Amanda Strydom

One of the roles she created for television was that of a Polish singer called Elzbieta Karski, for John Cundill's English television series 1922.

Amanda Strydom (born 23 July 1956) is a South African singer and songwriter.

Although she is known best for her singing, Strydom has also been active as a playwright and actress, most notably in the fields of cabaret and also in television.

Strydom was born in the city of Port Elizabeth where she lived and went to school, matriculating from Framesby High School in 1974.

She had no formal music training during her childhood (nor did she at any other time in her life) and she can't read a note of music, but she was an active participant in school choirs, and also learnt drama at the Children's Theatre with Mari Mocke and Marlene Pieterse.

Strydom pursued a tertiary education at the University of Pretoria where she graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, specialising in drama.

In 1979, she wrote her first song Ek loop die Pad (I walk the Road) after being urged to do so by friends.

The song quickly found its audience and has remained popular ever since, even being covered by artists like Laurika Rauch.

Strydom has since written most of the songs in her repertoire and discography, but she also sings songs by artists such as Koos du Plessis, Stef Bos, José Feliciano, Kris Kristofferson, Holly Cole, and George Gershwin.

When writing her own songs Strydom usually composes the lyrics alone, while often collaborating with others when composing the music.

Among her musical collaborators are Janine Neethling, Didi Kriel, Lize Beekman, Peter McLea, Siegfried Pretsch and Angerie van Wyk.

Also in 1979, Strydom began working for the Cape Provincial Arts Board (Capab) where she starred in theatre pieces such as Die Wonderwerk (The Miracle) and "Kinkels innie kabel" (Hitches in the Cable).

In the same year she also began freelancing as an actress, cabaret singer, disc jockey, television presenter and writer, this all after winning the lead role motion picture by Franz Marx, called Pasgetroud (Just Married).

In 1980 she was engaged as a singer for the television programme Musiek en Liriek, together with a large group of her colleagues in the Afrikaans music industry.

This programme would turn out to have a lasting impact on the development of Afrikaans popular music being, in the words of Jannie du Toit, a kind of "belated folk revolution".

Strydom also began working as a disc jockey in that year, for both Highveld Stereo and Radio 5.

She also landed the female lead role in Potato Eaters, an English television drama.

Johannesburg's famous Market Theatre was the venue for her first performance in one of Hennie Aucamp's cabarets, Met Permissie Gesê (Said With Permission).

This was in 1981.

She also presented the character Grace Lipschitz in Hell is for Whites Only, which was written by Pieter-Dirk Uys.

She also performed in Siener in die Suburbs for the official opening of the State Theatre in Pretoria.

The following year saw her singing on tour with David Kramer.

Well established in various industries by 1983, Strydom starred in various plays and television series in the following years.

She also released her first Afrikaans LP in 1983, titled Vir my Familie (For my Family), as well as her first English LP in 1985, titled Jupiter Jones is Amanda.

For her performance she won the Star Tonight award for best English actress in 1985.

She also began performing as a solo cabaret artist, at Garbo's in Cape Town and at Club 58 in Hillbrow.

The writer Hennie Aucamp had an enormous influence on Strydom's development as a cabaret singer, and she still acknowledges him as her mentor.

Merwede van der Merwe was another teacher.

With the help of these men she sang in such social commentaries as Die Lewe is 'n Grenshotel (Life is a Hotel on the Border), a work whose title alludes to the South African Border War in Angola.

This time in Strydom's career proved instrumental in shaping her own voice as one of dissent from the over-riding moral and political opinions of Afrikaners of that time.

In her own words: "Daar was 'n oorlog in Angola, en ons het daaroor gesing, gespot, gepraat; nie net daaroor nie, oor sensuur, oor die liefde. Ons is in ons stockings en sykouse en fishnets en shorts. In Afrikaans het ons oor daai verhoog gespring en oor dit wat dekadent en die lewe is 'n pad begin baan vir wat mense vandag in die land kabaret noem".

(There was a war in Angola, and we sang about it, mocked it, and talked about it; not only about that, but about censorship, and love. We were in our stockings and fishnets and shorts. In Afrikaans we jumped on that stage and laid the foundation for what people today call cabaret in this country.) However, her disillusionment with cabaret followed later when television directors and producers were asking her and others to sing translated American songs from musicals like Ebb and Kander's Cabaret.

Singing these American songs in forced translation irritated Strydom so much that she decided to go her own way as a solo performer again, so that she could once again sing songs in their intended vernacular.

Strydom achieved notoriety in 1986 for giving the black power salute after one of her songs in her cabaret at the Oude Libertas Hall in Stellenbosch.

This salute was intimately associated with the black struggle and is still used as a call by black political leaders to this day.

(The speaker would shout Amandla! raising his right fist in the air, to which an informed or sympathetic crowd would respond Ngawethu!) At the height of P.W. Botha's presidency it would have been taboo for any white Afrikaans woman to use this salute on stage in front of a white-only audience.

Consequently, Amanda Strydom was soon referred to as Amandla Strydom in popular culture.

Strydom uses the black salute on stage to this day and even occasionally refers to herself as Amandla.

Shortly after this scandal Strydom was facing her own private struggle with bipolar depression, something she has written about honestly in her play In Full Light, and in the song Strydom/Amandla.

She worked very little between 1988 and 1990.