Amandla—Festival of Unity—was a

world music "World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...

festival A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A ...

held at

Harvard Stadium Harvard Stadium is a U-shaped college football stadium in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The Stadium is one of only four athletic facilities that are considered National Historic Landmarks. The stadium is owned and operated ...

Boston, Massachusetts Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, on July 21, 1979.Emmett G. Price, III, Tammy Kernodle, Horace Maxille (eds)
"A Timeline of Significant Moments in African American Music"
, ''Encyclopedia of African American Music'', Greenwood, 2011, p. xliv. The goals of the concert were to support and celebrate the liberation of Southern Africa as well as the ongoing efforts of people in Boston to end racism in their families, schools, workplaces and communities. The word "Amandla" is from the South-African

Zulu language Zulu ( ), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu languages, Southern Bantu language of the Nguni languages, Nguni branch spoken in, and indigenous to, Southern Africa. Nguni dialects are regional or social varieties of the Nguni language, ...

and means "power", "strength" or "energy". The headline performance was

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica during the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its Jamaican diaspora, diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first ...

superstar

Bob Marley Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, he fused elements of reggae, ska and rocksteady and was renowned for his distinctive voca ...

and his band The Wailers. Marley made several short speeches during his encore when he powerfully blamed the

system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its open system (systems theory), environment, is described by its boundaries, str ...

and urgently claimed Africa's unity and freedom. Those onstage speeches were unusual for Marley, as he normally was threatened with censorship when speaking openly about the system's failure and

marijuana Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...

smoking, as he did at the Amandla Festival. Among the Festival's key organizers were Janet Axelrod, Reebee Garofalo, Janine Fay, Shelley Neill, George Pillsbury and Kazi Toure. Other performers were soul legend

Patti LaBelle Patricia Louise Holte (born May 24, 1944), known professionally as Patti LaBelle, is an American Rhythm and blues, R&B singer and actress. She has been referred to as the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Godmother of Soul". LaBelle began ...

, jazz pianist

Eddie Palmieri Eddie Palmieri (born December 15, 1936) is an American Grammy Award-winning pianist, bandleader, musician, and composer of Corsican and Puerto Rican ancestry. He is the founder of the bands La Perfecta, La Perfecta II, and Harlem River Drive. ...

, drummer

Babatunde Olatunji Michael Babatunde Olatunji (April 7, 1927 – April 6, 2003) was a Nigerian drummer, educator, social activist, and recording artist. Early life Olatunji was born in the village of Ajido, near Badagry, Lagos State, in southwestern Nig ...

, drummer Yaya Diallo, the South African band Jabula, the Art of Black Dance and comedian Dick Gregory who gave a speech before Marley's performance. Mel King, a long-time Boston community activist and outspoken opponent of apartheid, was the emcee. Bob Marley and the Wailers were the last musical act to be signed. They signed on to perform a mere 3 weeks before the scheduled festival. The performance almost did not happen because Al Anderson broke the neck of his guitar during rehearsal. The band, just minutes before their scheduled performance, refused to go on. One of the festival organizers drove into

Harvard Square Harvard Square is a triangular plaza at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue (Boston), Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Brattle Street and John F. Kennedy Street near the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, C ...

to "The Instrument Exchange" and purchased a guitar for $600. An interesting note: no municipal police were allowed within the stadium during the festival. The concert organizers had Boston residents trained in crowd security over a period of six months.

References

Folk festivals in the United States World music festivals Concerts in the United States Harvard University International opposition to apartheid in South Africa 1979 in the United States Festivals in Boston {{Apartheid-sa-stub