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/home-is-where-the-music-is-mw0000789812">“Home is Where The Music Is”</a> with, among others, sax player <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dudu-pukwana-mn0000210863/biography">Dudu Pukwana</a>, bassist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/eddie-gomez-mn0000794244">Eddie Gomez</a>, keyboardist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/larry-willis-mn0000114935/biography">Larry Willis</a> and Semenya.</p>
<h2>Sixties counterculture</h2>
<p>But as the title of “Grazin’ In the Grass” suggests, Masekela was also bewitched by other aspects of Sixties counterculture. He dated his addiction back to the alcohol-focused social climate of his early playing years in South Africa, but by the early Seventies he admitted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had destroyed my life with drugs and alcohol and could not get a gig or a band together. No recording company was interested in me…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That depression inspired the song that achieved genuinely iconic status back home in South Africa: the 1974 reflection on migrant labour, <a href="http://www.mahala.co.za/art/curse-of-the-coal-train/">“Stimela/Coal Train”</a>.</p>
<p>Foreign critics have handed that status to other Masekela songs, such as “Soweto Blues”, “Gold” or the much later “Bring Him Back Home”. Yet powerful though those are, it is Stimela, with its slow-burning steam-piston rhythm that captured the hearts of South Africans in struggle back home, and still does today. And of course the lyrics:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi /there’s a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe/ from Angola and Mozambique…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Masekela said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For me songs come like a tidal wave … At this low point, for some reason, the tidal wave that whooshed in on me came all the way from the other side of the Atlantic: from Africa; from home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shortly afterwards, Masekela headed off to Ghana, hooked up with <a href="https://soulsafari.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/masekela-introducing-hedzoleh-soundz/">Hedzoleh Soundz</a>, and was soon back in the charts. “Stimela” received its first outing on the album <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/hugh-masekela-i-am-not-afraid">“I Am Not Afraid”</a>, with West African and American co-players including pianist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/arts/music/joe-sample-crusaders-pianist-dies-at-75.html">Joe Sample</a>. </p>
<p>By the mid ‘80s, the hornman was back in southern Africa, recording <a href="http://afrosynth.blogspot.co.za/2009/08/hugh-masekela-techno-bush-1984-jive.html">“Technobush”</a> at the mobile <a href="http://shifty.co.za/the-shifty-story/">Shifty Studio</a> in Botswana, and performing for the Medu Arts Ensemble with a Botswanan/South African band, <a href="http://afrosynth.blogspot.co.za/2009/08/hugh-masekela-with-kalahari-tomorrow.html">Kalahari</a>. His music shifted again: roots mbaqanga came strongly to the fore to speak simply and directly to people now openly battling the apartheid regime just across the border.</p>
<h2>Returning home</h2>
<p>After liberation and his return home, Masekela once more chose fresh directions. In 1997 he banished his addictions and began to showcase the virtuoso player he could have been 30 years earlier without the distractions of the West Coast. He fronted big European jazz bands, and benchmarked a long musical friendship with Larry Willis with the magisterial <a href="http://revive-music.com/2012/05/10/hugh-masekela-larry-willis-friends/">Friends</a>.</p>
<p>But his shrewd ear for the music of today, rather than yesterday, also took him into younger company. He collaborated with current stars – including singer <a href="http://www.thandiswa.com/">Thandiswa Mazwai</a> – often encouraging them to take centre stage. Just before the recurrence of his cancer, he was <a href="http://www.channel24.co.za/The-Juice/News/eye-surgery-forces-hugh-masekela-to-postpone-collab-with-riky-rick-20170915">planning</a> a festival collaboration with rapper Riky Rick. </p>
<p>To cap the transformation, the individualistic rebel of the 60s and 70s became an elder statesman of social activism. In 2001, he established a <a href="http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=26912">foundation</a> to help other musicians escape addiction. Once more he foregrounded the music of continental Africa, to campaign against xenophobia. And the return of his own illness became the cue to <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/10/07/hugh-masekela-encourages-men-to-get-checked-for-prostate-cancer">exhort</a> other men to get checked for prostate cancer. </p>
<p>Other South African musicians have succeeded overseas; many have made one mid-career image switch – but few have shown us, in only one person but more than 30 albums, so many of the faces and possibilities of South African jazz.</p>
<p><em>Hugh Masekela, musician, activist. Born: 4 April 1939; Died: 23 January 2018</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Masekela Playlist:</strong></p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Eq0iSZzyWhM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Blues for Hughie’ from the album, Jazz Epistle Verse One.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kuu_EEbyreA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Unhlanhla (Lucky Boy)’ from The Americanization of Ooga Booga.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<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">The major Masekela hit, ‘Grazin in the Grass’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YTUpZ2-RQdM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela with ‘Up Up & Away’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LYOlXyv-NOU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Shebeen’ from The Union of South Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TOJMClzQ294?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The Big Apple’ from Home is Where The Music Is.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l1fIjdUEe5c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Stimela’, a South African classic.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PGZKfIYJvJ8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Motlalepula’ from Technobush.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1n1k7NrHUpI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela and Larry Willis live.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vxSm9Z3koZ0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘African Sunset’ with Thandiswa Mazwai.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9QnXNoVrR8Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Masekela in conversation with the rapper Riky Rick.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86414/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 trumpeter Hugh Masekela made an impact across the world during his decades-long musical career.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/651322016-09-14T21:18:46Z2016-09-14T21:18:46ZUncovered: the hidden history record sleeves tell about South African music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137572/original/image-20160913-4944-q50k07.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of the South African afro-jazz band Batsumi's self-titled album, which was designed by its bassist Zulu Bidi.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>As the age of disaggregated, cloud-stored music flowered, the album cover almost died. There was a depressing time, back at the start of the new millennium, when it seemed the future of music lay with tiny little <a href="http://mistupid.com/mp3/">MP3</a> tracks downloaded from the Web. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.</p>
<p>Albums are a thing again. Memorabilia has emerged as a money spinner in the music industry value-chain. Led by DJs, hipsters and anoraks, vinyl has returned from the grave. Vinyl sales <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/64345-vinyl-sales-made-more-money-than-free-streams-last-year/">rose 32%</a> in 2015. Since an album curates and conveys a musician’s vision far better than individual tracks can, this resurrection is welcome.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137214/original/image-20160909-13348-1f6d309.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Erroll Garner’s ‘The most happy piano’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the cover art is important too. Sometimes it reveals almost nothing about the music, rather illuminating the society it sprung from, revealing unexpected stories of people, art forms and struggles.</p>
<p>American music writer <a href="http://mta.mit.edu/person/lara-pellegrinelli">Lara Pellegrinelli</a> grew up intrigued by the models who decorated her family’s jazz LP covers. When, for example, American jazz pianist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/erroll-garner-mn0000206967/biography">Erroll Garner</a>’s “The Most Happy Piano” was fronted by a <a href="http://jazztimes.com/articles/20072-the-women-jacketed-by-records">glamorous redhead</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Narrowed blue eyes peered from under thin, arched brows… The record jacket squarely framed the slender face, with a teasing hint of bare shoulders below.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But as Pellegrinelli’s interviews about the attitudes of the record industry revealed, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>if Erroll Garner really had been a gorgeous redhead, the cover would have been as far as she’d get.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That same tantalising sense of a history as much hidden as disclosed by the pictures permeates the Alliance Francaise “September Jive” Musical Graphics <a href="http://www.alliance.org.za/events/johannesburg/september-jive">exhibition</a> in Johannesburg. Curators Rob Allingham, Siemon Allen, Molemo Moiloa and Lara Preston have assembled and displayed chronologically 150 covers of South African records, dating from 1957 to the present. The selection was guided by both aesthetics and the musical choices of industry role-players, whose portraits form a parallel display.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137574/original/image-20160913-4948-1mh7g6v.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dudu Pukwana’s album with The Spear is a South African collector’s record of note.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Apart from provoking a serious case of platter envy in any collector – saxophonist, composer and pianist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mtutuzeli-dudu-pukwana">Dudu Pukwana</a>’s 1969 hard to find <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/2010/03/one-for-charlie-dudu-pukwana-and-spears.html">debut</a> with “The Spears”, anybody? – these 12-inch cards can be shuffled in a range of ways, to unfold multiple narratives. Collector Siemon Allen’s magical 2013 Recording History <a href="http://flatint.blogspot.co.za/2013/01/siemon-allens-labels-curtain-at-slave.html">installation</a> at the <a href="http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/slave-lodge">Iziko Slave Lodge</a> in Cape Town had already made that point, but never found gallery space in Johannesburg. </p>
<h2>Bitter, committed riffing</h2>
<p>There are, for example, at least three “white” histories on display: religious, military and oppositional. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137575/original/image-20160913-4983-pfsopw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The record label of the anti-conscription compilation album, ‘Forces Favourites’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oppositional work ranges from the bitter, committed riffing on leftwing themes in compilations such as the anti-conscription, “<a href="http://shifty.co.za/compilations/forces-favourites/">Forces Favourites</a>”, or anti-establishment Afrikaner punk-rock by <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-05-10-00-johannes-kerkorrel-the-wise-fool-who-left-the-fray">Johannes Kerkorrel</a> and his peers, to the slightly comic attempts of aspiring bohemians at smuggling the Swinging Sixties into “verkrampte” (reactionary) South Africa. <a href="http://henniebekker.com/">Hennie Bekker</a>’s 1971 “<a href="https://www.discogs.com/Hennie-Bekker-Turn-On/release/3930050">Turn On</a>”, for example, shows a torrent of psychedelic images pouring from a crudely superimposed galvanised tap.</p>
<p>The military history is the most distasteful: deeply racist, sexist and disgendered. It is simultaneously titillating and coy about both female bodies and guns. There was an epidemic disappearance in South Africa of white female nipples during the 1960s and 1970s. <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/sociology/staff/academicstaff/assprofmichaeldrewett/">Michael Drewett</a>, scholar of this manipulation of desires during the era of “our boys on the border”, will lecture during the September Jive season.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most intriguing narrative shows how a common visual language around jazz coalesced among the community of black artists in 1970s Johannesburg. Some of these painters became famous. Some are barely known outside collectors’ circles. </p>
<p>But just as the official history of choral music has erased the tradition of workers’ choirs from its syllabus, so official art history seems to have little place for these artists or this genre of subject matter. </p>
<h2>Let’s talk about all that jazziness</h2>
<p>For the past two months, we have preferred to discuss the <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-07-13-00-henri-matisse-clawing-at-glory-and-jazz">jazziness of Henri Matisse</a> over the jazziness of the South African artists <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dumile-feni">Dumile Feni</a> or <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/sowetan/archive/2007/10/05/lefifi-tladi-poet-extraordinaire-an-inspiration">Lefifi Tladi</a>. Let alone discussing the artists on display here: <a href="http://www.capegallery.co.za/hargreaves_ntunkwana_cv.htm">Hargreaves Ntukwana</a> and <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/2010/05/batsumi-brings-sunshine.html">Zulu Bidi</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137578/original/image-20160913-4958-1iwz5qo.jpg?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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dumile Feni designed the cover for ‘Underground in Africa’ by pianist Dollar Brand, now Abdullah Ibrahim.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The art of Ntukwana and Bidi came from a community and reflected a legacy. In another kind of exhibition we might have grouped it together and used the term “school”. The places where such artists studied, such as Cecil Skotness’s <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/polly-street-era">Polly Street Art Centre</a>, built on an urban black visual arts tradition that can be traced back at least to John <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/john-koenakeefe-mohl">Koenakeefe Mohl</a>’s “White Studio” in Johannesburg’s Sophiatown suburb in the 1940s. </p>
<p>Both Polly Street and the White Studio permitted walk-in students. We <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thamsanqa-thami-mnyele">learn from memoirs</a> about the rich cross-fertilisation among practitioners of different genres even after apartheid removed and separated artistic communities. But students outnumbered the formally enrolled: those who studied shared skills with their peers, as in every roots creative community. Some members of those circles travelled, studied and exhibited abroad, and gained fame: Feni, Tladi, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-methuen-mancoba">Ernest Mancoba</a> and more. Ntukwana eventually made it to the Artists’ Colony in Toledo, Spain. </p>
<p>Others stayed home, putting art or music on the back burner to earn for their families. The occasional album cover commission must have provided a welcome opportunity to reawaken that side of their creativity. These covers should be looked on as a legitimate part of their opus, since other creative opportunities under apartheid were so limited, stereotyped and censored. </p>
<p>Both Ntukwana and Bidi were musicians: the former had played in the pit band of the musical “<a href="https://soulsafari.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/king-kong-the-first-all-african-jazz-opera-1959/">King Kong</a>”; the latter was bassist with jazz band <a href="http://afrobeat-music.blogspot.co.za/2012/05/south-african-jazz-batsumi.html">Batsumi</a>, and sideman for countless other bands. </p>
<p>But those skeletal biographies make up much of what we know about them – in Bidi’s case, almost all of it. The historical record is incomplete. We can only speculate about motives and inspirations and have no complete catalogues of works. That matters for several reasons, not merely completeness.</p>
<p>Without such information, it’s hard to add this work to the curriculum. Further, the lacunae handicap the history not only of art, but also of jazz. </p>
<p>A distinctive visual language about South African music was being shaped by these artists and their peers: a particular way of engaging with the music in images, analogous to the way that the jazz appreciation societies developed a kinetic language for engaging with the music through steps. We cannot accurately trace the development of that language through such a partial record.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137577/original/image-20160913-4963-wkye6r.jpg?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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Benjamin Jephta’s most recent jazz album, which was designed by contemporary artist, Mzwandile Buthelezi.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All the artists building this visual vocabulary paved the road that has brought us to today’s jazz cover art from, for example, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-12-09-album-art">Mzwandile Buthelezi</a>. He is his own man, but he did not emerge, fully formed, from nowhere. More postgraduate research into these lives and works is desperately needed, so that Ntukwana, Bidi – and their still unknown peers – become more than signatures on the corner of an LP sleeve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65132/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>Sometimes album sleeves reveal little about the music. Instead they illuminate the society it came from, exposing unexpected stories of people, art forms and struggles.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/551022016-02-29T04:24:49Z2016-02-29T04:24:49ZComparing black people to monkeys has a long, dark simian history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112510/original/image-20160223-16455-1ge9nfg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The climax of popular simianisation was the hugely successful classic of Hollywood’s horror factory, King Kong.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is a foundation essay. These are longer than usual and take a wider look at a key issue affecting society.</em></p>
<p>In the history of European cultures, the comparison of humans to apes and monkeys was disparaging from its very beginning.</p>
<p>When Plato – by quoting Heraclitus – declared apes ugly in relation to humans and men apish in relation to gods, this was cold comfort for the apes. It transcendentally disconnected them from their human co-primates. The Fathers of the Church went one step further: Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Isidore of Seville compared pagans to monkeys.</p>
<p>In the Middle Ages, Christian discourse recognised simians as devilish figures and representatives of lustful and sinful behaviour. As women were subject to an analogous defamation, things proceeded as one would expect. In the 11th century, Cardinal Peter Damian gave an account of a monkey that was the lover of a countess from Liguria. The jealous simian killed her husband and fathered her child.</p>
<h2>Hotbed of monsters</h2>
<p>Several centuries later in 1633, John Donne in his <a href="http://www.luminarium.org/editions/metempsycosis.htm">Metempsychosis</a> even let one of Adam’s daughters be seduced by an ape in a sexual affair. She eagerly reciprocated and became helplessly hooked. </p>
<p>From then on, the sexist manifestation of simianisation was intimately intertwined with its racist dimension. Already Jean Bodin, doyen of the theory of sovereignty, had ascribed the sexual intercourse of animals and humans to Africa south of the Sahara. He characterised the region as a hotbed of monsters, arising from the sexual union of humans and animals. </p>
<p>The history of a narrative by Antonio de Torquemada shows how in this process Africans became demonised and the demons racialised. In the story’s first version (1570), a Portuguese woman was exiled to Africa where she was <a href="https://sapientia.ualg.pt/bitstream/10400.1/1610/1/11-12-Dodds.pdf">raped by an ape</a> and had his babies.</p>
<p>A good century onwards the story had entered the realm of Europe’s great philosophical thought when John Locke in his 1689 essay <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/locke-the-works-vol-1-an-essay-concerning-human-understanding-part-1?q=drills#Locke_0128-01_907">Concerning Human Understanding</a>, declared that “women have conceived by drills”. His intellectual contemporaries knew well that the stage for this transgressing love-and-rape-story was Africa because, according to the wisdom of the time, drills lived in Guinea.</p>
<p>In the following centuries, simianisation would enter into different sciences and humanities. Anthropology, archaeology, biology, ethnology, geology, medicine, philosophy, and, not least, theology were some of the fields.</p>
<h2>King Kong’s reel racism</h2>
<p>Literature, arts and everyday entertainment also seized on the issue. It popularised its repellent combination of sexist and racist representations. The climax was the hugely successful classic of Hollywood’s horror factory, King Kong.</p>
<p>At the time of King Kong’s production the public in the US was riveted by a rape trial. The <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/timeline/">Scottsboro Boys</a> were nine black teenagers accused of having raped two young white women. In 1935 a picture story by the Japanese artist Lin Shi Khan and the lithographer Toni Perez was published. ‘Scottsboro Alabama’ carried a foreword by Michael Gold, editor of the communist journal New Masses.</p>
<p>One of the 56 images showed the group of the accused young men beside a newspaper with the headline “Guilty Rape”. The rest of the picture was filled with a monstrous black simian figure baring its teeth and dragging off a helpless white girl.</p>
<p>The artists fully understood the interplay of racist ideology, reactionary reporting and southern injustice. They recognised that the white public had been thoroughly conditioned by the dehumanising violence of animal comparisons and simianised representations, as in the reel racism of King Kong.</p>
<h2>Labelled with disease</h2>
<p>Animalisation and even bacterialisation are widespread elements of racist dehumanisation. They are closely related to the labelling of others with the language of contamination and disease. Images that put men on a level with rats carrying epidemic plagues were part of the ideological escort of anti-Jewish and anti-Chinese racism.</p>
<p>Africa is labelled as a contagious continent incubating pestilences of all sorts in hot muggy jungles, spread by reckless and sexually unrestrained people. AIDS in particular is said to have its origin in the careless dealings of Africans with simians, which they eat or whose blood they use as an aphrodisiac.</p>
<p>This is just the latest chapter in a long and ugly line of stereotypes directed against different people like the <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/">Irish</a> or <a href="https://po394.wordpress.com/wartime-propaganda/">Japanese</a>, and Africans and <a href="http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/african/3-coon/6-monkey/">African Americans</a> in particular. To throw bananas in front of black sportspeople is a common racist provocation even today.</p>
<h2>Why are blacks abused?</h2>
<p>What explains this disastrous association of black people defamed as simian? A combination of factors might be the cause: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>the prevalence of a variety of great apes in Africa, closest in size to humans. The Asian great ape population is more limited, while in the Americas one finds monkeys, but no apes; </p></li>
<li><p>the extent of the aesthetic “distance” between whites and blacks, their greater degree from a white perspective of physical “otherness” (deviant not merely in skin colour and hair texture but facial features) as compared to other “nonwhite” races; </p></li>
<li><p>the higher esteem generally accorded by Europeans to Asian as against African civilisations; and </p></li>
<li><p>above all the psychic impact of hundreds of years of racial slavery in modernity, which stamped ‘Negroes’ as permanent sub-persons, natural slaves, in global consciousness.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Large scale chattel slavery required reducing people to objects. Precisely because of that it also required the most thorough and systematic kind of dehumanisation in the theorisation of that reality.</p>
<h2>The origin of species</h2>
<p>Long before post-Darwinian “scientific racism” begins to develop, then, one can find blacks being depicted as closer to apes on the Great Chain of Being. Take mid-19th century America in circles in which polygenesis (separate origins for the races) was taken seriously. Leading scientists of the day Josiah C. Nott and George R. Gliddon, in their 1854 <a href="https://archive.org/details/typesmankindore01pattgoog">Types of Mankind</a>, documented what they saw as objective racial hierarchies with illustrations comparing blacks to chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. </p>
<p>As Stephen Jay Gould comments, the book was not a fringe document, but the leading American text on racial differences.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112520/original/image-20160223-16416-8wueiz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Darwin did not discredit scientific racism with ‘On the Origin of Species’ – he just refined it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Darwin’s revolutionary 1859 work, On the Origin of Species, did not discredit scientific racism but only its polygenetic variants. Social Darwinism, triumphantly monogenetic, would become the new racial orthodoxy. Global white domination was being taken as proof of the evolutionary superiority of the white race.</p>
<p>If it now had to be conceded that we were all related to the apes, it could nonetheless be insisted that blacks’ consanguinity was much closer – perhaps a straightforward identity.</p>
<h2>Tarzan = white skin</h2>
<p>Popular culture played a crucial role in disseminating these beliefs. The average American layperson would be unlikely to have been reading scientific journals. But they were certainly reading H. Rider Haggard (author of King Solomon’s Mines and She) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan). They were going weekly to the movies, including the genre of “jungle movies”. They were following daily comic strips like The Phantom – Africa’s white supercop, the Ghost-who-walks.</p>
<p>Africa and Africans occupied a special place in the white imaginary, marked by the most shameless misrepresentations. Burroughs would become one of the bestselling authors of the 20th century. Not just in his numerous books, but in the movies made of them and the various cartoon strip and comic spin-offs, of his most famous creation, <a href="http://weareorlando.co.uk/page13.php">Tarzan</a> of the Apes.</p>
<p>Tarzan would embed in the Western mind the indelible image of a white man ruling a black continent. “Tar-zan” = “white skin” in Ape, the impressively polyglot Burroughs informs us. It is a world in which the black humans are bestial, simian, while the actual apes are near-human.</p>
<p>Burroughs’s work was unprecedented in the degree of its success, but not at all unusual for the period. Rather, it consolidated a Manichean iconography pervasive throughout the colonial Western world in the first half of the 20th century and lingering still today. In this conflict between light and dark, white European persons rule simian black under-persons.</p>
<h2>Lumumba’s announcement</h2>
<p>The Belgian cartoonist Hergé’s Tintin series, for example, includes the infamous <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/15/tintin-and-racism/">Tintin au Congo</a> book, which likewise depicts Africans as inferior apelike creatures.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, “macaques” (monkeys) was one of the racist terms used by whites in the Belgian Congo for blacks, as was “macacos” in Portuguese Africa. In his 1960 Independence Day speech, Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba blasted the oppressive legacy of Belgian colonialism (to the astonishment and outrage of the Belgian king and his coterie, who had expected grateful deference from the natives). He is reputed to have concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/patrice-lumumba/">Nous ne sommes plus vos macaques!</a> (We are no longer your monkeys)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The story seems to be apocryphal – no documentation has been found for it – but its widespread circulation testifies to the decolonial aspiration of millions of Africans. Alas, within less than a year, Lumumba would be dead, assassinated with the connivance of Western agencies, and the country turned over to neocolonial rule.</p>
<h2>Racist cross-class alliances</h2>
<p>The use of simianisation as a racist slur against black people is not yet over, as shown by the furor in South Africa sparked by Penny Sparrow, a white woman, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/south-african-woman-faces-criminal-charges-racist-tweets">complaining</a> about black New Year’s revelers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From now [on] I shall address the blacks of South Africa as monkeys as I see the cute little wild monkeys do the same, pick and drop litter.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sparrow’s public outburst indicates the deep entrenchment of racial prejudices and stereotypes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112508/original/image-20160223-16425-q1vd0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">America’s First Couple, Barack and Michelle Obama, have been on the receiving end of simianisation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Kevin Lamarque</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This does not stop at class boundaries. The internet has overflowed with ape comparisons ever since Barack and Michelle Obama moved into the White House. Even a social-liberal newspaper, like the Belgian De Morgen, has deemed it kind of funny to simianise the <a href="http://thisisafrica.me/obamas-ape-impression-furore/">First Couple</a>.</p>
<p>Cross-class alliances against declassed others are a hallmark of racism.</p>
<p>Theodore W. Allen once defined it as “the social death of racial oppression”, that is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the reduction of all members of the oppressed group to one undifferentiated social status, beneath that of any member of the oppressor <a href="http://clogic.eserver.org/1-2/allen.html">group</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Animalisation remains a malicious and effective instrument of such a form of desocialisation and dehumanisation. Simianisation is a version of this strategy, which historically manifested a lethal combination of sexism and racism.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Together with Silvia Sebastiani, Wulf D. Hund and Charles W. Mills edited a volume of the Racism Analysis Yearbook on <a href="http://www.academia.edu/16269162/Simianization._Apes_Gender_Class_and_Race_ed._Wulf_D._Hund_Charles_W._Mills_Silvia_Sebastiani_">Simianization. Apes, Gender, Class, and Race</a>. Zürich, Berlin, Wien, Münster: Lit 2015/16 (ISBN 978-3-643-90716-5).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55102/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Animalisation remains a malicious and effective form of dehumanisation. Simianisation is a version of this strategy, which historically manifested a lethal combination of sexism and racism.Wulf D. Hund, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Department of Socioeconomics, University of HamburgCharles W Mills, John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Northwestern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.