Mbaqanga is a style of South African music with rural Zulu roots that continues to influence musicians worldwide today. The style originated in the early 1960s, and blends traditional African vocal styles and melodies with European and American popular music.
Zenzile Miriam Makeba, nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist. Associated with musical genres including Afropop, jazz, and world music, she was an advocate against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa.
Dolly Rathebe (OIS) was a South African musician and actress who performed with the Elite Swingsters jazz band, and in Alf Herbert's African Jazz and Variety Show.
Sophiatown, also known as Sof'town or Kofifi, is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sophiatown was a poor multi-racial area and a black cultural hub that was destroyed under apartheid. It produced some of South Africa's most famous writers, musicians, politicians and artists, like Father Huddleston, Can Themba, Bloke Modisane, Es'kia Mphahlele, Arthur Maimane, Todd Matshikiza, Nat Nakasa, Casey Motsisi, Dugmore Boetie, and Lewis Nkosi.
Meadowlands is a suburb of Soweto, Gauteng Province, South Africa. It was founded in the early 1950s during the apartheid era for black residents from Sophiatown.
Drum is a 2004 film based on the life of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, who worked for Drum magazine, called "the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa". It was director Zola Maseko's first film and deals with the issues of apartheid and the forced removal of residents from Sophiatown. The film was originally to be a six-part television series called Sophiatown Short Stories, but Maseko could not get the funding. The lead roles of Henry Nxumalo and Drum main photographer Jürgen Schadeberg were played by American actors Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann, while most of the rest of the cast were South African actors.
Lewis Nkosi was a South African writer, who spent 30 years in exile as a consequence of restrictions placed on him and his writing by the Suppression of Communism Act and the Publications and Entertainment Act passed in the 1950s and 1960s. A multifaceted personality, he attempted multiple genre for his writing, including literary criticism, poetry, drama, novels, short stories, essays, as well as journalism.
DRUM is a South African online family magazine mainly aimed at black readers, containing market news, entertainment and feature articles. It has two sister magazines: Huisgenoot and YOU.
Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony is a 2002 documentary film depicting the struggles of black South Africans against the injustices of Apartheid through the use of music. The film takes its name from the Zulu and Xhosa word amandla, which means power.
The Bleecker Street Cinema was an art house movie theater located at 144 Bleecker Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It became a landmark of Greenwich Village and an influential venue for filmmakers and cinephiles through its screenings of foreign and independent films. It closed in 1990, reopened as a gay adult theater for a short time afterward, then again briefly showed art films until closing for good in 1991.
Daniel Canodoise "Can" Themba was a South African short-story writer.
Todd Tozama Matshikiza OMSS was a South African jazz pianist, composer and journalist. As a journalist, he was a contributor to the innovatory South African magazine Drum, and known for his autobiographical short stories. As a musician, Matshikiza was celebrated for composing the score of the musical King Kong. He became a Google Doodle on 25 September 2023.
King Kong (1959) was a landmark South African jazz-influenced musical, billed at the time as an "all-African jazz opera".
William Modisane, better known as Bloke Modisane, was a South African writer, actor and journalist.
Lionel Rogosin was an independent American filmmaker. He worked in political cinema, non-fiction partisan filmmaking and docufiction, influenced by Italian neorealism and Robert Flaherty.
On the Bowery is a 1956 American docufiction film directed by Lionel Rogosin. The film, Rogosin's first feature was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.
Dr. Xuma's house was one of two houses to escape the destruction of Sophiatown, South Africa by the government in the late 1950s, it is also a landmark which belonged to Dr Alfred Bitini Xuma who was a medical doctor and the President of the African National Congress (ANC) and Chairperson of the Western Areas Anti-Expropriation and Proper Housing Committee. Construction of the house was completed in 1935 and named Empilweni which roughly translates to "the place of life". Xuma and his second wife Madie Hall Xuma lived there until his own property was expropriated when Sophiatown was declared a White area in terms of the Native Resettlement Act of 1954, and he had vacated it by 1957.
"The Suit" is a short story by the South African writer Can Themba. It was first published in 1963 in the inaugural issue of The Classic, a South African literary journal founded by Nat Nakasa and Nadine Gordimer. On publication, the story was banned by the apartheid regime. "The Suit" was adapted for the stage by Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon in 1994, and has been adapted into a short film of the same name, written and directed by Jarryd Coetsee and premiered in 2016.
The Suit is a short drama film from South Africa written and directed by Jarryd Coetsee, and produced by Luke Sharland, based on the short story by Can Themba. The film stars Tony Award-winner John Kani as Mr. Maphikela, and his son, Atandwa Kani as Philemon. Phuthi Nakene plays Matilda.
The apartheid regime in South Africa began in 1948 and lasted until 1994. It involved a system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy, and placed all political power in the hands of a white minority. Opposition to apartheid manifested in a variety of ways, including boycotts, non-violent protests, and armed resistance. Music played a large role in the movement against apartheid within South Africa, as well as in international opposition to apartheid. The impacts of songs opposing apartheid included raising awareness, generating support for the movement against apartheid, building unity within this movement, and "presenting an alternative vision of culture in a future democratic South Africa."
