Word: biko
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Redeemer Cry Freedom (1987) A white newspaper editor in South Africa denounces antiapartheid activist Stephen Biko. He then turns hero, deciding that Biko has the right idea after all - and risks his life to get the word...
...gonna play Sun City." Lyric fragments that, once heard, become a whole political statement in miniature, a rhythmic testament of pride and conscience. There is another that belongs in their company. It is a simple declarative dedication, really, spoken quietly by Peter Gabriel: "This is for Steven Biko." And Biko begins, its incantatory drum sounds and eldritch rhythms working some deep magic before Gabriel even gets to the first verse...
Gabriel, one of the most respected and most elusive of Britain's rock elite, meant Biko to be an act of conscientious solidarity. Steven Biko was a black South African activist who died while in police custody, and, as Gabriel performs his tribute, the song takes on the power of a folk requiem. Gabriel, however, has found a resonance in Biko's death that goes beyond outrage or simple protest. The further away history moves, the deeper Biko cuts. "You can blow out a candle/ but you can't blow out a fire/ once the flame begin to catch...
...gave up much of his commercial clout. The rhythmic complexities of his songs wove eerie aural patterns through which lyrics chased each other like phantoms from a surrealist serial. The music was simultaneously challenging and forbidding, and Gabriel was typed unfairly as an elitist working in a populist form. Biko began breaking this image down, and the So album has put it to rest forever. The process has received no little help from the raucous Sledgehammer video, which shows Gabriel in novel, self-mocking form, acting like a live-action cartoon surrounded by some nicely berserk animation. "I was lying...
...Jane sat next to me during the meal, with the chat swaying from movies to domestic matters to politics. She asked me about a movie I had just seen, Cry Freedom!, the story of the South African nationalist Steven Biko (Denzel Washington) and his white friend (Kevin Kline), an editor who wants to publish a book on Biko. Halfway through, Biko is dead, and Cry Freedom becomes the editor?s publish-or-perish saga. I told Jane that, as much as I agreed with the film?s sentiments, it was one more example of Hollywood thinking it can?t make...