Routledge

Chapter Notes

Chapter 3 Twentieth-Century Entertainment History: Live and Mediated

Radio

  • The apartheid government used radio to divide South Africans by creating separate radio stations for each of the major languages in South Africa. (Officially, however, only white South African qualified for South African citizenship, while non-whites were citizens of their respective ‘homelands’).
  • All radio content was heavily censored by apartheid government officials.
  • The South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) under apartheid had two main agendas: firstly, to instill Christian values and morals in both white and non-white South Africans; secondly, to portray all events in South Africa positively, and to celebrate white European history.
  • At the same time, the apartheid government used radio to promote ‘traditional’ reified African cultures. Only Zulu was allowed to be spoken on Radio Zulu, for example, and the music on that station was supposed to sound traditionally Zulu.
  • Along with music that was meant to promote ‘tribal’ identity to both people in rural areas and migrant workers, the more Westernized forms of isicathamiya, African jazz (and more commercial American swing), kwela, and ‘jive’ were also broadcast. These genres were typically non-political and contained ‘traditional’ elements.
  • Radio propoganda greatly increased in the mid-1960s through the larger distribution of radios in rural areas and the use of FM transmission. The increase in propoganda coincided with Verwoed's aggressive ‘Grand Apartheid’ policies of the late 1950s and 1960s.
  • In the post-apartheid period, single-language radio stations still exist, but today broadcasters are less interested in reifying tradition and are most interested in expressing cultural diversity.
  • A major challenge in the post-apartheid era has been to generate local music products that can compete with, and perhaps be sold to, international markets. Today, local music quotas are required of public and commercial radio and television stations.
  • The impact of foreign (and especially American) cultural products in South Africa was abivalent. Jazz, for example, was celebrated by many oppressed non-white South Africans as evidence of the success of non-whites abroad, and as a model of musical and social integration. Partly for these reasons, the apartheid government limited and controlled access to foreign media.

Sound recordings

  • Transnational entertainment corporations realized the commercial potential of the urbanizing black workforce in the early part of the 20th century.
  • Major international record labels established marketing channels in South Africa as early as the 1920s.
  • The SABC also recorded music, and focused on Boeremusiek (local Afrikaans-language music for romantic crooning and social dancing), European classical music, and the folk music of ‘tribal’ peoples.
  • Gallo Records (started by Eric Gallo) was the main record label and music publisher of South African music in the 20th century. Started in 1932, only in 1949 did Gallo records begin to print its own recordings. Gallo recorded very little music with lyrics in English (since it was simply easier to import such music from England), but did record much music in Afrikaans, and also in indigenous African languages.

Independent labels and archival reissues

  • In the years leading up to the end of apartheid, two major trends emerged in South African music recording:
    1. Various organizations and agencies began to reissue recordings of music recorded earlier in the 20th century. This was an effort to create an historical archive and to recuperate the many lost voices of South Africa's past.
    2. For the first time, black South Africans took control of the means of production. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the first black-owned record labels and independent radio stations were founded. The genre kwaito was the primary expression of this generation of black entrepreneurs, musicians, and cultural brokers.

Film

  • Films were first screened in South Africa in the 1920s.
  • The most popular films in the 1920s and 1930s were those produced in America (and to some extent Britain) Several important films were made in South Africa in the 1950s.
  • Zonk! is an African variety and jazz film showcasing performances typical of the 1940s and 1950s. Zonk! clearly illustrates the fascinating relationship between black South Africans and African Americans. Issues to be addressed here include: minstrelsy, technology and performance in South Africa, the new ‘urban’ black South African who largely rejected ties to ‘tribal’ or rural roots.
  • Jim Comes to Joburg/African Jim and Song of Africa both deal with themes of migrant workers and the tension between the rural and the urban. American and American inspired jazz feature in both of these films.

In the post-apartheid era, the South African film industry has taken enormous leaps forward. The Academy Award winning film Tsotsi is particularly interesting in its use of kwaito. Yesterday, which was nominated for an Academy Award, examines HIV/AIDS in rural areas and also gender issues in contemporary South Africa.

Foreign music, live and mediated

  • In a sense, the visits of international performers in the 1930s were replaced by international recordings in the 1950s.

Television

  • Television only came to South Africa in late 1975.
  • Many English-speaking white South Africans felt that watching television was a good way to connect with other English-speaking countries (such as Britain and America)
  • Almost all shows on South African TV in the late 1970s and 1980s were American. These shows were dubbed in Afrikaans or a black South African language.
  • Note that part of the reason that only American (and not British) shows were broadcast on South African TV was because of the cultural boycott against South Africa. While Hollywood largely ignored the cultural boycott, British actors and film composers were actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement and refused to let their work be broadcast in South Africa. It is primarily for this reason that South African culture — between the years 1975 and 1990 — was far more influenced by American than British culture.
  • In the late 1970s and 1980s, only European or American classical music and Afrikaans music was broadcast on South African TV.
  • In the part-apartheid era, the SABC continues to control South African television (with the exception of the free independent channel E TV).
  • Today, South African television broadcasts many types of local music: gospel, maskanda, mbaqanga, choral music, jazz, and kwaito.
  • Dozens of local soap operas, talk shows, and game shows are broadcast in many different languages on South African TV today.