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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Rocking the Boat in South Africa? Voelvry Music and Afrikaans Anti-Apartheid Social Protest in the 1980s
Author:Grundlingh, AlbertISNI
Year:2004
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:37
Issue:3
Pages:483-514
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:apartheid
political conflicts
political songs
music
Ethnic and Race Relations
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
Architecture and the Arts
Politics and Government
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/4129042
Abstract:Afrikaans anti-apartheid social protest music during the 1980s was reminiscent of the cultural and social challenges to the status quo in the West two decades earlier. In rock and roll style, with an overlay of punk, the Afrikaans anti-apartheid 'Voëlvry' musicians of the Gereformeerde [Reformed] Blues Band satirized the State, Afrikaans political leaders, the South African Defence Force, the apartheid system, and white middle-class values. This paper seeks to understand the conditions under which anti-apartheid Afrikaans protest music emerged in the 1980s and why it took about twenty years after oppositional youth movements in the West for comparable developments among Afrikaner youth to gain some traction. Central to the protest was an attempt to question, and even to reformulate through the medium of music, what it meant to be an Afrikaner during the latter phases of apartheid. The analysis disaggregates the dynamics and nuances of this process. Moreover, the actual impact of the phenomenon at the time is evaluated through an assessment of the claims made by band members and journalists. Finally, the way in which the memory of this movement continued to have an influence among young Afrikaner people well into the postapartheid era is explored. App., ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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