Weeping by the Soweto String Quartet (ft. Vusi Mahlasela)
philliesguy94
Dan Heymann on his lyrics:
I've been asked many times about the symbolism in the Weeping lyrics, so maybe I should say something here. The man referred to in the Weeping lyrics is the late P. W. Botha, one of the last white leaders of South Africa before the end of the Apartheid regime;
The demon he could never face in the Weeping lyrics refers to the aspirations of the oppressed majority,
while the Weeping lyrics also refer to the neighbors, literally the journalists from other countries who were monitoring the situation in South Africa.
That pretty much sums up the metaphorical content of the Weeping lyrics.
As a member of the South African rock group Bright Blue in the 1980s, Dan Heymann penned the anti-apartheid protest song Weeping.
On May 19th, 2013, I sat down with Dan in New York City, where he has lived since 1992. The following are excerpts from that interview about the story behind the song, and the protest music scene during the end of apartheid in South Africa.
Dan Heymann (http://www.danheymann.com/)
Bright Blue, 1987 (http://www.weeping.info/)
‘Weeping’ Music Video
Lyrics
Selected Quotes:
It was difficult to be too outspoken, because one would never have another chance to write a song again. One would be in prison.
~
[Weeping is] a song I’m very proud of, and it’s one thing that I can point to all the time, and people say to me […] 'What’s your claim to fame? What are your credentials from the freedom struggle?’ …I was on the side of the good guys.
Q: Can you tell me about how you got the idea, and what was the inspiration, for the song [Weeping]?
Dan Heymann: It happened in two separate spirits. The music came first. The lyrics came several months later. The music happened while I was stuck in the army against my will, far from Cape Town at an army camp, where there happened to be an old piano. I was just one lunch-time doodling on the piano, and I just came up with the saddest piece of music I could think of, basically. Because of the army and the politics and the whole situation in the country. Um… Made it back to Cape Town, reunited with the band, needed to have something to sing over it. So I was stuck for a story until the political situation very obligingly handed me a story, which was [that] the government declared the second state of emergency; they clamped down on the press, I mean that was the topical story of the time. There were riots and unrest and mass shootings going on in the black neighborhoods, which were sealed off from the prying eyes of the media and television, papers, everything. So that’s what the song is about, it’s about the muzzling of the press. And that’s how it all came together.
[…]
That’s what the second verse of the song is about, […] that’s the whole metaphor of when the neighbors came, wanted to see what was going on, but there was nothing to be heard at all, and that’s the story. It’s very literal, actually, it’s not much of a metaphor at all.
[…]
Q: Was there other music like that around, or did it come after you wrote that song?
DH: You mean had there been protest songs? Yes, there were, but it was difficult to be too outspoken, because one would never have another chance to write a song again. One would be in prison. But yeah, there’d been songs ever since, I mean, I remember when I was probably ten years old, there was a husband and wife folk music team: Des and Dawn. They were great, I mean, every child had their kids records. They had a hit on the radio—and this was too much of a coincidence to be true—there was a song on the radio that was a story of a child playing on the beach, and he sees a wounded seagull. The seagull’s name was Nelson. Now, I mean, is that a coincidence or what? Nelson Mandela had been sitting in jail for twenty years, another seven years to go… the seagull’s name was Nelson! Nelson the seagull, free. I don’t know, put this this way, it was on everybody’s mind. I may just be making that up; there may have been nothing political about that at all.
I mean listen, I’m sure there was a lot of protest music going on in the Zulu language, or in the Xhosa language, which I wouldn’t have been able to translate or understand… Yeah, there was plenty of it going on. But nobody could actually say ‘Bring down the damn government’ because if you said that, you’d be out of a job, you’d be out of the business. Oh sure, there was plenty, absolutely. From inside and from outside. There was ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, the fabulous song by The Special AKA, all types of reggae music, and all of that stuff was freely avail- well actually, no, the Free Nelson Mandela song I had to have a friend smuggle that in for me from London. I couldn’t buy it there.
And then there was this Rodriguez, and he was sort of writing songs about anti-establishment in general. Which we in South Africa took- it was very thrilling to us kids. Us white kids, anyway. So, was he specifically singing about apartheid? I don’t know. I doubt it.
Q: But there was a connection…
DH: Sure, there was a connection, of course.
[…]
Q: What was the response to the song, the immediate reaction? Was it different with different groups of people, like young, old, racially? The government—what did they say?
DH: Yeah, well, here’s the thing. Thank God, the government censors were asleep at the switch. They didn’t pick up on it at all! The DJs at the radio stations—government and otherwise—they picked up on it, they loved it, they played it like crazy. It went to number one on at least one chart… And the censors never picked up on it, which, I mean, maybe I should be insulted by that, I don’t know! But anyway, I’m glad they didn’t. Uh, but other groups? Our audiences at the gigs loved it. I cannot say that many people bought the LP… it was not a huge-selling LP.
Remember, whites made up 20% of the population. White musicians—generally, with one or two exceptions—didn’t have very much credibility among the black communities, so we weren’t going to sell a lot of records there. And half the whiteys were the apartheid guys, right? So we’re down to, what is it now? We’re down to 1/10th of the population. OK, so that’s really who was able- who was listening to it. Well, I mean, no one actually said, ‘I don’t like that song’. I guess everyone who heard it was OK with it, they seemed to like it. They’re still playing it today.
[…]
The only person who noticed from the government’s side was my captain in the army. Because remember, [the band members] were separated on account of the army; we got reunited just before the end of my army because I managed to get a transfer back to Cape Town, so we were able to rehears and play some gigs. And my captain in the army—who was a motorcycle guy, but he was a lifer, he was a career officer—he liked rock and roll, so he came to a gig. And the next day he actually took me aside. He said, ‘Listen, you just need to be a little more careful about what you’re singing and saying, because people are watching’… but that was the only word I ever heard from the other side. That’s it, sorry, it’s a bit of an anticlimax.
[…]
DH: When we recorded the single, we financed it ourself. We just scraped our savings together, went in the studio one evening, and pressed a thousand copies of it on a seven-inch single. That was it, there was only a thousand copies ever made. […] Designed the cover ourself—I cut out the letters for the cover, glued them on, and that was the cover design. That’s what we sent to the radio stations. On the strength of the interest, we got signed with EMI for an album.
[…]
Q: I was wondering if you think protest songs like yours, like Weeping, could they be used to educate kids [in South Africa] about what was going on back then, right before apartheid ended. You know, by looking at the songs, because music is an interesting and fun topic.
DH: I think many of the kids are familiar with the song, because it’s taught in some English classes. It’s considered something of a standard down there. Kids that I’ve met over here, and they say, ‘Who the hell are you?’, and I say, well do you recognize this tune?’, and they go ‘Oh yeah, I know that song!’, and I say ‘OK, so I wrote that.’
