Talk:Gumboot dance

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Untitled

I saw the reference to the "African welly boot dance" in a newspaper, and thought that it was probably a joke.

However after watching it then soon after finding out its meaning and history i saw i as the 'work of a genius' !The history to this amazing dance and rhytm of sounds is what the african mine workers made up and then used this to communicate by slapping their gum boots and wrattling their heavy metal chains and making up their own secret lanuage!

Whoever told you that the black gold miners could not talk to one another underground or that they worked in water up to their knees??? Of course they could talk and very often shout if they were near the drills. They had to in order to work together in that environment. No work would be done otherwise. As for working up to their knees in water, it rarely came up over one's boots. On the mines I worked on only the latrine gangs were issued with gumboots for that extremely unpleasant task, and they worked a short evening shift as compensation. There is an awful lot of rubbish written about conditions in the gold mines. It was hard work in the heat and sometimes inadequate ventilation but everyone looked out for everyone else, black and white. You had to.Egoli (talk) 19:28, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

May I emphasise my earlier comments above. I have never read such nonsense about working conditions on the mines in my life. PLEASE rewrite it. I would do so if I had the time or energy.

Egoli (talk) 23:00, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category

@Andy Dingley: you mentioned that the political history of gumboots during the '80s justifies the inclusion of this article in Category:History of South Africa. Can you elaborate on that? I do not read anything like that in the article. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:38, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The eternal paradox of Wikipedia. Sadly I know enough about this to know that it's important and that I would like to read about it, but not enough to be the person who ought to be writing it.

During the last decade or so of apartheid, white control of Black society extended to all sorts of measures. There was very tight control of any cultural expression so mbaqanga could hardly escape the townships or find a recording and publishing channel and the rare bands like Johnny Clegg and Juluka with some presence outside SA were harassed. Music was either pushed into narrow, isolated corners or else it went underground. The pun is too obvious, but here was a performance space that was available, national, and off the watchful radar of the white controllers.

In the mid '80s, aided partly by the new portability of production quality tape equipment, music started to make its way out of SA and Zim in a quality that allowed it to then be released onto the European and US popular music mainstream. Particularly jit and then later the still much-misunderstood Graceland opened up apartheid Africa to non-African ears. We saw world music (problematic though that is) move from esoteric reel-to-reel into radio airplay and mainstream festivals. Gumboots, like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, took a little longer to make it as what's a performance more than just a recording needs a relaxation of the sanctions regime for travel, not just a tape.

Gumboots alone weren't Graceland or Biko. But they were indigenuous, opened up to the North something of what was going on, and they did play their part in the propaganda part of the political struggle. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:36, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]