Research Guides: International Music Resources by Country: South Africa

Map of South Africa

Citation (2)

Books

Kwaito's Promise by Gavin Steingo In mid-1990s South Africa, apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela was elected president, and the country's urban black youth developed kwaito--a form of electronic music (redolent of North American house) that came to represent the post-struggle generation. In this book, Gavin Steingo examines kwaito as it has developed alongside the democratization of South Africa over the past two decades. Tracking the fall of South African hope into the disenchantment that often characterizes the outlook of its youth today--who face high unemployment, extreme inequality, and widespread crime--Steingo looks to kwaito as a powerful tool that paradoxically engages South Africa's crucial social and political problems by, in fact, seeming to ignore them.             Politicians and cultural critics have long criticized kwaito for failing to provide any meaningful contribution to a society that desperately needs direction. As Steingo shows, however, these criticisms are built on problematic assumptions about the political function of music. Interacting with kwaito artists and fans, he shows that youth aren't escaping their social condition through kwaito but rather using it to expand their sensory realities and generate new possibilities. Resisting the truism that "music is always political," Steingo elucidates a music that thrives on its radically ambiguous relationship with politics, power, and the state.
Call Number: ML3503.S6 S74 2016
Music and Social Change in South Africa by Kathryn Olsen Music and Social Change in South Africa looks at contemporary maskanda-a folk musical genre distinguished by fast guitar picking and blues-style vocal intonation-against the backdrop of South Africa's history. A performance practice that emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century among Zulu migrant workers, maskanda is strongly associated with young Zulu men's experiences of repression and dislocation during imperial and, more particularly, apartheid rule. Working closely with translated song lyrics and musical notation-and applying musical and socio-political analysis to this music and its cultural context-Olsen argues that maskanda offers insight into how the post-apartheid ideal of social transformation is experienced by those who were marginalized for most of the twentieth century.  Drawing on a decade of research, Olsen strives to demystify the Zulu part of contemporary experience in South Africa and to reveal some of the complexities of the social, economic, and political landscape of contemporary South Africa.
Call Number: ML3760 .O44 2014
Soweto Blues by Gwen Ansell A major new contribution to the study of African music, Soweto Blues tells the remarkable story of how jazz became a key part of South Africa's struggles in the 20th Century, and provides a fascinating overview of the ongoing links between African and American styles of music. Ansell illustrates how jazz occupies a unique place in South African music. Through interviews with hundreds of musicians, she pieces together a vibrant narrative history, bringing to life the early politics of resistance, the atmosphere of illegal performance spaces, the global anti-apartheid influence of Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, as well as the post-apartheid upheavals in the national broadcasting and recording industries. Featuring an introduction by Abdullah Ibrahim, Soweto Blues is a fitting tribute to the power of music to inspire optimism and self-expression in the darkest of times. FROM THE INTRODUCTION "This book tells of the journeys-in both directions-between village and city, between saxophone and cellphone, between Langa and Cape Town, between America and Africa that, over the past century, have created the unique sound dubbed 'South African Jazz'. The term itself is contentious. As in America, some politically-aware South African players dislike the term for its social connotations. 'The term jazz was used to describe the music of brothels. It was simply another way of denigrating the creativity of African musicians,' says percussionist and composer Ndikho Xaba. And, as in the rest of the world, many musical explorers resent the constraints of an externally defined musical box. In South Africa, apartheid overlaid the word with other, more sinister connotations. In some critical and ethno-musicological contexts, the music was evaluated by the degree of its American-ness and denigrated as impure when it employed African idioms in composition or playing. Also under apartheid, the white authorities found it unacceptable that black musicians should be acknowledged as capable of playing such 'sophisticated' music. And so symbolic annihilation became part of the hegemonic staging and broadcasting of jazz. Playing behind a screen at Cape Town City Hall while a white musician mimed his notes, reedman Winston Mankunku Ngozi was billed as Winston Mann. In radio broadcasts, pianist Tony Schilder heard himself re-christened Peter Evans, and trumpeter Johnny Mekoa became Johnny Keen."
Call Number: ML3509.S6 A57 2004

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music-South Africa

South Africa
Read more about South African music!

Online Resources

International Library of African Music
This website has been set up to host the ILAM Digital Archive. The Digital Archive is a work in progress and is being added to and developed over time.
South African Music Archive
The South African Music Archive Project aims to create an online resource on South African music and associated cultural heritage, so as to promote multidisciplinary research in the field of popular music and culture.

This site currently contains approximately 13,000 audio samples and associated metadata from 5 music collections.
South African Music Database
Started in 1997 as an initiative of Making Music Productions, the site at first carried details of artists who had a working relation with MMP. Subsequently, the site has included biographies of an increasing array of South African and African musicians - a priority has been to profile artists who were previously marginalised in much of the media.

Streaming Video: Mkhwenyana (Hochzeitslied/Chant Nuptial)

Flag of South Africa

The Republic of South Africa occupies the southern extremity of the African mainland. After 1948 the National Party introduced the doctrine of apartheid, which led to white supremacy. In 1990 the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC) was legalized, and its leader, Nelson Mandela, was released from prison. All remaining apartheid laws were repealed in 1991. The ANC won the majority of votes cast in legislative elections in 1994, and Mandela was elected President. Mandela formally retired from active politics following elections in 1999, at which the ANC was returned to power, and Thabo Mbeki became President. In September 2008 Mbeki resigned and, following legislative elections in April 2009, was replaced by Jacob Zuma. The ANC retained its legislative majority in elections held in May 2014. In February 2018 Zuma, who had been embroiled in a number of corruption scandals, resigned from the presidency and was replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa. The administrative capital is Pretoria, the legislative capital is Cape Town, and the judicial capital is Bloemfontein. There are 11 official languages.

Citations (3 and 4)

South African Music (Grove Music Online)

Nguni Music

Nguni is the name applied collectively to the Zulu, Swazi and Xhosa peoples of south-eastern Africa, the largest indigenous group in the country. Their languages and cultures are closely related, and their traditional music is more vocal than instrumental, polyphonic dance-songs being particularly important.

Strange as it may seem for an African people, the Nguni have no history of drums or percussion ensembles as a basis for their communal dancing. Dancers always sang their own dance music, and although ankle rattles and hand-clapping were sometimes added, the basis of their collective music-making was the unaccompanied dance-song. War-shields were sometimes used percussively by warriors in earlier days, and oxhides were beaten at Xhosa boys’ initiation ceremonies. Drums were not, however, entirely unknown. Medicine men sometimes used them, and a type of friction drum was employed at girls’ coming-of-age ceremonies among the Zulu. Improvised drums and wooden clappers are now used in certain neo-traditional art forms, such as modern Zulu ingoma dancing. Essentially, however, it is clear that in the past the Nguni have specialized in developing vocal polyphony rather than instrumental ensembles or rhythmic complexity.

A striking feature of traditional Nguni choral dance-songs is the principle of non-simultaneous entry of voice parts, and the intricacy of their polyphonic interaction. There are always at least two voice parts with different starting-points; their phrases frequently overlap, but there is usually no common cadence point where the parts achieve a combined resolution. Instead, each voice returns to its starting-point as in a round (though the parts are not identical), and the process is continually repeated. Variations commonly occur in the leading voice part, while the chorus maintains a constant ostinato. The alignment of the interacting parts is fundamental in such music. This concept is felt so intrinsically that an individual singer, if asked to demonstrate a traditional choral song, will not merely render a single voice part but will always attempt to present the essentials of at least two parts, the leader and the chorus, by jumping from one to the other whenever a new phrase entry is due.

Citation (5)

International Music Resources by Country: South Africa