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Related: About this forumArtists United Against Apartheid - Sun City
Hearing the news of Nelson Mandela's deteriorating health made me think of this song for the first time in years:
The left didn't get too many victories in the Reagan-Bush years, but the end of apartheid was a major win for the good guys.
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Artists United Against Apartheid was a 1985 protest group founded by activist and performer Steven Van Zandt and record producer Arthur Baker to protest apartheid in South Africa. The group produced the song "Sun City" and the album Sun City that year.
Van Zandt, who had parted with Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band at the height of their success to go out on his own, traveled to South Africa to research his next record. He was interested in South Africa because he had read that the apartheid system was actually modeled after America's system of Indian reservations, an issue that was his major passion. While in South Africa, he was distressed by a place called Sun City, an interracial gambling resort located in a bantustan, a nominally independent area supposedly ruled by black Africans, in the middle of an impoverished rural homeland.
sweetloukillbot
(11,045 posts)The artists that Little Steven was able to get involved were nothing short of amazing - and some of those performances, even for a single line, were amazing (Bobby Womack - Springsteen and Ruffin and Kendricks especially). Not to mention the jazzers he got involved. Its incredibly dated, but I still love hearing it - and spotting all these musicians that I didn't know at the time who were involved.
sigmasix
(794 posts)Here is recent historic proof that progressive politics and ideaology make a positive difference in every human being's life- hence the right wing class warfare that attempts to destroy the positive acheivements of America, brought about through American progressive approaches and policies.
Someone recently had an OP that questioned whether people see themselves as democrats or Americans. This same question can be asked of right wing sockpuppets and Obama Derangement Syndrome enjoyers.