AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	20. Popular culture and politics - alternative channels of expression
Paper ID	87
Author(s)	Schumann, Anne
Paper	No paper submitted
Abstract	It is just over a decade since the first democratic elections were held in South Africa. To properly understand the processes that have led to the transition from apartheid to majority rule, it is essential to not just analyse the developments at the negotiating tables of politicians, but also to understand popular initiatives for, and responses to political change. Studying popular creative expressions is instructive, since music may reveal popular sentiments as well as the political atmosphere. Apartheid regimes used music as a political tool to advance the policy of ‘separate development’, as ethnically targeted programming on state-controlled radio (Radio Bantu) demonstrates. Just as the apartheid era was not characterised 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 50s to becoming a ‘hammer’ with which to shape reality by the 1980s. Proceeding chronologically, this paper highlights the transformation in the political functions of South Africa’s music. In the 1950s, at a time of rising mass protest against pass laws and the intensification of apartheid, songs of protest openly addressed the politicians in question and mirrored common concerns of the population. The mournful tone of songs in the 1960s reflected popular sentiments after the Sharpeville massacre and the banning and arrest of African political leadership. Due to mounting censorship, politically subversive meanings were hidden in instrumental pieces and in songs, often to be expressed openly only at live concerts. By the 1980s, in the context of the ‘people’s war’ and the state of emergency, song texts portrayed an open, militant and rebellious challenge to the state and music was actively used to advance political change. Also, musical fusion by ethnically diverse bands (and audiences) negated decades of apartheid ideology and practice. Plato’s comment, that “when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State […] change with them” did indeed hold true for South Africa, as the early 1990s saw a period of political change and the elections of April 1994 ushered in a new period of majority rule. Finally, in post-apartheid South Africa, though no longer as politically minded, music strives to remain socially relevant by openly addressing issues that affect South Africans today. 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.

The Beat that Beat Apartheid: The Role of Music in the Resistance against Apartheid in South Africa