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A View Of The Music and Dance Of Africans of South Africa
Developing Talking Musical Cultural/Historical Points And Shifting the Paradigm
African Polyrhythmic-Roots-Rocking-Rhythms:
Any culture does not allow for stagnation; each culture manages to learn from other cultures, but
keep itself unique to itself. Many races or people throughout the world perform and manifest their
culture whilst maintaining this uniqueness, that which one can can discern by interrogating certain
aspects of those cultures, like in the case of this hub: music and dance.
I have been posting various types of music in their specific genres, and this means that different
music is sung in different languages, since the music I post is from different countries, This means
that whoever is listening might not understand the language, but the music is universal(that is, the
rhythm, sound melodies and the playing of various instrument and different dances), and most them
have different musical style, tones and accentuation as do their languages.. But what is important
and common about these musical acts and sounds, is that they are being selected from an African
centered perspective. Were people to find time and read-upon the origins and histories of these
groups, one would be struck at the similarities of experiences experienced by these musicians, in
their different countries throughout their different struggles. This is important to note, for this
applies too the the music and dances of Africans in South Africa.
If one were to listen to Eldridge cleaver, his issued this aphorism in the same spirit of what I had just
discussed above when he informs us that:
"Until Black(African) people as a whole gain power, it's not a question of where you are
geographically if you Black (African); it's a question of where you are psychologically. No matter
where you place Black(African) people under preset conditions, they'll still subject to the whims and
decisions of white political, economic and [psychological] apparatus."
Why I am using this citation is the simple reason that we have to begin to understand The African
peoples situation is not only regionally, nationally or continentally manifest, but looking at it from a
global perspective. This helps us become more aware and sensitized to this issue of African musical
culture is really Global-and if that is hard to conceive, we cannot change or shift any existing
paradigms that chain Africans to all our colonial past and continued existence. Africans will operate
with blinkers in a Globe that is Web-driven in its vastness and content. Africans cannot dig in into
their heels when they need to move into the 21st century. This means knowing, learning and
understanding the African struggle as it is International as much as local where it is based for each
individual.
In fact, some of us are so caught -up with trying to be very Europeans in how they imbibe or groove
to the music so long it is not their local music, and not African, in many cases. This you can find all
over the globe, and it is not unique to one people. But it applies to all the oppressed because most of
us have not yet been liberated in ourselves and in our societies. Ourselves are chained , to our
societies which are incarcerated..
I remember reading somewhere about Duke Ellington that he moved the music which we know as
Jazz from "Jungle Music" to what we call Jazz(I guess-bleached sounds). African Music globally is not
"Jungle Music", but it is human music. Imagine we have to actually say that and try to qualify and
uplift it to the level of it being human-preposterous! Yet, this is what we, those oppressed around the
world, have been sold to, bamboozled with and dry-cleaned to the extend that we ignore our music,
cultures and so forth, because we are avoiding and ignoring ourselves-as Bob Marley sings: "You
Running Away From Yourself.."
Then there is this perception that when one plays or posts music, they are not 'seriously' carrying
out the struggle. That could not be far from the truth. The Music of any people is the soundtracks of
their lives, culture and so on. It as as one as breathing is to our lives. You ignore music that uses a
language that you do not understand, or have been conditioned in a sort of "Kraal" enclosure in
one's existence by the laws, regulation, tricks, fraud, corruption and use of force that is administered
to to those who resist-and you cave in-you lose; so that, the act of brutal oppression, increased the
intensity of the production of radical music as one would breath hard when fighting.
Writing is just like music. One needs to compose it. In the case of writing, you compose whatever it
is from social experience-as does music. When as a people you originate ideas and other such things,
you become more legit and real. You cannot live your life as a duplicate of a colonially manufactured
personality. One cannot live a life that is not relevant to their lives. One cannot listen to music that
does not harken back to one's own social experience. To ignore or refuse to acknowledge that ones
music which is a pathway to sanity, then, one will be left lollygagging within a mix which corrodes
their inner core and souls. That is why we see the madness engulfing many poor Africans.
Just like writing, we develop our musical talking points about music that originates from our inner
sanctum and soul. To shift paradigms is to totally change a way that is not compatible with ones
well-beingness. Music appreciation is something one grows up and finds people one is born into
listening or playing it. This also means that, since then it is human music, it compels one to spread
one's listening preferences. If what we say amongst ourselves, we do not trust nor believe it,
because one of the same oppressed as us is saying it, means that when we begin to listen and
participate, imbibe and consume our 'high' culture, we have shifted a preset, concrete reality that
was an inhibitor to our spiritual, musical, intellectual or otherwise development. We change the way
we are conditioned and are made to see, think and behave, it is in this way that we will see ourselves
anew and begin to see the way we are educing ourselves to.
I for one believe in the emancipation of Africans throughout the world, and music is one way of the
many ways of doing it. Another way is cobbling together African musical experiences into an article
such as this one to begin to expand and extend African people's listening range to music we are not
familiar with, which can be found in a narrow category, world-wide, and I choose to simple dub it to
be African Music Systems- that is, to shift gears in appreciation of this African musical and dance art
form. Africans should 'validate' themselves and not wait for someone to box them or keep them
caged and be satisfied with.African people should dare explore themselves and their sounds without
let-up as part of waging their struggle for psychological liberation as a people who still have to
realize that freedom.
If people gave themselves time and opened themselves to the possibility that Africans have a "high
Culture" in music, their consciousness and actions and appreciations would change. They would stop
being people who are spectators(as Biko so pithily concurred) of their daily oppression, depression,
dehumanization and suppression that so disdainfully and cruelly manifested itself in their collective
midst and psyche so boldly throughout their history and current reality, that in the end, an attempt
or serious effort at dislodging, shifting of displacing these current deadening and dumbing ways-
down post-colonial paradigms should be dealt with and eliminated permanently. like any crucial part
or point of the Struggle of african people. Our African music is powerful and soulful, we just need to
listen, or take it, for its out there in the musical viral stream.
A Review Of The Posted Cultural Videos Of The People Of Mzantsi..
I have just finished a series of videos that I had started by posting first with an article articulating
my objectives(See Older Posts): to create a format and structural form of our music and culture and
frame it such that it has a National body and appearance. What I mean by this is that, I made some
means of collating our 'different,' 'variegated,' 'variable' and 'diverse' culture, which up to the point
before I started posting it in that manner, and having written a preface to my intentions, had never
been done like so. Also, what I did was create the bios or small histories of each of the musicians,
performers and bands so's to lay out a matrix that most of the South Africans on FB, might get a
glimpse of it holistically.
This exercise in Cultural defenseis not a "practice in Promoting My music " as has been claimed by
those who are left behind in what I was doing. It seems there is culture of obfuscating the 'right'
things for our people in order to "Dumb Them Down". Our people of Mzantsi are prohibited by a new
species of "Censurers" and "Gatekeepers". not on the TV and radio only, but viciously here on these
social media that can reach millions of people in Mzantsi and the world over.
Some of us are patently ignorant of these new, burgeoning, emerging, converging, moving-at-t-
e-speed-of-viral-data phenomenon and gizmos. Our people who are in different privileged position
are scared of an Independent African South African, who has the potential to learn, and become
better, if not different from the. Some of these leaders are cloaked in Pan Africanism of a "Type".
The Pan Africanism that cannot even recognize Africanism in the efforts some of us are trying to
disseminate, without us being crass and ignorant about what we are posting and how we are posting
it-as African peoples.
The response might not have been an earth
shaking event when I posted all the videos,
short histories of the 11 people of Mzantsi,
namely: The Zulus, Pedis, South Sothos,
Shangaans, Vendas, Ndebeles,Swazis,
Xhosas, Tswanas, Vendas, Colored and the
Khoisan. The main thrust of posting such
music, was not, and I still emphasize, to
"Promote My music/videos" on the Pan
African Sites on FB. Apparently there are
people working as spooks and moles of the
FB owners, and the present ANC
government, of which they are on its pay and beckon-and-call. The aim of laying these viral videos
was specifically to, in a coordinated and structured way(that of choosing relevant 'cultural ' videos
with as much 'authentic' dances and live videos as such as possible), to help us beggining to learn
much more better and in a 20/20 way the breadth and depth of our cultural matrix and mosaic as it
has manifested itself in our daily realities; and, undergirding this first aim, was the second one,
wherein I was trying to parlay an ideas, way of seeing, and conceptual ability of our people to begin
to see that we are really one people, as opposed to the apartheidized way of seeing, thinking and
being that we are a different disunited collectives of "TRIBES". A Term I have consistently rejected,
until we end up having a "French Tribe", "British, Italian, Danish," and so forth tribes, then I might
reconsider.
But, since that is not what I am talking about, we need certain perceptive ways and perspective of
beginning to realize ourselves not as a collection of different "Tribes", but a nation with a diverse,
vibrant,energetic, similar and one culture. Even if we were to try and interrogate or investigate the
notion that our languages are different and not the same, and that they emerged from our trekking
South from the north, is utter balderdash! We have always been here in Mzantsi for eons, and now
there is proof of 'supposedly' disappeared civilization of here in Mzantsi, andit can be traced back to
170,000 B.C, and there is a lot of physical material proof that we have been here since the formation
of the earth! So that, when I use our music, culture, customs, dances, languages and their practices,
techniques and uniqueness, I am working toward reconstructing our Nation (through all the
mentioned building blocks, and making them real through our Music, Dance and interpretation of
our Culture) and that they should be viewed as being one,, not different or unrelated to one another-
but one National Culture, etc..
For us to see ourselves as a Nation of Africans in Mzantsi, we need to see ourselves, in some shape
of form, as one people who are having a diverse culture, which is in essence, one culture. It is one
culture when one starts listening to the music, which we can group into Mbaqanga and those songs
unique to different groups in various regions throughout South Africa. We need to have a sense and
way of seeing our different cultures as they seemingly are different, but see them for their
commonalities, originality, energy, similar dances, hand-clapping, rhythmic foot-stomping,
movements of all kinds, from the gyration of the Shangaan women, to the active and energetic
synchronic dances of their men
; to the smooth foot-shuffling ad gentle stepping Batswana , Swazis mass singing, and for the men
Zulu-type of dancing; up to the easy, steady and deliberate dance of the Basotho men, with their
"kotos" always held high and the foot-stamping well calculated and seemingly off rhythm, but on the
beat; to the 'mokgibo' of their women kneeling on the ground, chest-vibrating to their musical
rhythm-along with the Xhosa mix of the Batswanas, khoi, Zulu and Sotho cultural dance nuances, as
in the case of the "Xhosa" who perform the "Mtjitjimbo" same as the Basotho women, but in a Xhosa
male stylistic fanfare(and of the older Xhosa women generation, more akin to the the Basothos) in
dance, actions and technique; and the Khoisan animistic dance, projecting the action of different
animals(they hunt) in a dance form and which too is related in style and presentation to the Zulus,
Xhosas, Pedis and all the other groups. We saw children put up their best efforts, imitating their
parents, in dance and song and style(which promises continuity). That in the final analysis, what I
am saying here, is not quoted or cited from some book, but what we are creating through viewing
the Music I have been posting, and I do not get paid a cent, and do not own these videos, nor
composed anything in them, or am I gaining in any way, shape or form. This is part of my
contribution to our struggle, and am using much needed innovative ways of teaching all and
reaching all-through creating, form the old, new ideas and ways of seeing for our self on our own.
I intensely dislike our detractors, whether they be Africans of Mzantsi or from anywhere else. I have
a passionate and offensive attitude when it comes to us and now we are blocked by those
ignoramuses who are in service of deep vested fiscal pockets. Nobody said I should do what I am
doing. I am doing it because we need many different ways of executing and making sure our
struggle survives, but we will not get this from those who Police The Pan Africanist Walls, which are
humming and howling for revolution, and the truth is that there is not one way to making a
revolution: ask the Zimbabweans with their Chimurenga; learn from the Angolans and their MPLA;
Frelimo; I mean, from all revolutionaries if whether in executing their revolutions, they listened and
worked on one single idea. That is an inexact way of making a revolution. A revolution uses all that is
relevant to it to succeed. Not a prescribed panacea from some Facebook revolutionaries who are
really out of touch with the people in the country, and how we should be trying, our darnest, to
liberate them- By Any Means Necessary [a la Malcolm X).
I have been viciously attacked here on face book on different sites and in my in-box. I can be just as
vicious too, but I do so tactfully. I cannot stand Bullies and Ignoramuses. Most of us are in position
that prevent our people from dreaming big, and bettering themselves. It does not mean that posting
here on FB is not "Free". No, according to the minions that are in service of Big Capital and they
themselves vulture-capitalist and self-serving-morons, they do so at the expense and to the detriment
of people learning and yearning to becoming much more better. I beg down to no such quislings!
These gendarmes tell us of "Bottom Line" as they have been instructed to trumpet that by their
handlers in various places, institutions and the whole bit! They attack our culture that I am working
on here on FB with venomous vengeance, and multiple 'exclamation marks" to drive their point
home. The Defend the Master's wish that our people should remain dumb, not made to be awake, by
anyone. If some os us remember, when the ANC and some of the PAC people came out, I have the
press cuttings, many of the revolutionary ANC cadre and PAC cadre were mercilessly murdered by
goons of the Death and torture squads of the mode of the Vlakplaas executioners, and they worked
with some of our brother(terrorists) who made it their business to eliminate all fierce and what they
considered to be vexatious elements amongst our worthwhile and erstwhile stalwarts. Is it not then a
wonder that some of them(african quislings) have morphed into the FB police, when we should now
be working with our people to create a Sane Society and an independent and well -self-willed and
developed polity. No! we have people telling us that they are "Guarding some Walls", and they are
the first ones to eat up what they claim to dislike.. I am not really scared of such quirks, but I will
use the FB too, to go for their tainted and fattened jugulars.
Our African Cultures, Customs, Traditions, Languages, Rites, Histories and Practices, they too need
Warriors. They need fearless and very culturally self-loving and defending Warriors. It is not only the
gun "revolution" that has have to be monitored, but our cultural revolution, too. This methodology I
have carved up in laying out our culture Bare and bringing them to the fore, with their own
structure they already have, but am giving form, meaning and dignity, is what ought to preoccupy
us. Or attaining power will be the one way that will be made realistic by relearning, and developing
'new ways of seeing and looking', shedding off the Apartheid blinkers in the process, will be what
might do for us in moving the struggle forward our own culture of which we live-daily-by our
knowledge, control and ownership of our culture.... Our struggle is lined to the International African
diaspora and Africa itself. I have posted music of Africans from Cape to Cairo; from South America
to North America-and throughout the world, to show how same its its matrix and mosaic-in all
genres- that in actual reality(in the Garvey-ite mode and sense).
I posted all the different nations of Mzantsi to show the 'similarities', 'commonalities' and
'converging' points of performance, technique and style(both musically and dance-wise) to be of one
people-one nation. We are one nation, but we have not yet even ready to energetically defend and
protect it, if not develop what we have as a culture because, as I usually say say, most of us have
been 'edumacated into ignorance', and 'we are running away from ourselves'. If fact, there are still
people in our midst who are still ashamed of, and deride our culture as backward, because they have
been conditioned to be so by their masters whom they now serve with zeal and gusto.
They go out of their way to please the master-they might as soon take the disease plaguing their
controllers/master and have it manifest itself on them-on his behalf. There are some who attack the
way I use this foreign language of English. Well, my take is that, if we ever do anything, we better do
it well, and good. This will not and does not take away from me being an African of Mzantsi. It is just
like presenting the videos that I have been posting or have posted thus, I still hold on to the belief
that we need to do our own things right. We need to taken control, shape and form, mold and design
our cultures, customs, traditions, history, music, dance and all its styles and techniques fully and
correctly.
It is amazing that going through YouTube, one discerns the way the Cultural imperialists are using
all manners of obfuscation, censorship, and licensing and holding on to information pertaining to our
music, cultures, dances-pattened to be released at their own discretion. When researchers like me
come and look for the music, artist, it's either there's limited information of the bio, or the music has
not yet been uploaded or are ignored, or we have not yet developed ourselves to be in a position to
really own, control and disseminate our culture as we see fit: to be able and be also in a position to
disseminate our data in any form we wish to.
I hope the thrust of the small idea I have implemented on all the PAC Walls should be seen as me
'showcasing our music. I put a lot of short history for the listener/reader to get an idea about what
they are listening to, and I posted it en-masse as I did because I was swelling the viral stream with
positive vibes and dances. On some other far flung and rare FB Walls, our music rules; our music
rocks; our music makes people all over the world come back wanting more- whether it is
contemporary music, or traditional/cultural music we make. For people who think that I have backed
off from posting music and originally written articles about various, they have got another think
coming..
We are much better than this- Ons is nie 'Moegoes', and have never been di-Bari, never! For me, I
post what I like, and like what I post, and if anyone on any site needs to block me, go ahead, make
my cultural day! I will post, if not create my own Wall on various topics and keep on working for our
people for no Renumeration.. None at all..
Many people have the need and drive to prove that they too are 'edumacated into ignorance' on
these social sites and Walls. I will never claim the trophy of being edumacated' by my masters-
because I have not and was not and will never be. But as to what should be doe about this
proliferating medium, people take it they should vent and wax political or otherwise in an effort to
display their "Alpha-self" but no ideas nor action are being expounded upon on these sites. some try
try, but the complex web that is FB, has another game changer up their sleeves. What am I really
talking about here? Time will tell.
If you have not really been warned by FB based on the type and rate of dissemination like I have
been, you are basically 'ineffective and are not a threat to the Media Status Quo and the whole bit. If
one is threatened for using lewd language and porno here on Fb, I would understand and have no
qualms about it. But if it is because one is posting, albeit too rapid, which by the way is not, at the
speed of the stream, and viral motion, then what is this media for? for us Africans to brag to each
other that one is on FB, Internet, has a "Crackberry", changes of phones and tablets like one
breathes, boast to the African have-nots that as a clique or cabal you will connect on the FB/Twitter,
for all those within ear-shot to hear-and this whole freaky and dysfunctional self edification through
boasting and usage of the Imperialists 'toys' and acquired material wealth- well, there will never be
any results nor changes in our present condition no matter haw many platitudes, harangues
citations, or complains we might arise and arouse or raise.
I not only speak truth to "Power" but to our people too. One might not like me for my
brashness(because the Boers always regarded one as an "Uppity Ka***r" so that most of us covet the
attention they get from white people who think 'something' of them, and the are short of saying what
Malcolm X said about such 'types', those that live in the Sandtons, Norwoods, and such-like affluent
suburbs-with white only neighbors, Malcolm said they like to claim that they "Are the only Ni**er
here", is what is actually happening to us here in Mzantsi. I have and continue to speak these
'cheese-boys' who hold power and are filthy rich, in-as-much as I challenge the FB establishment or
any other media-newspapers, radio mega-multi Corporations. Some are just content just to 'be on
FB" and what that entails, who cares. Well, you should all care and begin to understand the media
far better that sloppy attitude of "I don't care", which , by the way, has assailed the very base, and
fulcrum of our culture, that of 'caring' and respecting one another. Biko, whom I have recently
quoted, and one can go back and look, advices us to care and not be destructive to other peoples
properties and lives. I add, and cultural feeling-which is our blueprint and radar to all that we might
want to do-without it, we are like a tree without roots- that is, "We Stand For Nothing, And we Fall
for Everything and Anything!"
Any time you give up your information, ID, Life Stats(Children, Uncles, Friends) you yourself, in
mediums such as FB you are and become a commodity in the Marxian sense. You whole being in all
its manifestations, is hawked around as you are the commodity that they desire and need to make
oodles of Capital, which you do not get a cent, and can get hurt or die because of it.. This is not
scaring people, but we need to get real here, and talk about the media, its affects and its effects on
us in all these myriad ways. is sold to the highest bidder out on Webland. You or all of us logged
here, serve a good purpose, and you also keep on changing your FB Mug to whatever, but that does
not take from the fact that your information is collected and collated somewhere and it will be of use
in the very near future-bought and sold as a commodity-Read Marx and Lenin on what the concept of
"Commodity" entails if one has not yet done, and if you did, go back and re-read it- you will see the
parallels of when I say our information on these sites is a commodity, we are a commodity, that is
being bought and sold for a profit nexus... Some of us do not think nor realize what I am saying is so.
It is!
Both of us are cognizant of the fact that we are sick and made so in a myriad ways, and we're
immersed in and embedded into this oppressive juggernaut and it feels like we are still riding the
back of a tiger, and that we need to begin to learn and read about the causes of our dysfunction and
sickness without being belligerent, ignorant and spiteful of each other, as we have see happen here
on the Facebook. Getting our act together is recognizing and diagnosing our social malaise, and act
in the midst of our people by affecting their suffering and creating programs and helping, without
sounding of like dummies knocking against each other on the FB; and, in the final analysis, the
madness, sicknesses and psychological malfunction needs to be checked, and as I have been saying
throughout this year now ending- we need to come up with better results next year and hope that
will be the case-we are far much more better than what and where we are now. However one uses
"ENGLISH", so long as it drives home concrete lesson and teachable moments which are so sorely
needed-who cares how that "ENGLISH" is used, and the very critics use the same 'masters language
to crush those they dislike', for dumb, ignorant, vindictive and regressive reasons like "how they
write English-As if that a point worth talking about in this dire time in Mzantsi. Instead of the ideas
and the information this "ENGLISH" is sharing by the one using it-to elucidate(clarify) some points
about the struggle of Africans here at home. This is part of our sickness and madness, and the
sooner we recognize it as such, the better we will be able to combat and rectify these sicknesses, as
per Wilson, and what we can see for ourselves where we live(for some of us who still live in Kasi(
mo-lokishini, and never left it) ......
..
http://ixwa.hubpages.com/hub/South-African-Music-Dances-Struggle-Against-Culture-Wars-A-View-O
f-The-Music-and-Dance-Of-Africans-South-Africans

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A View Of The Music and Dance Of Africans of South Africa

  • 1. A View Of The Music and Dance Of Africans of South Africa Developing Talking Musical Cultural/Historical Points And Shifting the Paradigm African Polyrhythmic-Roots-Rocking-Rhythms: Any culture does not allow for stagnation; each culture manages to learn from other cultures, but keep itself unique to itself. Many races or people throughout the world perform and manifest their culture whilst maintaining this uniqueness, that which one can can discern by interrogating certain aspects of those cultures, like in the case of this hub: music and dance. I have been posting various types of music in their specific genres, and this means that different music is sung in different languages, since the music I post is from different countries, This means that whoever is listening might not understand the language, but the music is universal(that is, the rhythm, sound melodies and the playing of various instrument and different dances), and most them have different musical style, tones and accentuation as do their languages.. But what is important and common about these musical acts and sounds, is that they are being selected from an African centered perspective. Were people to find time and read-upon the origins and histories of these groups, one would be struck at the similarities of experiences experienced by these musicians, in their different countries throughout their different struggles. This is important to note, for this applies too the the music and dances of Africans in South Africa. If one were to listen to Eldridge cleaver, his issued this aphorism in the same spirit of what I had just discussed above when he informs us that: "Until Black(African) people as a whole gain power, it's not a question of where you are geographically if you Black (African); it's a question of where you are psychologically. No matter where you place Black(African) people under preset conditions, they'll still subject to the whims and decisions of white political, economic and [psychological] apparatus." Why I am using this citation is the simple reason that we have to begin to understand The African peoples situation is not only regionally, nationally or continentally manifest, but looking at it from a global perspective. This helps us become more aware and sensitized to this issue of African musical culture is really Global-and if that is hard to conceive, we cannot change or shift any existing paradigms that chain Africans to all our colonial past and continued existence. Africans will operate with blinkers in a Globe that is Web-driven in its vastness and content. Africans cannot dig in into their heels when they need to move into the 21st century. This means knowing, learning and understanding the African struggle as it is International as much as local where it is based for each individual. In fact, some of us are so caught -up with trying to be very Europeans in how they imbibe or groove to the music so long it is not their local music, and not African, in many cases. This you can find all over the globe, and it is not unique to one people. But it applies to all the oppressed because most of us have not yet been liberated in ourselves and in our societies. Ourselves are chained , to our societies which are incarcerated.. I remember reading somewhere about Duke Ellington that he moved the music which we know as
  • 2. Jazz from "Jungle Music" to what we call Jazz(I guess-bleached sounds). African Music globally is not "Jungle Music", but it is human music. Imagine we have to actually say that and try to qualify and uplift it to the level of it being human-preposterous! Yet, this is what we, those oppressed around the world, have been sold to, bamboozled with and dry-cleaned to the extend that we ignore our music, cultures and so forth, because we are avoiding and ignoring ourselves-as Bob Marley sings: "You Running Away From Yourself.." Then there is this perception that when one plays or posts music, they are not 'seriously' carrying out the struggle. That could not be far from the truth. The Music of any people is the soundtracks of their lives, culture and so on. It as as one as breathing is to our lives. You ignore music that uses a language that you do not understand, or have been conditioned in a sort of "Kraal" enclosure in one's existence by the laws, regulation, tricks, fraud, corruption and use of force that is administered to to those who resist-and you cave in-you lose; so that, the act of brutal oppression, increased the intensity of the production of radical music as one would breath hard when fighting. Writing is just like music. One needs to compose it. In the case of writing, you compose whatever it is from social experience-as does music. When as a people you originate ideas and other such things, you become more legit and real. You cannot live your life as a duplicate of a colonially manufactured personality. One cannot live a life that is not relevant to their lives. One cannot listen to music that does not harken back to one's own social experience. To ignore or refuse to acknowledge that ones music which is a pathway to sanity, then, one will be left lollygagging within a mix which corrodes their inner core and souls. That is why we see the madness engulfing many poor Africans. Just like writing, we develop our musical talking points about music that originates from our inner sanctum and soul. To shift paradigms is to totally change a way that is not compatible with ones well-beingness. Music appreciation is something one grows up and finds people one is born into listening or playing it. This also means that, since then it is human music, it compels one to spread one's listening preferences. If what we say amongst ourselves, we do not trust nor believe it, because one of the same oppressed as us is saying it, means that when we begin to listen and participate, imbibe and consume our 'high' culture, we have shifted a preset, concrete reality that was an inhibitor to our spiritual, musical, intellectual or otherwise development. We change the way we are conditioned and are made to see, think and behave, it is in this way that we will see ourselves anew and begin to see the way we are educing ourselves to. I for one believe in the emancipation of Africans throughout the world, and music is one way of the many ways of doing it. Another way is cobbling together African musical experiences into an article such as this one to begin to expand and extend African people's listening range to music we are not familiar with, which can be found in a narrow category, world-wide, and I choose to simple dub it to be African Music Systems- that is, to shift gears in appreciation of this African musical and dance art form. Africans should 'validate' themselves and not wait for someone to box them or keep them caged and be satisfied with.African people should dare explore themselves and their sounds without let-up as part of waging their struggle for psychological liberation as a people who still have to realize that freedom. If people gave themselves time and opened themselves to the possibility that Africans have a "high Culture" in music, their consciousness and actions and appreciations would change. They would stop being people who are spectators(as Biko so pithily concurred) of their daily oppression, depression, dehumanization and suppression that so disdainfully and cruelly manifested itself in their collective midst and psyche so boldly throughout their history and current reality, that in the end, an attempt or serious effort at dislodging, shifting of displacing these current deadening and dumbing ways- down post-colonial paradigms should be dealt with and eliminated permanently. like any crucial part
  • 3. or point of the Struggle of african people. Our African music is powerful and soulful, we just need to listen, or take it, for its out there in the musical viral stream. A Review Of The Posted Cultural Videos Of The People Of Mzantsi.. I have just finished a series of videos that I had started by posting first with an article articulating my objectives(See Older Posts): to create a format and structural form of our music and culture and frame it such that it has a National body and appearance. What I mean by this is that, I made some means of collating our 'different,' 'variegated,' 'variable' and 'diverse' culture, which up to the point before I started posting it in that manner, and having written a preface to my intentions, had never been done like so. Also, what I did was create the bios or small histories of each of the musicians, performers and bands so's to lay out a matrix that most of the South Africans on FB, might get a glimpse of it holistically. This exercise in Cultural defenseis not a "practice in Promoting My music " as has been claimed by those who are left behind in what I was doing. It seems there is culture of obfuscating the 'right' things for our people in order to "Dumb Them Down". Our people of Mzantsi are prohibited by a new species of "Censurers" and "Gatekeepers". not on the TV and radio only, but viciously here on these social media that can reach millions of people in Mzantsi and the world over. Some of us are patently ignorant of these new, burgeoning, emerging, converging, moving-at-t- e-speed-of-viral-data phenomenon and gizmos. Our people who are in different privileged position are scared of an Independent African South African, who has the potential to learn, and become better, if not different from the. Some of these leaders are cloaked in Pan Africanism of a "Type". The Pan Africanism that cannot even recognize Africanism in the efforts some of us are trying to disseminate, without us being crass and ignorant about what we are posting and how we are posting it-as African peoples. The response might not have been an earth shaking event when I posted all the videos, short histories of the 11 people of Mzantsi, namely: The Zulus, Pedis, South Sothos, Shangaans, Vendas, Ndebeles,Swazis, Xhosas, Tswanas, Vendas, Colored and the Khoisan. The main thrust of posting such music, was not, and I still emphasize, to "Promote My music/videos" on the Pan African Sites on FB. Apparently there are people working as spooks and moles of the FB owners, and the present ANC government, of which they are on its pay and beckon-and-call. The aim of laying these viral videos was specifically to, in a coordinated and structured way(that of choosing relevant 'cultural ' videos with as much 'authentic' dances and live videos as such as possible), to help us beggining to learn much more better and in a 20/20 way the breadth and depth of our cultural matrix and mosaic as it has manifested itself in our daily realities; and, undergirding this first aim, was the second one, wherein I was trying to parlay an ideas, way of seeing, and conceptual ability of our people to begin to see that we are really one people, as opposed to the apartheidized way of seeing, thinking and being that we are a different disunited collectives of "TRIBES". A Term I have consistently rejected, until we end up having a "French Tribe", "British, Italian, Danish," and so forth tribes, then I might
  • 4. reconsider. But, since that is not what I am talking about, we need certain perceptive ways and perspective of beginning to realize ourselves not as a collection of different "Tribes", but a nation with a diverse, vibrant,energetic, similar and one culture. Even if we were to try and interrogate or investigate the notion that our languages are different and not the same, and that they emerged from our trekking South from the north, is utter balderdash! We have always been here in Mzantsi for eons, and now there is proof of 'supposedly' disappeared civilization of here in Mzantsi, andit can be traced back to 170,000 B.C, and there is a lot of physical material proof that we have been here since the formation of the earth! So that, when I use our music, culture, customs, dances, languages and their practices, techniques and uniqueness, I am working toward reconstructing our Nation (through all the mentioned building blocks, and making them real through our Music, Dance and interpretation of our Culture) and that they should be viewed as being one,, not different or unrelated to one another- but one National Culture, etc.. For us to see ourselves as a Nation of Africans in Mzantsi, we need to see ourselves, in some shape of form, as one people who are having a diverse culture, which is in essence, one culture. It is one culture when one starts listening to the music, which we can group into Mbaqanga and those songs unique to different groups in various regions throughout South Africa. We need to have a sense and way of seeing our different cultures as they seemingly are different, but see them for their commonalities, originality, energy, similar dances, hand-clapping, rhythmic foot-stomping, movements of all kinds, from the gyration of the Shangaan women, to the active and energetic synchronic dances of their men ; to the smooth foot-shuffling ad gentle stepping Batswana , Swazis mass singing, and for the men Zulu-type of dancing; up to the easy, steady and deliberate dance of the Basotho men, with their "kotos" always held high and the foot-stamping well calculated and seemingly off rhythm, but on the beat; to the 'mokgibo' of their women kneeling on the ground, chest-vibrating to their musical rhythm-along with the Xhosa mix of the Batswanas, khoi, Zulu and Sotho cultural dance nuances, as in the case of the "Xhosa" who perform the "Mtjitjimbo" same as the Basotho women, but in a Xhosa male stylistic fanfare(and of the older Xhosa women generation, more akin to the the Basothos) in dance, actions and technique; and the Khoisan animistic dance, projecting the action of different animals(they hunt) in a dance form and which too is related in style and presentation to the Zulus, Xhosas, Pedis and all the other groups. We saw children put up their best efforts, imitating their parents, in dance and song and style(which promises continuity). That in the final analysis, what I am saying here, is not quoted or cited from some book, but what we are creating through viewing the Music I have been posting, and I do not get paid a cent, and do not own these videos, nor composed anything in them, or am I gaining in any way, shape or form. This is part of my contribution to our struggle, and am using much needed innovative ways of teaching all and reaching all-through creating, form the old, new ideas and ways of seeing for our self on our own. I intensely dislike our detractors, whether they be Africans of Mzantsi or from anywhere else. I have a passionate and offensive attitude when it comes to us and now we are blocked by those ignoramuses who are in service of deep vested fiscal pockets. Nobody said I should do what I am doing. I am doing it because we need many different ways of executing and making sure our struggle survives, but we will not get this from those who Police The Pan Africanist Walls, which are humming and howling for revolution, and the truth is that there is not one way to making a revolution: ask the Zimbabweans with their Chimurenga; learn from the Angolans and their MPLA; Frelimo; I mean, from all revolutionaries if whether in executing their revolutions, they listened and worked on one single idea. That is an inexact way of making a revolution. A revolution uses all that is relevant to it to succeed. Not a prescribed panacea from some Facebook revolutionaries who are
  • 5. really out of touch with the people in the country, and how we should be trying, our darnest, to liberate them- By Any Means Necessary [a la Malcolm X). I have been viciously attacked here on face book on different sites and in my in-box. I can be just as vicious too, but I do so tactfully. I cannot stand Bullies and Ignoramuses. Most of us are in position that prevent our people from dreaming big, and bettering themselves. It does not mean that posting here on FB is not "Free". No, according to the minions that are in service of Big Capital and they themselves vulture-capitalist and self-serving-morons, they do so at the expense and to the detriment of people learning and yearning to becoming much more better. I beg down to no such quislings! These gendarmes tell us of "Bottom Line" as they have been instructed to trumpet that by their handlers in various places, institutions and the whole bit! They attack our culture that I am working on here on FB with venomous vengeance, and multiple 'exclamation marks" to drive their point home. The Defend the Master's wish that our people should remain dumb, not made to be awake, by anyone. If some os us remember, when the ANC and some of the PAC people came out, I have the press cuttings, many of the revolutionary ANC cadre and PAC cadre were mercilessly murdered by goons of the Death and torture squads of the mode of the Vlakplaas executioners, and they worked with some of our brother(terrorists) who made it their business to eliminate all fierce and what they considered to be vexatious elements amongst our worthwhile and erstwhile stalwarts. Is it not then a wonder that some of them(african quislings) have morphed into the FB police, when we should now be working with our people to create a Sane Society and an independent and well -self-willed and developed polity. No! we have people telling us that they are "Guarding some Walls", and they are the first ones to eat up what they claim to dislike.. I am not really scared of such quirks, but I will use the FB too, to go for their tainted and fattened jugulars. Our African Cultures, Customs, Traditions, Languages, Rites, Histories and Practices, they too need Warriors. They need fearless and very culturally self-loving and defending Warriors. It is not only the gun "revolution" that has have to be monitored, but our cultural revolution, too. This methodology I have carved up in laying out our culture Bare and bringing them to the fore, with their own structure they already have, but am giving form, meaning and dignity, is what ought to preoccupy us. Or attaining power will be the one way that will be made realistic by relearning, and developing 'new ways of seeing and looking', shedding off the Apartheid blinkers in the process, will be what might do for us in moving the struggle forward our own culture of which we live-daily-by our knowledge, control and ownership of our culture.... Our struggle is lined to the International African diaspora and Africa itself. I have posted music of Africans from Cape to Cairo; from South America to North America-and throughout the world, to show how same its its matrix and mosaic-in all genres- that in actual reality(in the Garvey-ite mode and sense). I posted all the different nations of Mzantsi to show the 'similarities', 'commonalities' and 'converging' points of performance, technique and style(both musically and dance-wise) to be of one people-one nation. We are one nation, but we have not yet even ready to energetically defend and protect it, if not develop what we have as a culture because, as I usually say say, most of us have been 'edumacated into ignorance', and 'we are running away from ourselves'. If fact, there are still people in our midst who are still ashamed of, and deride our culture as backward, because they have been conditioned to be so by their masters whom they now serve with zeal and gusto. They go out of their way to please the master-they might as soon take the disease plaguing their controllers/master and have it manifest itself on them-on his behalf. There are some who attack the way I use this foreign language of English. Well, my take is that, if we ever do anything, we better do it well, and good. This will not and does not take away from me being an African of Mzantsi. It is just like presenting the videos that I have been posting or have posted thus, I still hold on to the belief that we need to do our own things right. We need to taken control, shape and form, mold and design
  • 6. our cultures, customs, traditions, history, music, dance and all its styles and techniques fully and correctly. It is amazing that going through YouTube, one discerns the way the Cultural imperialists are using all manners of obfuscation, censorship, and licensing and holding on to information pertaining to our music, cultures, dances-pattened to be released at their own discretion. When researchers like me come and look for the music, artist, it's either there's limited information of the bio, or the music has not yet been uploaded or are ignored, or we have not yet developed ourselves to be in a position to really own, control and disseminate our culture as we see fit: to be able and be also in a position to disseminate our data in any form we wish to. I hope the thrust of the small idea I have implemented on all the PAC Walls should be seen as me 'showcasing our music. I put a lot of short history for the listener/reader to get an idea about what they are listening to, and I posted it en-masse as I did because I was swelling the viral stream with positive vibes and dances. On some other far flung and rare FB Walls, our music rules; our music rocks; our music makes people all over the world come back wanting more- whether it is contemporary music, or traditional/cultural music we make. For people who think that I have backed off from posting music and originally written articles about various, they have got another think coming.. We are much better than this- Ons is nie 'Moegoes', and have never been di-Bari, never! For me, I post what I like, and like what I post, and if anyone on any site needs to block me, go ahead, make my cultural day! I will post, if not create my own Wall on various topics and keep on working for our people for no Renumeration.. None at all.. Many people have the need and drive to prove that they too are 'edumacated into ignorance' on these social sites and Walls. I will never claim the trophy of being edumacated' by my masters- because I have not and was not and will never be. But as to what should be doe about this proliferating medium, people take it they should vent and wax political or otherwise in an effort to display their "Alpha-self" but no ideas nor action are being expounded upon on these sites. some try try, but the complex web that is FB, has another game changer up their sleeves. What am I really talking about here? Time will tell. If you have not really been warned by FB based on the type and rate of dissemination like I have been, you are basically 'ineffective and are not a threat to the Media Status Quo and the whole bit. If one is threatened for using lewd language and porno here on Fb, I would understand and have no qualms about it. But if it is because one is posting, albeit too rapid, which by the way is not, at the speed of the stream, and viral motion, then what is this media for? for us Africans to brag to each other that one is on FB, Internet, has a "Crackberry", changes of phones and tablets like one breathes, boast to the African have-nots that as a clique or cabal you will connect on the FB/Twitter, for all those within ear-shot to hear-and this whole freaky and dysfunctional self edification through boasting and usage of the Imperialists 'toys' and acquired material wealth- well, there will never be any results nor changes in our present condition no matter haw many platitudes, harangues citations, or complains we might arise and arouse or raise. I not only speak truth to "Power" but to our people too. One might not like me for my brashness(because the Boers always regarded one as an "Uppity Ka***r" so that most of us covet the attention they get from white people who think 'something' of them, and the are short of saying what Malcolm X said about such 'types', those that live in the Sandtons, Norwoods, and such-like affluent suburbs-with white only neighbors, Malcolm said they like to claim that they "Are the only Ni**er here", is what is actually happening to us here in Mzantsi. I have and continue to speak these
  • 7. 'cheese-boys' who hold power and are filthy rich, in-as-much as I challenge the FB establishment or any other media-newspapers, radio mega-multi Corporations. Some are just content just to 'be on FB" and what that entails, who cares. Well, you should all care and begin to understand the media far better that sloppy attitude of "I don't care", which , by the way, has assailed the very base, and fulcrum of our culture, that of 'caring' and respecting one another. Biko, whom I have recently quoted, and one can go back and look, advices us to care and not be destructive to other peoples properties and lives. I add, and cultural feeling-which is our blueprint and radar to all that we might want to do-without it, we are like a tree without roots- that is, "We Stand For Nothing, And we Fall for Everything and Anything!" Any time you give up your information, ID, Life Stats(Children, Uncles, Friends) you yourself, in mediums such as FB you are and become a commodity in the Marxian sense. You whole being in all its manifestations, is hawked around as you are the commodity that they desire and need to make oodles of Capital, which you do not get a cent, and can get hurt or die because of it.. This is not scaring people, but we need to get real here, and talk about the media, its affects and its effects on us in all these myriad ways. is sold to the highest bidder out on Webland. You or all of us logged here, serve a good purpose, and you also keep on changing your FB Mug to whatever, but that does not take from the fact that your information is collected and collated somewhere and it will be of use in the very near future-bought and sold as a commodity-Read Marx and Lenin on what the concept of "Commodity" entails if one has not yet done, and if you did, go back and re-read it- you will see the parallels of when I say our information on these sites is a commodity, we are a commodity, that is being bought and sold for a profit nexus... Some of us do not think nor realize what I am saying is so. It is! Both of us are cognizant of the fact that we are sick and made so in a myriad ways, and we're immersed in and embedded into this oppressive juggernaut and it feels like we are still riding the back of a tiger, and that we need to begin to learn and read about the causes of our dysfunction and sickness without being belligerent, ignorant and spiteful of each other, as we have see happen here on the Facebook. Getting our act together is recognizing and diagnosing our social malaise, and act in the midst of our people by affecting their suffering and creating programs and helping, without sounding of like dummies knocking against each other on the FB; and, in the final analysis, the madness, sicknesses and psychological malfunction needs to be checked, and as I have been saying throughout this year now ending- we need to come up with better results next year and hope that will be the case-we are far much more better than what and where we are now. However one uses "ENGLISH", so long as it drives home concrete lesson and teachable moments which are so sorely needed-who cares how that "ENGLISH" is used, and the very critics use the same 'masters language to crush those they dislike', for dumb, ignorant, vindictive and regressive reasons like "how they write English-As if that a point worth talking about in this dire time in Mzantsi. Instead of the ideas and the information this "ENGLISH" is sharing by the one using it-to elucidate(clarify) some points about the struggle of Africans here at home. This is part of our sickness and madness, and the sooner we recognize it as such, the better we will be able to combat and rectify these sicknesses, as per Wilson, and what we can see for ourselves where we live(for some of us who still live in Kasi( mo-lokishini, and never left it) ...... .. http://ixwa.hubpages.com/hub/South-African-Music-Dances-Struggle-Against-Culture-Wars-A-View-O f-The-Music-and-Dance-Of-Africans-South-Africans