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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The beat that beat apartheid: the role of music in the resistance against apartheid in South Africa |
Author: | Schumann, Anne |
Year: | 2008 |
Periodical: | Stichproben - Vienna Journal of African Studies |
Volume: | 8 |
Issue: | 14 |
Pages: | 17-39 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | popular music anti-apartheid resistance political songs |
External link: | https://stichproben.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_stichproben/Artikel/Nummer14/Nr14_Schumann.pdf |
Abstract: | To properly understand the processes that have led to the transition from apartheid to majority rule in South Africa, it is essential to not just analyse the developments at the negotiating tables of politicians, but also to understand popular music initiatives for, and responses to political change. Studying popular music expressions is instructive, since music may reveal popular sentiments as well as the political atmosphere. Just as the apartheid era was not characterized by the same degree of political repression throughout its duration, so the musical response changed over time. This paper uses the German playwright Berthold Brecht's idiom 'art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it' to show how the political use of music in South Africa changed from being a 'mirror' in the 1940s and 1950s to becoming a 'hammer' with which to shape reality in the 1980s. In South Africa, music went from reflecting common experiences and concerns in the early years of apartheid, to eventually function as a force to confront the State and as a means to actively construct an alternative political and social reality. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and German. [Journal abstract] |