The World of South African Music

The World of South African Music

A Reader

Introduced, compiled, and edited by

Christine Lucia

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PRESS

 The World of South African Music: A Reader, introduced, compiled and edited by Christine Lucia

This book first published 2005 by

Cambridge Scholars Press

15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2005 by Christine Lucia and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN 1904303366
To Michael
 Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements........................................................................... xvii
Introduction ........................................................................................................... xxi

PART 1: Imperialism to Modernism.................................................................... 1

A Journey to the Booshuanas

John Barrow ............................................................................................................. 1

Tribal Life & Customs of the Xhosa

Ludwig Alberti ......................................................................................................... 3

Travels in Southern Africa

John Barrow ............................................................................................................. 5

Music in the Cape

Christian Latrobe...................................................................................................... 7

Songs of the Zoolas

Andrew Smith ........................................................................................................ 13

Music for the Settler Jubilee

Robert Godlonton................................................................................................... 15

Preface to a Solfa Tune-book

Christopher Birkett................................................................................................. 18

Music in the Northern Cape and Bechuanaland

Andrew Anderson .................................................................................................. 19

Ntsikana, the Story of an African Hymn

John Bokwe............................................................................................................ 21

Wings of Song
J.W. Househam ...................................................................................................... 26

African Music
Reuben Caluza........................................................................................................ 29

The Gora, a Stringed-wind Instrument

Percival Kirby ........................................................................................................ 32
viii Contents

African Music in South Africa

Frieda Bokwe Matthews......................................................................................... 39

PART 2: Apartheid and Musicology .................................................................. 41

A New Era for Music and Musicians

Edward Dunn ......................................................................................................... 41

The State of Folk Music in Bantu Africa

Hugh Tracey........................................................................................................... 44

Columbia Dance Hall, Marabastad

Ezekiel Mphahlele.................................................................................................. 48

Ocarina Music of the Venda

John Blacking......................................................................................................... 50

King Kong
Mona de Beer ......................................................................................................... 57

Africa, Music, and Show Business

Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim ............................................................................. 60

Tonal Organisation in Venda Initiation Music

John Blacking......................................................................................................... 62

Reminiscences of Healdtown
Joseph Scotch Coko ............................................................................................... 66

Princess Constance Magogo

David Rycroft......................................................................................................... 72

Evidence of Stylistic Continuity in Zulu ‘Town’ Music

David K. Rycroft .................................................................................................... 71

Aspects of Afrikaans Music

J.J.A. van der Walt and G.G. Cillié ........................................................................ 90

Wait a Minim and King Kong

Ralph Trewhela ...................................................................................................... 93

The Correlation of Folk and Art Music among African Composers

Khabi Mngoma....................................................................................................... 97
 Contents ix

The FAK and Afrikaans Music

W.S.J. Grobler...................................................................................................... 106

The Music of Ntsikana

David Dargie ........................................................................................................ 108

Highbreaks: A Taste of Marabi in the 1920s and ’30s

David Coplan ....................................................................................................... 115

Christian Schubart and the Cape

Anna Bender-Brink .............................................................................................. 121

Opera Houses in South Africa

Jaques Malan........................................................................................................ 125

Chris McGregor
Christopher Ballantine.......................................................................................... 129

Arnold van Wyk and Nagmusiek

Howard Ferguson ................................................................................................. 132

PART 3: Music and Social Transformation..................................................... 137

My Story
Miriam Makeba ................................................................................................... 137

The Songs of A.A. Kumalo: A Study in Nguni and Western

Musical Syncretism
Bongani Mthethwa ............................................................................................... 139

From Latvia to South Africa

Lucy Faktor-Kreitzer............................................................................................ 146

Xhosa Overtone Singing

David Dargie ........................................................................................................ 151

The Royal School of Church Music in South Africa

Barry Smith .......................................................................................................... 155

Tiger Dance, Terukuttu, Tango, and Tchaikovsky: A Politico-

Cultural View of Indian South African Music before 1948
Melveen Jackson .................................................................................................. 158
x Contents

But We Sing
Alfred Temba Qabula........................................................................................... 169

Reuben T. Caluza and Early Popular Music

Veit Erlmann ........................................................................................................ 171

Music and Emancipation

Christopher Ballantine.......................................................................................... 180

Hindu Devotional Music in Durban

Sallyann Goodall .................................................................................................. 191

Cape Malay Music

Desmond Desai .................................................................................................... 198

The Guitar in Zulu Maskanda Tradition

Nollene Davies ..................................................................................................... 206

Basotho Mbube
Robin Wells.......................................................................................................... 215

Basotho Performance Aesthetics: Sefela and Shebeen Songs

David Coplan ....................................................................................................... 219

PART 4: A New South Africa ........................................................................... 230

Isicathamiya in the 1970s-90s

Veit Erlmann ........................................................................................................ 230

Indigenous Instruments
Andrew Tracey..................................................................................................... 237

Songs of the Venda Murundu School

Kaiser Netshitangani ............................................................................................ 244

The Art of Metamorphosis – Or the Ju|’hoan Conception

of Plurivocality
Emmanuelle Olivier ............................................................................................. 249

Analysing Kevin Volans’ White Man Sleeps

Justin Clarkson-Fletcher et al ............................................................................... 257
 Contents xi

Kwela
Lara Allen............................................................................................................. 266

Pedi Women’s Kiba Performance

Deborah James ..................................................................................................... 271

Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town

Denis-Constant Martin ......................................................................................... 278

Nazarite Hymns
Carol Muller ......................................................................................................... 284

Stefans Grové: Sonate op Afrika-motiewe

Stephanus Muller.................................................................................................. 288

Abdullah Ibrahim and the Uses of Memory

Christine Lucia ..................................................................................................... 297

Vocal Jive and Political Identity during the 1950s

Lara Allen............................................................................................................. 302

John Knox Bokwe and Black Choralism

Grant Olwage ....................................................................................................... 309

The Globalisation of South African Music

Martin Scherzinger............................................................................................... 319

References ............................................................................................................ 324

List of Sources...................................................................................................... 348
Index..................................................................................................................... 361
 List of Musical Examples (original source in brackets)
Ex 1 Sounds produced on the lesiba, simplest type of tune (Kirby 1934, 190)
Ex 2 Sounds produced on the lesiba, more developed type of tune (Kirby 1934,
190)
Ex 3 Melodies produced by the most skilful lesiba players (Kirby 1934,191)
Ex 4 Another type of melody produced by a lesiba player (Kirby 1934,191)
Ex 5 Fingering and approximate tones produced on two ocarinas (Blacking 1959,
17)
Ex 6 Transcriptions of four duets played on two ocarinas (Blacking 1959, 20-21)
Ex 7 Harmonic framework and root progressions of four duets (Blacking 1959, 23)
Ex 8 Harmonic and tonal progressions of tshikona and khulo (Blacking 1970, 87)
Ex 9 ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ (transcr. C. Lucia)
Ex 10 Ugubhu harmonics (Rycroft 1977, 223)
Ex 11 Umakhweyana harmonics and resultant scale (Rycroft 1977, 223)
Ex 12 Transcribed opening of song ‘I shall go wandering, mother’ (Rycroft 1977,
229)
Ex 13 Transcription of violin song ‘Mus’ ukuzidumaza makoti’ (Rycroft 1977, 250-
251)
Ex 14 Antiphonal form reconstructed from the previous song (Rycroft 1977, 253)
Ex 15 Scheme of parts in ‘Mus’ ukuzidumaza makoti’ (Rycroft 1977, 254)
Ex 16 Magaliesburgse Aandlied arr. G.G. Cillié (FAK 1979, 614)
Ex 17 ‘U Ea Kae’ by J. Mohapeloa (Morija Publishing)
Ex 18 Ntsikana-Bokwe ‘Great Hymn’ transcr. D. Dargie (Dargie 1982, 9)
Ex 19 Ntsikana-Bokwe ‘Round Hymn’ transcr. D. Dargie (Dargie 1982, 9)
Ex 20 S.T. Bokwe’s ‘Great Hymn’ melody transcr. D. Dargie (Dargie 1982, 9)
Ex 21 S.T. Bokwe’s ‘Great Hymn’ full harmony transcr. D. Dargie (Dargie 1982,
23)
Ex 22 Four variants of wedding song ‘Ulo Thixo omkulu’ transcr. D. Dargie
(Dargie 1982, 25)
Ex 23 Reconciling the wedding song and J.K. Bokwe’s ‘Great Hymn’ (Dargie
1982, 11)
Ex 24 ‘Ntsikana Bell’ transcr. D. Dargie (Dargie 1982, 22)
Ex 25 ‘Ntsikana Creator of Life’ transcr. D. Dargie (Dargie 1982, 22)
Ex 26 ‘Highbreaks’ by A. Lebona transcr. L. Ament and D. Coplan (Coplan 1985,
259-61)
Ex 27 Four germinal motives of Nagmusiek (1st movt) by A. van Wyk (Ferguson
1987, 21)
Ex 28 Opening melody of 3rd movt (Ferguson 1987, 22)
Ex 29 New theme of 3rd movt (Ferguson 1987, 22)
Ex 30 New motive of 6th movt (Ferguson 1987, 22)
Ex 31 ‘Baba Wethu Ophezulu’ by A.A. Kumalo transcr. B. Mthethwa (Shuter and
Shooter 1971, 5-6)
 List of Examples xiii

Ex 32 ‘Ordinary umngqokolo’ showing fundamentals and overtones (Dargie 1988,

59)
Ex 33 ‘Umngqokolo ngomqangi’ showing fundamentals and overtones (Dargie
1988, 58)
Ex 34 ‘Silusapho lwase Afrika’ by R. Caluza (Lovedale Press)
Ex 35 Opening of ‘Ixeghwana’ by R. Caluza (Erlmann 1991, 124)
Ex 36 Bhajan ‘Kṛṣnạ tārī moralī mane bhāna bhūlawe’ (Goodall 1991, 413)
Ex 37 Adhdhaan (Desai 1993, 318)
Ex 38 Qiraat ‘Al Fatigah’ (Desai 1993, 319)
Ex 39 Pudjie (Desai 1993, 323)
Ex 40 Djieker (Desai 1993, 324)
Ex 41 Nederlandslied ‘Skoonste Minnaar’ (Desai 1993, 325)
Ex 42 Nederlandslied ‘Rosa’ (Desai 1993, 327)
Ex 43 Kaseda ‘Salaam’ (Desai 1993, 327)
Ex 44 Samman dhikr (Desai 1993, 329)
Ex 45 Transcription of a section of the song ‘Incema’ by S. Ngcobo (Davies 1994,
126-127)
Ex 46 Scale encountered in ugubhu and in other Zulu songs (Davies 1994, 126-
131)
Ex 47 Jo! Tlapa la thella Hee! Tlapa la thella (Wells 1994, 221-224)
Ex 48 Male sefela sung by Rabonne Mariti (Coplan 1994, 211)
Ex 49 Women’s shebeen song, ‘Peka’ (Coplan 1994, 213-215)
Ex 50 Pitch-class ‘A’ for White Man Sleeps ‘First Dance’ (Clarkson Fletcher et al [1998],
10)
Ex 51 Right hand part of harpsichord 2 in White Man Sleeps ‘First Dance’ (Clarkson
Fletcher et al [1998], 11)
Ex 52 Units for B:5 right-hand part of harpsichord 2 (Clarkson Fletcher et al [1998],
11)
Ex 53 Extract from Ballantine’s transcription of ‘Khunofu’ (Clarkson Fletcher et al
[1998], 11)
Ex 54 Emulation of fundamentals and overtones in White Man Sleeps ‘Second
Dance’ (Clarkson Fletcher et al [1998], 11)
Ex 55 Chord Sequence of White Man Sleeps ‘Third Dance’ (Clarkson Fletcher et al
[1998], 14)
Ex 56 Sonate op Afrika-motiewe, Finale 2, violin, bars 7-10 (Muller 2000, 125)
Ex 57 Sonate op Afrika-motiewe, Notturno 1, violin and piano, bars 1-6 (Muller
2000, 128-29)
Ex 58 Sonate op Afrika-motiewe, Notturno 2, violin and piano, bars 1-7 (Muller
2000, 128-29)
Ex 59 ‘Mamma’ by Abdullah Ibrahim transcr. C. Lucia (Lucia 2002, 132)
Ex 60 Vocal part of John Knox Bokwe’s ‘The Heavenly Guide’ (Olwage 2003,
144)
Ex 61 Opening of J. McGranahan’s ‘That will be Heaven for Me’ (Olwage 2003,
145)
xiv List of Examples

Ex 62 Musical Rhetoric in T.C. O’Kane’s ‘Go Work in My Vineyard’ (Olwage

2003, 148)
Ex 63 John Knox Bokwe’s ‘Plea for Africa’ (Cory Library, Rhodes University)
 List of Illustrations (artist or copyright owner in brackets)
Fig 1 View of a Kaffir settlement on the South Coast of Africa. Chevalier Howen
and Jacob Smies, engraved by L. Portman c1800-1810 (Parliament of the
Republic of South Africa, Acc. No. 1863)
Fig 2 The church at Groenekloof/Mamre (C. Lucia)
Fig 3 The church at Gnadenthal/Genadendal (C. Lucia)
Fig 4 Organ loft of the Dutch Lutheran Church Strand St. Cape Town (Museum
Africa)
Fig 5 St George’s Church Grahamstown c1830 (Museum Africa)
Fig 6 Original title pages of Ntsikana, the Story of an African Hymn (Cory Library,
Rhodes University)
Fig 7 Methodist Church Albert St. Johannesburg c1926 (Museum Africa)
Fig 8 Ends of Hottentot gora with tuning-peg (South African Museum)
Fig 9 Korana Hottentot playing upon the gora (P.R. Kirby)
Fig 10 Sotho (Bas.) playing upon the lesiba (P.R. Kirby)
Fig 11 Edward Dunn addressing a meeting c1950 (Museum Africa)
Fig 12 Diagrams of two Venda ocarinas drawn to scale (J. Blacking)
Fig 13 Miriam Makeba and Nathan Mdledle in King Kong 1959 (Bailey’s African
History Archives)
Fig 14 Harmonic and tonal progressions of tshikona and khulo (J. Blacking)
Fig 15 Certificate of the London Tonic Sol-fa College 1898 (Museum Africa)
Fig 16 Southern Zulu work-song ‘We Majola’ (D. Rycroft)
Fig 17 Zulu multi-part song ‘I shall go wandering, mother’ (D. Rycroft)
Fig 18 Mr Joseph Sikwaza (D. Rycroft)
Fig 19 The original cast recording of Wait A Minim (Bailey’s African History
Archives)
Fig 20 The Princes Theatre London 1961 (Bailey’s African History Archives)
Fig 21 Accordion and concertina played by Mary and Percy Monri 1939 (Museum
Africa)
Fig 22 Circular diagram of ‘Highbreaks’ after Rycroft (D. Coplan)
Fig 23 Manuscript of ‘Erstes Kaplied: Abschiedslied’ (A. Bender-Brink)
Fig 24 Manuscript of ‘Zweytes Kaplied: Fur den Trupp’ (A. Bender-Brink)
Fig 25 Standard Theatre Johannesburg 1890s (Museum Africa)
Fig 26 Van Riebeck Festival celebrations Cape Town 1952 (Museum Africa)
Fig 27 Cape Town Promenade Pier c1900 (Museum Africa)
Fig 28 Poster of Gems from the Operas (L. Faktor-Kreitzer)
Fig 29 Joseph Gabriels and May Abrahamse 1962 (L. Faktor-Kreitzer)
Fig 30 Nowayilethi Mbizweni performing umngqokolo ngomqangi (D. Dargie)
Fig 31 View of St George’s Cathedral by Thomas Bowler (© Iziko William Fehr
Collection, Cape Town)
Fig 32 The Lawrence Trio 1928 (Lawrence family private collection)
Fig 33 A.G. Pillay c1952 (SABC)
Fig 34 The Red Hot Jazz Pirates Band 1935 (Lawrence family private collection)
xvi List of Illustrations

Fig 35 Fox Movietone making a travelogue at Mt. Edgecombe (S.S. Singh

Collection)
Fig 36 Maya Devi and the Ranjeni Orchestra 1941 (M. Devi private collection)
Fig 37 Kalaivani Orchestra Pietermaritzburg 1948 (A.G. Pillay private collection)
Fig 38 The Merry Blackbirds in 1937 or 1938 (P. Rezant private collection)
Fig 39 The Merry Blackbirds in the early 1940s (P. Rezant private collection)
Fig 40 The Jazz Maniacs, in a photograph taken between 1934 and 1939 (C.
Ballantine private collection)
Fig 41 Division and tuning of maskanda guitar strings (N. Davies)
Fig 42 Nofinishi Dywili playing the uhadi (D. Dargie)
Fig 43 Tsonga (Shangaan) tshihwana players (ILAM, Rhodes University)
Fig 44 Pedi moropa drummers (ILAM, Rhodes University)
Fig 45 Zulu umtshingo player (ILAM, Rhodes University)
Fig 46 Pedi dipela player (ILAM, Rhodes University)
Fig 47 Transition from the primary basic version in the principle tessitura to the
others (E. Olivier)
Fig 48 Binary form of White Man Sleeps ‘First Dance’ (J. Clarkson Fletcher et al.)
Fig 49 Pitch-class ‘A’ configured for White Man Sleeps ‘First Dance’ (J. Clarkson
Fletcher et al.)
Fig 50 Relationship of parts to original dances in White Man Sleeps ‘First Dance’
(J. Clarkson Fletcher et al.)
Fig 51 Sections of White Man Sleeps ‘Third Dance’ (J. Clarkson Fletcher et al.)
Fig 52 Pennywhistlers (J. Schadeberg)
Fig 53 The fingering of B flat major on a B flat penny whistle (L. Allen)
Fig 54 Rural women singers performing to greet their urban visitors (S. Mofekeng)
Fig 55 SK Alex women: drummer and solo singer in performance (S. Mofekeng)
Fig 56 The Pennypinchers All Stars marching on the Green Point Stadium track 2
Jan 1999 (M. Matthews)
Fig 57 Close-up of Pennypinchers All Stars showing instrumentalists (M.
Matthews)
Fig 58 32-beat cycle of ‘Ngamemeza ebusuku nemini’ (C. Muller)
 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the product of several years’ work and many individuals and
institutions helped in its production, so the first thanks go to librarians in the
following libraries: Eleanor Bonnar Music Library, University of KwaZulu Natal;
Music Library, Rhodes University; Cory Library for Historical Research, Rhodes
University; International Library of African Music; South African National
Library, Cape Town; The British Library; The Pendlebury Library of Music,
University of Cambridge; Library of the University of South Africa.
The following people assisted in a host of small but significant ways, both in
developing the concept of the book and in its practical implementation:
Lara Allen; Rob Allingham; Christopher Ballantine; Max Peter Baumann;
Anna Bender; Kathy Brooks; David Bunn; Joseph Caluza; Anriette Chorn; Bill
Cottam; Giselle Dalziel; Dave Dargie; Nollene Davies; Desmond Desai; Zureena
Desai; Muzikayise Dlamini; Vera Dubin; Elizabeth Dunstan; Veit Erlmann;
Graham Gilfillan; Steven Gill; Stanley, Sue and Adam Glasser; Sallyann Goodall;
John Hopkins; Melveen Jackson; Deborah James; Lucy Kreitzer; Valmont Layne;
E.T. Lengoasa; Robert Letellier; Dave Leverton; Winfried Lüdemann; Pierre
Malan; Jacques Malan; Denis-Constant Martin; James May; Edward Mngadi;
Lindumuzi Mngoma; Mavis Mpola; Carol Muller; Stephanus Muller; Josephine
Naidoo; Andy Nercessian and the staff at Cambridge Scholars Press; Michael
Nixon; Elizabeth Oehrle; Elizabeth Potts; Julie Poyser; Nishlyn Ramanna; Zahida
Sirkhotte; Ari Sitas; David Smith; Kathy Standford; Michael Titlestad; Andrew
Tracey; Liz Welsh; Stuart White; colleagues in the Wits School of Arts.
A particular debt of gratitude is owed to Michael Levy for advice over
copyright permissions, Grant Olwage for research assistance, Clare Loveday for
help with proofing, and Roger Parker for invaluable comments on the Introduction.
I acknowledge financial assistance from the University of KwaZulu Natal,
Rhodes University, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the National Research
Foundation in Pretoria, and particularly thank The Master and Fellows of St John’s
College, Cambridge for an Overseas Visiting Scholarship in 2001-2002 that
enabled me to complete much of the research.
Above all I thank authors and copyright holders of extracts used in this book
for allowing me to use their valuable intellectual property. Sometimes cuts were
made in their work, indicated by ellipses or square brackets (ellipses in authors’
quotations are however their own). The sign […]indicates a longer cut than those
shown by a simple ellipsis. In a few cases the extract has been edited or shortened.
Most of the original musical examples or illustrations are reproduced here but it
has not always been possible to find them, and so alternative or additional ones
have been used. Because they have been numbered consecutively throughout the
Reader their original numbering will change, as will references to them in authors’
(original) texts. The same principle of uniformity was used for references and
xviii

sources, the ‘List of Sources’ at the end of the book being a composite one drawn
from all extracts (this also has the advantage of avoiding duplication). All original
formats have been standardized as far as possible (for ease of reading) but original
spellings are retained; and errors or omissions in the originals have where possible
been corrected.
Original spellings have mostly been kept in the main text too, but many aspects
of punctuation and referencing style have been standardized. Original
footnotes/endnotes are retained but all are now placed at the end of the book in
chronological sequence as endnotes. The Harvard system of referencing in the text
has been used even where footnote were used in the original, also to make the flow
of reading easier. My modifications or additions to endnotes as Editor are shown in
square brackets, and I have also added a few explanatory ones. Where original
authors did not give adequate information in their references (such as page
numbers) I have generally not made up for this. All musical examples have been
re-done in Sibelius, as originals were extremely varied in style and quality.
The labour of producing this book during the past two years was shared with
my husband Michael Blake, who not only typeset all the musical examples but also
undertook a thousand tasks on my behalf in the process of securing republication
rights. Most important, he rescued the remnants of my flagging spirit more times
than I dare remember. This book is lovingly dedicated to him.
While every possible effort has been taken to locate the copyright owners of
text, visual, or musical material used in this book, it has not been possible in all
cases. The publishers welcome any additional information in this regard.

Ludwig Alberti 1968 A.A. Balkema;

Lara Allen 1999 Ashgate Publishing Ltd.;
Lara Allen 2003 The Society for Ethnomusicology;
Christopher Ballantine 1991 Taylor & Francis Ltd.;
Christopher Ballantine 1997 Christopher Ballantine;
Anna Bender-Brink 1986 Musicological Society of Southern Africa;
John Blacking 1959 International Library of African Music, Rhodes University,
Grahamstown;
John Blacking 1970 The Society for Ethnomusicology;
Reuben Caluza 1931 Courtesy of Hampton University Archives;
G.G. Cillié 1979 The Human Sciences Research Council;
Clarkson Fletcher et al. 1998 Musicological Society of Southern Africa;
David Coplan 1985 David Coplan;
David Coplan 1994 The University of Chicago Press;
David Dargie 1982 Musicological Society of Southern Africa;
David Dargie 1988 David Dargie;
Nollene Davies 1994 Florian Noetzel Edition;
 xix

Mona de Beer 1960 A. Glasser and S. Glasser;

Desmond Desai 1993 University of Natal;
Edward Dunn 1949 The Outspan;
Veit Erlmann 1991 by The University of Chicago Press;
Veit Erlmann 1996 by The University of Chicago Press;
Lucy Faktor-Kreitzer 1988 Lucy Faktor-Kreitzer;
Howard Ferguson 1987 Peter Klatzow;
Sallyann Goodall Musicological Society of Southern Africa;
W.S.J Grobler 1982 The Human Sciences Research Council;
Melveen Jackson 1989 Florian Noetzel Edition;
Deborah James 1999 The International Africa Institute, London;
Percival Kirby 1968 The Estate of the late Percival Kirby;
Christine Lucia 2002 The British Forum for Ethnomusicology;
Miriam Makeba with James Hall 1988 Miriam Makeba;
Jacques Malan 1986 The Human Sciences Research Council;
Denis-Constant Martin 1999 New Africa Books;
Frieda Bowke Matthews 1935 V.J. Matthews;
Khabi Mngoma 1981 International Library of African Music, Rhodes University;
Richard Moyer 1973 Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes
University;
Es’kia Mphahlele 1958 Es’kia Mphahlele;
Bongani Mthethwa 1988 International Library of African Music, Rhodes
University;
Carol Muller 1999 by The University of Chicago Press;
Stephanus Muller 2000 Literator;
Kaiser Netshitangani 1997 International Library of African Music, Rhodes
University;
Emmanuelle Olivier 1997 InfoSource and the University of the Western Cape
Institute for Historical Research;
Grant Olwage 2003 Grant Olwage;
Alfred Qabula 1989 by National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa;
David Rycroft 1975/76 International Library of African Music, Rhodes
University;
David Rycroft 1977 Bonnie Wade;
Martin Scherzinger 2004 Cambridge University Press;
Andrew Smith 1975 A.A. Balkema;
Barry Smith 1988/89 Musicological Society of Southern Africa;
Andrew Tracey 1996 University of Natal;
Hugh Tracey 1954 International Library of African Music, Rhodes University;
Ralph Trewhela 1981 Paul Trewhela and Beverley Naidoo;
xx

J.J.A. van der Walt 1979 The Human Sciences Research Council;
Robin Wells 1994 Morija Museum and Archives.

Additional illustration permissions

Bailey’s African History Archives; Christopher Ballantine; Mrs Solomon Cele;

Cory Library, Rhodes University; David Dargie; Lucy Faktor-Kreitzer; Gallo
(Africa) Ltd; International Library of African Music; Melvin Matthews; Santu
Mofekeng; Museum Africa; Jürgen Schadeberg; Parliament of the Republic of
South Africa; Times Media Collection; Iziko William Fehr Collection.

Additional musical score permissions

‘Silusapho lwase Afrika’ by Reuben Caluza Lovedale Press (Pty) Ltd;

‘Magaliesburgse Aandlied’ arr. G.G. Cillié Federasie van Afrikaanse
Kultuurvereniginge; ‘U Ea Kea?’ by J. Mohapeloa Morija Sesotho Book Depot
and Publishers; ‘Kṛṣnạ Tārī Moralī Mane Bhāna Bhūlawe’ transcr. S. Goodall
The University of Durban-Westville; ‘Baba Wethu Ophezulu’ by A.A. Kumalo
Shuter and Shooter.
 INTRODUCTION
Reading South African music

We face the challenge of creating a unique South African musicology, [and]

have the opportunity, that other nations can envy, of building our own
monuments in this ‘last Paradise’ (Malan 1983, 34).i

For any ethnomusicologist interested in the music of the slums, streets,

harbours, and mines of Africa, South Africa constitutes something of an
Eldorado (Erlmann 1991, 1).

The subject of this book, South African music, tells many stories. It is a work of
meta-fiction, a narration of voices constantly interrupting each other with
diversions and contradictions, vying to construct itself from the remnants of a
remote or recent past in much the same way that we as human subjects have the
tendency (as Umberto Eco once noted) to construct our lives around the narrative
conceit of the novel (1995, 131). One might argue that the stories narrated here are
not fictional but infused with tangible reality through their historical, geographical,
generic or cultural location: the story of African traditional music, for example, or
the story of Afrikaans song, marabi piano, or Zulu choralism. Perhaps, even, there
is only one subject told in many different ways according to the writer’s
perspective.
The quotations that head this Introduction tell of two such perspectives: in the
case of Afrikaner musicologist Jacques Malan writing in the late 1970s and early
1980s, South Africa was a paradise, a tabula rasa waiting for the possibilities of a
new kind of (white) critical inscription. For German-born ethnomusicologist Veit
Erlmann ten years later the country was ‘something of’ an Eldorado, provided one
was prepared to explore the byways of the (black) working-class poor. However
different, each view is underscored by an alluring notion of paradise, a notion that
comes not from the language of musicology or ethnomusicology but from the
world of fiction.
Taking this view of the world of South African music as a play of narratives, a
musical biography of a country, the first question to ask perhaps, is how does the
story begin? Whether told through academic discourses in musicology or
ethnomusicology, or related discourses of a more creative kind such as
autobiography, news feature, travel journal, lecture, poetry - all represented in this
Reader - there is a tendency to want to evoke a certain myth of origin. Such myths
have been present throughout the written history of music in South Africa, a
history that goes back to travel accounts of the fifteenth century, tales of miracle
and wonder. Since South Africa’s political changes began in 1994 however there
has been a shift towards reclaiming the more immediate past, reimagining it and
xxii

even seeming to romanticise its darkest days. The musical life of the apartheid
township of Sophiatown of the 1950s, for example, is retold repeatedly in current
films, television series and books as if this was a golden age. A slightly different
example of reinvention is the alignment of Western classical music with new
bedfellows. South Africa’s ‘First International Classical Music Festival’ (known
locally as the ICMF) was held in Johannesburg and Pretoria in 2001 to show such
alignment bringing together (according to a media release) “the widely acclaimed
English Chamber Orchestra, Xhosa-woman overtone singing, Schubert lieder [sic],
African drum-singing [and] the ever-popular Ladysmith Black Mambazo” (quoted
in Ansell 2003).
In this kind of narration the entire history of orchestras, symphony concerts,
recitals, music festivals, competitions, arts councils, censored state radio and
television and the unimaginable damage of unequal education and cultural
opportunities that drove this Western hegemonic order along under grand
apartheid (and before that British colonial rule), are here erased - with the stroke of
a pen - as if they had never existed. The origins are remade and classical music
reborn with a new link forged between the classical (Schubert and the ECO), the
traditional (Xhosa-woman and African ‘drum-singing’), and the popular
(Ladysmith Black Mambazo). With such reinvention of the past, music has fallen,
to use Lacan’s term, out of the imaginary register into the symbolic. What under
Western hegemonic discourse before 1994 was just ‘music’ because it was music
of the dominant minority has, reasserting itself under the pressure of post-apartheid
South Africa, renamed itself (Classical Music) and redrawn its boundaries
(International).
Behind this recent transformation of music by the wand of classicism, however,
lie many other historical moments similarly driven by the imperative of changing
ideologies, whose complex relationships preclude the very notion of a single
narrative of South African music. The monolithic Europe-driven cultural
institutions of twentieth-century South Africa so clouded the view of this plurality
for the past 100 years that, until 1994 Western music seemed indeed to constitute a
homogenous block, supporting the Nationalist edifice both metaphorically (through
legislation) and literally (the State Theatre in Pretoria for example). Now South
African music sees itself differently, as part of a set of interlocked histories, a
patchwork of collective initiatives and individual efforts. In this optimistic view
South Africa is Eldorado: flowing with gold not only musically but also (as this
book itself shows) in terms of critical readings of that music - biographies,
autobiographies, dissertations, articles, books - telling their stories through the eyes
of composers, critics, performers, institutions of all kinds, even through the
musical lens of small towns.ii
Such a radical rethink inevitably begins to show more and more clearly that the
notion of a South African musical territory and set of practices before the first
significant European settlement in the seventeenth century, before colonialism,
 xxiii

urbanisation, apartheid or globalisation, with their attendant musical impositions -

Dutch psalms, Wesleyan hymns, German folksong, British music education,
American jazz, house music - is fictitious; the precondition for its existence being
precisely the absence that cannot be imagined. There is no timeless and
unproblematic past where cultural contact never occurred. This myth of origin,
persisting in South African discourse even to the present day and clung to by many
overseas visitors, hints at a freedom that once existed and might somehow come
again: once a South African liberation myth with political teeth, now reinvented as
an African Renaissance myth - it remains nonetheless a myth.
There is also no continuum in these stories - this Reader is not a ‘music history’
despite the way the readings are arranged chronologically - but there is a sense of
both continuity and discontinuity in these pages moving inexorably towards the
present moment. A definition of ‘South African’ in the title is linked to political
history, of course, and for the purposes of this book it means music that exists or
once existed within the current political borders of South Africa. Constraints of
time and place are daunting in a region that has several centuries of recorded
history, approximately 43 million inhabitants, covers an area of 1, 400 000 square
kilometres and is bordered by six countries (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland) with whom it has a shared cultural history
and some shared languages. Further, South Africa has a terrain and climate almost
as varied as Argentina or Australia, an ecological multi-environment that has
profoundly shaped the development of its indigenous musical instruments and
practices (see Tracey 1996). It has eleven official languages and many religious
practices, including more than 200 indigenous Christian churches ranging from a
few hundred to millions of members (the Zionist Church for example). Its music
has been affected by successive waves of acculturation, some brutal, all causing
major cultural transformations and retransformations.

Selecting the readings

The literature in which music emerging out of such cultural polyphony is explained
or in other ways ‘read’ is enormous. Well over 1000 items are available, not
including at least twice this number in print media articles as well as hundreds of
plays, poems, short stories, travel fictions and novels in which South African music
is represented. The simplest way to make a selection from this vast aggregation of
motifs would have been to take the ‘top ten’ academic articles on South African
music from the last 15 to 20 years. I resisted this approach, however: partly
because such writing is well known in academic circles, but mainly because such a
selection would have biased the book strongly in favour of black South African
popular music and jazz, and privileged white writers. The number of pieces I
xxiv

included here, ultimately, came in at about 60, whittled down from 200, and even
those left standing were ruthlessly pruned.
Informing this process were several criteria. First, I favoured extracts that dealt
with musical material directly - whether by example, analysis, or description - so
that music would have a strong ‘presence’. This means that there are differences in
music notation and several indigenous languages used (in song texts) although in
most cases these are translated. Second, I tried to introduce as fair a distribution of
gender, age and cultural background as I could manage, given the imbalance that
exists. South African writers of colour are few in number despite the fact that the
overwhelming majority of the population is not white. Texts are nevertheless there,
and they have been included - not for the political purpose of incorporating what
Kofi Agawu has called “native discourse” (Agawu 1995, 394) - but because, as
Agawu indeed has shown, such discourse often speaks of music not discussed
elsewhere with a voice that is not dominant.
Third was the criterion of coverage. Some areas of music are far better covered
in the literature than others (indigenous music and twentieth-century popular music
for example); there is far less on African choral music and almost nothing (in
English) on Afrikaans music. Aside from studies of individual composers or
histories of towns, there is no writing on the meanings of Western classical music
in South Africa as distinct from writing published elsewhere. Taking stock of
classical music as a cultural phenomenon within a Southern African rather than
European context - and taking it right back to the seventeenth century - is a long
overdue project, but few writers have taken the ethnographic or post-colonial view
of such music that a reading like this requires. Some gold has been well mined -
the Zulu male-voice genre isicathamiya for example - while other texts only graze
the surface of their subject and may be seen as first attempts to define a field. In
making a selection there was no attempt to make up for inadequacies or
unevenness in the literature by commissioning further research.
What I aimed for, rather, was a reasonable spread of topics given that
unevenness. This involved excluding some well-known pieces and authors, which I
did with great regret, the compensation being, I hope, a wider range of both musics
and voices. Gaps in the research field are there for all to see – and there are many
challenges both empirical and theoretical for young researchers to take up. Finally,
the scholarship (but not necessarily its authors) emerges from within the present
political borders of South Africa. One exception to this general rule is the work of
Emmanuelle Olivier on the Ju|’hoansi, who live in the (Botswanan) Kalahari
(Olivier 1997). It is included mainly because it demythologises so effectively the
imaginary of nomadic ‘bushmen’ that haunts some of the earlier writing in the
book; and because the multivocal techniques she analyses relate tellingly to
contemporary studies of Xhosa music. Olivier also deals in a way most other
writers do not, with vernacular terminology and concepts.
 xxv

This representation of musical practices from immigrant, urban, peri-urban,

migrant and rural communities covering large geographical areas of the country is
paralleled by an equally wide representation of views and ideologies, ranging from
those of 200 years ago (the earliest writing is from 1806) to writing of the present.
Many different kinds of discourse emerge, and the rest of this Introduction
highlights some of the issues of origin, history, ideology, representation, identity,
and language that are a feature of the writing.

Origin

In her (1995) analysis of post-colonial literary criticism, Karin Barber exposes

paradigms of binarism that inform both the imaginary tabular rasa of a South
African musical paradise and the aspirations of the ever-changing Eldorado:
oppositions such as traditional-modern, oral-written, past-contemporary, local-
international (11). Such binarisms recall evolutionist views of music in nineteenth-
century writing, predicated on the fundamental binary, self-other. As John McCall
has summarised it, the view promoted in 1893 by Richard Wallascheck for
example, is as follows:

European Music African Music

modern primitive
melodic rhythmic
complex simple
aesthetic functional
mental physical
intellectual emotional
creative expressive
product of culture product of nature (McCall 1998, 96).iii

Although we are alert to Victorian ideologies of ‘ancient and modern’ or ‘savage

and civilised’ implicit in this list (see for example Erlmann 1994), the traditional-
modern and African-Western dichotomy persists in current thinking about music in
South Africa, as do other frequently encountered pairs such as individual-
communal, urban-rural. The difficulty in moving away from binaries is
compounded by the degree to which they are constantly re-inscribed, if only to be
manipulated afresh (as the ICMF has shown), the problem with them being
precisely that they are so much part of the way South Africans think about
themselves musically. In the global context, such dichotomies place us
automatically in anOther country, another hemisphere, another culture, from that of
the imagined West. They reduce the historical and economic contingencies of a
more nuanced reading of South African music - where the West has been part of
xxvi

the script for several centuries - to secondary status. A single word in any pair
operates mainly in relation to its opposite and becomes a signifier of difference,
one that contemporary music education and composition continually seek to
undermine but ultimately reinforce, locked as they are into the symbolic order of
naming.
An example of this problem is choral music, or amakwaya or makwaya
(competition) music, which originated from black mission-educated composers in
the eastern Cape and Natal. Choral works in this tradition are written in tonic solfa
notation and become scores; but such scores are not necessarily read or even
owned by those who perform them. They are scarce commodities (it takes a serious
researcher to make a substantial and diverse collection);iv few choristers are fully
literate in solfa notation,v and choral songs are often taught by rote over many
rehearsals comprising constantly shifting groups of attendees. Composers
themselves strain against the expressive, tonal and rhythmic limitations of working
in solfa notation. Unavailability of scores, even when they have been prescribed for
competitions, confirms their low status as ‘texts’.vi Yet fidelity to notes and
instructions on the ‘score’ is a criterion that adjudicators use in assessment, and the
few scores that exist are treated as classics by committees who organise the major
national competitions, forming over time a canon of musical works inscribed in the
consciousness of those involved in choralism. Furthermore, choralism is
phenomenally popular, involving almost half the country’s population (see
Mngoma 1986, 116-117).
In the midst of such ambiguity, to bring Barber into service again, it seems that
whatever state of literacy choirs uphold, they all “access texts in one way or
another” (1995, 12). Just as she cites the potential 30 million Hausa or Swahili
‘readers’ of texts, I would estimate that there are close on 20 million members of
choirs in South Africa who ‘read’ choral songs. Where does such music fit into the
oral-written paradigm? The three categories of competition songs (traditional,
Western, vernacular) have themselves changed since 1994. The ‘vernacular’ was
designed in the earlier twentieth century to cater for music written in solfa script by
composers using African-language texts, but now includes songs in Afrikaans; thus
it challenges the African-Western binary while at the same time exposing the
problematic of placing Afrikaans songs alongside African solfa pieces, in the
category ‘indigenous’.
There are many other examples where South African music defies neat
categorisation. Constantly re-narrated and re-read, the very difficulties in
conceptualising it (for this Reader) are part of its story. If presenting it as an
anthology in the way this Reader presents an ‘overview’ brings out (rather than
obscures) the underlying dichotomies, it also affords an opportunity to look at it
precisely for those differences and anomalies, as an archaeological site in which
layers of practice and meaning are encrusted together and occasionally thrown up
into strangely tilted conjunctions. This enables a view of South African music as a
 xxvii

set of differently constituted practices resonating with each other as they

develop(ed) - simultaneously as well as sequentially and with resulting
discontinuities as well as continuities. With this Foucaultian notion in mind, we
come to a discussion of history.

History and ideology

The music of South Africa has evolved by a series of migrations - from many parts
of the world over several centuries (Europe, the Malay Archipelago, south-east
Asia, the Middle East, the US, Canada and South America), and, within the
country, over several millennia. Thus its story has a number of possible ways to
‘begin’. In the search for origins South African music has been particularly well
served by Xhosa prophet Ntsikana Gaba (died c1821). His story is referred to
several times in this Reader, and always he is presented as ‘the first’ - the first
Christian convert in the eastern Cape, the first Xhosa composer, creator of the
“first Christian hymn composed and sung in Kaffirland to real native music”
(Bokwe [n.d. c1904], 28). His surviving hymns provide ample material for an
evolutionist consideration of something that lies on the border between history and
myth, to prove that “origin is there so that history can begin” (Barber 1995, 7).
One can argue that there were concrete beginnings, and inescapable historical
facts, such as the establishment of the first permanent mission station among the
Xhosa by Rev Brownlee in 1820 (Dargie 1982, 7). The building of this mission -
mud, stone, hardship, prayer - and the sudden death of Brownlee shortly afterwards
took place at a certain time and place, profoundly affecting the detail of some
everyday lives. But such bald realities do not explain music, or tell us what moved
Ntsikana and what his community of onlookers experienced. What ‘text’, for
example, did those early congregations access in Ntsikana’s chants?
There are only partial answers. The oldest account we have is by John Knox
Bokwe from the late 1870s: the version given in this Reader was published around
1904 and was intended for a readership in Victorian Britain (the publisher was the
London Missionary Society), for whom Ntsikana is domesticated as ‘ab-original’
Christian rather than - during frontier wars he was deeply involved in - as
politicised being (see Olwage 2003, 139-42). Bokwe’s myth goes thus: looking
over his cattle one morning he is excited (Bokwe calls it a ‘trance’) by the sight of
a glowing light striking his favourite ox ([n.d. c1904], 19). Returning with his
family from an umdudo or ceremonial dance a few hours later, Ntsikana passed a
stream where he unexpectedly “washed off the heathen clay from his body”, the
signature of conversion (Ibid., 19-20). The next morning Ntsikana sang a strange
new chant and told his startled relatives that “the thing that had entered within him
directed that all men should pray” (Ibid., 19-20). According to Bokwe, then,
Ntsikana’s hymn - his first utterance as a Christian convert - ‘entered’ him at night,
xxviii

having been dreamt.vii First the flash of enlightenment, then the discarding of the
past, the dream-song, and a prophecy.
This historic moment - Ntsikana’s altered state of consciousness resembling for
Bokwe St Paul on the road to Damascus - was captured very differently by
Methodist leaders in 1923, celebrating a century of success in the South African
mission fields. The origin of Ntsikana’s music lay for them not in a mystical
moment between sleeping and waking, past and future, but in a typically African
spontaneous “outburst”.

We can imagine how these first converts, rejoicing in the new and wonderful
life that had sprung up within them, would croon, in quiet and low monotones,
the message that had appealed to them, until the heart would swell and
unconsciously burst into melody and praise God. Ntsikana … has given us
such an illustration. It is just a natural outburst of feeling and joy as we should
expect from one emerging from the bondage of a cruel heathenism into the
freedom and liberty of the children of God (Househam 1923, 53).

In his recounting of the myth, Househam downgrades song (the most ardent
expression of Xhosa culture) to ‘crooning’, reiterates the litany of primitive
music’s qualities as did Wallaschek; and speaks of the great prophet Ntsikana as
illustration or mere ‘example’ of an early convert. His distancing strategy (aside
from its racial overtones) pushes the event away from the tenor of the fictional
account Bokwe wrote for the metropole, leading it towards a crude evangelistic
ethnography. Employing quite another register, David Dargie’s (1982) account
explores the musical side of this experience, as if it were not so much a religious
awakening as a great creative moment in which Ntsikana juggles old and new.
Dargie places his account in the context of performance: while Ntsikana was
dancing at the umdudo - the night before he supposedly dreamed the first of his
hymns - he “became aware that the Holy Spirit had entered him” (1982, 7). Dargie,
like Bokwe, imagines what was said and by whom, writing his account almost as
fiction. “The next day he continued to act strangely, telling people that something
had entered him … He began to sing strange chants, using the words ‘elelele
homna’” (Ibid.).
Dargie’s account also signals the focus on difference: he is fascinated by the
merging of European and African cultural traditions into what has come to be
viewed as the first South African composition (Blake 2000, 13). Here, then,
Ntsikana is not so much exemplary convert as composer articulating a new musical
expression. Concern for what is often seen as a ‘reconciliation’ between the
African and Western in compositional discourse (although it often re-inscribes
difference) places Dargie’s account at an interesting tangent alongside other writers
in this volume who have tackled the same issue, such as Bongani Mthethwa (on
Alfred Assegai Kumalo [sic]), Erlmann (on Reuben Caluza), and Stephanus Muller
 xxix

(on Stefans Grové). All four writers examine the interface, or in Leon de Kock’s
apt phrase, the ‘seam’ (de Kock 2001) that holds together compositional strands in
the post-colony. The interweaving of these strands has, over time, been theorised
under various names: in the 1970s and 80s it was called syncretism, in the 90s
hybridity; in popular music or jazz discourse it might be fusion or cross-over. In
terms of Ntsikana’s music, such hybridity was extremely awkward, ‘unlikely’, as
Grant Olwage puts it, revealing (through Bokwe’s harmonisation) both Xhosa
music ‘reformed’ and Victorian hymnody ‘deformed’ - and thereby, spawning few
successors (Olwage 2003, 138). The claim for Ntsikana as compositional origin
rests on his symbolic significance, then, rather than on his music. And where the
music is claimed it is partly in error: the version of his hymn that Bokwe
transcribes as the ‘Great Hymn’ is not what is now seen as the originating Great
Hymn (transcribed by Bokwe as the ‘Round Hymn’ (Olwage 2003, 136)). The
claim rests, moreover, on two massive conceptual leaps: from what Ntsikana
actually chanted in the early nineteenth century to Bokwe’s early twentieth-century
arrangements; and again to what we choose to find original a century later.
The myth of Ntsikana as origin owes its different inflections to historical
undercurrents that inevitably changed during the course of the 200-year span of
this volume. The dividing line between different sections of the present book mark
some of the most important moments of change in South African history: 1806-
1930s, 1940s-80s, late-1980s-mid-90s, and mid-1990s to the present. They broadly
define four projections that have been of over-arching significance in South
African political ideology: British imperialism and its aftermath in a tangle of
rapidly urbanising modernisms, the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the
philosophy of apartheid, the often violent politics of transformation, and the post-
apartheid democracy. This does not mean, however, that the four sections are
movements of a national symphony that move inexorably forward in time without
reminiscent themes. The ideology of the colonial nineteenth century contained
many elements (romanticism and nationalism being two) that persist to the present
day; apartheid laws may have crumbled but their stifling impact on musical
development is still felt; transformation was a long and painful stage in the South
African psyche that occupied a surprisingly short span of chronological time and
still has not yet ended; and although 1994 was a new beginning, even in ‘the new
South Africa’ cultural terrain remains highly contested. The texts represented in
this book reflect changing historical and ideological imperatives in ways far more
complex than can be grasped by surveying the (chronological) list of contents, and
some examples must now be given.
In the work of some writers (such as Melveen Jackson on South-Asian music
from the 1860s to 1948) historical sensibility is very much to the fore. In others it
is an insignificant aspect of the writing - some extracts seem almost to exist in a
historical (or ideological) vacuum. Most of the writing cannot be fully understood,
however, without knowing something of the socio-political events that surrounded
xxx

it; for example Barrow’s Account of a Journey, Made in the Years 1801 and 1802
… (Barrow 1806b), Alberti’s Tribal Life & Customs of the Xhosa in 1807 …
(Alberti 1968[1815]), and Barrow’s [Travels] in Southern Africa … (1813). All
three were written during the British-Dutch war over the Cape Colony during
which, briefly: the British wrenched the Colony from Dutch control in 1795 to
prevent it falling into French hands during the Napoleonic wars,viii handed it back
to the (Dutch) Batavian Republic in 1803, seized it again after the Battle of
Blaauwberg in January 1806 and confirmed their control through the London
Convention of August 1814 (Saunders and Southey 1998, 31). Barrow was a
significant player in this tug of war. He published at least five accounts of two
visits to south-western Africa in 1797-98 and 1801-02, rewriting his narrative to
suit the expectations of readers in London and his employer, the British Admiralty.
Their appearance was timed conveniently in terms of the unfolding of political
events (1801, 1804, 1806 and 1813). His accounts of 1806 and 1813 (detailed and
shrewd observations including many references to music) lent narrative solidity to
the centre’s possession and re-possession of a distant ‘other’ (Pratt 1992, 58).
Music provided Barrow with evidence of ‘civilisation’ among the inhabitants
sufficient for their subjugation: “here a plentiful harvest is offered to the first
reapers who may present themselves” (1806b, 400). The full titles of his books
themselves speak to the imperial agenda (see List of Sources); while his changing
signature (John, John Esq, Sir John …) traces a career whose ascendancy between
1801 and 1813 was arguably due in large part to his work on ‘the colonies’.
A counterpoint to this narrative is German-born Ludwig Alberti’s popular
Tribal Life … published first in Dutch (1810) then French (1811) and German
(1815) - an English translation appeared only in 1968. Alberti’s work as a
professional soldier took him to the Cape in 1803-1806 (the Dutch period between
British rule) on the Batavian Republic rather than British side. His view of music is
as ‘other’ as Barrow’s; but it is not so much the tale as his dour telling of it, that
marks a major contrast. Not for Alberti are the literary allusions that make
Barrow’s text readable as (travel) fiction quite aside from its references to music.
Alberti manages to reduce a great Xhosa creation myth to the following bland
‘poem’:

In the land in which the sun rises, there

is a cavern, from which the first
Kaffirs, and in fact All peoples, as also
the stock of every kind of animal, came
forth. At the same time, the sun and
moon came into being, to shed their
light, and trees, grass and other
plants to provide food for man and cattle (1968[1815], 13).