Feature: Black History Month
Published: 6 October, 2011
by ANGELA COBBINAH
IT is the only revolution done in four-part harmony,” says pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim to the camera, referring to the pivotal role music played in the anti-apartheid struggle.
His words complete the title of the 2002 film Amandla!, whose screening was a fitting opener for Art as a Weapon, a day of music, drama and speech to mark Black History Month at Theatro Technis in Camden Town on Sunday.
A mix of interviews, archive footage and live performance, Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony vividly chronicles five decades of struggle through the songs of those who fought to slay the monster – not only world-renowned musicians like Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, who were forced into exile, but the township foot soldiers whose chants of Awuleth’ Umshini Wami (“Bring me my machine-gun”) and Toyi Toyi preceded the stone-throwing and charging of the riot police as resistance was stepped up in the 1980s.
The stunning soundtrack reveals how music changed with each phase of the struggle and was often part of a mass response to events as they occurred.
The film poignantly opens and closes with the exhumation of the remains of Vuyisile Mini, who was buried in a pauper’s grave after he was hanged by the Verwoerd government in 1964.
A popular singer and an activist, his song, Beware, Verwoerd, was a taste of things to come.
In his talk of the use of the spoken and written word by black activists through the ages, historian Dr Hakim Adi pointed out that the phrase “art as a weapon” is taken from a speech by Paul Robeson.
“I have never separated my work as an artist from my work as a human being,” he said, quoting the singer, whose radicalism eventually led to him being barred from performing in the US.
“I’ve always put it, even more strongly, that, to me, my art is always a weapon.”
Claude McKay and Langston Hughes, two leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s, both took the same line, seeing the struggle for racial justice as part of a wider fight for human rights, as Hughes’ poem Letter from Spain, written during the Spanish Civil War, shows.
Similarly, Claudia Jones, who was deported to Britain from the US for being a Communist, launched the Notting Hill Carnival in 1959 following the race riots as an “affirmation” of black culture.
Further back in time, former slaves Ignatius Sancho, who became famous in England for his book of abolitionist letters, and the American poet Phillis Wheatley, did not have the luxury of intellectualising their work.
“Slaves were discouraged from learning to read and write and that is why the written word in the 18th century became so important in the struggle for liberation,” said Adi, author of West Africans in Britain 1900-1960: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism.
Wheatley, named Phillis after the ship that brought her to America as a slave child from Senegal and sold to the wealthy-but-liberal Wheatley family of Boston, became the first African-American poet to be published in 1773.
“In my view, her poetry was not very good [stylistically],” remarked Adi. “But it was outstanding because here was a former slave writing poems and disproving racist ideas about black people.”
The US social reformer Frederick Douglass was also born into slavery.
His 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, turned him into a superstar, though some questioned whether a black man could be such an eloquent writer. “
The power of words down the ages is highlighted by two phrases that have been used by modern writers in their work. “I know how a caged bird feels”, written by US poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar in 1872, and “emancipate yourself from mental slavery”, taken from a 1937 speech by the militant nationalist Marcus Garvey, are usually attributed to Maya Angelou and Bob Marley respectively, he explained, adding: “After all these years, these words still resonate.”
Other events during the day included a rendition of spirituals and original songs by Antonia Fraser and Half Moon, a 15-minute play by Tayo Aluko, who curated the day.
Performed by Faith Drama, it neatly focuses on the vexed question of treasures looted from Africa by colonialists through the efforts of a 3,000-year-old Nubian princess to prevent a mask worth millions of pounds ending up in yet another private collection.
Meanwhile Cutter’s Choice was an irreverent take on black “hair-story” as standup comic Paul Cutter recounted his quest for black identity through a lifetime of changing hairstyles, from “baldhead” to “fro” and “jheri curl” to “dreads”.
• www.black-history-month.co.uk
Festival highlights
The Angola 3. Former Black Panther member Robert King spent 29 years in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola Prison – a former slave plantation – for a crime he did not commit. He recounts his personal story of injustice and how he is campaigning for the freedom of Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, who were framed with him. Monday October 17, King’s College London, WC2, 6pm; Wednesday October 19, University of London Union, Malet Streett, WC1, 6.30pm.
Call Mr Robeson – Tayo Aluko’s award-winning one-man show about the actor, singer and civil rights campaigner Paul Robeson. Unicorn Theatre, Tooley Street, SE1, October 18-23. Times vary.
As part of the Islington Black History Month Film Festival, Katrina Browne tells the story of her forefathers, the largest slave-trading family in US history, in Traces of the Trade. Followed by two short films, The Story of Maggie Walker, an African American who was the first woman in the US to found a bank; and Ancestral Wanderings, a visual series of Jamaican born Fowokan’s poems. Kings Place, York Way, N1, October 15, 2-4pm.
Two authors discuss their debut novels: Ginny Bailey’s Africa Junction – a young woman’s quest for redemption set against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of modern Africa; Louis Julienne’s Pure Pressure – a saga set at the start of the Liverpool 1981 uprisings. Waterstone’s, Islington Green, London N1. October 18, 6.30-8pm. Free
EC1 Youth Music Project: The Roots of Contemporary Black Music. Working with renowned producers, musicians and music historians,13-19 year-olds can root through old records, sample them and produce fresh songs. Finsbury Library, St John Street, Clerkenwell, EC1. October 27, 2-4.30pm. Free
Alexander D Great, Calypsonian performance poet, writer and musician entertains children aged 4-7. Islington North Library, Manor Gardens. London N7. October 27, 2-3pm. Free. Islington Central Library, Fieldway Crescent, London N5. October 30, 3-4pm.
Islington Black History Month’s grand finale takes place at the former premises of the pioneering Keskidee Centre, in Gifford St, London N1 (now the Christ Apostolic Church), October 27, 7-9pm.
In My Shoes – comedienne Angie Le Mar’s new one-woman show, charts the perils and fortune of six distinctly depicted individuals. Directed by Femi Elufowoju, jr. Soho Theatre, Dean Street, W1. October 15-November 5.
Black Myth Versus History – theologian and broadcaster Dr Robert Beckford leads a panel that includes Bonnie Greer to discuss two and a half decades of Black British identity. Presented by Talawa Theatre Company. Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Rd, SW7. October 15, 3pm.
Black Chronicles brings together four Magnum photographers who have brought black subject matter into focus. Autograph ABP, Rivington Place, Gee Street, EC1. Until October 21. Free
An Evening of Poetry and Prose with John Prince. Prince reads from his latest work in his disctinctive style. Hackney Central Library, Reading Lane, London E8 (Hackney Central overground) October 20, 6-7.45pm.
Free www.black-history-month.co.uk