The Sound of Soweto - Part Two

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Johannesburg-based poet Thabiso Mohare explores the music of Soweto from the 1970s onwards, through the unrest that led to democracy in 1994, and takes a look at the music scene today. Featuring interviews with Sipho 'Hotstix' Mabuse, Mandla Mlangeni, BCUC and The Soil.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC World Service, the Sound of Suueto.
0:07.0	There was only an enemy then, which was the system which was apartheid.
0:13.0	Even if you were still young, you'd hear house, house outside, some chance going on.
0:18.0	So already in you, already we upon us fight has in a way. The National Gonna G.
0:24.0	The National Gonna The nationalist government had a limited understanding of what role music can play and it also had a limited
0:40.3	understanding of their power because they always
0:44.3	understood their power to be in military and police and so. So they focus most of the
0:49.8	energies on dealing with that aspect. In the second of two programs, to Bicele-Mahare,
1:04.7	in the second of two programs,
1:10.2	to Bicele-Mahare explores the music of Suueto from the 1970s onwards.
1:17.0	Sooetu's music has always been forged by the movement of people into the township,
1:25.0	whether by choice or force.
1:28.0	For over a century now, the threads of lives and cultures broken by migration to Johannesburg and by removal from the city to the township have gathered here.
1:39.0	Wonderful indigenous music, they carried it with them to the cities. They brought it with
1:44.8	them here. If you think about Johannes but music from the fast note, those dudes
1:49.2	brought it with them on the trains man. Or if they walked here, they brought those melodies with them. And here, it finds
1:56.6	Western instrumentation and modern Evan styles, and it creates a fantastic vernacular. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
2:13.0	yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
2:14.0	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
2:15.0	I,
2:16.0	A U-Tah Kontinu. The interplay of global and local cultures has always been important in Soweto,
2:31.0	with influences from well beyond South Africa's borders entering the fabric of the place.
	...

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