Graceland was one of the most controversial albums by Paul Simon because of its connection to the apartheid. The apartheid is a policy on segregation or discrimination based on race. The album was censored from the South African government because they believed that Simon was supporting the regime. He took influence from the South African music and American Rock n’ Roll to create the Grammy award-winning album. Simon worked alongside many South African singers bringing out their heritage, traditions, and history. The reason for Graceland‘s success are the skilled artists, the different genres, and its presence is highly valued in the music market. Lastly, another political reason why Graceland was so controversial to the public eye was because …show more content…
Simon had gained a wide audience thanks to his success of his duo Simon & Garfunkel, and his solo albums through the 1970s. There were several unsuccessful albums in the early 80s that served as a challenge. He released Graceland in 1985 and it sold millions of copies reviving his career. Once this album was released, Simon received criticism by defying the United Nations of South Africa and for recording the majority of the album in Johannesburg. Critics and scholars soon discovered that none of the lyrics made any direct comments against or for the apartheid. Many people thought that he made an error by avoiding political …show more content…
The blacks were overpowered through various regulations for over forty years. During the apartheid, blacks were to be relocated to “homelands.” The white government allocated that all black citizens be assigned to “tribes,” and were forced to return to “homelands” within the boundaries given by the government. There were soon eleven countries and ten black tribal National states. Blacks were now prohibited from leaving the “homelands” without work passes. White minority lived in luxury while the 80% of the population, black, lived on 17% of the poorest land. The National Party was able to eradicate human rights of the black South Africans while maintaining absolute control of the government. Most international communities ignored the apartheid in South Africa due to the Cold War concerns in the United States and Europe. This enabled the South African government to operate with little contact with international parties. There were uprisings like the Sharpeville killings of 1960 and Soweto of 1976 but were rare occurrences. South Africa, not depending on national ties to other countries, grew into a weakening economy. Soon the United Nations had a cultural boycott prohibiting international artists from performing in South Africa. Despite the boycott, artists such as Frank Sinatra and Elton John ignored this boycott and performed in Sun City (a white resort in
Nina Simone used music to challenge, provoke, incite, and inform the masses during the period that we know as the Civil Rights Era. In the songs” Four Women”, “Young Gifted and Black”, and Mississippi God Damn”, Nina Simone musically maps a personal "intersectionality" as it relates to being a black American female artist. Kimberly Crenshaw defines "intersectionality" as an inability for black women to separate race, class and gender. Nina Simone’s music directly addresses this paradigm. While she is celebrated as a prolific artist her political and social activism is understated despite her front- line presence in the movement. According to Ruth Feldstein “Nina Simone recast black activism in the 1960’s.” Feldstein goes on to say that “Simone was known to have supported the struggle for black freedom in the United States much earlier, and in a more outspoken manner around the world than had many other African American entertainers.”
Samuel Cornelius Phillips was born in 1923 in Florence, Alabama to a family of tenant farmers (Sam Phillips Obituary. 3) He grew up around the songs of his parent’s, primarily black, coworker’s songs as they were tending to the cotton fields. Phillips said that he “felt an awakening of [his] spirit when [he] heard the singing of African Americans who worked alongside him”. This early exposure to racial equality stuck with him for the rest of his years. When Phillips grew older, he took a job as a disc jockey for an “open format’ radio station (Sam Phillips Bio. 2). He experienced first-hand the reaction of the listeners to black rhythm and blues, and that led him to founding Sun Records. Sam Phillips founded Sun Records in 1952 in the heart of the Memphis black music scene. Sun Records was created in attempt to “develop new and different artists, get freedom in music, and tape people that weren’t getting tapped; despite the boundaries” (Sam Phillips Bio. 5)
Artists write about what they know; they pull feelings from their heart and their songs relay what the artists’ emotions, whether it be of their hometown, their high school crush, or their experiences. Many artists that came to fame during the twentieth century have a fair share of experiences they share with us in the form of their songs. The twentieth century is comprised of the institution of slavery and its effects, war, gender norms, discrimination based on nationality, sex, race, etc., and countless events that sparked protests and uproars in the United States. Music at this time was a phenomenon, and artists could use it to their advantage. Artists used their music to spread awareness about their cause, influence their listeners, and
...romotion of black consciousness it is clear that these two labels were working towards the same goal: to empower their black audience by emitting waves of black consciousness through their music. Both labels also used the same strategy of using lyrics that were laden with innuendos, despite their very different reasons for doing so. Their combined effort helped soul music develop its inherent and inseparable connection to the black struggle of the 1960s and their legitimacy as music powerhouses aided in spreading soul music to every corner of the United States of America. And although there was no immediate economic or political changes, the efforts of these two labels did not go unnoticed. Their impact on black consciousness would serve as the driver for the continued fight against the black struggle in hopes of one day achieving those economic and political changes.
Soul had a great cultural impact on the music industry during the 1960's, especially considering that record labels such as Motown, Stax, and Fame had several important soul artists under contract. While Motown was considered by some to be a more restrained (pop) type of soul, musicians such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and groups such as the Supremes and the Temptations released many successful records in combination. Both Stax and Fame Records decided to take a different approach, and many of the tracks issued out of their respective studios were of a grittier, southern soul style, which some consider to be more true to the roots of African American culture. Some southern soul musicians include Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Aretha Franklin. During the civil rights movement and more so after Martin Luther King was assassinated, some soul artists began incorporating a "black power" element within their music. For example, take James Brown's single "Say It Loud, I'm Black and Proud".
Before the war started, a wealthy white man by the name of John Hammond worked to integrate black and white music.1 Since his childhood, he enjoyed the music of numerous black artists, and he wanted to share his love with the rest of America. He used much of his inherited fortune to make this possible. He went against the general opinion of society and his parents, who despised black people. Hammond refused to ignore black artists’ musical abilities because of their color, “I did not revolt against the system, I simply refused to be a part of it.”2 He used his money to organize the most eclectic group of musicians ever assembled, for an integrated audience of his time. Hammond’s efforts made an indelible impact on the music industry. The musicians Hammond introduced in...
The Emancipation Proclamation was written and signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, just five years before the birth of Joplin. Being a member of the first generation of free African Americans in the nation’s history was a positive and liberating notion for Scott Joplin. His father did have to endure the hardships of slavery, so the cruelty of the slave trade was not lost on Joplin. Free to do what he wanted to, Joplin pursued a life of music at a very early age, bringing to his compositions the carefree and jubilant attitude of a nation under reconstruction, even if the country was in the process of rebuilding itself. It was not an easy time for blacks in America, as they had a long way to go before they enjoyed equal rights and freedoms, but the promise of a better life was enough to empower many of them, including Joplin.
One of his most controversial songs came later in his career, it was titled “Jesus Walks,” many people didn’t want this song to be played but radios did it any way and so did MTV. There is one verse of the song that makes you appreciate his work:
African-American music is a vibrant art form that describes the difficult lives of African American people. This can be proven by examining slave music, which shows its listeners how the slaves felt when they were working, and gives us insight into the problems of slavery; the blues, which expresses the significant connection with American history, discusses what the American spirit looks like and teaches a great deal from the stories it tells; and hip-hop, which started on the streets and includes topics such as misogyny, sex, and black-on-black violence to reveal the reactions to the circumstances faced by modern African Americans. First is about the effect of slave music on American history and African American music. The slave music’s
The White album was released in 1968.It’s blank cover frames the endless possibilities that imagination brings while listening to the songs, giving the audience a more personal and limitless perspective of the songs they listen to. The album has a total of 30 songs, and they all tell a story and are very clear, in comparison to past songs like Johns “I am the Walrus”. The album kicks off with “ Back in the U.S.S.R” a response to the many patriotic songs established in the era. It is a very upbeat and specific a narrative like song written by Paul. The same goes for the following songs on the first side of the White album. How...
In 1990, South Africa became a totalitarian state. Apartheid is still in full effect. There is extensive racial violence in the streets. The country is economically suffering from sanctions from many other countries in protest of Apartheid.
You know him as the singer, the dancer, and the song writer. As the famous Artist whose words were often binary. As a man that was regarded with much adulation and scrutiny for singing and acting with audacity. The one and only, Michael Joseph Jackson, well known performer and the producer of many great songs, as well as the inventor of the moonwalk. Jackson often released songs that had powerful messages behind them e.g. 'We Are the World' and “Black and White”. Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us” released as part of the “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I” album in 1996, was addressed to “the people” in an effort to promote equality, justice, and peace. However, it led to unexpected controversy
On a trip to Ghana as Ambassador Satchmo, he recognized the struggles the people still faced with slave trading and colonial subjugation and was reminded of the American South’s “vigilante violence against black people.” (Eschen 62). The sympathy that he felt for their struggles inspired him to play “Black and Blue” and the “sense of shared struggle was reciprocated” (Eschen 63). Through “Black and Blue” Armstrong remembered the struggles that the blacks were suffering in the United States just like the people of Ghana. This was a turning point in his life and ultimately led him to work harder at helping his fellow black brethren to obtain their rightful civil privileges. This conversion was illustrated when he cancelled a trip for a Soviet tour in order to help the African American kids in Little Rock. Armstrong accused President Eisenhower of being “‘two-faced” on civil rights and allowing ‘Faubus to run the government.’ ‘It’s getting so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country’” (Eschen 63). In response, Eisenhower sent federal troops to assist with integration. However, the actions of the musician at other times bought forward harsh feelings like “What have you done for your people, except hurt them?” (Meckna 37) He was criticized for wearing leopard skins in a film and using minstrel humor which made him appear as playing into the degrading stereotypes of the time. In a
...rry their pass books (“Black’s resistance to Apartheid”). “During 1980 there were 304 major incidents concerning struggle with apartheid including arrests, tear gas violence, stoning, and strikes (“Black’s resistance to Apartheid”). In 1986 violent conflict forced the government to assert a national state of emergency (Wright, 68). The Public Safety Act increased penalties such as fining, imprisonment, and whippings for protesting the law (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”).
The apartheid was a very traumatic time for blacks in South Africa. Apartheid is the act of literally separating the races, whites and non-whites, and in 1948 the apartheid was now legal, and government enforced. The South African police began forcing relocations for black South Africans into tribal lines, which decreased their political influence and created white supremacy. After relocating the black South Africans, this gave whites around eighty percent of the land within South Africa. Jonathan Jansen, and Nick Taylor state “The population is roughly 78 percent black, 10 percent white, 9 percent colored, and l...