giant steps: the complete transcript #16
Lefifi Tladi: The thing that made Dashiki quite different was that it was a combination of music and poetry… and that was inspired mainly by how traditional music and poetry had been working together…and from a political perspective when we started working with the Black Consciousness movement. People like Steve Biko, Mandla Langa and Aubrey Mokwae had come to our place in GaRankuwa and see how we could function together as a mobilizing force to uplift the consciousness of the people.
Don Laka: The Black Consciousness was the movement that really drove us to understand ourselves and know who we are… …that had obviously the influence of people like Dashiki who carried the flag at that time. You know with us who come from the sixties and the seventies, you know most specially the seventies, the height of Apartheid at the time and the oppression, the serious oppression of the eighties. If you listen to the music that we did because the lyrics were banned and people thought we couldn’t write lyrics. We subjected ourselves to writing lyrics that would mean nothing but deep down the music that we produced, you know was protest music. You know it was music that would keep us hoping.
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