DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY A musical ethnography of the Kaapse Klopse carnival in Cape Town, South Africa Gregory, Jonathan Award date: 2018 Awarding institution: Queen's University Belfast Link to publication Terms of use All those accessing thesis content in Queen’s University Belfast Research Portal are subject to the following terms and conditions of use • Copyright is subject to the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, or as modified by any successor legislation • Copyright and moral rights for thesis content are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners • A copy of a thesis may be downloaded for personal non-commercial research/study without the need for permission or charge • Distribution or reproduction of thesis content in any format is not permitted without the permission of the copyright holder • When citing this work, full bibliographic details should be supplied, including the author, title, awarding institution and date of thesis Take down policy A thesis can be removed from the Research Portal if there has been a breach of copyright, or a similarly robust reason. 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Sep. 2021 A musical ethnography of the Kaapse Klopse carnival in Cape Town, South Africa Jonathan Alexander Gregory A dissertation submitted to the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics of the Queen’s University of Belfast in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2018 colophon This document was typeset by the author using LATEX, compiled with pdfTeX and BibTeX (TEX Live 2016/Debian), and edited using GNU Emacs 25.3.50.2 (Org mode 9.1.3) on 4.4.0-116-generic GNU/Linux. Inspired by the typographical style of the classicthesis package, the text is set to 11pt Palatino typeface using old-style figure and small caps. Serifed typewriter font is Latin Modern Typewriter, and drop caps are set to EB garamond. Music notation and maps were rendered using GNU LilyPond and R, respectively. There are 24 figures and 3 tables in this document. A musical ethnography of the Kaapse Klopse carnival in Cape Town, South Africa Jonathan Alexander Gregory PhD dissertation, March 2018 Supervisors: Fiona Magowan and Ioannis Tsioulakis Queen’s University Belfast c 2018 All contents of this document, unless specified otherwise, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Final Version as of 2018-03-12 Mon 18:57 To my nephews and nieces, Alice, Joaquim, Lucas, Maria Cecília, Maria Fernanda, and Pedro. iii Acknowledgements This research would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many people and institutions. First and foremost, I would like to thank my super- visors Fiona Magowan, Ioannis Tsioulakis, and Suzel Reily (now at the University of Campinas) for their mentoring and intellectual support during the development of this dissertation, and each member of my committee, Gregory Barz and Maruska Svasek, for their critical comments and encouragement. To Denis-Constant Martin and every researcher of klopse I owe my deepest gratitude for laying the groundwork of this dissertation. Discussions and feedback from the following people were also greatly ap- preciated: Olivier Urbain, Gordon Ramsey, Theodore Konkouris, Stephen Millar, Dominic Bryan, Paulo Sousa, and Sylvia Bruinders. I wish to thank capes Foundation for the financial support (Ciência sem Fronteiras) during all stages of the PhD Programme. Everyone at Queen’s University Belfast for their technical support. Specifically, I would like to thank the happ faculty and staff, Maruska Svasek, Susan Templeton, Marie Catherine George, and Patrick Carson. Everyone at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town, especially Sylvia Bruinders, for making available their support since the early stages of fieldwork when I needed the most. I am grateful to everyone involved with District Six Entertainers, District Six Hanover Minstrels, and the Cape Town Carnival for allowing me entry as a parti- cipant observer, and all the friendly people I met in Cape Town: Roshin, ‘Solly’ (in memoriam), Lanre, ‘Skull’, Anna, Mark, ‘Rasta’, Faldien, Shadley, and Muneeb, to name a few. I miss you all. I would like to extend my inmost gratitude to Sedick Kannemeyer and Owen Elias for their honest and thoughtful discussions and generosity in answering many of my questions, and everyone who contributed their time and knowledge to making this research possible. I will be forever indebted with you all. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their emotional support. Specifically, I want to thank my wife Claudia for her patience during the gestation of this dissertation, and the many helpful discussions on the subject. iv Abstract This research explores the interplay between culture and politics from a musical ethnography of the Kaapse Klopse carnival in Cape Town, South Africa. This cultural expression can be traced to colonial slavery when Cape slaves were given a day off on 2 January. Since the early 20th century, carnival troupes have gathered in football stadiums as a medium of socialisation to perform and compete against each other for trophies, profit, status, and bragging rights. The research is divided into four parts. In the first part, I discuss the impact of violence in township areas, the locus of carnival and where the majority of participants live, where I examine the role of carnival in the mitigation of physical and emotional distress, and the legacy of klopse music as symptoms of deeper divisions rather than historical imperatives. In part two, I discuss the functions and characteristics of klopse competitions, seeking to understand the reward scheme, motives and strategies for enticing players, as well as the effects of winning and losing, team work and pride on the individual and group. Part three focuses on the more negative aspects of competition, drawing on notions of persuasion, control and manipulation, as well as empirical discussion of how individuals compete for positions of power and status, and on how their quest for success in carnival reflects their position in the formal economy. Finally, in the last part, I examine the music of the Kaapse Klopse and explore its place within a rapidly changing South Africa, in which carnival and the political mainstream are moving in opposite directions, focusing on notions of ethnicity, entrainment, and solidarity, and the effects of power and money on the social field. Specifically, I use Durkheim’s concept of collective consciousness to explain how the conscience collective is imperative to establishing moral order and the continuity of parades and competitions. v Contents Acronyms xi Consultants xii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The festival.................................. 10 1.1.1 Klopse procession and short chronology............ 12 1.1.2 Klopse competition......................... 15 1.1.3 Klopse music............................ 17 1.1.4 The social structure of troupes.................. 19 1.2 Race in South Africa............................ 20 1.2.1 Terminology............................. 21 1.2.2 South African coloured communities.............. 22 1.2.3 The coloured people of Cape Town............... 26 1.2.4 Constructions of race and ethnicity............... 27 1.2.5 Cultural marginalisation...................... 30 1.3 Theoretical framework and chapters................... 31 1.4 Methodology................................ 32 1.4.1 Musical ethnography........................ 33 1.4.2 Musical participation........................ 33 1.4.3 Unstructured interview...................... 35 1.4.4 Data gathering........................... 36 1.4.5 Data analysis............................ 41 1.4.6 Research ethics........................... 44 2 From violence to music and back 47 2.1 Ethnographic setting and violence.................... 50 2.1.1 Early stages of fieldwork..................... 50 2.1.2 Joining the band.......................... 52 2.1.3 Inside Bo-Kaap’s social structure................. 56 2.1.4 Post season............................. 59 2.2 Cleaning the house: Theory and practice................ 60 vi 2.2.1 The band as a pack......................... 63 2.2.2 Collective efficacy.......................... 65 2.3 Understanding structural violence.................... 68 2.3.1 Problems of governance and inequality............. 68 2.3.2 ‘Post’-apartheid city........................ 69 2.3.3 Mediation between crime and joy................ 70 3 Why troupes compete 74 3.1 Tournament design............................. 74 3.2 Functions and characteristics of competition.............. 78 3.2.1 Playing success and post-match discussions.......... 78 3.2.2 Contest for legitimacy and social capital............ 81 3.3 Playing the game.............................. 82 3.3.1 Making a name in the industry.................. 82 3.3.2 Becoming an asset in the troupe................