Indoctrination through music is a well-known phenomenon which has been used for centuries as a
strategy to influence society and instil certain beliefs and attitudes in people. Extensive research
over the last few decades confirms music as a propagandist method to promote ideology. In this
study, it is my aim to focus on two specific instances of such indoctrination, namely the ârote
Liederâ which were sung in the German Democratic Republic, as well as Afrikaans âVolks- en
Vaderlandsliedereâ as deployed before and during the apartheid era in South Africa.
After National Socialism, people were once again exposed to propaganda in the German
Democratic Republic. Several mass organisations were formed by the SED (Socialist Unity Party of
Germany), including youth organisations such as the Young Pioneers, the Thälmann Pioneers and
the Free German Youth, and society was introduced to songs of an ideological nature, encouraging
belief in the communist system. These GDR ârote Liederâ were published in songbooks used
especially by youth organisations. In this way the GDR government managed to gain support for the
communist regime and a successful endeavour was initiated to circulate ideologically-loaded folk
songs amongst the GDR citizens.
In South Africa an Afrikaner ideology of racial segregation slowly emerged during the first decades
of the 20th century, reaching a climax with a political take-over of the National Party in 1948. The
songbook of the FAK (Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations), published in 1937, quickly
gained popularity and promoted patriotism and nationalism among white Afrikaners, finding its way
into Afrikaner homes, churches, organisations and schools, thus becoming unanimous with
Afrikaner culture. Similar to the GDR, these songs were sung especially by the youth in schools and
youth organisations. The governments of both the GDR and South Africa never formally disclosed
the implementation of ideologically-driven songs to indoctrinate people, but this does not mean that
they did not understand the value and effectiveness of using music and song text to sway large
groups of people, and actively used these to convey political ideas. An ideology-critical analysis of
a selection of folk songs taken from the GDR and FAK songbooks could therefore uncover
underlying ideological structures which may have had a profound but possibly distorted effect on
those who sang these songs.
Against this background, this thesis investigates the extent to which ideology is present and
operative in GDR songs and FAK âVolk- en Vaderlandsliedereâ by distorting reality through misrepresenting the conditions of a particular set of social-historical circumstances; expressing the
interests of those in power; mobilising meaning so as to establish and perpetuate relationships of
domination, and concealing relationships of domination. In order to uncover such ideological
content, the theoretical framework for ideology analysis, as presented by John Thompson with his
depth-hermeneutical, multi-level critical approach, and sub-theories of Discourse Archaeology as
proposed by Johann Visagie, are applied. By combining Visagie's Discourse Archaeology with the
discourse of critical musicology, the underlying and sometimes hidden ideological deep structures
found in political folk songs revealed deep-seated ideological beliefs concealed within these songs
and unmasked hidden relationships of domination.
The conclusion reached is that ideological indoctrination is present in both the ârote Liederâ and the
âVolks- en Vaderlandsliedereâ to a substantive degree. This confirms that the sub-theories of
Discourse Archaeology are highly-complex ideological-critical tools with which deep-rooted
ideological meanings in political folk songs were identified and exposed in this study within two
very specific socio-historical environments. Moreover, when utilised in combination, each of the
models introduced and applied in this thesis offers its own below-the-surface analysis on different
levels and in different fields using their own language to describe structures and systems in a way
that is not possible with âeverydayâ language, thus providing the analyst with an all-encompassing,
powerful analytical framework with which to expose the philosophical deep structures of
indoctrination through music that might have gone unnoticed in a more traditionally-oriented mode
of musical analysis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-08042014-124030 |
| Date | 04 August 2014 |
| Creators | Schutte, Charla Helena |
| Contributors | Prof PJ Visagie, Prof M Viljoen |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-08042014-124030/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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