My name is Suer, a student from Westminster College, MO. This blog is for the class "Music of Resistance, Revolution, and Liberation". I simply love music. I listen to almost all kinds of music especially Japanese pop music. While listening to those music, I realize that music, whether with lyrics or not, has great power, and music can be much more powerful than words, if used appropriately. So I chose this class to study what music has helped people do in social and political activities.
As for me, resistance music is a type of music that people (especially repressed people) use to support resistances of social or political injustice. Music is one of the tools that people use in the resistance or rebel activities, and it is more like a tool to promote. This is because artists who write these music usually uses simple words and short sentences as lyrics to express their feelings and criticism about different issues. The audience can understand those feelings by listening to the songs. When the audience fully understand the meaning of one song, they can then choose whether to support the resistance or not, and whether to change the perspectives that they had before or not. I believe that this is when music of resistance starts to making changes.
Thomas Mapfumo is one of the resistance musicians. Mapfumo was born in 1945 in Zimbabwe. When he was 16, he joined his first band as the vocalist, which was the starting point of his music career. As Zimbabwe was a colony of Great Britain in his time, Mapfumo preferred to use native language while singing, and he also focus on native musical tradition in his songs, because the British colonist were derogating native culture. Mapfumo's lyrics contains strong political messages, but because of the using of native language in his lyrics, the white government did not realize that for a long time. And when they finally found out the meaning of his lyrics, the records of Mapfumo's music was banned, and he was put into prison. However, his music was so powerful that his records were still played by his supporters. Finally he was released by the government because large demonstration was held in order to protest his arrest. And his music helped a lot in the independence of Zimbabwe. I cannot find his lyrics but here is his famous song "Hokoyo.", which means "watch out!", and was a warning to the white government of Rhodesia today known as Zimbabwe, as written on youtube.
Another resistance musician that I would like to introduce is Fela Kuti. He was born in a middle-class family in Nigeria in 1938. His family members were well-educated, and he was sent to London to study medicine but later he decided to study music instead. First he and his band wrote love songs, but when he went back to Nigeria in 1970s, he started to focusing on social issues. Kuti wrote his lyrics using Pidgin English, which helped spreading his music rapidly across Africa. His famous album "Zombie" used zombie as a metaphor to criticize Nigerian military, and infuriated the government. Kuti himself was severely beaten, his studio called Kalakuta Republic was burnt, his mother was also killed by the government. I found a video on YOUTUBE that provides lyrics of this song:
Kuti's influence was great that in recent years there has been a revitalization of his music. His albums were remastered by Universal Music and different artists.
