Sophiatown, the legendary South African township destroyed in the late 1950s, is considered in terms of the interrelations between long-distance, transnational cultural influences and local circumstances. The influence of foreign popular culture and fashion is sketched, and the flowering of music and writing in the 1950s is related to local institutions. Attention is also drawn to the successes of township culture in exile. The favourable reception of metropolitan high culture and popular culture is seen as resistance against the apartheid policy of cultural separation, and Sophiatown writers are seen as forerunners of the current interest in cultural hybridity and creolization.