Goema's Refrain
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Goema’s Refrain: Sonic Anticipation and the Musicking Cape by Valmont Layne Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, Faculty of Arts, University of the Western Cape Supervisor: Professor Premesh Lalu http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 3 Declaration I, Valmont Layne, declare that Goema’s Refrain: Sonic Anticipation and the Musicking Cape is my own work, that it has not been submitted for any degree or examination in any other university, and that all the sources I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by complete references. Valmont Layne August 2019 http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 4 Acknowledgements I hereby acknowledge the support of the National Research Foundation (NRF) with an Early Career Fellowship and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. I also acknowledge the support of the following individuals (all remaining faults are my own): My supervisor, Premesh Lalu for his support, guidance and wisdom. Tanya Layne, for her love, support and companionship, and Ella Layne, because fatherhood inspires an examined life. Musicians Mike Perry for the lessons and conversations. Luis Giminez, Reza Khota, Dathini Mzayiya, Colin Miller, Rafiq Asmal, Alan Wilcox, Gerald Mac Mckenzie, Hilton Schilder, Alex van Heerden, Robbie Jansen and my fellow travellers with the Raakwys experience namely Andre Sampie, Bruce Kadalie, Ralton Praah, Wayne Dirk, Aki Khan, Wayne Dixon, Wayne Barthies. Also, carnival insiders Melvin Mathews, and Katje Davids, and musical activists Mansoor Jaffer, Adam Haupt, Thulani Nxumalo. Scholars and colleagues The History Department at the University of the Western Cape. The staff and fellows at the CHR – including Lamees Lalken, Micaela Felix, Leslie Witz, Ciraj Rassool, Suren Pillay, Paolo Israel, Nicky Rosseau, Jane Taylor, Aidan Erasmus, Lauren van der Rede, Kim Gurney, Thozama April, Kate Highman, Michelle Smith, Sam Longford, Luis Gimenez, Janne Juhana, Lee Walters, Ross Truscott, Emma Minckley, Reza Kota, and Kristy Stone. The staff and fellows of the International Centre for the Study of Global Change, University of Minnesota for their support during my semester there in the fall of 2017. Sylvia Bruinders, Brett Pyper, Cory Kratz, Ciraj Rassool, Tina Smith, Iain Harris, Shamila Rahim, Colin Miller, Frédéric Salles, Shereen Pandit and Bahir Lattoe. Thanks to Michael Gallope for the enjoyable introduction to Sound Studies. The staff and regulars at Joons Coffee Shop, Palmer Road, Muizenberg. Staff at the the UWC library, and at the District Six Museum. In memory To those who have passed, who once journeyed with, and inspired me: Anne and Eugene Layne, my parents. Vincent Kolbe, my honorary musical uncle. Ivan Karp. Robbie Jansen and Winston Mankunku. Jimmy Adams who introduced me to the story of Tem Hawker. Ralton Praah for his friendship; Willie Jales for the langarm and the ‘piekniek http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 5 bos;’ Robert Sithole, for his friendship and pennywhistle; Alex van Heerden for his friendship and vastrap; Jeff Raaf for being a mentor and the introduction to global folksong http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 6 Abstract This thesis traces the making of a social world of the musicking Cape through sound, which it calls sonic anticipation. Sonic anticipation is threaded through a Cape-based musicking milieu called goema in the Nineteenth century, and through the regional jazzing culture that emerged in Cape Town in the latter part of the Twentieth century. A key concern is to read the sonic archive of Cape music without folding into a representational discourse of (apartheid) group identity or of a Cape exceptionalism. First, the thesis explores goema's emergence as folk music. In a central example, sonic anticipation is discernible in the intensities of a song called Daar Kom die Alibama [translated as ‘There Comes the Alibama’]. This song enabled goema to secure a status as racialised folk memory. Later in the Twentieth century, the song set the scene for a re- articulation that laid claim to the city as a response to the 'anxious urbanity' of race formation. This shift from the Nineteenth to Twentieth century musicking tradition is at the heart of what we have come to know as Cape jazz. In its genealogical construction of Cape jazz, the thesis traces a prefigurative aesthetics and politics that proposes new ways of thinking about the political significance of jazz. It traces the pedagogic strategies that musicians – Tem Hawker, Winston Mankunku, Robbie Jansen and Alex van Heerden - used in pursuing ‘ethical individuation’ with this racialised folk memory. By the early 1960s, jazz had become a method ‘archive’ or formative canon for these musicians. The thesis outlines how musicians used ‘nomadic’ pedagogies; following the energies that moved through the city, inside the technological, and discursive formations by which the social world was made. This thesis on goema’s refrain and the musicking Cape offers a way to consider a ‘difference that is not apartheid’s difference’. Keywords: http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 7 goema, phonograph, sound, anticipation, post-apartheid, sensory, refrain, desire, writing http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 8 Glossary South Africa's most respected and well-known musician in the Abdullah Ibrahim jazz idiom A singer, trumpet and accordion player who worked to reclaim Alex van Heerden the creole roots of South African Afrikaans music. A marginal performance practice inside Cape Towns carnival tradition in which primitivism – exemplified in the so-called atja American Indian, the Zulu and the red devil featured prominently. The cosmopolitan old 'Malay Quarter' of Cape Town, also known as Bokaap (Upper Cape) and as Scotsche Kloof – the latter recalling its links with colonial Scottish mission and Bokaap military settlement. It has, in recent years, been exoticised in public discourse as a ‘Cape Malay’ enclave and is a major tourist attraction in the city. An apartheid designation for people with cultural connections to Cape Malay the Indian Ocean world. Often reduced to a synomym for muslims. An apartheid racial designation associated with the Cape, and Coloured which has a complex genealogy which incorporates the violent conquest of the Cape’s precolonial polities, the import of slaves http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 9 and the settlement by colonists from Europe as well as others from terrestrial Africa, the Carribean and the Indian Ocean world. The historic working class neighborhood established in the early nineteenth century as Kanaladorp and destroyed between 1966 District Six and the late 1980s and renamed Zonnebloem. Along with Sophiatown in Johannesburg, it is the most infamous example of urban forced removals under apartheid. gammie A vernacular term for the goema drum A popular 1980s band which pioneered a a new goema sound Genuines fused with rock, jazz punk A body of Cape musics embracing carnival, social dance and goema comic song and named for the goema drum The main street of the inner city neighborhood known as District Hanover Street Six NEUM Non-European Unity Movement noon gun A gun which fires at 12 noon on a daily basis. A vocalist, alto saxophonist and flautist who has earned a Robbie Jansen reputation as an exponent of a certain Cape folk sensibility. http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 10 A cosmopolitan suburb of Cape Town with a north-facing onto Seapoint the Atlantic ocean. Table Bay The bay housing the main harbour for the City of Cape Town Table Mountain The main landmark of the City of Cape Town One of South Africa’s premier jazz tenor saxophonists and a Winston Mankunku respected composer and performer. Winston Mankunku Prominent tenor saxophone player from Cape Town http://etd.uwc.ac.za/ 11 Table of Contents Declaration .................................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 6 Glossary ......................................................................................................................................................... 8 Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter one: Sound, history and anticipation .............................................................................................. 12 Part One: Becoming folklore ........................................................................................................................ 35 Chapter two: “Daar kom die Alibama” – Auditing a nineteenth-century world picture ................................. 36 Chapter three: Making atja performance archaic in the phonographic twentieth century ........................... 67 Part Two: Becoming phonographic ............................................................................................................... 96 Chapter four: Behind the sonic veil: nomadism in Cape jazz ......................................................................... 97 Chapter five: Sound, individuation and the voice ....................................................................................... 127 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................