Hello everybody on HIVE, and especially the AFRITUNES Community. My name is Jasper, and I'm writing (and singing) to you from Cape Town, South Africa! Welcome to Week 109 of AFRITUNES.
I love South Africa and some of the special flavours of music we get here, and I look forward to doing a few posts on AFRITUNES to bring you music from South Africa, or to show you my original songs that have South African inspiration…
Today, I’d like to introduce you to kwela music, which is a bouncy kind of traditional street guitar music here in South Africa, where a pennywhistle often plays along!
The song I’d like to try this with is “Meadowlands”! According to the Wikipedia article for the song (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadowlands_(song)), “Meadowlands” was written during Apartheid, where the Government decided to enforce racial segregation by forcibly removing black people out of Sophiatown to a new township called “Meadowlands” in 1955.
This song is typically up-beat sounding like most of Kwela, and the lyrics sarcastically say “We Love Meadowlands”, which meant the white Apartheid Government mistakenly thought the song approved of the relocation program, and therefore decided NOT to ban the song like they did with many more blatant protest songs.
However, the target audience of black people understood the sarcasm, and “Meadowlands” is now one of the most recognised anti-Apartheid anthems in South Africa, and has been popularised by being sung by some of South Africa’s best including Miriam Makeba and Mango Groove! The version I’m singing is in Northern Sotho and “Tsotsitaal” (a mixture of Afrikaans and other South African languages).
Here's Archie Coker and the Meteors singing it in 1962 and making it famous:
Lyrics for "Meadowlands” by Strikes Vilikazi (The Mango Groove Version)
O tla utlwa makgowa a re
Are yeng ko Meadowlands
O tla utlwa makgowa a re
Are yeng ko Meadowlands
(You can hear the white people say “Let’s go to Meadowlands”)
Meadowlands, Meadowlands
Meadowlands, sithandwa sam
Meadowlands, Meadowlands
Meadowlands, sithandwa sam
(We love Meadowlands!)
O tlwa utlwa botsotsi ba re ( Eita )
Ons gaan nie on phola hier
O tlwa utlwa botsotsi ba re ( Eita )
Ons dak ni ons phola hier
(You can hear all the scoundrels say “We’re not leaving, we’re staying here!”)
Phola hier, phola hier ( Phola hier, phola hier )
Phola hier sithandwa sam
Phola hier, phola hier ( Phola hier, phola hier )
Phola hier sithandwa sam
(We love it here!)
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: David Daniel Strike Vilakazi
Meadowlands lyrics © O/B/O Capasso
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