Meadowlands (song)
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Meadowlands (song)
"Meadowlands" was an anti-apartheid song composed in 1956 by Strike Vilakazi. It was written in reaction to the forced relocation of black South Africans from Sophiatown, to the new township of Meadowlands. The song was popularised by a number of musicians, including Dorothy Masuka and Miriam Makeba, and became an anthem of the movement against apartheid. Background The Afrikaner National Party (NP) was elected to power in South Africa in 1948, and remained in control of the government for the next 46 years. The white minority held all political power during this time, and implemented the system of apartheid. "Apartheid" involved a brutal system of racial segregation, and the word itself meant "separateness" in Afrikaans. Black South Africans were forced to live in poverty stricken townships, and were denied basic human rights, based on the idea that South Africa belonged to white people. The NP government passed the Group Areas Act in 1950 and the Bantu Resettlement Act in 1 ...
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Music In The Movement Against Apartheid
The apartheid regime in South Africa began in 1948 and lasted until 1994. It involved a system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy, and placed all political power in the hands of a white minority. Opposition to apartheid manifested in a variety of ways, including boycotts, non-violent protests, and armed resistance. Music played a large role in the movement against apartheid within South Africa, as well as in international opposition to apartheid. The impacts of songs opposing apartheid included raising awareness, generating support for the movement against apartheid, building unity within this movement, and "presenting an alternative vision of culture in a future democratic South Africa." The lyrical content and tone of this music reflected the atmosphere that it was composed in. The protest music of the 1950s, soon after apartheid had begun, explicitly addressed peoples' grievances over pass laws and forced relocation. Following the Sharpeville mas ...
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Bantu Resettlement Act, 1954
The Natives Resettlement Act, Act No 19 of 1954, formed part of the apartheid system of racial segregation in South Africa. It permitted the removal of blacks from any area within and next to the magisterial district of Johannesburg by the South African government. This act was designed to remove blacks from Sophiatown Sophiatown , also known as Sof'town or Kofifi, is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sophiatown was a black cultural hub that was destroyed under apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "apart ... to Meadowlands. Content of the Act The following is a brief description of the sections of the Natives Resettlement Act: ;Section 1 Defined the meanings of common words within the Act. ;Section 2 Defined the name of the Board as the Natives Resettlement Board and in the legal form of a body corporate. It would also be liable for no tax. ;Section 3 Defined the Board size as no less than nine members and maximum ten ...
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Tsotsitaal
Tsotsitaal is a vernacular derived from a variety of mixed languages mainly spoken in the townships of Gauteng province (such as Soweto), but also in other agglomerations all over South Africa. ''Tsotsi'' is a Sesotho, Pedi or Tswana slang word for a "thug" or "robber" or "criminal", possibly from the verb "ho lotsa" "to sharpen", whose meaning has been modified in modern times to include "to con"; or from the tsetse fly, as the language was first known as Flytaal, although ''flaai'' also means "cool" or "street smart". The word ''taal'' in Afrikaans means "language". A tsotsitaal is built over the grammar of one or several languages, in which terms from other languages or specific terms created by the community of speakers are added. It is a permanent work of language-mix, language-switch, and terms-coining. History The tsotsitaal phenomenon originates with one variety known as Flaaitaal or Flytaal, and then Tsotsitaal, which became popular under this latter name in the fr ...
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SeSotho
Sotho () or Sesotho () or Southern Sotho is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho–Tswana ("S.30") group, spoken primarily by the Basotho in Lesotho, where it is the national and official language; South Africa (particularly the Free State), where it is one of the 11 official languages; and in Zimbabwe where it is one of languages of Zimbabwe, 16 official languages. Like all Bantu languages, Sesotho is an agglutinative language, which uses numerous affixes and derivational and inflexional rules to build Sesotho grammar#The Sesotho word, complete words. Classification Sotho is a Southern Bantu language, belonging to the Niger–Congo languages, Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho-Tswana languages, Sotho-Tswana branch of Guthrie classification of Bantu languages#Zone S, Zone S (S.30). Although Southern Sotho shares the name ''Sotho'' with Northern Sotho, the two groups have less in common with each other than they have with Setswana. "Sotho" is also the name ...
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IsiZulu
Zulu (), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 12 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population), and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 11 official languages in 1994. According to Ethnologue, it is the second-most-widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Swahili. Like many other Bantu languages, it is written with the Latin alphabet. In South African English, the language is often referred to in its native form, ''isiZulu''. Geographical distribution Zulu migrant populations have taken it to adjacent regions, especially Zimbabwe, where the Northern Ndebele language ( isiNdebele) is closely related to Zulu. Xhosa, the predominant language in the Eastern Cape, is often considered m ...
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AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ...
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Dolly Rathebe
Dolly Rathebe ( OIS) (2 April 1928 – 16 September 2004) was a South African musician and actress who performed with the Elite Swingsters jazz band, and in Alf Herbert's ''African Jazz and Variety Show''. Rathebe died on 16 September 2004 from a stroke. Music career Rathebe was born in Randfontein, South Africa but grew up in Sophiatown, which she describes as having been "a wonderful place". She was discovered around 1948 after singing at a picnic in Johannesburg. A talent scout from Gallo approached her and it was not long before she became a star. Rathebe rose to fame in 1949, aged 21, when she appeared as a nightclub singer in the British-produced movie '' Jim Comes To Jo'burg'' - the first film to portray urban Africans in a positive light. During a photo-shoot for ''Drum'' magazine at a mine dump, Rathebe and the white photographer, Jürgen Schadeberg, were arrested under the Immorality Act, which forbade interracial relationships. When Alf Herbert's African Jazz a ...
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Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest (after Johannesburg). Colloquially named the ''Mother City'', it is the largest city of the Western Cape province, and is managed by the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The other two capitals are Pretoria, the executive capital, located in Gauteng, where the Presidency is based, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital in the Free State, where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located. Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 66% of the Western Cape's population. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place ...
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Sun Valley Sisters
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radiation, and is the most important source of energy for life on Earth. The Sun's radius is about , or 109 times that of Earth. Its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, comprising about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Roughly three-quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen (~73%); the rest is mostly helium (~25%), with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron. The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V). As such, it is informally, and not completely accurately, referred to as a yellow dwarf (its light is actually white). It formed approximately 4.6 billionAll numbers in this article are short scale. One billion is 109, or 1,000,000,000. years ago from the gravitat ...
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