“A river with many branches”: song as a response to Afrophobic sentiments and violence in South Africa

The purpose of this article is to examine the symbolic role of song regarding Afrophobia in South Africa – a topic which has received limited attention within local music scholarship. To this aim, a textual reading, drawing on thematic analysis serves to identify patterns of cultural meaning represented in “Umshini wami”, as opposed to anti-Afrophobic songs, including Boom Shaka’s “Kwere Kwere” (1993); “Xenophobia” by Maskandi musician Mthandeni (2015), “United we Stand, Divided, we Fall” by Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Malian singer Salif Keita (2015), and “Sinjengomfula” on the CD Tjoon in (2008), a collective production by musicians from Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The question considered is how healing metaphors featured in these songs oppose a politics of fear and the idea of the other as enemy in “Umshini wami”, described in the media as the ‘soundtrack’ of the deadly Afrophobic upsurge of 2008. It is found that, within the context of Afrophobia, the symbolic reach of “Umshini wami” extends beyond inter-racial conflict and in-group black factionalism to convey a politics of ‘war’ on African foreign nationals. Contrastingly, as symbolic exemplifications, healing metaphors in the selection of anti-xenophobic songs discussed speak to a perceived unified identity that, while representing ethnically diverse peoples, may bind Africans together through the fundamental human rights of morality, justice, and dignity

Roelof Temmingh’s Kantorium: a reflection on suffering and redemption

Roelof Temmingh’s Kantorium (2003/4), a large-scale work for choir, soloists and orchestra, won the prestigious Helgaard Steyn award in 2006. Temmingh commented briefly on his extremely difficult personal circumstances during its creation. Should a composer suffer in order to produce great music? This question raises the wider problem of contextuality, as well as concomitant theoretical/philosophical considerations. Profoundly religious in nature, the work, whose text is in German, was written for a European audience by an Afrikaans-speaking composer in post-apartheid South Africa. It does not embody any clearly overt political values, nor does it attempt to serve as a repository of cultural identity. Moreover, according to the composer, his personal circumstances were not a prerequisite for its creation

After universalisms: music as a medium for intercultural translation

Postmodernity is characterised by the fundamentalisation of plurality. As Aleida Assmann (1996: 99) finds, difference is affirmed in the form of deviance, gaps, and radical alterity. Within this intellectual milieu, the acknowledgment of alterity and the acceptance of difference have become foremost ethical claims (Assmann 1996: 99). Appropriating the thought of Goethe, she finds that the emphasis shifts from the embrace of the One to an encounter with the mode of the Two (Assmann 1996: 100). This encounter is marked by awe and surprise, but also by the shrouding of each of the Two as if cloaked in eternal solitude. The question posed in this article is whether Assmann’s viewpoints may enhance a reading of a work from the South African art music repertoire, Hans Huyssen’s Ciacona & Tshikona (2007). Engaging with a broader selection of viewpoints on cultural translation, it is asked whether Assmann’s (1996: 99) notion of otherness is a productive context for mediating a meaningful encounter between cultures and whether, as such, it is relevant to an interpretation of Huyssen’s work. A speculative interpretation of Huyssen’s Ciacona & Tshikona reveals that the work is suggestive of a complex heredity being translated into an ‘impure’ new South African contextuality

An ambiguous partnership of word and tone: media “confrontation” in Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is generally recognised as the greatest work dealing with the theme of Don Juan. It is also extremely complex and raises in an unusually challenging way the significance of the figure of Don Giovanni. This article examines the relevance of Nicholas Cook’s theory regarding the analysis of musical multimedia. Focusing also on the works of Wye Jamison Allanbrook and Leonard Ratner that have a bearing on the topic, it explores Mozart’s ingenious deployment of musical expression, style, and syntax in the opera as primary agents in the construction of human character. Cook’s “contest” model postulates that the projection of Don Giovanni’s character owes its complexity to a remarkably ambiguous partnership of word and tone, resulting in what may be called a “contradiction” of musical and verbal meaning

Roelof Temmingh’s Kantorium: a reflection on suffering and redemption

Roelof Temmingh’s Kantorium (2003/4), a large-scale work for choir, soloists and orchestra, won the prestigious Helgaard Steyn award in 2006. Temmingh commented briefly on his extremely difficult personal circumstances during its creation. Should a composer suffer in order to produce great music? This question raises the wider problem of contextuality, as well as concomitant theoretical/philosophical considerations. Profoundly religious in nature, the work, whose text is in German, was written for a European audience by an Afrikaans-speaking composer in post-apartheid South Africa. It does not embody any clearly overt political values, nor does it attempt to serve as a repository of cultural identity. Moreover, according to the composer, his personal circumstances were not a prerequisite for its creation

African and European voices: speaking ‘in harmony’ as contemporary authenticity

Hans Huyssen, a contemporary South African composer whose social consciousness is an essential facet of his work, stresses the importance of period performance practice as a rejuvenating and significant movement within Western art music. Regarding contemporary music as ‘the period music of our time’, it is his conviction that period performance practice and contemporary composition share the same goal, and moreover that a synthesis of their artistic ideals offers possibilities for responding specifically to the intricate challenges posed by the ‘new’ South African multiculturalism. Recent international debates on the nature of the Early Music Movement and Historically Informed Performance Practice (HIPP) have not yet entered into South African musicological scholarship. Yet Huyssen is firmly convinced that these need to become part both of current local musicology, and of the great diversity in South African art music’s creative, reproductive and reception contexts. This article, in presenting some of the composer’s views on the topic, attempts an appraisal of Huyssen’s stance. It contextualises the relevance of the debate about performance practice for the crucial shifts in cultural consciousness currently taking place within South African art music composition. Of particular interest is its propensity for obscuring distinctions between the past and the present, and for accommodating the diversity in compositional styles that reflect an increasing multiculturalism within the local art-music scene.Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa Volume 5 2008, 19–3

Gospel Hymnody: a living chronicle of suffering and hope - or promiscuous evangelical hustle?

Die doel van hierdie artikel is om die historiese ontwikkeling van gospelmusiek na te gaan aan die hand van die vraag of huidige gekommersialiseerde vorme daarvan steeds die godsdienstige oorsprong en ekspressiewe krag van die historiese model huldig. ‘n Aantal “spirituals” en gospel liedere word aan die hand van metafoor-analise ontleed, waarby die benadering steun op Peter Jackson (2006) se argument dat die metaforiese neerslag van “gebaar” in godsdienstige diskoers op ‘n diepgaande wyse by konstrukte van kulturele oordrag en historiese geheue betrokke is. Die fenomeen van lofprysingsmusiek word kortliks bespreek as invloedryke verskynsel binne Suid- Afrikaanse denominasies waar dit algemeen as “gospelmusiek” bekend staan. Daar word bevind dat hedendaagse gekommersialiseerde vorme die aard van gospelmusiek radikaal verander het, maar dat dit steeds as outentieke uitdrukkings van geloof gesien kan word. Nietemin is die sosiale appèl van historiese swart gospelmusiek nie in hedendaagse gekommersialiseerde voorbeelde aanwesig nie, en sluit die laasgenoemde eerder by die sentimente van “wit” gospelhimnodie aan. Onlangse voorbeelde van gospelkletsrym weerspieël egter onverstaanbaarheid en godsdienstige onsekerheid as tekens van die postmoderne tydsgees. As eietydse manifestasies van hedendaagse religieuse introspeksie, fokus hierdie voorbeelde op die soeke van die individu eerder as op kollektiewe aanbidding