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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/457 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Dlamini, Sazi Stephen. |
| Contributors | Impey, Carol., Muller, Carol. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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