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Welcome Duru
Welcome Duru (1933–2009) was a South African actor, boxing promoter, composer, musician, politician and a socialite, also known as ''Bra Wel''. Early life Duru was born in Korsten (Port Elizabeth), South Africa, but due to forced removals grew up in the black African township of New Brighton. In 1952 he started an a cappella group called The Basin Blues, which was the first black African group in Port Elizabeth to record a song in a studio. In 1958 Duru married Dolly Rathebe, one of South Africa’s established blues singers and beauty queen of the 1950s. The couple had two children before their marriage was dissolved after four years. Composer Duru composed a number of songs during his lifetime, including ''uNomeva'', ''Sindy'', ''Sithetha ngeBasin Blues'' and, most famously, the protest song ''Wenyuk’uMbombela'' (The Train Song) recorded by Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba on their Grammy Award-winning album ''An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba'' (1964), and later b ...
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Port Elizabeth
Gqeberha (), formerly Port Elizabeth and colloquially often referred to as P.E., is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa's second-largest metropolitan district by area size. It is the sixth-most populous city in South Africa and is the cultural, economic and financial centre of the Eastern Cape. The city was founded as Port Elizabeth in 1820 by Sir Rufane Donkin, who was the governor of the Cape at the time. He named it after his late wife, Elizabeth, who had died in India. The Donkin memorial in the CBD of the city bears testament to this. Port Elizabeth was established by the government of the Cape Colony when 4,000 British colonists settled in Algoa Bay to strengthen the border region between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa. It is nicknamed "The Friendly City" or "The Windy City". In 2019, the Eastern Cape Geographical Names Committee recommended ...
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New Brighton, Nelson Mandela Metropole
New Brighton is a township in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It forms part of the greater township of Ibhayi and the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality which governs Port Elizabeth and its surroundings. History It was established in 1902, and was the first officially black residential area in the greater Port Elizabeth area. Prior to the establishment of New Brighton as the first black township, there was a demolishing of the then Black residential area in 1902 where the personal belongings of the Black residents were arbitrarily destroyed, and restrictions imposed upon their travel outside the demarcated area. The racially segregated township of New Brighton was established in 1902 on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth, some 8 km north of the city centre, to house families who had been forcefully removed in the previous years. . Many of Athol Fugard's plays are set in New Brighton. As part of the governing modus-operandi of the Colonial Government of the 19th ce ...
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A Cappella
''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato musical styles. In the 19th century, a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony, coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists, led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. The term is also used, rarely, as a synonym for ''alla breve''. Early history A cappella could be as old as humanity itself. Research suggests that singing and vocables may have been what early humans used to communicate before the invention of language. The earliest piece of sheet music is thought to have originated from times as early as 2000 B.C. while the earliest that has survived in its entirety is from the first century A.D.: a piece from Greece called the ...
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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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Catch A Fire (film)
''Catch a Fire'' is a 2006 biographical thriller film about activists against apartheid in South Africa. The film was directed by Phillip Noyce, from a screenplay written by Shawn Slovo. Slovo's father, Joe Slovo, and mother Ruth First, leaders of the South African Communist Party and activists in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, appear as characters in the film, while her sister, Robyn Slovo, is one of the film's producers and also plays their mother Ruth First. ''Catch a Fire'' was filmed on location in South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique. Plot In South Africa in 1980, Patrick Chamusso, a young, apolitical man, is accused of carrying out a terrorist attack. Afrikaner police officer Nic Vos is in charge of locating the perpetrators of a recent bomb attack against the Secunda CTL synthetic fuel refinery, which is the largest coal liquefaction plant in the world. Patrick is unwillingly swept into Vos's investigation due to his inability to provide a satisfactory explanation for ...
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Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927) is an American singer, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Jamaican-American pop star, he popularized the Trinbagonian Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album '' Calypso'' (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Belafonte is best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, " Jump in the Line", and " Jamaica Farewell". He has recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, including ''Carmen Jones'' (1954), '' Island in the Sun'' (1957), and ''Odds Against Tomorrow'' (1959). Belafonte considered the actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson a mentor, and was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. As he later recalled, "Paul Robes ...
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Miriam Makeba
Zenzile Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist. Associated with musical genres including African popular music, Afropop, jazz, and world music, she was an advocate against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa. Born in Johannesburg to Swazi people, Swazi and Xhosa people, Xhosa parents, Makeba was forced to find employment as a child after the death of her father. She had a brief and allegedly abusive first marriage at the age of 17, gave birth to her only child in 1950, and survived breast cancer. Her vocal talent had been recognized when she was a child, and she began singing professionally in the 1950s, with the Cuban Brothers, the Manhattan Brothers, and an all-woman group, the Skylarks (South African vocal group), the Skylarks, performing a mixture of jazz, traditional African melodies, and Western popular music. In 1959, Makeba had a brief r ...
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An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba
''An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba'' is a Grammy Award-winning 1965 album by Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, released by RCA Victor. It was the second outcome of the long lasting collaboration between Belafonte and Makeba, the first being the appearance of Makeba in the song "One More Dance" on Belafonte's 1960 album, ''Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall''. Despite the title, the album is not a collection of live duet performances by Harry Belafonte and Makeba. It is a studio album of 12 tracks, five by Belafonte, five by Makeba, and two duets. The songs are all African traditional tunes sung in tribal languages like Xhosa and Zulu. In the mid-1960s, Belafonte was very active in supporting emerging African artists as well as making African music known worldwide, and this album is an example of this activity. It includes classical African songs like ''Malaika'' (with the English title ''My Angel'') as well as songs in African languages such as Zulu, Sotho and Swahili. Trac ...
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Hugh Masekela
Hugh Ramapolo Masekela (4 April 1939 – 23 January 2018) was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, singer and composer who was described as "the father of South African jazz". Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as "Soweto Blues" and " Bring Him Back Home". He also had a number-one US pop hit in 1968 with his version of "Grazing in the Grass". Early life Hugh Ramapolo Masekela was born in the township of KwaGuqa in Witbank (now called Emalahleni), South Africa, to Thomas Selena Masekela, who was a health inspector and sculptor and his wife, Pauline Bowers Masekela, a social worker. His younger sister Barbara Masekela is a poet, educator and ANC activist. As a child, he began singing and playing piano and was largely raised by his grandmother, who ran an illegal bar for miners. At the age of 14, after seeing the 1950 film '' Young Man with a Horn'' (in which Kirk Douglas plays a character modelled on ...
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Robben Island
Robben Island ( af, Robbeneiland) is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, north of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the Dutch word for seals (''robben''), hence the Dutch/Afrikaans name ''Robbeneiland'', which translates to ''Seal(s) Island''. Robben Island is roughly oval in shape, long north–south, and wide, with an area of . It is flat and only a few metres above sea level, as a result of an ancient erosion event. It was fortified and used as a prison from the late-seventeenth century until 1996, after the end of apartheid. Political activist and lawyer Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on the island for 18 of the 27 years of his imprisonment before the fall of apartheid and introduction of full, multi-racial democracy. He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and was elected in 1994 as President of South Africa, becoming the country's first black president and serving one term from 1994–1999. In additio ...
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Gibson Kente
Gibson Mthuthuzeli Kente (23 July 1932 Duncan Village, Eastern Cape – 7 November 2004, Soweto, Johannesburg) was a South African playwright, composer, director and producer based in Soweto. He was known as the ''Father of Black Theatre'' in South Africa, and was one of the first writers to deal with life in the South African black townships. He produced 23 plays and television dramas between 1963 and 1992. He is also responsible for producing some of South Africa's leading musicians. Many prominent artists, including Brenda Fassie, owe their first opportunities on stage to him. Biography Gibson Kente was raised in Stutterheim by his mother. He was educated at Bethel Training College Seventh-Day Adventist college in Butterworth until he moved to Lovedale Training College to complete his matric. In 1956 Kente moved to Johannesburg to study social work at the Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work. He never completed his studies, instead he joined a group known as Union of S ...
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1933 Births
Events January * January 11 – Sir Charles Kingsford Smith makes the first commercial flight between Australia and New Zealand. * January 17 – The United States Congress votes in favour of Philippines independence, against the wishes of U.S. President Herbert Hoover. * January 28 – "Pakistan Declaration": Choudhry Rahmat Ali publishes (in Cambridge, UK) a pamphlet entitled ''Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?'', in which he calls for the creation of a Muslim state in northwest India that he calls " Pakstan"; this influences the Pakistan Movement. * January 30 ** National Socialist German Workers Party leader Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg. ** Édouard Daladier forms a government in France in succession to Joseph Paul-Boncour. He is succeeded on October 26 by Albert Sarraut and on November 26 by Camille Chautemps. February * February 1 – Adolf Hitler gives his "Proclamation to ...
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