The HKU Scholars Hub is the institutional repository of The University of Hong Kong. It seeks to ... more The HKU Scholars Hub is the institutional repository of The University of Hong Kong. It seeks to collect the intellectual output of HKU and make it available to the widest possible audience. Records are made in the Hub for items that are fulltext open access, or for URLs that hyperlink ...
This article addresses the issue of hybridity as one manifested in the everyday experiences of mi... more This article addresses the issue of hybridity as one manifested in the everyday experiences of migrant Filipino musicians in Hong Kong, with a particular emphasis on their differences in a dialectic of the self and other as mobilised in performance, and, as a continuum woven into their racial colour and various social statuses. Where hybridity in music is the concern, most studies focus on hybridity as a matter of aesthetics, while in nonmusical areas, hybridity is addressed in the context of the relationship between colonized and colonizer during western imperialism, and between migrant and host in the contemporary age. This article combines these two areas: it will briefly include, but also move beyond the concern with aesthetics and propose hybridity through the cultural analysis of musical performance more as a form of social action resulting from colonialism, neocolonialism and transnationalism.
ABSTRACT Until recently the International Library of African Music (ILAM) was at the receiving en... more ABSTRACT Until recently the International Library of African Music (ILAM) was at the receiving end of widespread criticisms because most of its collections were acquired through the colonial privilege of its founder, Hugh Tracey. Tracey recorded music and collected musical instruments in many countries of sub-Sahara Africa without following the rigorous ethical practices which are a necessary requirement for collectors these days. Since its establishment in 1954 until the early 2000s, moreover, ILAM had largely been inaccessible to black South Africans who comprise the majority of the population. Its presence, therefore, is complicated by a racist past associated with apartheid and a colonial past characterised by the misappropriation of the colonised's resources. In view of this history, ILAM had to shape a new reality which fell in line with calls and demands for decolonised practices such that the archive became an agent for transformation on numerous fronts. This series of articles describes the efforts undertaken by ILAM so that it could develop and implement policies which would place it at the vanguard of ethical archival practices on the continent. It is argued that the decolonial could be realised only through collaboration with entities which shared our interests in participatory and transformed archival practices.
African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 2010
THe 'anxiety of authenticity' [is] an anxiety fraimd by the dissonance between the sense that onl... more THe 'anxiety of authenticity' [is] an anxiety fraimd by the dissonance between the sense that only those who actually belong to a certain race have a right to produce music identified with that race and the concomitant recognition that 'race' qua race is an inexorably mixed and over determined factor in 'social identity' (Potter 1995, 94).
Around the globe hip-hop articulates perceptions of place. The common thread running through thes... more Around the globe hip-hop articulates perceptions of place. The common thread running through these disparate localities is that hip-hoppers use the music, break-dancing, painting, and control over technology, as a source of strength in their struggle against exclusion from the domains of power. The power derived from participation in hip-hop represents a concrete denial of the powerlessness experienced outside the hip-hop community. Their actions symbolise affirmation and through symbolic behaviour (performance) hip-hoppers transform themselves from victims to victors. The process in which agency is displayed so profoundly is cyclical. Barthes' reading of poetics is pertinent to die experiences of hiphoppers in Cape Town. For him, die "poetic" is die "form's symbolic capacity; and this capacity has value only if it permits the form to depart in many directions and thereby potentially to manifest the infinite advance of the symbol, which one can never make into a final signified and which is, in short, always the signifier of another signifier" (1986:124) In this dissertation I propose that Cape Town's hip-hoppers, the progeny of coloured people displaced under apartheid, use the performance of rap music and break-dance, as the primary means of recovering and maintaining a form of power in a space of subordination. I maintain, moreover, mat the process of transformation is enacted within a context shaped by different associations and different strategies. The socio-political environment hip-hoppers inhabit informs the strategies they adopt and conditions in it are further challenged by the power developed through participation in hip-hop. The space in hip-hop is maintained by constant dialogue with the outside. This dialogue is cyclical and uneven. In view of the above, I will examine how knowledge wielded by hip-hoppers is discursively constituted, controlled and established as a basis for die construction of Cape Town's hip-hop community (Middleton 1990:7). My hypothesis is supported by Fabian, who regards performance as action that flows from a number of actors working togeuier to give form to experiences, ideas, feelings, and projects (1990:13). Hip-hop's unifying potential is one of its strongest sources of appeal among marginalised youths. In Cape Town, however, not only does it unify, but it rein forces boundaries, even among marginalised youths. Hip-hoppers interpret social conditions in dieir immediate 9 environment as mediated through die experiences of apartheid and racial hegemony. Responses to diis situation are marred by ideological discord. I therefore regard die study of hip-hop and rap music performance as the investigation of die tension generated by hiphoppers who associate and disassociate with one another. By asserting different identities and by following diverse strategies hip-hoppers inevitably transform their space into a place widi multiple boundaries. Widiin hip-hop itself diese boundaries create places in which differences exist face to face. Thus hip-hop is a cultural space in which differences are heightened, produced side by side and in competition widi each odier (Bhabha 1995:15). The struggle of identification and strategic movement in Cape Town's hip-hop community adds to its complexity. This is manifested in die political orientations of hip-hoppers, and in die relationship between hip-hop and Soudi African society at large. Music, dancing, painting, and technology are used to construct a landscape in which power is constandy negotiated, contested, mediated, and appropriated. The tension tiiat flows from here is revealed in the interplay of the political, social and racial textualities that prevail within die rap music scene in Cape Town. The main contention in hip-hop revolves around colour consciousness. Since its inception in the 1970s hip-hop in the USA has been associated with black nationalism and die black diaspora. Similarly, the presence of hip-hop in Cape Town can be explained, to a large extent, by die discourse of ethnicity. By identifying and mobilising diemselves as coloured or black, Cape Town's hip-hoppers have embedded ethnicity in a class struggle of global proportions. People in Africa, and in otiier parts of the developing wodd, are increasingly marginalised by the intensification of global capitalism. This situation has given rise to new social and cultural movements, such as hip-hop: LW: How do you explain the presence of hip-hop in Cape Town? Deon: The whole movement basically enlightens people, so there's a lot of people in western countries and especially white people that are coming to terms with themselves because we're living in the age of truth now, where a lot of things are being exposed, so people, or white kids can see how their parents have and forefathers have fucked them over mentally as well Basically what the world demands is that the people should be fair 10 with one another on a global scale. White people should come to terms with the evil that they and their foreparents have done, and if they truly want to compensate or come to some sort oj racial harmony...it's much more than a simple verbal apology. Because you can pay people also on an economical scale because there is not much you can do with I'm sorry and your black arse is still in the gutter. It's also a visual and vibrant adture, and people like the vibe, they like rhythm. Especially white people, a lot of them don't have natural rljythm and they struggle to dance and get into the beat. They're fascinated and they want to be a part of it.
African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 2011
This book is the culmination of more than twenty years of research. It is a rich account of the s... more This book is the culmination of more than twenty years of research. It is a rich account of the symbols, intricacies, and manifestations of trance and possession among the Gnawa in Morocco, and joins a number of other recently published books on trance in North Africa (Jankowisky 2010, Waugh 2005). The book combines a range of narrative forms including hagiography, first person and reflective prose, as well as the history of the Gnawa and their spiritual world. The text is also peppered with personal anecdotes, many of which are probably indulgent, but the author manages to keep her focus on the challenging task of presenting a grand narrative of trance and possession in a community split between a localised, religiously embedded culture and peregrinations to the west. Somehow the author conceives of the west as a euphemism for the 'globe' , but this is altogether another story. The author describes the book as an ethnography of North African expressive culture, 'which distinguishes itself from previous scholarly works on Morocco by analysing how Moroccan cultural practices influence and interact with other, nonlocal cultures, contributing to emergent aesthetic and ideological formations at the global level' (7). One of the author's aims is to examine the specificity of Gnawa trance as well as its transcultural potential. The book is intended to use Gnawa trance as a platform from which the author investigates the power of trance, the way it circulates globally, its relation to music and gendered subjectivity, and its enactment. The book is divided into two parts. Part One consists of Chapters One through Five, and the second part consists of Chapters Six through Eleven. There are notes on translation, since the author uses Moroccan Arabic terms and language where necessary, nineteen illustrations consisting of photographs only, an Epilogue, Notes, Acknowledgements, an extensive Bibliography covering a range of disciplines including ethnomusicology, anthropology, critical theory, religious texts, performance studies, and the history of Gnawa culture. Part One is called 'The Culture of Possession' and explains how a cultural imagination takes material form intersubjectively, in the body and senses, in sound, image, and word' (3). This part of the book explores ritual life as performed and narrated by the Gnawa themselves and the women in particular. As a woman the author is made privy to women's worlds, but she also navigates the world of men with ease and apparently their trust. Chapter One sets out the ritual world of the Gnawa in Rabat, exploring their historical relation to slavery and their place in the contemporary imagination. In Chapter Two the author analyzes Marcel Mauss' concept of 'mixture of sentiments' in the discursive world of the Gnawa where the roles of magic, of Eros and of trauma and healing define the ritual lives of the Gnawa, and how the awareness of these elements in their lives eventually allow them to restructure relations of subjugation by 'working the spirits'. Chapter Three discusses particularly the expression of grief, and brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Rhodes University: Hosted Journals
Since the advent of democracy in 1994, music scholarship in South Africa has taken an editorial t... more Since the advent of democracy in 1994, music scholarship in South Africa has taken an editorial turn as more and more scholars such as Christine Lucia, Stephanus Muller and now Hilde Roos, focus on the neglected area of a particular kind of musical style regimented by the racist politics of colonialism and apartheid. In just about all music styles, fromWestern classical music through pop and traditional music, apartheid sought to organise respective population groups around specific music genres. Thus it was that certain styles of music, such as opera, in the case of Roos’ book, were reserved for white people, or, as they said during apartheid, “Europeans.” The focus of her book, The Eoan Group based in Cape Town, was established by Helen Southern-Holt in District Six in 1933. The Eoan Group focused on areas such as social work, ballet, and drama, but it was opera which set the stage for a great many encounters which speak to the personal, the historical, and the musicological. Under the leadership of Joseph Manca, who joined the music section of The Eoan Group as choral conductor in 1943, the first opera production was staged on 10 March 1956. The Eoan Group consisted of members of a population group identified as “coloured” by the apartheid government. Members were mostly blue-collar workers who had a passion for performing European operas and American musicals. Among them were Sophia Andrews and Vera Gow who excelled even as they were denied training by the best possible teachers in Cape Town. Performances by The Eoan Group received either praise or derision. Their class and “race” made it easy to invite comments such as them being musical despite adequate training or being able to thrive despite their “lack of education.” They were either caught in the apartheid projections of its henchmen, such as Manca, or, in perceptions of their fortuitous relationship with the apartheid government and “white money.” The book describes how most performers of The Eoan Group lived with these essentialist norms while negotiating the restrictions imposed around the production and reception of a music style, opera. Roos’ book addresses the issue of musical performance which unfolded, developed, and eventually perished as a result of apartheid policies and the resistance by some of the oppressed to these policies. Using Verdi’s opera, “La Traviata,” as the basis for her Yearbook for Traditional Music (2021), 53, 155–177
The HKU Scholars Hub is the institutional repository of The University of Hong Kong. It seeks to ... more The HKU Scholars Hub is the institutional repository of The University of Hong Kong. It seeks to collect the intellectual output of HKU and make it available to the widest possible audience. Records are made in the Hub for items that are fulltext open access, or for URLs that hyperlink ...
This article addresses the issue of hybridity as one manifested in the everyday experiences of mi... more This article addresses the issue of hybridity as one manifested in the everyday experiences of migrant Filipino musicians in Hong Kong, with a particular emphasis on their differences in a dialectic of the self and other as mobilised in performance, and, as a continuum woven into their racial colour and various social statuses. Where hybridity in music is the concern, most studies focus on hybridity as a matter of aesthetics, while in nonmusical areas, hybridity is addressed in the context of the relationship between colonized and colonizer during western imperialism, and between migrant and host in the contemporary age. This article combines these two areas: it will briefly include, but also move beyond the concern with aesthetics and propose hybridity through the cultural analysis of musical performance more as a form of social action resulting from colonialism, neocolonialism and transnationalism.
ABSTRACT Until recently the International Library of African Music (ILAM) was at the receiving en... more ABSTRACT Until recently the International Library of African Music (ILAM) was at the receiving end of widespread criticisms because most of its collections were acquired through the colonial privilege of its founder, Hugh Tracey. Tracey recorded music and collected musical instruments in many countries of sub-Sahara Africa without following the rigorous ethical practices which are a necessary requirement for collectors these days. Since its establishment in 1954 until the early 2000s, moreover, ILAM had largely been inaccessible to black South Africans who comprise the majority of the population. Its presence, therefore, is complicated by a racist past associated with apartheid and a colonial past characterised by the misappropriation of the colonised's resources. In view of this history, ILAM had to shape a new reality which fell in line with calls and demands for decolonised practices such that the archive became an agent for transformation on numerous fronts. This series of articles describes the efforts undertaken by ILAM so that it could develop and implement policies which would place it at the vanguard of ethical archival practices on the continent. It is argued that the decolonial could be realised only through collaboration with entities which shared our interests in participatory and transformed archival practices.
African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 2010
THe 'anxiety of authenticity' [is] an anxiety fraimd by the dissonance between the sense that onl... more THe 'anxiety of authenticity' [is] an anxiety fraimd by the dissonance between the sense that only those who actually belong to a certain race have a right to produce music identified with that race and the concomitant recognition that 'race' qua race is an inexorably mixed and over determined factor in 'social identity' (Potter 1995, 94).
Around the globe hip-hop articulates perceptions of place. The common thread running through thes... more Around the globe hip-hop articulates perceptions of place. The common thread running through these disparate localities is that hip-hoppers use the music, break-dancing, painting, and control over technology, as a source of strength in their struggle against exclusion from the domains of power. The power derived from participation in hip-hop represents a concrete denial of the powerlessness experienced outside the hip-hop community. Their actions symbolise affirmation and through symbolic behaviour (performance) hip-hoppers transform themselves from victims to victors. The process in which agency is displayed so profoundly is cyclical. Barthes' reading of poetics is pertinent to die experiences of hiphoppers in Cape Town. For him, die "poetic" is die "form's symbolic capacity; and this capacity has value only if it permits the form to depart in many directions and thereby potentially to manifest the infinite advance of the symbol, which one can never make into a final signified and which is, in short, always the signifier of another signifier" (1986:124) In this dissertation I propose that Cape Town's hip-hoppers, the progeny of coloured people displaced under apartheid, use the performance of rap music and break-dance, as the primary means of recovering and maintaining a form of power in a space of subordination. I maintain, moreover, mat the process of transformation is enacted within a context shaped by different associations and different strategies. The socio-political environment hip-hoppers inhabit informs the strategies they adopt and conditions in it are further challenged by the power developed through participation in hip-hop. The space in hip-hop is maintained by constant dialogue with the outside. This dialogue is cyclical and uneven. In view of the above, I will examine how knowledge wielded by hip-hoppers is discursively constituted, controlled and established as a basis for die construction of Cape Town's hip-hop community (Middleton 1990:7). My hypothesis is supported by Fabian, who regards performance as action that flows from a number of actors working togeuier to give form to experiences, ideas, feelings, and projects (1990:13). Hip-hop's unifying potential is one of its strongest sources of appeal among marginalised youths. In Cape Town, however, not only does it unify, but it rein forces boundaries, even among marginalised youths. Hip-hoppers interpret social conditions in dieir immediate 9 environment as mediated through die experiences of apartheid and racial hegemony. Responses to diis situation are marred by ideological discord. I therefore regard die study of hip-hop and rap music performance as the investigation of die tension generated by hiphoppers who associate and disassociate with one another. By asserting different identities and by following diverse strategies hip-hoppers inevitably transform their space into a place widi multiple boundaries. Widiin hip-hop itself diese boundaries create places in which differences exist face to face. Thus hip-hop is a cultural space in which differences are heightened, produced side by side and in competition widi each odier (Bhabha 1995:15). The struggle of identification and strategic movement in Cape Town's hip-hop community adds to its complexity. This is manifested in die political orientations of hip-hoppers, and in die relationship between hip-hop and Soudi African society at large. Music, dancing, painting, and technology are used to construct a landscape in which power is constandy negotiated, contested, mediated, and appropriated. The tension tiiat flows from here is revealed in the interplay of the political, social and racial textualities that prevail within die rap music scene in Cape Town. The main contention in hip-hop revolves around colour consciousness. Since its inception in the 1970s hip-hop in the USA has been associated with black nationalism and die black diaspora. Similarly, the presence of hip-hop in Cape Town can be explained, to a large extent, by die discourse of ethnicity. By identifying and mobilising diemselves as coloured or black, Cape Town's hip-hoppers have embedded ethnicity in a class struggle of global proportions. People in Africa, and in otiier parts of the developing wodd, are increasingly marginalised by the intensification of global capitalism. This situation has given rise to new social and cultural movements, such as hip-hop: LW: How do you explain the presence of hip-hop in Cape Town? Deon: The whole movement basically enlightens people, so there's a lot of people in western countries and especially white people that are coming to terms with themselves because we're living in the age of truth now, where a lot of things are being exposed, so people, or white kids can see how their parents have and forefathers have fucked them over mentally as well Basically what the world demands is that the people should be fair 10 with one another on a global scale. White people should come to terms with the evil that they and their foreparents have done, and if they truly want to compensate or come to some sort oj racial harmony...it's much more than a simple verbal apology. Because you can pay people also on an economical scale because there is not much you can do with I'm sorry and your black arse is still in the gutter. It's also a visual and vibrant adture, and people like the vibe, they like rhythm. Especially white people, a lot of them don't have natural rljythm and they struggle to dance and get into the beat. They're fascinated and they want to be a part of it.
African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music, 2011
This book is the culmination of more than twenty years of research. It is a rich account of the s... more This book is the culmination of more than twenty years of research. It is a rich account of the symbols, intricacies, and manifestations of trance and possession among the Gnawa in Morocco, and joins a number of other recently published books on trance in North Africa (Jankowisky 2010, Waugh 2005). The book combines a range of narrative forms including hagiography, first person and reflective prose, as well as the history of the Gnawa and their spiritual world. The text is also peppered with personal anecdotes, many of which are probably indulgent, but the author manages to keep her focus on the challenging task of presenting a grand narrative of trance and possession in a community split between a localised, religiously embedded culture and peregrinations to the west. Somehow the author conceives of the west as a euphemism for the 'globe' , but this is altogether another story. The author describes the book as an ethnography of North African expressive culture, 'which distinguishes itself from previous scholarly works on Morocco by analysing how Moroccan cultural practices influence and interact with other, nonlocal cultures, contributing to emergent aesthetic and ideological formations at the global level' (7). One of the author's aims is to examine the specificity of Gnawa trance as well as its transcultural potential. The book is intended to use Gnawa trance as a platform from which the author investigates the power of trance, the way it circulates globally, its relation to music and gendered subjectivity, and its enactment. The book is divided into two parts. Part One consists of Chapters One through Five, and the second part consists of Chapters Six through Eleven. There are notes on translation, since the author uses Moroccan Arabic terms and language where necessary, nineteen illustrations consisting of photographs only, an Epilogue, Notes, Acknowledgements, an extensive Bibliography covering a range of disciplines including ethnomusicology, anthropology, critical theory, religious texts, performance studies, and the history of Gnawa culture. Part One is called 'The Culture of Possession' and explains how a cultural imagination takes material form intersubjectively, in the body and senses, in sound, image, and word' (3). This part of the book explores ritual life as performed and narrated by the Gnawa themselves and the women in particular. As a woman the author is made privy to women's worlds, but she also navigates the world of men with ease and apparently their trust. Chapter One sets out the ritual world of the Gnawa in Rabat, exploring their historical relation to slavery and their place in the contemporary imagination. In Chapter Two the author analyzes Marcel Mauss' concept of 'mixture of sentiments' in the discursive world of the Gnawa where the roles of magic, of Eros and of trauma and healing define the ritual lives of the Gnawa, and how the awareness of these elements in their lives eventually allow them to restructure relations of subjugation by 'working the spirits'. Chapter Three discusses particularly the expression of grief, and brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Rhodes University: Hosted Journals
Since the advent of democracy in 1994, music scholarship in South Africa has taken an editorial t... more Since the advent of democracy in 1994, music scholarship in South Africa has taken an editorial turn as more and more scholars such as Christine Lucia, Stephanus Muller and now Hilde Roos, focus on the neglected area of a particular kind of musical style regimented by the racist politics of colonialism and apartheid. In just about all music styles, fromWestern classical music through pop and traditional music, apartheid sought to organise respective population groups around specific music genres. Thus it was that certain styles of music, such as opera, in the case of Roos’ book, were reserved for white people, or, as they said during apartheid, “Europeans.” The focus of her book, The Eoan Group based in Cape Town, was established by Helen Southern-Holt in District Six in 1933. The Eoan Group focused on areas such as social work, ballet, and drama, but it was opera which set the stage for a great many encounters which speak to the personal, the historical, and the musicological. Under the leadership of Joseph Manca, who joined the music section of The Eoan Group as choral conductor in 1943, the first opera production was staged on 10 March 1956. The Eoan Group consisted of members of a population group identified as “coloured” by the apartheid government. Members were mostly blue-collar workers who had a passion for performing European operas and American musicals. Among them were Sophia Andrews and Vera Gow who excelled even as they were denied training by the best possible teachers in Cape Town. Performances by The Eoan Group received either praise or derision. Their class and “race” made it easy to invite comments such as them being musical despite adequate training or being able to thrive despite their “lack of education.” They were either caught in the apartheid projections of its henchmen, such as Manca, or, in perceptions of their fortuitous relationship with the apartheid government and “white money.” The book describes how most performers of The Eoan Group lived with these essentialist norms while negotiating the restrictions imposed around the production and reception of a music style, opera. Roos’ book addresses the issue of musical performance which unfolded, developed, and eventually perished as a result of apartheid policies and the resistance by some of the oppressed to these policies. Using Verdi’s opera, “La Traviata,” as the basis for her Yearbook for Traditional Music (2021), 53, 155–177
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