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From Homeland to Township: Rap Music and South African Choral Tradition
| Article
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11447 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1994 |
3,926 Words |
| Author
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Sandra Jackson-Opoku And Michael West
Sandra Jackson-Opoku is a free-lance writer who teaches
creative writing at Chicago State University. She is a founder
of One Village, an organization promoting cross-cultural
harmony among diverse international communities of African
descent. Michael West is assistant professor of history and
Afro-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. He specializes in southern African and pan-African
history. This essay was researched on assignment for THE WORLD
& I in 1993. |
Business is fairly slow in Gold Reef City, a history theme park built on the site of a semifunctional gold mine. Mounting violence and political instability are the fallout as apartheid totters on its last leg. The tourist trade has suffered as a result. Lunching on piri piri chicken in one of the property's fancy restaurants, we have the whole place to ourselves.
Tourists are notably absent, but noisy and bright-eyed African schoolchildren are out in force. Shepherded by frazzled teachers and tour guides, uniformed groups troop about, peering in the windows of curio shops and studying exhibits of turn of the century mining life. During a demonstration of African song and dance in an outdoor theater, some of the students sing along. Others loudly critique the performance. When they discover that one of us is African American, they switch to English and question her about pop stars like Michael Jackson and M.C. Hammer.
In this much-ballyhooed dawn of a "New South Africa," the tour guide segregates the groups, separating our handful of European and American tourists into the top half of a double-decker mine elevator, while crowding a large group of schoolchildren into the bottom. An American with a video camera expresses relief at the extra elbowroom.
The elevator slowly descends into the shaft of the gold mine. Daylight disappears, and we switch on lights atop the hard hats we've been given. The video cam's lights come on too, though there is nothing to see. But there is plenty to hear. Disembodied voices float up from below, eerily echoing in blended harmony, with intermittent shrills and ululations. Someone wonders if a radio has been turned on. We hush to listen. The children below us are singing "Shosholoza," a Zulu mining song. The cameraman turns up the volume, wishing aloud that he could videotape the impromptu performance.
To the mountainous mine dumps
The train comes from Zimbabwe.
You are running away
From these mountains.
The train goes to Zimbabwe.
We descend into darkness, the voices of these township-bred African schoolchildren reminding us that
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