dir. Lee Hirsch
Wed Sept 18 at the Experience Music Project.
In an age of entertainment and consumption, it's easy to forget that the simple human act of singing against injustice can be more than merely "authentic"; it can be authentically revolutionary. After seeing Amandla!, a staggeringly inspirational documentary about the unique role of music in the 40-plus-year struggle against apartheid in South Africa, this notion becomes indelible.
The film's message--underscored quite literally by the rousing sound of people singing in dense, elaborate harmony--is that even in the absence of freedom, justice, or reason, the spirit of resistance will not be quashed. The revolution against apartheid was fought with the only weapon the people had, a weapon no power can govern: It was fought with song.
The documentary, whose title means "power," is constructed conventionally, with newsreel footage and talking-head interviews with South African musicians and activists, many of whom suffered exile, arrest, and torture for their efforts against institutionalized oppression. They tell the same story: When all other attempts to be heard failed, black citizens were left only with the power of music to resist the government. And though the resistance was nonviolent, the music was not; interviewees recall lines like "we will shoot you, we will kill you," and "we will kill you with our machine guns." Not all the lyrics were so blunt, but they shared the relentless conviction that change had to and would come. The message is clear: These are songs of freedom, not peace.
The watershed composition in this movement was "Watch out Verwoerd," a defiant song that called the president of South Africa by name, warning that his "policy of good neighborliness" (his words) was an evil lie that would be exposed. The song's author, Vuyisile Mini, emerges as a Che Guevara-esque figure in the resistance, a martyred folk hero who "went to the gallows singing." The film opens with footage of soldiers digging up Mini's unmarked grave, to literally reclaim his bones for the liberated nation and give him a proper burial. "Mighty," cries a man at the site, "mightiest of the mighty."
Mini's spirit energizes the film in much the same way it energized the revolution; we never hear his deep voice, but we do hear its legacy, both in song and in testimonials from his descendants. The image of him singing defiantly while being led to his execution carries over into the stories of others singing in prisons and on work trains, singing through clouds of tear gas and into the barrels of guns. Singing as a means of protest, and to elevate the spirit. Singing together as a statement of unity and power. Singing instead of crying to mourn the dead--or, as one woman remembers, "singing, then crying anyway."
As Amandla! marks the passage of time, and the movement's frustrations mount, the music evolves from Mini's simple folk idiom to "Toyi-Toyi," a militarized foot-stomping chant that galvanized the resistance into its crucial--and ultimate--phase in the 1980s. It's here that the "revolution of dancing and singing" reaches its most insistent point, and the film reaches its most exhilarating chapter. Cracks begin to show. A former prison guard confesses his addiction to "power over life." Retired riot police admit to being undone by the chanting and pounding. The songs can no longer be ignored. Mandela is released from prison. A free election is held. The revolution prevails. Mighty. Mightiest of the mighty.
The experience of viewing Amandla! consists of a complicated series of jolts to the consciousness. It's astonishing to see so much history encapsulated so effectively, to hear so many eloquent accounts of such inhuman misery, to be exposed to so much stirring music. But the biggest jolt is generated by a simple fact: For nearly half of the 20th century, the governing principle of a predominantly black nation was that black people were not entitled to the same social, legal, and human rights as a tiny minority of white people.
As a matter of official policy, black citizens were shunted into ghettos, stripped of basic dignities, randomly arrested, and rampantly murdered. The only justification offered for this rank moral outrage was that the national economy depended on discrimination. More outrageous is the fact that this justification was enough for the governments of the world--either by silence or collusion--to allow the policy to endure, which it did, with mounting severity, until 1994. Eight years ago.
It's easy to sound pious when discussing such well-known history, but it's just as easy to let it go unspoken. Amandla! is a testament to the importance of remembering, and to the power of film to make the memory vivid and alive.
Amandla! inaugurates the second Music+Film series at the Experience Music Project. New films screen every Wednesday through November at the JBL Theater. Consult Stranger Film Shorts for details.
