Liner Notes

Louis Meintjes:
Urban African musicians in and around Johannesburg, they were listening to Atlantic records, they were listening to Motown [inaudible 00:36:58], others were listening and very deeply tied in with jazz, others were listening to gospel music, et cetera. So there was a huge influx and acute attention that was paid to popular music coming out of the United States.

Brian Balogh:
Louis Meintjes grew up in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, her family lived in Pretoria, the administrative capital of the country outside of Johannesburg. Growing up, she learned to play classical music on the violin, but she says a range of pop music swirled around her.

Louis Meintjes:
There was lots of other music going on around me both on the radio, in the streets, in the backyards, in the suburbs, and that was the most magnificent, compelling African popular music.

Brian Balogh:
Louis has spent her career as an ethnomusicologist, studying various kinds of South African music. She’s also researched links between South African and American music. She says popular American music could often be heard over the radio, but the radio was a complicated device in apartheid South Africa, embedded in its frequency was something more conniving than just a broadcast of the latest hits.

Louis Meintjes:
Well, radio has been absolutely crucial to the sort of structuring of apartheid, that a radio during apartheid was state owned, state regulated, music was censored, radio stations were divided on the basis of language, it was both a tool for the apartheid state, and also a source of great pleasure for a lot of South Africans who heard music through the radio.

Brian Balogh:
So the state was trying to use radio to divide people, segment in various geographic and racial other identities. Did people try to circumvent that with music?

Louis Meintjes:
Yes, not necessarily deliberately so, it was style such as Mbaqanga for instance, which was this kind of soul inflective [GarageBand 00:39:06] style. This was a studio produced sound, these were musicians who were completely using the radio despite the fact that it was state owned apartheid radio. For some listeners, particularly later in the liberation struggle, Mbaqanga musicians were criticized for being [foreign language 00:39:33] because they didn’t sing politically explicit lyrics, and because they were so integrated into the state radio, but yet one has got to look back and say, well actually these musicians we’re doing something different, these musicians were singing about everyday life in many ways, and singing about everyday life, they were therefore singing about everyday struggle.

Louis Meintjes:
They were looking to sounds across the ocean, they were integrating and making their own sounds from soul and Motown and Atlantic records, et cetera, and making it their own. And that was an incredibly interesting and important move. That is to say these were musicians who were living in townships, that is in urban areas around the cities, and who thought of themselves as urban residents, as South African citizen, as people of the world, as modern cosmopolitans, connected into international ideas. To present all that in sound without saying so necessarily explicitly is also to say we are not rural South Africans, we are not South Africans who sing only in one language or speak only in one language, we are urban modern people, and that was really counter to what the apartheid state was trying to do, right?

Louis Meintjes:
So this is at a time when African South Africans are being evicted, and on the basis of some phony idea of what constitutes an ethnic group, and who fits into which ethnic group they are being designated to different so-called homelands in South Africa. So to sing whether kind of soul inflicted sound, to sing that black is beautiful in a South African way, was in fact to do a lot of political work at the same time.

Brian Balogh:
Now, while many South African musicians perform within the confines of the state owned system, Louis says some big name artists chose to resist apartheid and endured the consequences.

Louis Meintjes:
During the apartheid era, there were a lot of musicians who were either exiled or chose self-imposed exile, who are absolutely crucial to the exposure of South African culture, and with that culture as a kind of political voice internationally. These are musicians like Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba and others. And the key kind of places that these musicians went to were London or New York. And in terms of the US connection, there were American musicians who were crucial to enabling these South African figures to integrating into a US musical life, people like Harry Belafonte and Duke Ellington for instance.

Brian Balogh:
And I know Hugh Masekela had big hits, did that matter in this effort? Was that kind of a way of validating South African musicians or did it seem a diversion or how would you describe it?

Louis Meintjes:
I think it was absolutely crucial to validating South African music and making an international world aware of South African music, and of South African music as a thoroughly modern music, you know what I mean? Hugh Masekela’s 1968 hit, Grazing in the Grass, which was kind of an Afro fusion piece was very exciting for South Africans.

Brian Balogh:
I still turn it up today too.

Louis Meintjes:
It’s great.

Brian Balogh:
Yeah, really.

Louis Meintjes:
Yeah, and that set of musicians kind of set the stage for later discussions about South African music or later exposure of South African music.

Brian Balogh:
And in the mid 1980s, in the wake of musicians like Hugh Masekela’s success, South African music get an exposure from a global audience, thanks to one album in particular, Paul Simon’s, Graceland. The similar work features a vibrant mix of pop, rock and South African styles. During its recording, Paul Simon collaborated with several South African bands, like the [inaudible 00:43:44] boys and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It was a big commercial success and won album of the year at the Grammy’s in 1987, but Graceland’s recording and release was engulfed in the political turmoil of the era. The album came out in 1986 while American artists were wrapped up in a cultural boycott of South Africa, implemented by the United nations.

Louis Meintjes:
Paul Simon’s entry into South Africa was really complex for a lot of people. There were a lot of people who were intrigued and interested in the creative experimentation.

Brian Balogh:
It was a big deal in the States, what was it’s reception in South Africa?

Louis Meintjes:
It had a most fascinating reception, it was greatly loved by many South Africans, and there were also South Africans who boycotted it. There were South Africans who felt that it was a sell out record.

Brian Balogh:
What have been the consequences on South African music of that album? I mean, in some ways it’s kind of like English musicians taking African American music, redoing it and giving it back to Americans. Here are cases of Americans taking South African music and kind of remixing it and giving it back, did it have consequence on the shape of South African music.

Louis Meintjes:
It had some very immediate consequences of such a beautifully produced album, there were musicians of course who imitated the sounds, there were Isicathamiya choirs like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, other choirs like Ladysmith Black Mambazo who began singing more closer to the sound of Black Mambazo than perhaps they had been before. So they were the sort of typical kinds of influence of the great album, where all sorts of musicians were inspired by the sound and took up some of the sound into their work.

Louis Meintjes:
Another thing I think the Graceland album did was bring attention to the well known fact in South Africa of the melodic base and on the emphasis of the base in South African music. And that was largely because Paul Simon worked with this magnificent bass player Bakithi Kumalo. His baselines I think just really brought attention to baselines in a lot of South African music and the way they very often kind of the melodic lead. So there were lots of kind of musical influences, were there political influences? In the long run I think that all passes and what remains is the sound.

Brian Balogh:
So here in the 1980s, there was a lot of concern in the United States about boycotting South Africa, including a cultural boycott and a lot of anguish about what was the right thing to do. What was it like at the other end of that? What effect did the cultural boycott have in South Africa?

Louis Meintjes:
The cultural boycott was important because of the way that it raised debate about what constituted resistant culture. But of course culture can never be contained, however sophisticated a cultural policy might be, you’re never able to actually contain and constrain creativity and cultural production. What was more constrained was the circulation of musicians themselves.

Brian Balogh:
And so how about South African musicians be affected by this? Did it kind of limit their opportunities as well?

Louis Meintjes:
It wasn’t designed to do so, but to an extent it did. It perhaps enabled musicians who were explicitly political in their message, but there’s so much music which while not explicitly political, still did important work even if it was sort of implicated in apartheid structures such as, for example, the radio, it still did important work expressing South Africans points of view and enabling them.

Brian Balogh:
Louis Meintjes is an associate professor of music at Duke University.

Joanne Freeman:
That’s going to do it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online.

Ed Ayers:
You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org or send an email to backstory@virginia.edu, we’re also on Facebook and Twitter @backstoryradio.

Brian Balogh:
BackStory is produced at Virginia humanities, major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities and the environment.

Speaker 1:
Brian Balogh is professor of history at the university of Virginia. Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the university of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and American studies at Yale university. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of history at the Johns Hopkins university. BackStory was created by Andrew Wyndham for Virginia humanities.