“Throughout the struggle there was music,” the narrator says as depicting graphic images of death and cruelty in South Africa. That is how the movie Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony begins, with the viewing of pictures and film that depicts the Apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was the segregation movement in South Africa that with a textbook definition means “separate development” whereas truthfully it entailed a set of laws that were passed which decided who could live, travel, learn and be buried where and with whom dependent on their race (Roberts, 54). It classified people of white and black and distinctively separated them in a violent matter. Although all of this mass disappoint spread across South Africa, there was one
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interviews and portrays different musical performances and artists and their stories of how music helped them overcome the challenges they faced as an individual in South Africa during Apartheid. These artists and performances communicated the concept that music was an escape from reality and a form of empowerment during a hard time of repression, however they also shed light on the idea that the music would not have come if there was not a feeling of discontent and separation between 1948 and 1990. The ways that the songs are sung and performed and the ways that the artists speak during the film, seem to me to say that music came as a result of discrimination; that without these awful events occurring around them, the people of South Africa may not have sung such powerful songs and created intense musical …show more content…
The book Music and Protest in 1968 by Barley Norton and Beate Kutschke discusses various use of music through protest and struggle in many different countries. The section that I chose to focus on however is about the nueva cancion movement, otherwise known as the “new song movement” in Latin America, Spain and the Caribbean. This movement was during 1970 where the “coming together of political parties to form…resistance to brutal Latin American dictatorships…and their dark years…followed but the struggle for new democracies,” occurred (Norton, 119). Nueva Cancion was a time where different generations of music came together to help “support social and political change in their respective countries,” (Norton, 120). The specific section of this chapter that I chose to compare to Amandla! is where the authors discuss 1968 in Mexico where there Olympics were supposed to take place and the three hundred students who were “peacefully demonstrating in Mexico City were mown down by a hail of military bullets,” (Norton 125). The songs that came after this event were all ballads that depicted the story of what happened while acting as a source of education on what occured. This relates to some of the songs in Amandla! during the apartheid movement and how they painted a story through song as well. The song about the event in Mexico City was called
interviews and portrays different musical performances and artists and their stories of how music helped them overcome the challenges they faced as an individual in South Africa during Apartheid. These artists and performances communicated the concept that music was an escape from reality and a form of empowerment during a hard time of repression, however they also shed light on the idea that the music would not have come if there was not a feeling of discontent and separation between 1948 and 1990. The ways that the songs are sung and performed and the ways that the artists speak during the film, seem to me to say that music came as a result of discrimination; that without these awful events occurring around them, the people of South Africa may not have sung such powerful songs and created intense musical …show more content…
The book Music and Protest in 1968 by Barley Norton and Beate Kutschke discusses various use of music through protest and struggle in many different countries. The section that I chose to focus on however is about the nueva cancion movement, otherwise known as the “new song movement” in Latin America, Spain and the Caribbean. This movement was during 1970 where the “coming together of political parties to form…resistance to brutal Latin American dictatorships…and their dark years…followed but the struggle for new democracies,” occurred (Norton, 119). Nueva Cancion was a time where different generations of music came together to help “support social and political change in their respective countries,” (Norton, 120). The specific section of this chapter that I chose to compare to Amandla! is where the authors discuss 1968 in Mexico where there Olympics were supposed to take place and the three hundred students who were “peacefully demonstrating in Mexico City were mown down by a hail of military bullets,” (Norton 125). The songs that came after this event were all ballads that depicted the story of what happened while acting as a source of education on what occured. This relates to some of the songs in Amandla! during the apartheid movement and how they painted a story through song as well. The song about the event in Mexico City was called