[Forty
years ago this week, the musical supergroup USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa recorded
their single “We are the
World” (it would drop on March 7th). So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy that effort and other examples of musical activism!]
On two American
contexts for another 1985 musical activism.
First
things first: South Africa is not the United States, and it’s important to note
that the 1985 musical supergroup Artists United
Against Apartheid, and their protest song “Sun City,” were explicitly
and entirely focused on that African nation and its policies of racial segregation.
There are of course additional, complex layers to that focus, including the Sun
City resort and casino, located in the semi-autonomous-but-ultimately-still-part-of-South-African-and-thoroughly-tied-to-Apartheid
state of
Bophuthatswana, that the group and song were overtly protesting and
boycotting (a concert venue at which, frustratingly enough, a number of contemporary
artists and groups had been and continued to be more than happy to
perform). This blog is called AmericanStudies, and so I’m going to focus the
rest of this post on a couple American contexts for this musical activism; but
there’s plenty more to say about its South African contexts, and if folks want
to add to them in the comments below I’d be very appreciative as always.
One
particularly striking American context for the supergroup is just how diverse a
collection of artists rocker
Steve Van Zandt and hip hop producer Arthur Baker assembled for the
recording session and the song that they created. In his book
on the project critic Dave Marsh called it “the most diverse line up of
popular musicians ever assembled for a single session,” and I can’t disagree: you’d
be hard-pressed to find another group that included DJ Kool Herc and Ringo
Starr, Grandmaster Melle Mel and Hall & Oates, Bob Dylan and Afrika
Bambaataa, Bono and Gil Scott-Heron, and literally countless others. And the
resulting song reflects that diversity, as it moves back and forth between hip
hop and rap verses, rock ones, and a chorus that brings the multiple voices and
styles together. A great deal has been made of the groundbreaking
1986 collaboration between Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith, and rightly so—but nearly
a year earlier, the “Sun City” sessions and song likewise featured these
multiple musical genres, and could be seen as helping pave the way for future
such collaborations and cross-overs.
The other American
context I want to highlight here is far, far more complex. By his own admission, Steve
Van Zandt’s initial interest in opposing Apartheid came when he learned that
the policy had been based in part on Native American reservations in the US,
and the
song’s lyrics reflect that intersection with the repeated lines “Relocation
to phony homelands/Separation of families, I can’t understand.” And then there’s
this: Sun City had been developed by the South African
hotel tycoon Sol Kerzner and his Sun International group; and just over a
decade after Van Zandt’s supergroup, Kerzner opened another
resort and casino, this time as a joint venture with a Native American
tribe: Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. I’m not suggesting for a second that a
Native American casino is the same as an Apartheid one; indeed, the two could be
seen as polar opposites. But the same South African tycoon was behind both,
which at the very least reminds us that, to quote Trip in Glory, “We’re
all covered up in it. Ain’t nobody clean.”
Last
musical activism tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Activisms you’d highlight?
