Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony

Lee Hirsch. | 103 minutes. Artisan Entertainment.

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Amandla! is a stylish, well-researched documentary that testifies to the power of music as a tool of salvation. Through interviews with South Africa’s leading black musicians, it chronicles the importance of music in the struggle against apartheid as well as the lineage of individual songs, demonstrating how one musical idea could bring solidarity across generations and social groups: from condemned prisoners to rebel soldiers to domestic workers.

In one of Amandla!‘s most poignant segments, Sophie Mgcina launches into an impromptu rendition of “Madam Please”: “Madam, please, / Before you ask me if your children are fine, / Ask me when I last saw mine.” The scars of apartheid are everywhere in Amandla!, but for each act of injustice, a song was there to greet it. The film opens and closes with scenes from the exhumation and dignified reburial — nearly 40 years after his execution — of Vuyisile Mini, a noted protest singer and activist. In the words of one of Mini’s friends, “He went to the gallows singing.”

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That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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