The First Case of the South African Holiday

It is a very special edition of Adventures today in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday.

African content on the show so far has strayed from West Africa only twice (visits to Ethiopia's surprising Ethio-jazz scene of the late 60s/early 70s). Today we make our first visit to South Africa, a country with an utterly unique history among African nations, and with a unique musical culture as well.

Like virtually all sub-Saharan African countries, South Africa was dominated by European colonialists during the 18th and 19th centuries (power there changed hands several times between the English and the Dutch). Unlike most other African countries, however, South Africa became a sovereign country in 1931 when the English renounced their control of the country. South African independence was codified when it became a Republic in 1961, a time when most other African countries were gaining independence with native African governments. 

Unlike these other African countries, government in South Africa was the exclusive prerogative of European settlers who now considered South Africa to be their new homeland (much as New World European settlers thought of the Americas). Black South Africans were not enfranchised to vote, and they were systematically denied the same rights and privileges enjoyed by white South Africans under the "Apartheid" system. 

South Africa's racial oppression reached a boiling point in the early 90s, and it looked as if there could be a civil war. That prospect was averted when the government released the country's most famous black political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, in 1990. Mandela became president of the African National Congress political party and negotiated with the government for an end to the Apartheid system. In 1994 Mandela was elected the first President of a fully democratic South Africa. At the time it seemed like a miracle that widespread violence had been averted.

Because Europeans in South Africa considered this land to be a homeland more than a colonial conquest, South Africa hosted a developed local economy in the early 20th Century when most other African countries were exclusively concerned with extraction of natural resources. As a result, South Africa had the infrastructure for a music industry much earlier than other African nations, with local studio recordings as early as the 1930s. In spite of the repression of Apartheid, South African musicians enjoyed the continent's greatest access to instruments, recording studios, vinyl pressing facilities, and paying musical gigs up until the 1960s. This access to music produced a first generation of international music celebrities from South Africa including Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, and Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand). These musicians lived and recorded in Europe and America during the 60s and 70s and, for Westerners, became the most well known musicians from Africa.

South African musicians in the 40s and 50s played a hybrid of Western jazz, much as musicians in Ghana and Nigeria were developing early high life. With international exposure for Makeba, Masekela, and Ibrahim in the 60s, cross-polination pushed the South African jazz scene to become a highly developed movement with a distinctive local voice, even though recordings and performances from South Africa were increasingly repressed after the 70s. 

Jazz was never a widely popular music among black South Africans, who enjoyed their own scene of dance-oriented 'township jive' music. This movement also cross-polinated with the jazz scene, however, resulting in greater musical sophistication in jive music, and in a warm indigenous undertone for South African jazz.

My set today will dig into the cross-currents of these 3 musical scenes:  South African jazz in the West, South African jazz in South Africa, and South African jive.

After all this history, let me tell anyone still reading why I cover South African music for the holidays:  every song you will hear today was recorded in the Apartheid era, prior to the democratic elections of 1994. Of course, you will hear some of the anguish and despair of the black community in this music. But it has always amazed me to hear so much more here... there is patience, and wisdom, and hopefulness; even inner peace and joy. Enjoy this music today, and reflect on everything we have to be thankful for [seasonal preposition fail].