Cross-circulations and Transnational Solidarity: Historicizing the US Anti-apartheid Movement Through Song

Abstract

In encounters with African-American expressive culture, black South Africans at the dawn of the twentieth century recognized possibilities for their own lives—educational institutions free from white intervention, professional advancement, and independent nationalist governance. African-Americans seeking to reconnect with the continent worked for South Africa’s independence from apartheid. Music was a critical component of these engagements, creating lasting connections across national boundaries.

This paper situates the anti-apartheid activism of Sweet Honey in the Rock and In Process…, both African-American women’s a capella ensembles, within a larger historical trajectory. Through cross-circulations between the U.S. and South Africa, music constituted shared interpretive space linking African-American and black South African activist communities in combating systems of racial injustice in both countries. Building on scholarship on the role of performance in social movements, I explore the creation of shared community across national boundaries through the profound circulation of song.

Keywords:

• Freedom Songs
• Anti-Apartheid Activism
• Political Performances;

Acknowlegments

This article is based on research conducted through a Graduate Student Summer Fellowship awarded by the Smithsonian Institution in 2008. I am grateful to those who gave their time for interviews and conversations. I am also grateful for feedback received from Dorothy Hodgson, Nancy Hewitt and members of a yearlong writing seminar (2008–2009) at the History Department of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Notes

¹ Dr Bernice Johnson Reagon, interview with the author, August 1, 2008.

² Reagon, “Let Your Light Shine,” 43.

³ Reed, The Art of Protest, 1–39; Reagon, The Song Culture of the Civil Rights Movement; Reagon, “African-American Music as Resistance”; and Eyerman and Jamison, Music and Social Movements.

⁴ Reed, The Art of Protest, 2.

⁵ Gilbert, “Singing against Apartheid”, 426.

⁶ Mthembu, “Verbo-motor Expression.”

⁷ Gray, “Liberation Song.”

⁸ James, Songs of the Women Migrants, 84.

⁹ Vuyisile Mini (1920–1964) was a trade-unionist, often tagged as the father of freedom songs. He was arrested and hanged by the apartheid regime. Purportedly, he went to the gallows singing the song he is now well known for, “nants’ indod’ emnyama, Verwoerd,” translated as “here comes the black man, Verwoerd.”

¹⁰ Reuban Tholakele Caluza (1895–1966) was a composer who trained and taught at the Ohlange Institute, a private college outside Durban.

¹¹ Gunner was discussing Jacob Zuma's resurrection of the song, “Umshini Wami,” translated as “my machine gun,” a song sung by freedom fighters, espousing the machine gun as a tool of liberation.

¹² Gunner, “The Unruly Power of Song,” 11.

¹³ Reed, The Art of Protest, 15.

¹⁴ See Barnwell and Brandon, Singing in the African-American Tradition, 21; and Gilbert, “Singing Against Apartheid.”

¹⁵ Gilbert, “Popular Music, Gender Equality.”

¹⁶ The toyi-toyi is a form of singing with added emphasis on rhythmic stomping of the feet and attendant arm movements.

¹⁷ Umkhonto We Sizwe refers to the former military arm of the African National Congress (ANC), a leading organization in the anti-apartheid movement and currently South Africa's ruling party.

¹⁸ Twala and Koetaan, “The Toyi-toyi Protest Culture,” 167.

¹⁹ Gilbert, “Popular Music, Gender Equality,” 11.

²⁰ See Coplan, In Township Tonight, 37–43; Ballantine, “Looking to the USA”; Erlmann, Music, Modernity and the Global Imagination; and Muller, “American Musical Surrogacy.”

²¹ Hamm, Afro-American Music, South Africa, and Apartheid.

²² Reagon, interview.

²³ Fisk University was founded in 1866 by the American Missionary Association of New York to provide higher education to liberated slaves.

²⁴ Erlmann, “A Feeling of Prejudice,” 332; see also Cockrell, “Of Gospel Hymns.”

²⁵ Erlmann, “A Feeling of Prejudice,” 332.

²⁶ Cell, Highest Stage of White Supremacy, 22.

²⁷ Erlmann, “A Feeling of Prejudice,” 332.

²⁸ Reagon, interview.

²⁹ Erlmann quotes a declaration by Thembinkosi Pewa, a member of the isicathamiya group, the Durban Evening Birds, that “Our oldest brothers, the first to sing isicathamiya were the Jubilee Brothers. That was in 1891” as evidence of deeply ingrained popular consciousness of the Virginia Jubilee Singers’ historic tour. See Erlmann, Nightsong, 47.

³⁰ Erlmann, Nightsong, 60.

³¹ The Zulu word “mbube” referred to a lion. Linda's composition was based on a wedding song that young girls sang in his hometown.

³² Erlmann, Nightsong, 66. Of the richness of South African bass, Reagon observes: “South African basses were some of the most powerful bases I ever heard recorded, and the South African bass is actually richer in a choral way, than African-American.”

³³ “Wimoweh” was Seeger's transcription of “ha, wembube” the Zulu refrain of the song.

³⁴ Joseph Maselwa, a student at St. Matthews College in Capetown, South Africa, along with a Revered H.C.N. Williams had collected and edited the volume Seeger received. Choral Folksongs of the Bantu, an American edition of the volume was published with an introduction and some English lyrics by Pete Seeger in 1960; see Seeger, ed., Choral Folksongs of the Bantu.

³⁵ Seeger, Incompleat Folksinger, 129–32.

³⁶ Seeger and Reagon had met during campaigns for the civil rights movement, see Dunaway, How Can I Keep from Singing, 224. It was Seeger who encouraged members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to form the singing group, the SNCC Freedom Singers that toured the United States in the fall of 1962. Reverend Nglabati Gladstone, a South African Methodist minister who was living in exile in Atlanta, also taught Reagon about the South African freedom struggle and related freedom songs; see Reagon, “Let Your Light Shine,” 43.

³⁷ Sithole was a noted singer and professor of ethnomusicology and anthropology whose life tragically ended in a plane crash in 1994.

³⁸ Makeba's performance was broadcast on Sweden Television in 1967. Footage of this performance is available on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74f9eIi9c0

³⁹ Reagon, interview.

⁴⁰ A South African poet and performance artist, Diana Ferrus played an active part in helping return the remains of Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman to South Africa. Ferrus’ poem, “I have Come to Take You Home” was included in the French legislation passed on 29 January 2002 to return Baartman's remains.

⁴¹ Diana Ferrus, interview with the author, June 3, 2008.

⁴² See Denselow, When the Music's Over, 46. Denselow discusses the building up of an anti-apartheid global pop network. This network included musicians as diverse as Gil Scott-Heron, Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, “Little Steven” Van Zandt, rappers Run DMC, Kurtis Blow and Afrika Bambaataa, reggae musicians Peter Tosh, Alpha Blondy and Bob Marley, among countless others who released music protesting apartheid.

⁴³ “Mayibuye” was an artist collective that performed poetry, songs and sketches, while touring Europe and raising funds for the ANC; see Gilbert, “Singing Against Apartheid.”

⁴⁴ Fania Davis quoted in Shavelson, “US Choir Sings Freedom Songs of South Africa.”

⁴⁵ Andrea Turner quoted in Shavelson, “US Choir Sings Freedom Songs of South Africa.”

⁴⁶ Davis, “Black Women and Music,” 223.

⁴⁷ Walker, “Introduction,” 9.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 10.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 8–9.

⁵⁰ In Process …, “Hear the Voices,” 323.

⁵¹ Reagon, “Let Your Light Shine,” 14

⁵² Ibid., 16–17.

⁵³ Ibid., 16.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Members of Sweet Honey refer to the group using female pronouns.

⁵⁶ Reagon, “Let Your Light Shine,” 67.

⁵⁷ From the In Process… webpage: http://www.inprocess.org/INPROCESSBios.htm

⁵⁸ Michelle Lanchester quoted in In Process…, “Hear the Voices,” 323.

⁵⁹ Reagon, “Let your Light Shine,” 53.

⁶⁰ Ysaye Maria Barnwell, interview with the author, May 11, 2009.

⁶¹ Reagon, interview.

⁶² Denselow, When the Music's Over, 34.

⁶³ Reagon, “Let Your Light Shine,” 41.

⁶⁴ Hill, “From the Sixth Pan-African Congress.”

⁶⁵ Reagon, interview.

⁶⁶ Reagon, interview.

⁶⁷ Jabavu, “Origin of Nkosi”; Coplan, In Township Tonight, 44–5.

⁶⁸ Jules-Rosette and Coplan, “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika,” 350.

⁶⁹ Coplan, In Township Tonight, 46.

⁷⁰ Rogers, interview.

⁷¹ Rogers, interview.

⁷² Reagon, interview.

⁷³ Vail and White, Power and the Praise Poem, 41. Vail and White described the freedom of expression embedded in song performance as an aesthetic convention, that is “a set of assumptions held throughout southern Africa—and perhaps further afield…that criticism expressed in song is licensed criticism, [through which] the singers defined pungently and accurately the terms of their exploitation.”

⁷⁴ Van Schalkwyk, “Voice of Protest,” 77–81, 89–90.

⁷⁵ Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle, 11.

⁷⁶ Van Schalkwyk, “Voice of Protest,” 90.

⁷⁷ Reagon, interview.

⁷⁸ Reagon, interview.

⁷⁹ Reagon, interview.

⁸⁰ Reagon, interview.

⁸¹ Brown, “Polyrhythms and Improvization,” 85.