In their contributions to local African resistance, musicians today such as Uganda’s Bobi Wine, who face increasingly autocratic governments, draw from the legacies of older artists such as Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba.
In many parts of Africa, particularly Southern Africa, music played an important in the struggle for liberation from colonizers. Music and song served as inspiration and provided a potent tool to mobilize society to resist, and fight against colonial administrations. This was mainly between the 1960s and 1980s when many African countries gained political independence. It is from this context that in 2009, when renowned South African artist and activist, Hugh Masekela, chanted in Lugano, Switzerland, at a concert, ‘…I don’t know what happened to us the human beings, we seem to have lost our sense of outrage that we had in the 60s and 70s and now, we just look at our laptops and shake our heads,’ one can’t help but reflect on the importance, significance and purpose of music and song in the struggle for liberation and freedom...
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