Código de Ética del Colegio de Enfermeros del Perú

It was the myth of fingerprints, I've seen them all and man, They're all the same.245

Whilst the legacy of the cultural boycott demonstrated the ways in which popular music and politics could mix explicitly, there is a further story about the wider links between popular music and opposition to apartheid.This could be seen by the growing popularity of world music. Whilst not always overtly political, the

contemporary rise of world music, throughout the 1980s provides a fascinating counterpoint to events such as the ongoing debate about the cultural boycott. With much of the genre originating or inspired by Southern Africa in general and South Africa in particular, world music was often consciously viewed within the context of global debates about apartheid. This was reinforced by the fact that some musicians and songs made direct references to apartheid. Crucially though the rise of world music alsohelps to illustrate some of the wider issues in the relationship between popular music and the campaign against apartheid and popular politics more generally. Whilst the boycott represented the focused efforts of a coordinated and distinctly political campaign, it is through looking at the contemporary interest in world music that we can begin to see the wider story of the link between

opposition to apartheid and popular music.

245

Paul Simon, ‘All Around The World or the Myth of Fingerprints’, Graceland, Paul Simon (Warner Brothers Records,7599-25447-2, 1986) [LP Album].

In this chapter I will examine the links both explicit and implicit between world music as a growing phenomenon and the context of growing awareness and unease about apartheid in South Africa. In this way we can see a contrast with the established campaign for the musical boycott, formed and shaped by committed activists and audience that whilst sympathetic and increasingly knowledgeable of the issue of apartheid South Africa were not as necessarily bound to tactics such as the total boycott of all music from South Africa or musicians entering South Africa. By focusing on the growth of interest in world music it is possible to show a

counterpoint to the established position of groups such as the AAM’s interaction with popular music.

World music itself was in part a product of apartheid. As many

commentators such as Robin Denselow and Robert Christagau acknowledged, it was world music’s proximity to the context of apartheid that made it an attractive proposition to many music fans. A 1984 profile of Hugh Masekela by Barry Hoskyns for the NME noted that ‘At a time when Western attention is once more

turned on the evil and cunning of the South African government, it couldn't be more appropriate that we have begun to hear the bright strains of South African music.’246

Certainly this can be seen in the privileged position which South African musicians and music enjoyed. Many of the first successful world music albums and artists, such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela were South African. Artists such as Sting and Peter Gabriel evoked South Africa in

246 _{Barry Hoskyns, ‘Hugh Masekela, Blazing in the Bush’, NME, 31 March 1984.}

<http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/hugh-masekela-blazing-in-the-bush> (11 September 2015).

their music to convey a sense of struggle.247 As the early world music enthusiast and DJ Andy Kershaw has acknowledged, world music was in part enabled by the emergence of British record labels importing and compiling collections of ‘South African Township jive and Zimbabwean guitar-driven pop’, both of which arrived from a context of political struggle familiar to listeners from news reports.248 This could be seen in the way in which this music was packaged by British record labels. Virgin’s early world music releases were packaged with the imprint of ‘Front Line’ on the disc labels alongside the image of black fist clenched gripping barbed wire.249 For these listeners, world music provided a platform from which they could consider the issue of apartheid from outside of the party political structures of organisations such as the AAM, ANC and the UN Centre Against Apartheid.

Yet as the controversy surrounding Johnny Clegg’s attempts to tour outside of South Africa and the lingering arguments over Paul Simon’s Graceland album demonstrated, the context of the cultural boycott, not to mention ongoing debates within the various organisations about the boycott, complicated the existence of world music. Strictly speaking, all music made within South Africa in this period was still subject to the cultural boycott no matter how progressive the artist was presumed to be.Even with the ANC internationally and the UDF within South Africa increasingly moving towards offering support to those deemed to be progressive ‘cultural workers’, the lingering debate about the cultural boycott saw many groups such as the British AAM take a hardline stance.

247

In particular see Peter Gabriel’s ‘Biko’ which uses a number of African musical tropes to evoke struggle

Peter Gabriel, Biko, Peter Gabriel (Charisma, CB 370, 1980) [7” Single].

248 _{Andy Kershaw, No Off Switch: An Autobiography (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2011), p.204.} 249 _{For example see The Twinkle Brothers 1978 single ‘Free Africa’}

Norman Grant and Ralston Grant, ‘Free Africa’, The Twinkle Brothers (Front Line Records, FLS 104, 1978). [7” Single].

Furthermore, the extent to which any of this new world music could be considered as inherently ‘anti-apartheid’ was also a matter of some controversy. For the AAM, the argument in favour of a total boycott hinged upon the

organisation’s firm belief that sales of South African music could still generate financial benefit for and legitimise the apartheid regime. In a leaflet given to those attending Paul Simon’s London concerts the AAM made this point clear when they argued that;

Now Botha's regime is feeling the squeeze of international isolation, it tries to use culture as a wedge to divide its opponents abroad. At the same time big record companies that have always flouted the cultural boycott seek to cash in on the growing popularity of African music and all things 'anti-apartheid'. In these conditions the cultural boycott must be defended and sustained with greater consistency than ever.250

Again we can see the AAM and other groups’ insistence on the cultural boycott being guided by a belief in boycott as a mostly economic rather than strictly cultural action. In the same way that Dammers bemoaned the insistence of some UK musicians that their music had ‘revolutionary potential’, this was a cultural boycott that was focused mainly on the economic ramifications of not buying consumer goods from South Africa. This is a position made even clearer in the final line of the AAM leaflet issued at the Paul Simon concert, ‘You might like the music, but there are more important issues’. 251

For advocates of world music, the question of South Africa and the cultural boycott was one of great soul searching. Writing in Africa Beat, one of the first UK publications dedicated to world music, in 1987 John Harlow, the magazine’s editor outlined his own confusion and misgivings stating that;

250 _{Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.1463, AAM, ‘Paul Simon and the Anti-}

Apartheid Cultural Boycott What Is The Problem’ leaflet, April 1987.

I have always tried to avoid the question of the boycott of South African music. It’s not just cowardice. It’s simply that I don’t know what to think. And with the arguments again raging with the success of the rather plastic Paul Simon album-Should this leading light of the American anti-apartheid movement have recorded in the heart of the beast, no matter what wages he paid to the musicians that undoubtedly needed and deserved them- I still don’t feel any the wiser.252

Interestingly, after acknowledging that popular music could be a ‘positive political force’, Harlow also acknowledged that the South African music industry was deeply economically exploitative, noting that;

The trouble isthat Gallo Records [South Africa’s largest record company]

seem to end up making money off the music in the most devious and unexpected ways…They may ignore and starve Township Jive, but

somewhere along the line, you can be sure that they will make moneyout of it.253

In this way Harlow, though not consciously echoed one of the key concerns of the AAM and AAA. However unlike Dammers and the AAM, Harlow expresses some belief in the ability of popular music to bring about change within South Africa, noting that even most exiles such as Masekela and Makeba and politically radical musicians such as Nigeria’s Fela Kuti, allowed their music to be sold within the apartheid state.254 This raise an interesting questions about the extent to which groups such as the British AAM and AAA felt they had the authority to enforce a cultural boycott over South African musicians, which was did not necessarily reflect the views of South African artists.

For others, this very idea that hearing ‘radical’ music, in the words of Kuti, ‘could only be for the good of the people’, proved to be the most attractive element of this newly emerging world music.255 It was argued that by simply giving a platform and a market place for black South African musicians and black South

252 _{Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.1462, John Harlow, ‘Editorial’, Africa} Beat, 1987, p.3.

253 _Ibid. 254

Ibid.

African styles, world music, in its content alone provided a clear counterpoint to the growing cultural tensions within South Africa. Interestingly, Harlow refers to Simon as a ‘leading light of the American anti-apartheid movement’, a title that belies the fact that Simon, despite his well-established liberal credentials, never had any formal association with an anti-apartheid campaign.256 This demonstrates the extent to which many were willing to consider any positive musical interaction with South Africa as inherently anti-apartheid. In a review of The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, one of the first readily available and successful compilations of South African music outside of its home country, Robert Christagau music critic with the Village Voice commended the collection, because to him it seemed to run contrary to ‘apartheid's determination to deny blacks not just a reasonable living but a meaningful identity’.257

Throughout the same issue of Africa Beat as Harlow’s editorial, there are

countless examples of attempts to make the same link between world music and resistance to apartheid. An advert for the record label Earthworks, one of the earliest established world music distributors and labels, here credited as ‘the

originator of world beat’, makes their belief in the connection between world music and anti-apartheid clear, using the tagline ‘Beat Against Botha’.258 The strongest defence of popular music as a ‘positive political force’ comes from an article written by Trevor Herman, a key proponent of world music, which argued that it was ‘perverse to boycott [the] black SA music scene’ when it provided an example

256 _{Simon had publicly supported the Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern in the}

run up to the 1972 US election, which gifted him in the eyes many as a stalwart Liberal. A belief that had obviously carried over to the period in which Graceland was recorded.

Peter Doggett, There’s a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and the Rise and Fall of ‘60s

Counter Culture (London: Cannongate, 2007), pp.504-505.

257 _{Robert Christgau, ‘The Indestructible Beat of Sowetwo’. Village Voice, 1986,}

<http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_album.php?id=648> (25 September 2015).

258

Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.1462, Trevor Herman, ‘Sowetwo and all that Jive’, Africa Beat, 1987, p.30.

of culture which was by its very nature in opposition to apartheid.259 Notably, Herman’s argument explicitly refuted the established economic argument used by the ANC, the AAM and all those in favour of a total cultural boycott. Herman instead argued that the economic benefit of black popular music to the South African government was in essence negligible, with it ‘not being big an enough an industry to touch the government or the state of the Rand’.260

Furthermore, Herman argued that large South African record companies like Gallo devoted the majority of funding to ‘white rock’, with desultory budgets spent on black music.261

This is certainly borne out by comparison of the figures spent on different kinds of music in South Africa.For example, in 1980 the two biggest record labels in South

Africa, EMI South Africa and Gallo, spent an average of 100,000 Rand on retaining and promoting American and European artists whilst EMI South Africa spent only 2,000 Rand producing and promoting Raising the Family, an album by the South African mbaqanga star Steve Kekana.262 Though the high sales of an album such as Kekana’s would increase the profit margins of labels such as Gallo. Vindicating Harlow’s assertion that South African record labels would be sure to make money from black South African music in ‘devious and unexpected ways’.

Herman’s argument instead focused on the cultural value of township jive, or mbaqanga as it was often referred to, as an artistic medium that survived ‘in

spite of the apartheid regime.’263

This in many ways mirrored the position which many exiled South African musicians, even those aligned formerly or otherwise

259 _Ibid. 260 _Ibid. 261

Ibid.

262 _{Jonas Gwanga, and Fulco van Aurich, ‘The Melody of Freedom: A Reflection on Music’ in}

Campschreur, Willem and Divendal, Joost (eds.), Culture in Another South Africa (London: Zed, 1989), p.155.

263 _{Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.1462, Trevor Herman, ‘Sowetwo and all}

with the ANC, had begun to take on the cultural boycott. In Hoskyn’s 1984 profile for the NME, Masekela had argued that

The boycott presents a very difficult situation for me. Nobody really gives a shit about South Africa so long as they're making money out of it. I mean, there's a cultural boycott, but Shell is in South Africa, BP is in South Africa, Ford, Nissan, and Toyota are in South Africa...I could go on forever. Every company in the world is in South Africa… It bores me to even talk about it, because Iknow really that it makes no difference.264

Although Masekela’s fatalistic attitude towards the boycott does not completely line up with Herman’s, it does demonstrate the extent to which the economic argument that underlined the cultural boycott had come to be seen as irrelevant by some of those heavily associated with anti-apartheid campaigns. Furthermore Masekela’s stance also raises questions about the legitimacy of the total cultural boycott. Particularly a boycott being organised and enforced by white British musicians. Addressing that point specifically Masekela argued ‘Why should the pressure be on artists alone, just because of their high visibility? I say a stand should be made, but made by everybody…Speaking for myself… I wouldn't go to South Africa, but I don't expect everyone to feel like me’.265

Rather Masekela appeared to acknowledge that as long as a variety of other multinational corporations took advantage of South Africa, its own musicians should be able to profit from their work. This was supported by a growing sense both inside and outside South Africa that that South Africans musicians and audiences could be empowered both culturally and financially through sales of world music albums. In direct contradiction to the economic focus of groups such as the AAM, many believed that popular music in itself would be able to affect change. For example, Herman used his Africa Beat article to argue that

264

Hoskyns, ‘Hugh Masekela, Blazing in the Bush’.

mbaqanga’s revolutionary potential was suppressed by a lack of financial support and promotion both inside and outside of South Africa, concluding that mbaqanga

as a form in itself, had the ‘potential to change the world’.266

This belief, naïve or otherwise, in what Harlow had regarded as the potential for popular music to act as a ‘positive political force’ reflected the developing debate about the role of culture and popular music more specifically throughout the mid to late 1980s. In many ways, the statements of Harlow and Herman were not particularly different from those made by established anti- apartheid groups. At the 1987, ANC convened, Culture in Another South Africa

conference, one resolution read that, ‘there has developed a vibrant people's music, rooted in South African realities and steeped in democratic values, in opposition to the racist music associated with the apartheid regime’.267

At the same conference, Basil Coetzee an ANC aligned musician and contemporary of Abdullah Ibrahim confidently predicted that,

I think a lot of musicians are becoming aware of themselves culturally. They have become aware because of the political events, because of the system. This growth of political consciousness gives musicians new freedom, a freedom to play what they want to.268

What this clearly shows is a growing consensus, also demonstrated by the growing importance given to events such as the1988 Mandela Birthday Tribute, in the ability of popular music to enact political change.

World music as an expression of black South African popular music, was clearly a beneficiary of this new optimism about the potential of popular music as a ‘positive political force’. For an emerging musical trend, world music enjoyed shocking instant success. Compilation albums, compiled by Herman amongst

266 _{Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.1462, Trevor Herman, ‘Sowetwo and all}

that Jive’, Africa Beat, 1987, p.30.

267

Gwanga and van Aurich, ‘The Melody of Freedom’, p.157.

others, and releases by individual artists such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, sold in astonishingly high numbers.269 In fact, the sheer success of world music, which had in less than a decade of existence generated a market share comparable to other established genres such as jazz and classical music, in itself highlights the way in which world music represented a genuinely popular musical trend.