I saw an amazing film recently – Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony is a documentary about the centrality of music in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, especially in the 1980′s. What moved me most was the description of music as a form of self-defense.

The Black South Africans faced simply insurmountable odds, an entrenched and well-armed police state willing to use as much violence as necessary to destroy them. But they were led by the artists and the musicians and the dancers, both inside the country and in exile. The dvd has some astonishing interviews with ex-military officers and prison wardens. These white men (some heart-broken and repentant, some not) try to convey what it felt like to hear a condemned man singing a victory song on his way to the gallows. Or to watch thousands of children dancing toward their machine guns.

Can singing as self-defense really work? Well. Here’s a link to the revolution on the South African Embassy’s Website in Washington, D.C.

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