The aim of this study has been to locate a subcultural aspect of neotraditional music performance, and relate this to the broader historical, social, political, economic, and cultural processes of lived experience. In looking at the performance and compositional output of three township neotraditional musicians, I have attempted to focus on the individual construction and articulation of this lived experience. I have sought to link individuals to aspects of social and historical circumstance, perhaps to account for the undeniably social basis of performance generally. In this respect I have also recognised a common, overriding perception by the three township neotraditional performers, namely that of their pursuits as straddling a continuum of performance experience and epoch. In this way I have been led to examine elements which characterise this continuum in the urban black social experience. Thus, the bulk of the second chapter has been informed by existing archival documentary materials, scholarly studies of the socioeconomic, political, cultural and social performance developments among urban Africans in and around Durban prior to 1960. Several interviews with neotraditional performers of this era have also gone towards augmenting a backdrop for the emergent social performance practice of the townships since their consolidation from about the late 1950s onwards. It is from this melting pot of experience that I have attempted to pick up the threads that link the present subjects with what had unfolded before their time. However socially and culturally disjunctive the advent of the townships might be construed, it is as well the dynamics of such conjunctive and disjunctive experience in social performance practice which stand out clearly as symptoms in the course of urban black performance development. I have viewed the experience of the township as manifest in the lives of its citizens, here typified by the three subjects. I have sought the processing of the elements of the environment and its articulation in their individual compositional and performance styles. In the third chapter is delineated the influential aspect of learning and its effect upon the total expressive potential of the individuals. From a close scrutiny of contributing factors in the formative experiences of individual musicians, there emerge elements which highlight the intertextual and coeval nature of lived experience of the three subjects. The inclusion in the first chapter of my early musical consciousness acknowledges both the individual and the shared, social aspect of the musical performance experience. It is also in the intertwined careers of individual musicians that one of the most pertinent theoretical assumptions of this study finds resonance - namely the potential to be changed by, as well as to change, the experience of others (Jackson 1989). Chapter 4 seeks to account for the widespread employment of the guitar, especially in Natal and KwaZulu, as a primary instrument of neotraditional performance expressivity. The section on the tin-guitar exemplifies a general, grassroots understanding of the intervallic possibilities and rudimentary harmonies potentiated by neotraditional musical experiences. Chapter 5 deals with the stylistic approaches of the three subjects to performance and composition. An attempt is made to highlight their individual manipulation and understanding of the elements of form and structure, melody, harmony and rhythm. Chapter 6 focusses attention on the reproduction and representation of the music of the three subjects on records, radio, live performance and the print media. / Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of Natal, 1998.

No abstract available. / Thesis (B.Mus.)-University of Natal, Durban,1992.

This dissertation studies South African popular 'Gospel' music in the context of the new order of the post-apartheid era. The four main focal points of the study are genre, production, mediation and consumption. The end of apartheid was a historic and significant socio-political phenomenon in South Africa. Its implications were not only socio-political; they also affected many other aspects of the country, including arts and culture. Music was not exempt. The genre of local 'Gospel' is premised on the Christian faith, so that by producing and mediating 'Gospel' music, the music industry is at the same time producing and mediating the 'Gospel', or Christian culture. Consequently, by consuming 'Gospel' music the audience also consumes this 'Gospel' culture. Local 'Gospel' first emerged with foreign influences brought into South Africa by the missionaries, but gradually developed into the broad and complex genre that we know today. This is, in part, a result of 'other' influences, styles and elements having been incorporated into it. Many production companies are responsible for the production of local 'Gospel' music. These can be broadly categorized into two: major companies, and indies (which are small, private production companies). These two production routes have different implications for the artists and their music. Similarly, there are many different ways in which this music is mediated, or 'channelled', to its audience. These include television, radio, print media (newspapers, magazines, posters, fliers, etc.), internet, and live performances, all of which have their own specificities that determine their effectiveness in mediating local 'Gospel'. As is the case with any music, the audience for local 'Gospel' consumes its music in different ways and for different purposes. Though the artists/musicians assign certain meanings to their musical works, the audience does not always identify precisely with those musical meanings. Different people at different places and times, with different experiences and social conditions, encounter and interpret the music in different ways. South African popular 'Gospel' music is a broad and complex genre that has developed and grown over the years. The birth of democracy has had an indelible impact on it, and on its processes of production, mediation and consumption. / Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

This ethnographic study concerns itself with the role that local rap performance plays in either reinforcing or challenging perceptions of 'race' amongst the participants of hip-hop culture in Durban, South Africa, and what this implies for the prospects of reconciliation. Using Cohen's (1989) theory of community and Grossberg's (1996) theory of affective alliances, I explore the ways in which music may create and maintain differences and commonalities between groups of people. It is my hypothesis that genre conventions and connotations, and the discourses that circulate about rap music (for example, rap music as a form of expression particular to the 'black Atlantic' diaspora and conditioned by a racially segregated society [Rose 1994]), allow hip-hop to either reinforce or challenge participants' perceptions of 'race'. I examine how musical and lyrical utterances thrust into a semantic historical and socio-political context limit how rap performance can mean and how, as a dialogic speech genre, rap can uphold, subvert or negotiate its genre associations, including, through the use of double-voiced discourse, dominant ideas concerning 'race' and cultural identity. Acknowledging the idiom as of a form of black cultural expression (Rose 1994), interviewees mention narratives of hip-hop's historical origins, rap artists' use of Five Percenter and Black Nationalist ideologies, and poverty, as factors that either reinforce or challenge notions of 'race'. The simultaneous transgression of and/or adherence to, racialized space and spatialized 'race' (Forman 2002) by different 'races', as well as the presence or absence of multilingualism, are viewed as indicators of the level of commitment to the notion of a democratic place for all 'race' and language groups in post-apartheid South Africa. It is the aim of this thesis to add to the body of knowledge concerning the nature of our post-apartheid identities, what influences them and in what way. And in a broader context, to explore the role of music in societies in transition and the role it might play in facilitating an ability to 'imagine culture beyond the colour line' (Gilroy 2000). / Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

The present work examines the poetry in neapolitan language and particularly the works of E. A. Mario, fin de siecle poet and melody writer, who contributed considerably to the song history. / The first part introduces us to the neapolitan regional poetry as well as to its language to finally conclude with the poetry set to music: the song. The ideal atmosphere is the cafe-chantant. The poets of the time including Salvatore Di Giacomo and the generation after are surveyed. / The second part deals with the author. It describes his life, his art and his works, rich of popular and especially classical elements, which crowned him with success.

The aim of this dissertation is to analyze the public music-making by locals in Holmsund 1850—1980, and to explain the great variety of musical forms in hope to thereby illuminate the importance of local music-making for the workers' musical taste, but also how workers' musical aesthetics were affected by a more general working-class culture. The variety of musical forms is explained according to John Blacking's distinction between change of musical system, and variation and innovation within a musical system. There are two major changes of the musical system. The first generations of workers in Holmsund were recruited from the surrounding countryside, and the main structure of their music-making seems to have remained unchanged. During the 1880s and 1890s there is an introduction of new elements which dominate the whole industrial epoch: brass instruments become the most highly valued instruments, and the thoroughly organized group playing. The new ideals of instrument sound are related to the new soundscape of the industrial society. Organized group playing is seen as homological with the social organization of industrial production, where the work of individuals in different departments is coordinated by a conductor/executive in power. During the decade of the 1960s the musical system is once more changed. Electronic technology changes the concepts of sounds and distribution forms, the influence of local music-making on public musical taste became marginal. Local music-making cannot therefore be said to reflect a workers' aesthetic, but should rather be interpreted as tendencies counteracting the professionalism and mediafication of modern society. These epochal models outline the basic structural frame of the musical system of each period and the role assigned to local music-making. At the same time there is a great variety of musical forms within each period. These variations are systematized as temporarily-used ways fo managing certain pairs of concepts, which are seen as oppositional or complementary. These pairs are: individual/collective, ideals of equality/professionalization, education/entertainment, continuity/innovation, culture/subculture, and male/female. Finally, the ways in which values and attitudes of the general working-class culture influence the local music scene are analyzed. Instead of the abstract ideals of composition, the usefulness of the music is stressed in popular aesthetics. The genius cult of art musics does not fit into popular music situations, where the will to work hard for the audience is valued instead. Ways of relating to the body form another distinction between bourgeois and worker culture. Popular music is much centred around dance music, which is also used in concert situations. What these values and attitudes have in common is that they are part of a popular aesthetic which the educated aesthetic uses as a negative reference point. / digitalisering@umu

In this project, I focus on women's relationships with technology in the context of contemporary music culture. In choosing this focus, I intend to elucidate the interplay between social constructs of gender, power and technology as they enacted in a particular arena of artistic and economic activity. The nature of this interplay is informed by prevailing regimes of truth which have emerged through historical processes and which surface in diverse social contexts, of which this is but one. My intention here is to identify such regimes and to situate women's discourses within them. In this undertaking, I draw on a body of theory which lies at the conjunction of contemporary feminist critique and the later work of Michel Foucault on power and the 'technologies of the self' to explore a model of power which promises cogent strategies in the feminist project of reworking notions of gender and social agency. The inquiry enlists the perspectives of women students in a university school of contemporary music through a guided interview process. The technologies referred to include musical instruments both of traditional and twentieth century design, as well as a range of sophisticated systems of equipment used for recording and amplifying, for composing and arranging music. Through analysis of the interview data and through readings from social science and musicology, I identify a dominant discourse, or regime of truth, which privileges men and marginalizes women in the realm of techno-musical activity. Alongside this prevailing regime are women's discourses which both comply with and dissent from its assumptions. In examining these discourses, I seek insights into the processes by which women collude in their own exclusion from a male-colonized terrain, but also exercise power to insist on entry. The alignment of technology and masculinity in contemporary music creates serious training and employment disadvantages for women in many facets of the industry. I contend that this anomaly demands attention in the interests of socio-economic justice, in the interests of the industry itself through full utilization of human resources and market potential, and in the interests of women's desires to expand their creative options and employment opportunities.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-248).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2005. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Bibliography: leaves 348-412.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2007. / A thesis submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the College of Arts, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney. Includes bibliographical references.