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New Music for New South Africans: The New Music Indabas in South Africa, 2000–02

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Mareli Stolp
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Abstract

This article explores the content, scope and impact of an annual contemporary music festival in South Africa, the first of which was presented in 2000 by New Music South Africa (NMSA), the South African chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). It explores the New Music Indabas of 2000–02 against the background of the political and cultural transformations that characterized South Africa, especially in the aftermath of the end of apartheid. Research into the archive of NMSA provided an entry point into understanding South African cultural, social and political life in the early years of the country's democracy. The ‘separate development’ rhetoric of the totalitarian apartheid regime, in power from 1948 to 1994, prevented cultural exchange and connection between musics and musicians in South Africa for decades; this article explores the ways in which the New Music Indabas attempted to right these historical imbalances, and to forge new directions for South African art-music production and practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 143 , Issue 1 , 2018 , pp. 211 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 The Royal Musical Association

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Footnotes

I am grateful to William Fourie, chair of New Music South Africa (NMSA) in 2015–16, for allowing me access to the NMSA archive, and for the assistance of Santie de Jongh, chief archivist at the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) at Stellenbosch University, for her assistance in the archival research conducted for this article. I also wish to thank Gwen Ansell, Annemie Behr, Michael Blake, George King and Clare Loveday for their valuable input during the writing of the article.

References

1 Annegret Fauser, ‘The Scholar behind the Medal: Edward J. Dent (1876–1957) and the Politics of Music History’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 139 (2014), 235–60.

2 Ibid.; Anne C. Shreffler, ‘The International Society for Contemporary Music and its Political Context (Prague 1935)’, Music and International History in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 58–90.

3 ‘Apartheid’, an Afrikaans word that means ‘separateness’, was a system of racial segregation enforced by the all-white National Party government, which ruled South Africa from 1948 until the first democratic elections in 1994. Under this policy, black South Africans (including Indian and coloured) suffered many injustices and human rights abuses. For more on apartheid, see Sampie Terreblanche, A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652–2002 (Durban: University of Natal Press, 2003), and Michael Morris, Apartheid: An Illustrated History (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2012).

4 Michael Blake, ‘South African Composers on the World Stage: The ISCM in South Africa’, Fontes artis musicae, 54 (2007), 359–73.

5 Ibid. Blake covers the activities of the first South African section of the ISCM extensively in this article, and this information will therefore not be dealt with in detail again here.

6 Ibid.

7 Gwen Ansell, ‘A Rich Vision’, Cue, 1 July 2002. Stellenbosch University, Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS), New Music South Africa archive (hereafter NMSA archive), Box 31, Folder 60.

8 Catherine Barnes, ‘International Isolation and Pressure for Change in South Africa’, Accord, 19 (2008), 36–9; Brooks Spector, ‘Sanctions and Cultural Boycotts – The Next Frontier?’, Daily Maverick, 4 September 2012 (<http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-09-04-sanctions-and-cultural-boycotts-the-next-frontier/#.V-i_qYh96Uk>, accessed 14 November 2017).

9 See, for example, Rachel Beckles Willson, ‘The Parallax Worlds of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 134 (2009), 319–47; Olivier Urbain, Music and Conflict Transformation: Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015); and Adham Hamed, ‘Music in Conflict Transformation’, Speaking the Unspeakable: Sounds of the Middle East Conflict (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016), 53–9.

10 Brett Pyper, ‘Mozart in African Colour’, The Weekender, 8–9 July 2006. NMSA archive, Box 31, Folder 60.

11 Gwen Ansell, ‘Uncaged’, Cue, 30 June 2000. NMSA archive, Box 31, Folder 60.

12 See, for example, Lizabe Lambrechts, ‘Ethnography and the Archive: Power and Politics in Five South African Music Archives’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Stellenbosch University, 2012).

13 Stephanus Muller, ‘Michael Blake 50’, Musicus, 30 (2002), 119–26.

14 The ‘homelands’ or ‘Bantustans’ established by the apartheid government were areas to which the majority of the black population were forcibly moved in order to prevent majority black presence in urban areas preferred by white South Africans.

15 Department of Economic Development, Environmental Affairs, <http://www.dedea.gov.za/research/Research/Eastern%20Cape%20Socio-Economic%20Review%20and%20Outlook%202013.pdf> (accessed 14 November 2017).

16 Infrastructure and service delivery has, however, deteriorated rapidly over the last decade, with severe water shortages, unsatisfactory road maintenance and regular electricity outages now common occurrences in the town.

17 Programmes for concerts of 20 May 1999, 5 August 1999, 24 August 1999 and 17 August 2000, and programme for Graduation 99 Concerts. NMSA archive, Box 31, Folder 60.

18 Stephanus Muller, ‘“Quo vadis, Obelisk?” SA musiek trek swaar’, Die Burger, 13 June 2001, 33; Blake, ‘South African Composers’.

19 Muller, ‘“Quo vadis, Obelisk?”’.

20 Composers programmed by Obelisk include John Coulter, Andrew Cruickshank, Christopher James, Hubert du Plessis, Etienne van Rensburg and Arnold van Wyk. These names are collected from a short survey of Obelisk concert programmes. NMSA archive, Box 31, Folder 60.

21 Blake, ‘South African Composers’, 368.

22 Ibid.

23 Brett Pyper, ‘State of Contention: Recomposing Apartheid at Pretoria‘s State Theatre’, Composing Apartheid: Music For and Against Apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), 237–44; Mareli Stolp, ‘Contemporary Performance Practice of Art Music in South Africa: A Practice-Based Research Inquiry’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Stellenbosch University, 2012).

24 Email from Sheila Jones to Michael Blake, 7 March 2001 (NMSA archive, Box 4, Folder 6); Blake, ‘South African Composers’.

25 Blake, ‘South African Composers’, 362.

26 Report from Michael Blake to the board of the South African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO), 10 September 2000. NMSA archive, Box 1, Folder 2.

27 Grant Olwage, ‘Scriptions of the Choral: The Historiography of Black South African Choralism’, South African Journal of Musicology, 22 (2002), 29–45 (p. 29).

28 Veit Erlmann, Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination: South Africa and the West (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); idem, ‘“Spectatorial Lust”: The African Choir in England, 1891–1893’, Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, ed. Bernth Linfors (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), 107–34; Christine Lucia, ‘Travesty or Prophecy? Views of South African Black Choral Composition’, Music and Identity: Transformation and Negotiation, ed. Eric Akrofi, Maria Smit and Stig-Magnus Thorsén (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2007), 161–80; Olwage, ‘Scriptions of the Choral’; idem, ‘Music and (Post)colonialism: The Dialectics of Choral Culture on a South African Frontier’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, 2003). Lucia notes: ‘As choral music in tonic sol-fa notation became automatically considered inferior to Western music composed in staff notation, so through general attitudes by White musicians to composers of choral music was this sense of inferiority preserved. This in turn made it more likely that an ethnomusicological perspective would be used to study choral music, and that Western musicology's formalist modes of analysis would find such music wanting’ (‘Travesty or Prophecy?’, 165).

29 Olwage, ‘Music and (Post)colonialism’, 78.

30 Grant Olwage, ‘Discipline and Choralism: The Birth of Musical Colonialism’, Music, Power and Politics, ed. Annie J. Randall (London: Routledge, 2005), 25–46 (p. 26).

31 Christine Lucia highlights the fact that, in the South African context of racialized imperialism, tonic sol-fa notation became the predominantly ‘native’ notation, and staff notation became mostly associated with whiteness (‘Travesty or Prophecy?’, 164). For more on the history of tonic sol-fa notation in South Africa and Victorian England, see Olwage, ‘Music and (Post)colonialism’; Robin Stevens, ‘Tonic Sol-fa: An Exogenous Aspect of South African Musical Identity’, Music and Identity, ed. Akrofi, Smit and Thorsén, 37–52; and Lucia, ‘Travesty or Prophecy?’.

32 Correspondence, 17 February 2000. NMSA archive, Box 5, Folder 8.

33 This statement was, of course, hyperbolic, even in the year 2000. I would suggest, though, that Blake's tactic here – in trying to convince a bureaucratic entity of the necessity of transcribing Western art music for use by African choirs – is understandable.

34 Correspondence, 17 February 2000. NMSA archive, Box 5, Folder 8.

35 Correspondence, 2 June 2000. NMSA archive, Box 5, Folder 8.

36 Correspondence, 15 February 2000. NMSA archive, Box 1, Folder 2.

37 In 2004, only one choir could be accommodated (the Eastern Cape government, which had provided sponsorship for the choirs for the first four festivals, had by then withdrawn their financial support), and in 2005 no choirs could be funded. The 2006 Indaba once again featured three black choirs, facilitated mostly by a significant grant from the South African Department of Arts and Culture; they performed works by Mozart (the festival theme that year was ‘Reimagining Mozart’, in honour of the 250th commemoration of the composer's birth) as well as giving premières of three choral compositions, by Lihle Biata, Teenage Mahlangeni and Sibusiso Njeza.

38 The Standard Bank National Arts Festival, which hosted the New Music Indabas from 2000 to 2006, is made up of main and fringe festival programmes; works included in the former typically receive more financial and logistical support, and are considered more prestigious, than smaller productions on the fringe programme.

39 Personal correspondence with Andile Khumalo, 7 July 2016.

40 Committee feedback. NMSA archive, Box 1, Folder 2.

41 Ibid.

42 Gwen Ansell, ‘Gwen Ansell on New Music Indaba 2001 “Spaces and Odysseys”’, New Music SA Bulletin, 1 (2001), 11.

43 Ibid.

44 Gwen Ansell, ‘Diamonds in the Dust’, Cue, 4 July 2001.

45 Correspondence, 25 July 2001. NMSA archive, Box 7, Folder 10.

46 The participants were Lihle Biata, Andile Khumalo, Mokale Koapeng, Sicelo Mkhize, Thobile Ncanywa, Mandisa Nguza, Sibusiso Njeza, Mbulelo Nzo, Lloyd Prince, Simphiwe Sekute, Braam du Toit, Ben Turner, Timon Wapenaar, Cassidy Webb and Emily Williams.

47 Participating composers were Lihle Biata, Fredrik Ed, Thobile Ncanywa, Christian Ngqobe, Sibusiso Njeza, Celebration Ntungwa, Mbulelo Nzo, Lloyd Prince, Jim Pywell, Johan Rautenbach, Julia Raynham, Braam du Toit, Francois de Villiers, Timon Wapenaar and Cassidy Webb.

48 United Nations, General Assembly 10 December 1985: Policies of Apartheid of the Government of South Africa: Comprehensive Sanctions against the Racist Regime of South Africa (1985), <http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/40/a40r064.htm> (accessed 14 November 2017).

49 Blake, ‘South African Composers’; Stolp, ‘Contemporary Performance Practice’.

50 Ansell, ‘A Rich Vision’.

51 A useful resource for overviews of current debates in South African music is the conference programmes of the South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM), accessible online at <www.sasrim.ac.za>. The journal South African Music Studies (SAMUS) is a further informative resource.