Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The SOUND Of Freedom
People are irritated or amused, usually both, by the buzz of the Vuvuzelas at the World Cup.
Yes, I know that they are crappy representations of a Zulu horn that came up in 2001. But they are. An entity. A definition. A presence. Known as lepetatas, similar horns also grace football pitches in South America. But the plastic and untuned versions have become the trademark of this year's World championship of the ultimate sport.
And the sound, albeit untuned, is GLORY.
I met Nelson Mandela for all of 12 seconds on a school trip in 1990 and you know what- that was one of the foundations of my existence as I am today. I was a poor kid and I believed that I could become something. The country that the man who shaped my life in a moment should get a break here. These people are SO full of life because they have experienced so much. For generations, whites were dominant over browns, browns over blacks, Ashkenazim over Beta Yisroel. Division by one's melanin and people's families could be socially divided because of their pigment. In South Africa, my family would have been divided into haves and nots purely because we all have different mums and dads and different tans. We are colourful. And so is the new South Africa.
With its national team comprised of once-scorned Blacks and Browns and their White friends (who would have been hated for the association) we should offer mad love for this new nation forged on the corpses of the folks of all colours and faiths that fought to keep a country not only together, but vital. And the sound of freedom must reign, even in plastic.
I choose to think of the new sound as a cat's purr, or the swarm of bees escaping from a snow-capped hive. But for those of you who cannot grasp that, just think of them as Enchanted Beer Funnels. The Freedom Beer Bong.
Grab a Vuvuzela and dump the beer that black people are now allowed to drink in South Africa down it whilst savouring your own freedom in honour of the house that Mandela built.
The video is from 2009 and courtesy of Supersport.
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I Respect your take....But it is annoying..can I say that without being Pro-apartheid? PS.. I dont like to make the Roofer mad :)
ReplyDeleteTis what I love about you. You take something like a silly annoying plastic horn & give it a history & meaning. I NEVER for one second of any day take my afforded Freedom for granted. My dad was an Air Force fighter pilot, my daughter has served 3 tours in Iraq,my cousin died there. It appears that like it or not the horn stays.
ReplyDeleteLOVE the horns. A combination of bees, bagpipes and Formula-1 engines. All things that get a heart beating faster. I don't care if it's a "tradition" of only 2 years, 10 years or 100 years.
ReplyDeleteVoltage, you CAN say your bit here. No judgment in my kitchen.
ReplyDeleteBut DO admire the fact that Argentina's chant eclipsed all the vuvus on the planet for 10 minutes today :)
after watching that video I now know that the vuvuzelas are never going away.
ReplyDelete