Chapter Notes
Chapter 15 Final Reflections
- The 1989 book and 1992 film The Power of One touches on themes that have emerged in South African music and the chapters of this book.
- The film celebrates the ability of an individual to make a difference in the lives of many, and of the impact of a single song in forging unity between people of different languages and cultures (if of a single race).
- It opens with a solo voice, but it is the hybrid voice of black South Africans who have absorbed European tradition and incorporated local languages, timbres, and intonations. This is the real South African voice, whose authenticity lies in a particular kind of hybridity.
- The words (mostly Zulu) are foreign to an American viewer, but the structure of the strange sounds is familiar.
- The visual is a nearly empty hand-drawn map of the African continent with printed words that tell of the arrival of Europeans in the seventeenth century.
- PK, the main character, narrates with a voice whose accent gradually shifts from British to distinctly South African as he comes to grips with a local identity and mixes with speakers of Afrikaans, Xhosa, and Zulu.
- The movie covers roughly the first two decades of Apartheid and addresses South African through the harsh experiences of these years primarily for black South Africans.
- The recuperation of the human body was an integral part of achieving political liberation in 1994, and the body (beaten, abused, or destroyed) is part of musical performance, as seen in scenes of group singing (involving clapping and swaying) in the film which, though not about the post-Apartheid period, depicts reconciliation and cooperation.
- PK, a professor, and a prisoner compose a song that resolves differences by allowing several groups to sing their own melodies in a call and response format and in harmony with other groups. The resulting rich musical texture becomes a metaphor for nation building.
- Today, ‘European’ music in South Africa is part of black South African performance, and it is more difficult to distinguish ‘European’ from ‘African’ or to pigeon-hole certain musical works as one or the other. Racial and cultural stereotyping from a European or American perspective is a messy process, as the film suggests.
- PK heeds the German professor's advice and views Africa (and its natural world in particular) as a resource for original thought that should be valued but not exploited. This allows him to define himself as South African rather than British.
- Travel in various forms — both internationally and within the country — shape the film and have shaped South African music.
- South African musical performance in the film is always collective, a stereotype that makes it quite difficult for individual musicians to record their music alone.
- PK was taught to value reading and writing by his mother, and he is urged to help his fellow South Africans by teaching them to read, suggesting that the ability to read the signs of the contemporary world one must be able to read English. His black nanny, however, imparted some of the wisdom of her people to him orally/aurally, and in this manner he teaches the singers his composition.
- South Africa's relationship with other African countries is becoming somewhat more open, but its potential dominance (in music, in economics, in politics, etc.) remains an issue. As being ‘African’ and even ‘South African’ becomes culturally and racially more inclusive, the question of South Africa's relationship to the rest of the continent and its representation thereof to the rest of the world becomes particularly important.