Africa Speaks, America Answers by Robin D. G. Kelley

Author:Robin D. G. Kelley [Kelley, Robin D. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780674046245
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Harvard
Published: 2012-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

4 | The Making of Sathima Bea Benjamin

Jazz . . . is what liberates you. It is the most liberating music on the planet.

—Sathima Bea Benjamin, interview, Jazz Weekly

In the era of decolonization, when much of the black world saw Africa as the beacon of hope for the future of humanity, honoring and embracing African cultures underscored the continent’s arrival on the world stage. For African Americans, especially, identification with Africa and the Third World transformed a minority struggling for basic civil rights to a world majority demanding human rights for all formerly colonized and oppressed people. The journeys of Guy Warren, Randy Weston, and Ahmed Abdul-Malik reveal that the elements of indigenous culture they celebrated were not always ancient and traditional but new and modern—highlife being perhaps the best example.

But as most of the continent celebrated political independence, in South Africa the white minority–ruled racial state tightened its grip. In 1948, the predominantly Afrikaner National Party came to power and immediately implemented legislation intended to weaken multiracial struggles for social democracy, labor rights, and racial equality. The apartheid laws, as they came to be known, further codified racial segregation and severely limited rights of nonwhites in South Africa. The laws prohibited marriage and sexual relations across the color line; classified the entire population by four “racial” categories of Bantu (Native), Asian, Coloured, and White; divided residential rural and urban areas strictly by race; segregated public accommodations; barred black workers from striking; and essentially outlawed every liberal antiracist organization under the guise of anticommunism. The Bantu Education Act (1953), passed a year before the U.S. Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” education unconstitutional, created a draconian, state-run education system based on the principle of separate and unequal. The apartheid state imposed a national curriculum for Africans allegedly suited to their status as a permanent cheap labor force. All these restrictions were enacted under the guise of preserving “traditional” cultures. Science and anything but the most remedial math were prohibited, and the social science curriculum promoted white supremacy and nonwhite inferiority. The act was just one example of the apartheid regime’s twisted deployment of “traditional culture” as a weapon to subjugate Africans. There was no room for “Natives” in modern South Africa, except as maids, cooks, and laborers. In this severely segregated context, something modern and international, like jazz, was considered anathema by the apartheid state. To South Africa’s black and “Coloured” population, however, modern jazz potentially embodied an inherent critique of apartheid’s racial illogic. As mass opposition to the regime grew during the 1950s, jazz served as one of the prevailing soundtracks of struggle.

This social and political cauldron produced some of South Africa’s greatest musical figures, notably Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Chris McGregor, Letta Mbulu, and Abdullah Ibrahim. And it was that same turmoil that caused them to flee their country. Whereas African American artists like Randy Weston sought freedom by traveling to Africa, generations of South African musicians sought freedom in escape, in exile. It often meant finding their

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