Script and description
Part one High-angle shot of a suburban area with streets, cars and houses. Scene filmed from inside a car. A man turns on his car-radio. Instrumental music is played. Close-up of the man (Rude Paul Boy) who moves his head to the music. Close-up of a sign which reads: “Home of Radio Freedom. Institute of broadcast journalism.” Medium shot of the inside of a radio station where six men and women are sitting.
RUDE BOY PAUL (DISK JOCKEY): ...Youth Cross Fire now in full effect. Talking about freedom songs. Liberation songs that were sung by activists, protestors, looking at just how these songs were used to mobilize and to strengthen the community at large.
Part two
Close-up of three people (two women and a man) who are being interviewed.
PETER MAKARUBE (POP CULTURE JOURNALIST): Well, I suppose chants were... were mostly used when people were very angry, irrational...
RUDE BOY PAUL (DISK JOCKEY): Right. PETER MAKARUBE (POP CULTURE JOURNALIST): Facing bullets with stones.
GAIL SMITH (JOURNALIST): The freedom songs evoked a kind of pride in me, which Kwaito does not.
RUDE BOY PAUL (DISK JOCKEY): There was no age group boundary. GAIL SMITH (JOURNALIST): There was no... Absolutely not... You could be standing next to a sixty-year-old woman who would be singing, you know... Senzenina or whatever. Archive footage of African people singing in an African dialect and dancing in front of a cathedral parish centre.
GAIL SMITH (JOURNALIST): And there would be... there would be a bond, an immediate kind of acknowledgement of commonality and what we were about.
Close-up of Rude Boy Paul addressing Audrey Brown, a journalist.
RUDE BOY PAUL (DISK JOCKEY): Now, now, now, do you think older comrades appreciate... AUDREY BROWN (JOURNALIST): Are you talking to me? RUDE BOY PAUL (DISK JOCKEY): I’m talking to you, yeah. I’m talking to you. Close-up of Audrey Brown and Gail Smith.
AUDREY BROWN (JOURNALIST): I’m not an older comrade. However, I do believe that I’m kind of like a bridge between that generation because I remember the ’80s, and I remember singing freedom songs. And I remember the running away from police. I also wake up in the morning and groove to Phat Joe, you know?
Part three
Close-up of Rude Boy Paul speaking to a man and two women.
RUDE BOY PAUL (DISK JOCKEY): Yeah, yeah... Where do these songs come from? Where do they originate from? Who wrote them? Do we know the people, you know, who put them together?
Scene filmed from inside a car at night. Full shot of a group of African people in an apartment, singing in an African dialect and dancing to an African song. Close-up of the three interviewees in the radio station.
PETER MAKARUBE (POP CULTURE JOURNALIST): African people always made music.
RUDE BOY PAUL (DISK JOCKEY): Right.
PETER MAKARUBE (POP CULTURE JOURNALIST): You know, nobody ever said: “Well, you know I wrote this song in three minutes, or I wrote it in three months, this is my song.” Because you start a song, and someone backs you, and people just build up a song.
Close-up of a man and woman in an apartment.
MAN # 1: What I’m saying is that song didn’t give birth to struggle. Yeah? MAN # 2: No, no, no... MAN # 1: Struggle gave birth... MAN # 2: Which one came first?
MAN # 1: Struggle gave birth to song. Close-up of three men who seem to disagree with the first man. SIFISO (ACTIVIST, MUSIC PRODUCER): No, no, no, no. That’s not true. That’s not true. Close-up of Duma Ka Ndlovu, a playwright and a historian.
Part four
DUMA KA NDLOVU (PLAYWRIGTH, HISTORIAN): We are a spiritual people, and one of the ways of expressing spirituality is through song. One of the ways that an African feels closer to his Creator or her Creator is through song. We were raised in families and homes where our parents would break into song at the slightest provocation. When your mother couldn’t figure out what to feed you for that night because she didn’t have any money, she came back from looking for a job, she would break into a dirge that would be expressing how she felt.