2. COLELITIASIS Y COLECISTECTOMÍA
2.9. TRATAMIENTO QUIRÚRGICO DE LA COLECISTOLITIASIS
What this clearly demonstrates is that musical genres, in the context of South Africa, were not only politically fluid, shifting depending on context and audience, but more importantly that music could be assumed to be inherently political. The work of Leeroy Vail and Landeg White has suggested that this was part of a long
348 Timothy D. Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (London: Routledge, 1997), p.11. 349
On Tiptoe: The Music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo (Dir: Eric Simonson, 2000).
held convention across southern Africa whereby music was an accepted form for conducting political debate and that there was a tradition that ‘power may be openly criticised’ in songs.351
Using the example of Mozambique, Vail and White have shown how music was used to comment on Portuguese colonial rule and how the role of music and the messages in songs helps to produce a picture of African colonial relations that went beyond one of either ‘collaboration’ or ‘resistance’.352 In this framework we can see how music and different genres could serve as tools for commenting on current events and providing a highly contemporary point of view.
This was particularly clear in apartheid South Africa where particular musical forms took on a heightened political significance. Importantly music itself was regarded as a key indicator of cultural and racial difference and was
increasingly built into the very foundations of apartheid and its guiding doctrine of ‘separate development’.353
It was the apartheid state in South Africa that did so much to demarcate a black African culture by promoting culturally specific programming on the South African Broadcasting Corporations. The SABC
effectively ensured that, ‘each person would have easy access to a state controlled radio service in their own language, dedicated to ‘mould[ing] his intellect and his way of life’ by stressing the ‘separateness and distinctiveness of his cultural
351Leroy Vail and Landeg White, ‘Forms of Resistance: Songs and Perceptions of Power in Colonial
Mozambique’, The American Historical Review, 88 (1983), p.887.
352 Ibid., p.888. 353
Anne Schumann, ‘The Beat That Beat Apartheid: The Role of Music in Resistance Against Apartheid in South Africa’, Vienna Journal of African Studies,14 (2008), p.19.
development.’.354
By 1960, the SABC had established seven different radio services, with a service dedicated to each of the major African languages.355
For Hamm, this state control of the distribution of popular culture was a key component of the ideological foundations of apartheid.356 This was reflected in the way in which the National Party seized upon public broadcasting as an ideal means of reinforcing apartheid. As the SABC’s annual report for 1952 clearly stated; ‘The SABC has a dual purpose... in the first place to provide the Native with
entertainment ... and secondly to contribute towards the education of the Bantu’.357 Most importantly though, from 1949 the new ‘native’ re-diffusion services on the SABC began to play more music than news content, reflecting the importance placed on music, as a marker of racial difference.358
However, at the same time we can also see how music broadcast on the radio was not simply a means of propagating apartheid propaganda but could also be a means of giving a voice to communities. The music played by the SABC on these diffusion services, was not simply just what the programmers believed to be culturally appropriate but also reflected the music that was popular in the
townships. To this end, black American jazz made up a high proportion of the music broadcast on Radio Bantu in its early days.359 The SABC were also reluctant
354 Charles Hamm, ‘‘The Constant Companion of Man’: Seperate Development, Radio Bantu and
Music’, Popular Music, 10 (1991), p.169.
355
Christopher Ballantine, ‘A Brief History of South African Popular Music’, Popular Music, 8 (1989), p.308.
356 Hamm, ‘‘The Constant Companion of Man’’, pp.147-148.
357 South African Broadcasting Corporation, Annual Report 1952 (Johannesburg, 1952), p.36. cited
in Hamm, ‘‘The Constant Companion of Man’’, pp.147-148.
358
Hamm, ‘‘The Constant Companion of Man’’, p. 150.
to play other styles such as American rock ‘n’ roll music which it deemed a ‘primitive music’.360
Whilst the SABC were happy to play a limited amount of music made by black South African musicians, there was a preference towards archiving
traditional music and a reluctance to play many recordings in any of the new styles emerging from working class black areas.361 These new styles such as marabi and later mbaqanga, which were built on elements of popular western styles such as jazz and blues, were often deemed to be not African enough by the SABC and as a result were rarely broadcast.362 Interestingly a similar attitude appears to have been adopted at different times by groups such as the ANC who sought to downplay the influence of western music in the cultural struggle against apartheid. 363 In a paper written for the ANC affiliated conference, Culture in Another South Africa, Jonas Gwanga and Fulco van Aurich focused upon genres such as marabi which drew more heavily on African musical traditions than genres such as the penny whistle led kwela and the mass produced msakzo music.364However the reality is that it was exactly these genres such as kwela, msakzo and mbaqanga that would be key
360
Charles Hamm, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll in a Very Strange Society’, Popular Music, 5 (1985), p.160.
361 David B. Coplan, In Township Tonight!: South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre, 2nd edn
(London: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp.90-112.
362 Hamm, ‘‘The Constant Companion of Man’’, p. 163. 363
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), pp.147-152.
364
In particular msakzo (meaning broadcast music) has received a somewhat unfair volume of criticism from commentators such as Hamm who have suggested the genres largely apolitical lyrical content make it unworthy of serious consideration. However the work of Louise Meintjes has emphasised the way in which msakzo was largely created as a label of derision that did not
necessarily reflect the complex nature of negotiations between musicians, record labels and censors. This is something we can see further evidenced of in the Rhythms of Resistance documentary, whereby it is made clear that even the most outwardly inoffensive black South African groups could fall foul of the censors keen to subdue any musical subversion
Louise Meintjes, Sound Of Africa: Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp.34-35.
influences on Graceland.This again demonstrates the way in which popular music could escape attempts by political groups to serve either one purpose or another.
Graceland was instead cast in a well-established tradition among South African musiciansto cross musical boundaries. The incorporation of western musical styles and forms such as jazz and blues helped to shape kwela and
mbaqanga, which in turn was reshaped in their music on Graceland. This cross cultural collaboration demonstrated radical potential of popular music. Particularly in its ability to represent a rejection of the doctrine of ‘separate development’, which stressed the cultural incompatibility of different races.
Christopher Ballantine has argued that this was a fundamental part of South African music generally. That South African ‘music is a fusion - vital, creative, ever changing - of traditional styles with imported ones, wrought by people of colour out of the long, bitter experience of colonisation and exploitation.’.365
It is worth noting that western music had a lengthy history within South Africa, with records showing that European performers in ‘blackface’ were putting on minstrel shows in Cape Town as early as 1848.366 By 1880s there were groups of African minstrels travelling South Africa performing spirituals, inspired by the growing numbers of African American groups that made fairly regular tours of South Africa.367 In the early twentieth century this appreciation of African American music, grew to incorporate newer musical forms such as the music coming from songwriters working in Tin Pan Alley, which was often adopted by South African musicians.368
365 Ballantine, ‘A Brief History of South African Popular Music’, p.306. 366 Ibid..
367
Ibid.
The music that would fuel so much of this fusion in South Africa was undoubtedly jazz. On the most basic cultural level, jazz had been long established as a popular music in urban black areas where it had built on the popularity of other American music forms from spirituals onwards.369 Jazz appears to have had an even stronger link with the urban black population in South Africa who identified with black American musicians. David B. Coplan has suggested that jazz became so popular in South Africa because of the deep historical parallels between the lives of black American musicians and black South African listeners.370 Black American jazz musicians also represented aspirational figures for black South Africans as ‘symbols of what black people could achieve in a white-dominated world’.371
The growth in the popularity of jazz is also notable because of jazz’s strong radical associations, particularly the emphasis on racial and social equality.372 Also as Ballantine and many others have argued, jazz was fundamentally international in its outlook.373 This affinity with black American culture can be clearly seen in the popular black press such as the magazine Drum, which took particular interest in ‘anything involving American blacks’.374
Drum, along with other black publications such as Zonk and Hi-Note!, frequently featured articles on black American jazz musicians alongside pieces on the racial tensions in America.375
Drum in particular embraced this philosophy of music as both a liberating force and a way to imagine a new South Africa free from apartheid. In the 1989
documentary film Have You Seen Drum Recently, the magazine Drum is described as ‘a world within a world... inside a loony apartheid landscape’ stressing how in
369
Hamm, ‘‘The Constant Companion of Man’’, p. 164.
370 Coplan, In Township Tonight, pp.122-123.
371 Ballantine, ‘A Brief History of South African Popular Music’, p.307. 372 Ibid., pp.308-309.
373 Ibid., p.309. 374
Hamm, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll in a Very Strange Society’, p.165.
the townships of the 1950s this alternative jazz culture represented an escape from the harsh reality of apartheid.376
It is also important to note that this proliferation of black South African music was carried by the creation of a supportive music industry. Alongside magazines such as Drum, Hi-Note! and Zonk,the growth of the availability of cheap 78 rpm singles and battery powered turntables helped to make home-grown South African music available to all.377 This in turn led to the emergence of black South African recording artists, who went on to enjoy significant and lasting careers both inside South Africa and sometimes in exile. This was a category that not only included Simon’s future collaborators Makeba and Masekela, but also Gwanga, the future leader of the Amandla Cultural Ensemble, who all recorded high numbers of cheaply produced 78 rpm singles, which were being bought in ‘unprecedented quantity’ by South Africa’s non-white population.378
David Fine, a white South African who worked for the black label Trutone in the 1950s, argued that the black singles market came to be an important ‘economic entity’ that the government was happy to encourage.379 Although the white population still constituted the largest part of the popular music market within South Africa, the presence of a successful 78 rpm singles market speaks volumes about how black music in South Africa represented a viable economic interest.380 Musically it was this period that Graceland would recall the most with a number of songs on the album taking inspiration from these South African musical traditions established in the 1940s and 1950s.
376
Have You Seen Drum Recently (Dir. Jurgen Schadeburg, 1989).
377 Hamm, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll in a Very Strange Society’, p.164.
Louis Barfe, Where Have All The Good Times Gone? : The Rise and Fall of the Record Industry
(London: Atlantic, 2004), p.173.
378 Hamm, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll in a Very Strange Society’, p.164. 379
Barfe, Where Have All the Good Times Gone, pp.173-174.
This revived black South African music scene wouldsoon take on more political connotations. For hard-line supporters of apartheid this new music appeared to encourage degeneracy and evils such as ‘inter-racial dancing’.381
The late 1950’s saw heightened tensions between those living in the townships and the security services with musicians coming in for ‘continual police harassment’.382
This increase in tensions reflects a distinct political turn in the content of the music made in the latter half of the 1950s. This rise in politically conscious music reflects both the rise of this New Africanism and also a response to increasingly repressive apartheid regime. In particular the Group Areas Act of 1950, which effectively forced the breakup of mixed race neighbourhoods, such as Sophiatown, causing disruption of the ‘vibrant’ musical communities that had formed in these
neighbourhoods.383 Allen argues that due to the work of the ANC ‘to increase its support base, the mass of ordinary township people became politically conscious and active during the 1950s and, in turn, the commercial viability of politically orientated recordings increased considerably.’.384
Popular music was also quickly embraced by those opposed to apartheid. In this period the ANC began to use music to recruit members and spread its message, a tactic that had been long established by the Trade Unions in South Africa, who had long established choirs.385 However many such as the white South African music journalist Muff Anderson have argued that these engagements with popular music were behind developments in township music and instead rested on a
381 Ibid., p.163. 382
Schumann, ‘The Beat That Beat Apartheid, p.22.
383 Ballantine, ‘A Brief History of South African Popular Music’, p.308.
384 Lara Allen, ‘Commerce, Politics, Musical Hybridity: Vocalising Black South African Identity
during the 1950s’, Ethnomusicology, 47 (2003), p.234.
385 Christopher Ballantine, ‘Music and Emancipation: The Social Role of Black Jazz and Vaudeville
in South Africa between the 1920s and the Early 1940s’,Journal of Southern African Studies, 17 (1991), pp.141-144.
nostalgia which encouraged people to look back to a ‘mythical past’ whilst ignoring the ‘aspirations of the working class’.386
This was in direct contrast to the growth of the popular protest music that began to emerge from the townships in the 1950s. Recordings on labels such as
Trutone and Troubadour, by artists such as Dorothy Masuka, Mary Thobei and Mabel Mafuya, took the approach of singing ‘the latest news’, not as an overtly political act but as a reflection of everyday problems.387 Makeba articulated this point of view well when she argued that “people say I sing politics, but what I sing is not politics, it is the truth”.388
This approach can be seen in the wealth of songs encouraging bus strikes or protesting against the pass laws, which criticised the everyday symptoms of apartheid as a means of confronting the wider issue of apartheid.389
Another key development in South African popular music in the 1950s was the increased use of allegory, metaphor and coded messages in songs to outwit the censors. For example, Mabel Mafuya’s, ‘Udumo Lwamaphoysia’ (‘A Strong Police Force’), was used to warn people in township bars of approaching policemen. An even clearer example can be found in Nancy Jacobs ‘Meadowlands’ which was a coded lament for the forced removal of black South Africans from Sophiatown according to the Group Areas Act of 1950.390 With its cheerful melody and
386
Muff Anderson, Music in the Mix: The Story of South African Popular Music (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981), p.18.
387 Allen, ‘Commerce, Politics, Musical Hybridity’, p.234.
388 Miriam Makeba cited in Graeme Ewens, Africa O-ye: A Celebration of African Music (Enfield:
Da Capo, 1991), p.192.
389
Allen, ‘Commerce, Politics, Musical Hybridity’, p.236.
sarcastic lyrics, ‘Meadowlands’ escaped censorship because the Directorate of Publications and security forces simply thought ‘it was a nice song’.391
Both of these conventions, of singing the latest news and of use of metaphor can be found on Graceland.In particular the first song on the album ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ begins with an allusion to a roadside bombing.392
Although it is never explicitly stated that Simon is narrating a South African scene, the prominent use of the South African accordion jive style in the song, alongside later mentions of ‘desserts’ and ‘jungles’ help to create the impression. More importantly though the lyrics form and presentation evoke a news report, again reflecting conventions on reporting the news in South African popular music. In terms of metaphor and allegory there are a number of occasions whereby the ambiguity of the lyrics on songs such as ‘Homeless’ and ‘Under African Skies’ could allow listeners to hear an anti-apartheid message. Certainly this is how many of the ordinary members who defended Simon in letters to the AAM saw the album. More importantly though, was that whether consciously or not the inclusion of these elements show the way in which key elements of South African popular music were reflected on
Graceland.