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As a child of the sixties that grew up on Peter, Paul & Mary, Dylan and Baez, and Pete Seeger, I've long been keenly interested in the social phenomena behind protest songs. "We Shall Overcome" was as vital to the Civil Rights Movement as Dr. King's speeches, and no righteous Vietnam protest would have been complete without anti-war songs. Thus, following South African freedom fighters battle Apartheid for half a century using protest songs as the vehicular glue is perfectly valid and intriguing. With so few Americans knowing much about Apartheid, outside a few Nelson Mandela headlines, Lee Hirch's Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony is long overdue. Numerous films chronicle various aspects of America's Civil Rights struggles, but this film stands alone as a comprehensive visual testament about South Africa's even more intense battles with racial injustice.
Taking its title from the Xhosa word for power and from South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim's wry observation that this may be the first revolution ever conducted in four part harmony, Hirch's documentary proceeds on the premise that music was essential to the movement. Not only did the protest songs fuel the movement, but they helped the resistance fighters free themselves first as well. Likewise, not only does this film preserve the history behind Apartheid from its 1948 establishment by the right-wing National Party to its inevitable demise in 1994, but it revitalizes old rebels and hopefully stirs new ones to fight for righteous causes. The great silent majority may sit glumly in their seats, but others will be stirred to act.
You can witness the emotional reactions of former freedom fighters when recalling the past and singing the old protest songs. One young woman is visibly moved to tears when reminiscing about 26 comrades killed in battle and singing a song that invokes the names of the day's heroes while others exuberantly get into the protest songs and become energized. Many of the songs are upbeat and happy sounding, but had the Afrikaners known the content of the lyrics, they'd become frightened—it was almost like a secret protest going on live in front of their ears. People dancing energetically, smiling, and laughing while chanting lyrics like "We will shoot you / We will kill you / Be careful what you say."
Fearing revolution, Afrikaners even tried to make prayerful songs like "Nkosi sidelel'i" illegal. To demonstrate this, the filmmakers document the 2000 Community Choir of Soweto to reprise "the people's anthem" with a hand held camera and intercut archive 1980's footage from a choral rendering that includes Reverend Desmond M. Tutu. Sung at the beginning and end of resistance meetings, the peaceful words invoke unspoken signs of protest when the people recall their context:
God bless Africa
May her horn rise up
Hear thou our prayers
And bless us.
God take care of our nation
The spirituality of the long oppressed South African blacks comes through plainly on the documentary, and music is often used to cope with any situation. When an impoverished mother has no food for her children, she sings a song. The same goes for the loneliness the gold miners felt when forced away from their families to work 16-hour shifts for almost no pay. Songs were a way to express frustrations, communicate, provide hope, and build solidarity with others—all vital elements for freedom fighting.
Hendrik Verwoerd, minister of National Affairs and father of Apartheid, stupidly states that their policy was an act of "good neighborliness" but his racist government did recognize the "dangerous" power of poets and protest songs. So too does filmmaker Hirsch, who includes perceptive interview clips, song segments, and archive news footage to capsule a remarkable history of Apartheid between the bookend segments surrounding Vuyisile Mini's reburial in 1998. Known as South Africa's best poet and protest songwriter, Mini's deep bass voice was silenced forever in 1964 when the government accused him of murder and hanged him. Poignantly the film captures his son examining his unknown father's skull, reminiscent of Hamlet and Yorick. Nearly forty years after burial, Mini's skull has a tale to spin.
Most have only vague notions concerning South Africa's history, and significant Apartheid events usually received brief notices in the news—adoption of the policy, removing blacks into ghetto settlements like the Meadowlands, the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, the 1976 Soweto uprising, etc. More are familiar with Nelson Mandela (imprisoned from 1964-92) and exiled South African musicians—Abdullah Ibrahim (from 1962-91), Miriam Makeba (from 1960-90), Hugh Masekela (from 1962-90)—but victory over Apartheid came from mass resistance and was inspired by lesser known individuals that few outside South Africa know about. Anyone interested in the history of Apartheid, ethnographic studies, folk music, or the human condition should find Amandla! well worth examining—far more interesting that reading dry British accounts of those years. |
