South Africa
Friday, May 15th, 2009It’s amazing how many elements of my life converged into my recent visit to Cape Town. I went there to record a project involving a South African hymn, but it just so happens that I’ve also been working (composition and production) on a song for the last couple of months for the new Jenny Burton CD. The name of the song is “South Africa” and it was actually written for The Jenny Burton Experience about 10 years ago.
Nelson Mandela
It was done as a tour de force production number at a time when the focus of the world was on Nelson Mandela and the historic happenings at the end of Apartheid. Each night when the song was passionately performed, the audience, black and white, would rise to their feet in full-throated exuberance at the end. It was one of the power point moments of The Jenny Burton Experience.
Under the heading of “You Probably Know This But…”, I thought the following info was worth repeating:
Apartheid — An Afrikaans word meaning ‘apartness’
During most of the 20th century, South Africa was ruled by a system called Apartheid, which was based on the segregation of races.
During the 1960s, racial discrimination applied to most aspects of life in South Africa and Bantustans (territories set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South-West Africa, now Namibia) were created for Blacks. The system had evolved into ‘Grand Apartheid’. The country was rocked by the Sharpeville Massacre, the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were banned, and the country withdrew from the British Commonwealth and declared a Republic.
