{"id":22942,"date":"2011-09-02T05:01:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T10:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=22942"},"modified":"2011-09-15T23:17:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T04:17:48","slug":"the-real-eighties-johnny-clegg-and-savuka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=22942","title":{"rendered":"The Real Eighties: Johnny Clegg and Savuka"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things I miss the most about music in the eighties was that almost anything could score, with a little luck.<\/p>\n

Some kinds, of course, had a head start. \u00a0South Africa was tres hip in the nineties – and for a brief spell, South Africa’s jumpy melange of pop styles got some airplay and mindshare in the west.<\/p>\n

And one of the biggest sellers – to the extent that there was a big seller – was South Africa’s “Johnny Clegg and Savuka”.<\/p>\n

Clegg – an Brit-Rhodesian whose mother’s parents were Polish\/Lithuanian Jews – fronting a mixed-race group that pretty edgy stuff in apartheid-<\/em>era South Africa – was a musical sponge, known as “The White Zulu” who mixed languages and genres like Emeril Legasse mixes spices:<\/p>\n

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/diCyzQSkmyU” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n

And while it was almost inevitable that the politics would beat you over the head – because politics were an inevitable part of South Africa’s situation at the time – it worked as often as not,and in any case, it was often great music…<\/p>\n

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KfTkD-XWOFg” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n

…so who cares anyway?<\/p>\n

And sometimes being beaten over the head could be fun!<\/p>\n

But more of that tomorrow…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the things I miss the most about music in the eighties was that almost anything could score, with a little luck. Some kinds, of course, had a head start. \u00a0South Africa was tres hip in the nineties – and for a brief spell, South Africa’s jumpy melange of pop styles got some airplay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-real-eighties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22943,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22942\/revisions\/22943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}