The wind will blow it higher: “Biko”
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Gabriel drew upon the work of white South African journalist, Donald Woods in writing the song. Woods was a friend of Biko’s, and was himself placed under a ban after Biko’s death. He fled South Africa after an attack on his family made clear that the regime would kill him. Woods’s book on his friendship with Steve Biko became the basis for the 1987 film Cry Freedom starring Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline.
The song’s arrangement arose from Gabriel’s chance hearing of a Dutch radio station playing soundtrack music from the film Dingaka. He later picked up the soundtrack. The rhythms from those songs inspired the studio version of “Biko.” The track begins and ends with traditional South African songs sung at Biko’s funeral. (Critics characterize the latter, “Senzeni Na?” as the South African equivalent of “We Shall Overcome.”) Between the intro and the outro, Gabriel sings over an African-inspired drum beat, and a growing, synthesized bagpipe sound.
Sociologist Michael Drewett argues that Gabriel’s drumbeat presents a false authenticity. It’s a European idea of an African rhythm, and an instance of “imperial imagination.” Despite his misgivings about the combination of this “African drumbeat” and artificial bagpipes, Drewett agrees that the combination “heighten the emotional impact of the song.”
Gabriel was conscious of his status as an outsider to this struggle. Speaking to Sounds magazine in 1980, he said: “It’s a white, middle-class, ex-public schoolboy, domesticated, English person observing his own reactions from afar.” We will return to this point, but it is particularly salient considering Steve Biko’s writings, which elevate Black Consciousness and reject the internalization of oppressive systems by oppressed peoples. Biko wrote, “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Part of his significance as a political leader was in actively claiming political, cultural, and intellectual autonomy and equality for Black South Africans.
Relative to our ongoing conversation here, “Biko” is not a ballad per se. It is a protest, a tribute, perhaps an elegy. In some respects, it resonates with Pete Seeger’s “Those Three Are On My Mind,” about the Freedom Summer killings of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman. The lyrics divide into three stages, which I’ll call “ballad,” “lament,” and “prophecy,” with a concluding admonition.
The “ballad” verse invokes the story of Biko’s death without really telling it. It also places this particular tragedy within the broader “business as usual” of violent state oppression in the apartheid era.
September ’77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
The man is dead
The man is dead
Peter Gabriel (source: Facebook profile picture)
“Yihla Moja” is Xhosa for “Come, spirit” or “descending spirit.” (I confess that for years, I heard this phrase as a mondegreen, saying “He’s a martyr.”) Rhetorically, the use of this Xhosa phrase and the limited detail provided in invite the listener to learn more. They present a mystery clothed in strong emotion. We’ll read below a particularly important instance where that worked. Gabriel employs a principled reticence here, again implying his acute awareness of his position relative to Biko’s martyrdom. The “lament” verse provides that “reaction from afar” that Gabriel describes:
When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
The final, “prophecy” verse pushes back on the tragedy and injustice. They forecast oppression’s ultimate futility in the face of protest and opposition. In contemporary language, it paints the oppression as on the wrong side of history. When asked in 1987 whether he thought that protests might increase the siege mentality of the apartheid regime, Gabriel replied that it might, but that pressure would make change appear inevitable to them as well.
You can blow out a candle
But you can’t blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
“Biko” concludes with an admonition:
And the eyes of the world are watching now, watching now
Peter Gabriel performing “Biko,” Boston, 2011 (source: wikimedia commons)