Focus: Music of South Africa

Chapter Notes

How might we create a comprehensive account of South African music in the twentieth century? And is this even possible?
What mechanism should a historian use to represent a past that she/he has not experienced in his/her lifetime?
In a nation whose history has been marked by severe forms of segretation, who is sufficiently qualified to create a comprehensive historical narrative?
Is a clear idea of contemporary democratic South Africa necessary if we are to write a history of this nation's music?

Yvonne Huskisson (a white woman who worked for the SABC for many years, and was responsible for broadcasting the music of many black South African musicians) published a four-volume Encyclopedia of South African Musicians, in addition to several books on ‘Bantu composers.’ While these are important historical documents, Huskisson's perspective was shaped by her position inside the government-controlled environment of apartheid broadcasting.
In 1981, South African (white female) journalist Muff Anderson wrote a ‘coffee table book’ called Music in the Mix, which focuses largely on popular music. Anderson's book is important in that it is the first to include both white and non-white musicians. Anderson's book is radical in that it names musicians banned by the apartheid government. Interestingly, Anderson's book was aimed at a South African, and not international, audience.
Rob Allingham, an American archivist working at Gallo Music, provides a useful account of twentieth-century South African music in the Rough Guide series. Because his perspective is shaped by his position in the industry, his narrative is based on available recordings.
David Coplan, Charles Hamm, and Gwen Ansell have all written on the history of non-white South African music.

Knowledge of precolonial music gained through archeological research.
Khoisan music.
In the early colonial period, travel accounts, and the reports of missionaries and administrators may be helpful.
The impact of European and American missionaries on South African music.
The influence of slaves and exiles from Indonesia, the Philipines, India, and China.
Hybridity of religious practices: Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and indigenous African religions.
African American music groups touring in South Africa in the late 19th and early 20th century.
New technologies such as radio and sound recordings.

Black migrant workers in newly emerging urban centers.
The beginning of Gallo Records.
Recordings of local South African music by the SABC.
First South African music groups travel to London to record (notably the Reuben Caluza Double Quartet).
Hugh Tracy begins his important work.
With the influx of jazz recordings from America (and the beginnings of the jazz craze in South Africa in the 1910s), the South African popular music form marabi emerges in the early 20th century.

South African soldiers of all races and ethnicity join the fight of the Allies during WWII in North Africa and Europe. These soldiers experience international music, most notably swing.
In the 1950s, several urban areas were remarkably interracial, the most famous example being Sophiatown. In such interracial urban areas, American music was hugely popular (especially jazz), as was the local American-inspired pennywhistle music called kwela. Sophiatown was destroyed with the onset of Grand Apartheid.
Urban working-class blacks were literally obsessed with American films (and especially gangster films).
Jazz and variety shows were very popular in urban areas.
Black journalists working for the white-owned press wrote actively about music in urban areas, and especially jazz. Many such journalists (a large proportion of whom lived in Sophiatown) wrote for Drum Magazine. The 1950s is some times referred to as the “Drum Decade”.

The era of Grand Apartheid began with the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960. In the 1960s and 1970s many additional apartheid laws were instituted, and apartheid rapidly became increasingly aggressive and violent.
During the 1960s and 1970s many black South African musicians stopped performing, and many of the country's most talented musicians were either exiled or went into self-exile.
As described above, the 1980s was a particularly contradictory decade.

In 1990, Nelson Mandela and a host of other political prisoners were released from jail.
The first ever fully democratic election took place in 1994. The African National Congress, led by Nelson Mandela (who became president), won the election.
Many exiled musicians returned to South Africa after 1990.
Major record labels such as Sony and BMG re-entered South Africa with the end of the cultural boycott.
Music festivals and writing about music (both in the academic and popular press) have profliferated in South Africa since 1990.

The periods are defined in terms of politics and not only in terms of transformations of musical style.
Much of the struggle within South Africa was related to larger international struggles.
Media and technology has had a large impact on South African history.

Localized and specific studies dealing with individual musical genres and styles or the music of specific language groups or ethnicities. Such studies have been popular since the 1950s and include works by John Blacking and Veit Erlmann. Question: Do such histories not obscure the hybrid nature of South African music? How can localized histories and ethnographies be put into conversation with one another?
The rejection of linear history, by introducing the metaphor of history as a palimpsest. A palimpsest is an artifact created when a scribe uses an old manuscript to write something new, and in this sense traces of the past remain visible in the present. In this way, the past is never erased, but rather seeps through into the present.

The archive: Music South African music was destroyed by the apartheid regime. How can an archive be created from which a history can be written?
Originality: If South African music borrows and appropriates from foreign music (and especially through various forms of media), what does this say about the concepts of distinctiveness or uniqueness?
Value: How do we judge music? What criteria should we use to judge music, and who should create this criteria? What music should be included in our histories, and how do we decide which musics are important enough to include? Conversely, how do we decide which musics to exclude?