Whenever I listen to The Indestructible Beat, I recall those days distinctly. Since news of Nelson Mandela's serious illness became public I've been thinking about him a lot. And now that the great man is no longer with us, I wanted to say a few things. Mandela is a man that has always awed me a bit. Can you imagine being subjected to all that he endured, yet he persevered and succeeded, despite the efforts of a brutal dictatorial government. All those years of imprisonment and solitude. In the Special Aka song Free Nelson Mandela, the lyrics mentioned "21 years in captivity". He had to wait another 6 long years for that dream to finally be realised. I try to imagine what it would be like to be in his shoes in those days and I simply can't do it. I was watching Fareed Zakaria this weekend, and he remarked that Mandela was a one term president, voluntarily deciding to step down. It seems so common that fledgling democracies wind up metamorphosing into president for life regimes. It's unfortunate that we so often honor people when they pass on, so I would like to say that it is his great life that we are celebrating now. Truly one of the great men of the past century, an inspiration and role model for me and for the whole world.
Like a lot of Americans I first learned of apartheid in high school, reading Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. It was a story that really opened up my eyes---it just seemed to be stupid, cruel and unfair. Injustice exists aroung the world, but when it is legislated into being the law of the land. Certainly as an American I feel a little like a hypocrite when I say this, because our history has had a number of racist social experiments that I'm not too proud of. But I did want to learn more about South Africa, reading books by Rian Malan and J.M. Coetzee, among others. The book by Malan, My Traitor's Heart, was a pretty engrossing read as I recall. And it was interesting that while he was an advocate of ending apartheid, he also quite candidly spoke of the fear of what would happen when the whole system came crashing down. But of course the brutal stories that were related in his book about the police and life in the shanty towns were hard to bear. It seems natural today that such a system was untenable, doomed, but at the time it wasn't very certain at all. And if it was going to happen, then when?
But let's get back to the music....
Indestructible Beat of Soweto is one of the great musical compilations. When I listen to this I can't help but reflect on the upbeat happiness evident on this album. It sounds like there was nothing wrong in South Africa. To me it's like the music says, do what you will but we will never give up the fight. You may have won the battles so far, but the war is still up for grabs. Though the song themes are not overtly political, you can feel the pride pouring out on each song. Music for the heart and soul.
And when I think of the term Township music, it would seem to evoke the idea of urban music. But honestly the music has a rural sort of feel to it, which probably makes some sense, since so many people came from the countryside to work in the towns and mines. The music came with the people, mixed with other peoples music from other areas in the country and and became a new thing. Some of the songs remind me a little of Zydeco music, fiddles and accordians. And there is a lot of gospel harmonies going on here, and not just by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the final artist on the album, and the best known group here, as they performed on Paul Simon's Graceland album. Simon got a lot of flack because he was thought to be taking from another culture, but I no that I was curious as to who was accompanying him on the record. For a lot of Americans, this was probably their first encounter with African musicians, so it could also be said that he was an early popularisor of what became known as World Music.
It's hard to pick out favorites on this stellar compilation, but I have a soft spot for Amaswazi Emvelo, in particular the song Thul'ulalele which has such great soaring harmonies which made their way onto more than a few mixtapes over the years. The whole album is simply ebullient though. I love the infectious loping bass on Sobabamba by Udokotela Shange Namajaha. Or the call and response vocals on Holotelani by Nelcy Sedibe.
I still remember when I was in graduate school in the mid-80's at University of Illinois Champain-Urbana, when students built shanty towns on the school quad in protest, to get the Administration to divest from companies that did business in South Africa. Some of the kids who protested got into some pretty serious trouble as I recall, not really about the shanty towns--after all if you are a student school officials can have a lot of power over your life. And as I recall the administration was pretty intransigent as to what they should invest in. But what was most shocking was that one night, somebody came to the quad and set at least one of the tents on fire, when protesting students were actually camped out in them. I never heard whether they caught the people who did such a thing, but it is just more evidence about how corrosive unjust political ideas about managing societies like apartheid are. Of course its not the same as getting your neighborhood bulldozed down as illegal dwellings.by the powers that be, but it was still an ugly little incident.
The Indestructible Beat of Soweto is a hands down classic anthology. If you love african music you probably own this album already. If you don't own it, what are you waiting for? Simply an essential, vibrant record of the 80's, endlessly entertaining!
I know that I am rambling a bit, but certainly we can all spare a little time to reflect on the legacy of such a brave, intelligent, just, and resilient leader as President Mandela, who helped make his country and the world a better and more humane place. I don't know if they still make people of the caliber of a Nelson Mandela, but certainly let's hope so! There is still a lot of work to do....
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