Abstract:
This thesis maps some of the paths of transformation in post-apartheid South Africa
through an investigation of the most striking shifts in contemporary maskanda
performance and the analysis of these shifts in relation to the standards of practice that
dominated the genre during the apartheid era. The discourses on power that are aired
in and through maskanda are seen as contextualized responses that are closely bound
to the lived experience of maskanda musicians and the ways in which they see the
world around them. Furthermore, like other performance practices, maskanda is
regarded not only as a response to lived experience but also as a form of action that
may be used to imagine and experiment with alternative ways of being that may
indeed not feature in lived reality.
The concept of social and political transformation is interrogated through the
investigation of a range of different musical responses that are formulated and
disseminated as maskanda. The primary target of study in this thesis is a carefully
selected body of commercially recorded music by a number of musicians who
approach maskanda from different perspectives.
Maskanda evolved as practice that was clearly stamped as a male domain, and it is
still a male-dominated performance practice. Hence the central chapter (chapter 3) is
concerned with male performers, and women's engagement with the genre is dealt
with separately (chapter 4). In each instance, musical procedures and the lyrics of a
selection of songs are described and analyzed as discourses on experience in
contemporary South Africa. A range of different practices and issues are highlighted
and compared to those that featured in maskanda during the apartheid years.
Identity politics are an important dimension of transformation. The dynamics of
identity formation in the two eras are compared; and the ways in which various
constructions of tradition and modernity are engaged to validate identities, particularly
where ethnicity is the point of focus, are examined. During the apartheid era the
meaning-making process was characterized by rural/urban and past /present
dichotomies. Processes of meaning-making in the post-apartheid era are explored as
sites of change where new signifiers and new relationships between these positions
(rural/urban; past/present) may be forged thus giving expression to altered
expectations and ideals. In some instances musicians stand out as speaking for a
substantial social body, in others, the focus is on the idiosyncrasies of individuality.
Underpinning this thesis is a perspective on power relations that draws particularly
from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. A central paradigm in Bourdieu's work is that not
only do systems of domination (patriarchal, colonial, or other) determine who does
and who does not have access to power, they also determine the responses of those
who are dominated, both in action and in thought.
In the broadest sense, this thesis is concerned with the dynamics of transformation in
post-apartheid South Africa. In its detail, it is concerned with the style, sounds and
stories that particular maskanda musicians tell.
