Living the heritage through Indigenous music competitions

Festivalising!

This article looks at two social couple dance forms, ‘jazz’ and salsa, the first emerging in the 1970s, and the second in the 2000s in Cape Town. The focus is on how concepts of geography, body, space, community, heritage, tradition and identity have become conflated within processes of social change. ‘Jazzing’, otherwise known as ‘Cape jazz’ dance, or ‘jazz’, danced to what is locally known as ‘jazz’ music (mostly R&B and soul ‘covers’), is associated with the apartheid-constructed ‘coloured’ community, a historically contested identity in the Western Cape. Salsa, as a globally popularised and commercialised dance form, danced to salsa music, started in central Cape Town in the early 2000s, incorporating participants from diverse backgrounds. Because of similarities in style, and the informality and fluidity of both dance forms, tensions emerged in the mid-2000s, when many jazz dancers, influenced by the local salsa scene, copied and incorporated what were described as ‘salsa moves’ into jazz routines, resulting in contestations over whether what was seen as a ‘local’ tradition was under threat. At the same time, the crossing over of dance styles and dancers between venues resulted in modes of racial integration and inclusivity within a highly segregated society. The study argues for the use of dance as a lens to explore, contest, interrogate and problematise a rapidly transforming society, and what it means to be South African today.

The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 2018

This paper will explore two examples of African contemporary dance, including the 2014 Uhambo 1 production in Athlone Cape Town and Four Seasons, choreographed by Gregory Maqoma and performed by the Vuyani Dance Theatre at Artscape Theatre Cape Town in 2014. Hence, it also argues that one critical way of supporting audiences to resist past and present forms of oppression is for the creation of meaning (value) through interdisciplinary choreography and post-performance discussions with audience members which will allow Black South Africans to begin to reclaim their ability to reflect on the meaning of contemporary African dance forms, and in turn, to reflect and act upon confidently, through their own

African Musicology Online

This article discusses music as cultural policy instrument in South Africa. It observes that numerous studies focus on cultural policy as initiated by governments in the western hemisphere and articulated through the written medium to its audience therein. While cultural policy in the country is also by and large government driven, it however also involves ordinary citizens through other transmissions like music. Through interviews and discography of songs by musicians Sello Galane, Rudzani Colbert Mukwevho and Khakhathi Tshisikule, the article demonstrates how cultural policy can be initiated by artists or how they can critic the already existing ones as sanctioned by respective current governing authorities.

African Musicology Online, 2017

This article discusses music as cultural policy instrument in South Africa. It observes that numerous studies focus on cultural policy as initiated by governments in the western hemisphere and articulated through the written medium to its audience therein. While cultural policy in the country is also by and large government driven, it however also involves ordinary citizens through other transmissions like music. Through interviews and discography of songs by musicians Sello Galane, Rudzani Colbert Mukwevho and Khakhathi Tshisikule, the article demonstrates how cultural policy can be initiated by artists or how they can critic the already existing ones as sanctioned by respective current governing authorities.

Dance and the quality of life, 2019

In South Africa, we dance! We dance to establish identity, build community, and to foster collective healing. South Africans also dance in protest, such as the 2015 national “fees must fall” student protest where participants danced the ukutoyiza, commonly known as the toyi-toyi, a dance symbolising solidarity (Edwards, 2010; Glasser, 2000). South Africans dance for freedom, dignity, equality, human rights, public services, and fair wages (Bakare & Mans, 2003; Edwards, 2010; Glasser, 2000; Kothari, 2006; Onyeji, 2004; Wanyama & Shitubi, 2012). We dance “to improve the quality of life for all citizens” as promised by the Constitution (Republic of South Africa [RSA], 1996). In contemporary South Africa, dance has communal, cultural, public and political connotations, which informed my decision to explore the potential of dance education to promote social cohesion in a culturally and politically diverse post-apartheid South Africa.

2012

The thesis project was a community based festival involving twelve young people of African descent, five patrons, two community artists and the researcher as the facilitator and cultural translator. I therefore wish to extend my sincere thanks to the young people involved in the project for trusting the process, sharing their stories, and creative imagination that culminated into an informative and educative festival. I also wish to thank the patrons for sparing their time to support the project, and the artists for playing an important role in facilitating some of the sessions towards informative performances. I would also like to acknowledge the organisations that provided funding and resources for the project-The City of Stirling (WA); Healthway (WA), the Office of Crime Prevention (WA), The Afrikan Community in Western Australia (ACWA) and Murdoch University, without their generosity it would have been impossible to accomplish this project. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, many thanks to my supervisors, Dr. David Moody and Dr. Peter Wright your support and feedback is immensely appreciated. I have learnt so much from you. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my wife Nasimolo Sarah Wakholi and our girls; Namusobya Wakholi Kamulegeya, Hasahya Wakholi, Namulwa Wakholi and Mirembe Musenero Wakholi for the support, passion and love. We have to tell our stories and through performance we legitimise our humanity. Ata demba satwihula! ix

In this thesis I use music as a starting point to animate the wider social experience of individuals and groups responding to rapid social change in South Africa. Social change in South Africa is linked in to discourses about identity that have been rigidly racialised over time. The cohorts and individuals who I engaged with cross, or are crossed by, the boundaries of racial categories in South Africa, either through family background or by the composition of cohort membership. The affective quality of music in people’s experience allows a more nuanced view of the changing dynamics of identity that is not accessed through other research methods. Music is used as a device to track biographies and stories about lived experiences of social change from the 1940’s to the first decade of the 21st Century in South Africa. Popular music cultures, including multi-racial church dances of the 1940’s, the 1970’s Johannesburg jazz and theatre scene and Kwaito, the electronic music that emerged in the 1990’s, provide a canvas to explore personal memories in very close connection to historical developments and groups of people ageing and working alongside each other in the inner western areas of Johannesburg, extending into other areas of the metropolis and the coastal city of Durban.The ethnography includes the life story of a member of a multi-racial family,the dynamic and biographies of a post-apartheid friendship cohort in Western Johannesburg, and an exploration of racial tension in a lap dancing club with a mixed clientele and staff base. The thesis draws on a period of 18 months of dedicated fieldwork in Johannesburg, where I was employed as a DJ in a number of night clubs, as well as many years living in the city as a South African national both as a child and an adult. The methodological implications of a close personal connection to the field site are thus also explored as a determinant of data gathering.

Ethnomusicology, 2013

This article addresses a South African music genre: maskanda, often marketed as “Zulu blues.” It describes the various ways maskanda is musically analyzed and interpreted by musicians, audiences, producers, and scholars, including myself. By treating music analysis as a form of participant observation (and indigenizing my own analytical conventions) the article aims, foremostly, to foster a cross-cultural dialogue about musical experiences (hearings) and the practices of finding words for these experiences (conceptualizations). Music analysis as participant observation also sheds light on local historiographies, critiques, and structural analyses of maskanda, and it bridges the artificial academic dichotomy of object-related observation (music analysis) and discourse related theorization (cultural analysis) that still impairs much music research.

E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Framed within social constructivism theory, this article argued that government, organisations, and stakeholders could foster and promote collaboration, community engagement, cultural recognition and policy advocacy to address the socio-economic challenges faced by Indigenous African musicians. With an increasing number of indigenous African musicians who greatly contribute to the country’s cultural landscape, South Africa is well renowned for its incredibly rich and diversified heritage of music. However, due to modern influences and globalisation, there are growing concerns that indigenous African musicians are facing significant obstacles in the music industry that have implications for preserving and promoting cultural heritage. A sensitive endeavour that calls for careful navigation and adaptation is balancing classical aspects with modern musical genres. It was against this background that this article set out to critically discuss and raise awareness of the challenges experie...

Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 1997

This article uses a case study of thekibamigrant performance genre from the Northern Province of South Africa to illuminate recent theoretical ideas on the role of performers and audiences, and in so doing to offer a critical perspective on the way in which the concept of class has been conceptualised in some southern African studies. While the homogenising and Western-derived concept of class may well be unsuitable in some African and other southern contexts, as certain writers have claimed, migrant northern Sotho communities have developed indigenous notions of social category which combine modern work-related sources of identity with apparently backward-looking celebrations of traditional behaviour. The article examines the contention of performance theory that cultural expression does not merely reflect the predilections of established groupings of people but may provide a focus for the consolidation and identity of new ones.

2008

At the interstices of cultural geography and performance studies, this article continues the author's earlier research and writing on Jamaica's Dancehall culture, and analyzes the applicability of insights gained to other black performance genres, most notably South African Kwaito. Through research methods including interviews and participant observation, a comparative perspective on Dancehall and Kwaito reveals unexplored parallels, particularly ideological and spatial ones. I therefore expand the focus beyond musical and symbolic elements by privileging the spatial category. This focus reveals striking similarities across nations and their diasporas, and how identity, ideology and history merge in the articulation of self for the disenfranchised youth in a crosscultural context. Ultimately, this article contributes to a broader project of mapping New World performance geographies, in this instance using Dancehall and Kwaito as its main cases.