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A brief history of South African popular music

No-one could have foreseen it and, with hindsight, it looks like the intrusion of an impudent gatecrasher. The sudden, unheralded arrival of South African popular music at, or very near, the centre of the international arena is surely the single most startling event in the recent history of popular music. The massive Human Rights Now Concert in Abidjan on 9 October 1988, part of the world series organised by Amnesty International, made the point once again. The featured superstars, in what was one of the largest popular music events ever staged in Africa, included not only the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Sting, but also the South African band Johnny Clegg and Savuka. One thinks of other recent examples. At the Nelson Mandela birthday concert at Wembley in June 1988, South African musicians, such as Amampondo or the ageing Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, were as much of a draw as Whitney Houston and Dire Straits: an astonishing turnaround for a musical culture that, not long ago, was little known outside the sub-continent. And the Bishop Tutu Peace Concert, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles (but finally postponed), was to have been the biggest line-up of South African musicians ever to appear on an international platform. Yet, despite the unprecedented international exposure of South African music, despite the record-breaking success of Graceland (and the world tour that followed), despite the award of a Grammy to Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the fact that music