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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: Sun City, Artists United Against Apartheid (1985)
Description: Dr. Robert Larson replays the sounds of activism against apartheid and American neo-imperial hegemony, through Artists United Against Apartheid's 1985 song, Sun City.
Field recordings from South Africa's anti-segregation protests open Sun City, a single, album, and music video released in October 1985. Miles Davies, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Run DMC joined fifty Artists United Against Apartheid, a multicultural collective who boycotted performing in the racialised regime. Striking its Sun City casino complex, where capitalistic excess comingled alongside extreme poverty, these artists targeted the homeland seizures at apartheid's core. Their lyrics shine light on how apartheid accelerated British...