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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Rocking the Boat in South Africa? Voelvry Music and Afrikaans Anti-Apartheid Social Protest in the 1980s |
Author: | Grundlingh, Albert |
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] |