Sounding the Cape, Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa Denis-Constant Martin To cite this version: Denis-Constant Martin. Sounding the Cape, Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa. African Minds, Somerset West, pp.472, 2013, 9781920489823. halshs-00875502 HAL Id: halshs-00875502 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00875502 Submitted on 25 May 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Sounding the Cape Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa Denis-Constant Martin AFRICAN MINDS Published by African Minds 4 Eccleston Place, Somerset West, 7130, South Africa [email protected] www.africanminds.co.za 2013 African Minds ISBN: 978-1-920489-82-3 The text publication is available as a PDF on www.africanminds.co.za and other websites under a Creative Commons licence that allows copying and distributing the publication, as long as it is attributed to African Minds and used for noncommercial, educational or public policy purposes. The illustrations are subject to copyright as indicated below. Photograph page iv © Denis-Constant Martin Photograph page 33 © Denis-Constant Martin Illustration page 68 © John and Charles Bell Heritage Collection Photograph page 110 © The Ismail Dante Archives / Denis-Constant Martin Photograph page 123 © District Six Museum / Africa Media Online Photograph page 151 © Steve Hilton-Barber Photograph page 187 © John E Mason Photograph page 199 © District Six Museum Photograph page 217 © Paul Weinberg / South Photographs / Africa Media Online Photograph page 219 © Denis-Constant Martin Photograph page 235 © Denis-Constant Martin Photograph page 259 © Denis-Constant Martin Photograph page 263 © Rashid Vally Photograph page 291 © Denis-Constant Martin Photograph page 313 © Fortissimo Films Photograph page 335 © District Six Museum Photograph page 339 © Denis-Constant Martin Photograph page 361 © Denis-Constant Martin For orders from within South Africa: Blue Weaver PO Box 30370, Tokai 7966, Cape Town, South Africa Email: [email protected] For orders from outside South Africa: African Books Collective PO Box 721, Oxford OX1 9EN, UK [email protected] www.africanbookscollective.com Design and lay-out by COMPRESS.dsl www.compressdsl.com Published with the support of: This book is dedicated to the memory of Vincent Kolbe, Chris McGregor and Winston Mankunku Ngozi Contents Prelude ix Acknowledgements xiii Timeline xvii Part One: The Emergence of Creolised Identities CHAPTER ONE Music and Identity: A Theoretical Prologue 3 CHAPTER TWO Cape Town’s Musics: A Legacy of Creolisation 53 Part Two: The Dialectics of Separation and Interweaving CHAPTER THREE Separation and Interweaving in the 20th Century: Futile Separations 101 Vincent Kolbe’s Childhood Memories 187 CHAPTER FOUR Separation and Interweaving in the 20th Century: Fertile Intertwining 209 Chris McGregor talks about the Blue Notes, Jazz, and South African Society 259 “Soweto Sun”, an Interview with Rashid Vally by Denis-Constant Martin 263 CHAPTER FIVE Two Decades of Freedom 267 CHAPTER SIX The Musicians’ Discourse: Cape Town as a Musical Potjiekos 333 Conclusion Recognising Creolisation? 357 References 385 Illustrations 411 Musicians Interviewed in 2007 and 2009 412 Index 413 Prelude This book is the outcome of a project that began to take shape through conversations with Professor Simon Bekker (Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Stellenbosch), in the course of which he suggested that I submit a research proposal to the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study (STIAS). I then discussed the idea with Professor Bernard Lategan, the then director of STIAS. We agreed that the project would try and combine my interests in the analysis of group identities and in the sociology of music. I wrote a proposal entitled “Urban Music and Identities: A Case Study of Cape Town”, which was approved by the STIAS Research Committee, and I was invited to come and spend ten weeks at STIAS. During my stay in Stellenbosch, from 17 September to 1 December 2007, I conducted a series of semi-directive interviews on the relationship musicians entertained with Cape Town, the city and its surroundings; I also collected as much printed information and as many recordings as possible. Musicians included in the sample represented most of the musical genres that were actually performed in Cape Town in 2007. When asked what, in their opinion, made Cape Town’s musics special, nearly all the musicians interviewed agreed on two characteristics: a history of mixture, and the ghoema beat. In order to be analysed, the findings of the musicians’ survey had to be set against a double background: first a theoretical background which would treat mixture as an effect of creolisation dynamics that developed at the Cape after the arrival of the first European settlers in 1652, and which would consider creole musics (including genres based on the ghoema beat) invented in South Africa within a general framework assessing the role of music in identity configurations; then, a historical background which would illustrate the development of Cape Town’s musics and ascertain their quality as creole (creolised and creolising) musics, highlighting connections and interactions between people who were ascribed separate identities. Finally, after reading several reports published by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), I realised that it was necessary to engage with the apparent contradiction between what the history of music and the perceptions of musicians reveal about exchanges and blending that occurred at all times in the history of the Cape, and the findings of successive IJR Barometer surveys that bring to the forefront the relative isolation in which South Africans previously classified in different groups still live. viii Prelude The book consequently begins with two chapters respectively dealing with the role and place of music in identity configurations, and with theories of creolisation and their relevance to South Africa. The following three chapters offer an outline of the history of Cape Town’s music. They do not claim to provide a comprehensive history, but endeavour to illustrate as precisely as possible the works of creolisation in music. I have attempted to describe musical genres and styles in the most neutral manner – in line with the imperative of axiological neutrality advocated by Max Weber (Weber 1958) – and the descriptions are not meant to carry any value judgement on the music itself but to capture its social signification. The three historical chapters focus on Cape Town but, when necessary, also delve into the history of music in the rest of South Africa. Cape Town was the first outpost of creolisation in South Africa. Cape Town’s musics played a decisive role in shaping popular music that spread throughout the whole country in the 20th century. Consequently, it is often difficult to disentangle what is specifically of Cape Town and what is more generally South African. At any rate, such disentanglement should only be attempted for the sake of conducting a case study of Cape Town, and without losing sight of the permanent mutual influences that interlocked Capetonian and South African musics. Cape Town appears, in this perspective, not as an exceptional case in South Africa, but rather as a prototype. The history of colonial and post-colonial South Africa started at the Cape. What unfolded there, especially in terms of musical invention, impacted deeply on the rest of South Africa. The role and place of music in the development of Cape Town’s society is just one example of trends that affected the whole country. Following the three historical chapters, I carry out an analysis of the interviews conducted with Capetonian musicians in 2007, before the conclusion presents a few suggestions regarding the place music should be granted in education and cultural policies given the divisions that still characterise South Africa in the 21st century. When writing this book, I have been confronted with terminological and typographical questions – as have most authors dealing with South Africa. To designate groups that were defined in the Population Registration Act, 1950, I have adopted what has become a most common code in South Africa and used the labels: Africans, coloureds, Indians, and whites (I have retained initial capitals for coloureds and whites in quotations where they were originally used); blacks encompass all the victims of apartheid (Africans, coloureds and Indians). Having recourse to these labels does not amount in any way to granting them an intrinsic value. But the history of South Africa – and the effects it continues to have upon the organisation of today’s South African society and on the representations South Prelude ix Africans entertain about each other – makes it necessary to use these labels to try and assess both their irrelevance in terms of what they suggest about the distinction and separation of the people they designated, and their powerful effects on the structures of social life. Similarly, it is impossible in such a study not to use the word “race” and a number of the words in the composition of which it enters. I have chosen to put systematically “race” between inverted comas to underline that “race” is devoid of any biological basis and should only be considered as a social construct. The spelling of some words sometimes varies according to sources – one can find, for instance Guguletu and Gugulethu,ghoema and goema – and I have tried to use only one spelling in the text, but have respected spellings used by other authors I quote.