Synopsis: This is another lighthearted story to ease us into the more heavy-hitting series on the racial divide in South Africa under apartheid. Scott describes the music of Johannesburg in particular the music enjoyed by the native black population and how it influences the environment of the city.  He notes with wonderment the contrast between the beauty of the music and the hardship and injustice experienced by the people. 

Gay Songs Amid Poverty

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa.– There's a book crying to be written on the relationship between poverty and music. 

Johannesburg reminds me of a holiday my wife and I spent some four years ago in Mazatlan, Mexico. One day we hired a car and drove deep into the interior of Mexico; drove, in fact, until the road gave out. 

The farther we went the more wretched were the living conditions of the people, the more bloated the babies. 

But with every mile of misery the music of the people became more gay until at the very last village of despair we heard the guitars and singing as in fiesta. 

There is much music to be heard in this teeming gold capital of South Africa. It comes from the hands and the throats of people who have very little to sing about. 

At least three of every five citizens of Johannesburg are black of skin. Most of them live a cruel life, a life that would seem unbelievably hard in  the worst slums of Canada or the United States. 

And so, as if in denial of this, the Africans who have made the city their home produce a music so happy that it is poignant. 

Walk down any street. It will be a rare block when you do not see a black-skinned man pumping on a concertina or plucking with long fingers on a guitar or mandolin hung by a cord about his neck, or chewing a harmonica or singing softly to himself as he goes about his business. 

It is often formless, often a mere phrase repeated over and over again, but it is a curiously cheerful sound. 

I arrived here on a Sunday and saw a remarkable and moving  sight. 

Like most state-owned radio systems the South African Broadcasting Corp. leans heavily to serious music, and on this Sunday when I went for my first stroll about the city, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was coming from many an open window of the great modern apartment buildings. 

It was a warm, golden day with the sun filtering through the leaves of the boulevard trees and very few people were abroad. But wherever the sympohonic music swelled loudest from the blocks there were Africans lying on their elbows under the trees or sitting on the curbs lost in contemplation of the sound. 

Again wherever there is a music store with a loud speaker sending jazz into the street you will see a knot of natives loitering about. 

It is really something wonderful to see the look of delight on the face of a full-blooded Zulu savouring Johnny Ray and "Walkin' My Baby Back Home", which happens at the moment to be No. 1 on the South African hit parade. 

The African element gives an off-beat atmosphere to a city otherwise so European and while you become accustomed to this in a day or two there are often little vignettes that remind you of the incongruity of the contrast. 

Yesterday, for example, I saw a native in a loose loin cloth, his ear-lobes sliced so that they hung in great loops to his neck, his dark arms banded with bracelets. He was leaning up against the plush salon of Madame Helena Rubinstein. 

You see the native in every stage of his adjustment to city life. Many are barefoot, the soles of their feet astonishingly white from the wear and tear of pavement. 
It is not unusual to see African women with metal bands stiff about their necks, their beautiful chocolate babies slung in a bandeau on their rumps and jiggling their hips in a fast dance to keep Junior asleep. 

Yet many more are as sartorially elegant as a Harlem dandy in zoot-cut drapes, two-toned sports shoes and wide-brimmed fedoras. 

They all accept the city life as casually as if it were a toy. On Johannesburg's equivalent to Wall St., you will see young native men in denim shorts romping along hand in hand, laughing as uproariously as children at some private joke.