Carnegie Hall

In South Africa, music was the soundtrack to a resistance movement. The 1948 institution of apartheid (Afrikaans for “separateness”) and its segregationist laws set in motion a vicious cycle of repression and institutionalized brutality against South Africa’s non-white citizens that lasted nearly 50 years. Forced relocations of Black South Africans, oppressive racial laws, and violent government crackdowns on protestors were everyday life.

Black South Africans responded with strikes and demonstrations—often beaten down and ending with imprisonment or death. The dozens of Black protestors massacred in the Sharpeville township (one of several settlements built on the fringes of cities for non-whites) in 1960 is just one example.

This playlist is a musical document of Black South African voices raised in protest. The songs and instrumental music are monuments to a struggle that was finally victorious with the repeal of apartheid in 1991 and the election of Nelson Mandela as president in 1994.

The songs address central figures of the movement, including Mandela, journalist Steve Biko, and even Hendrik Verwoerd, the former prime minister who is regarded as the architect of apartheid and who is warned in Miriam Makeba’s heroic “Beware, Verwoerd!” (“Ndodemnyama”). A call to arms and yearning for loved ones is heard in “Sobashiy’ Abazali” (“We Leave Our Parents at Home”), sung by South Africans training in faraway paramilitary camps. The heartbreaking “Senzeni Na?” asks, “What have we done?” and answers, “Our sin is that we are Black.” There’s also joy and triumph: Abdullah Ibrahim honors his country in “Mannenberg Revisited”; Vusi Mahlasela’s “Tswang Tswang Tswang” is a lively celebration; and the rousing national anthem “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (“God Bless Africa”) is a song of liberation and unity.

Listen to Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dorothy Masuka, and others who were exiled and imprisoned, but fought back with music and ultimately triumphed.