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The Significance of Small Journeys: Travel and the Congregational Music of Kroonvale, South Africa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2018
Abstract
In James Clifford’s influential text, Routes (1997), he makes the point that, contrary to the entrenched belief that only the ethnographer is a traveller to faraway places, the local people and communities are also travellers. This article takes his notion as its point of departure and investigates the implications of travel within the context of my research among the members of three church congregations of coloured people in Kroonvale, South Africa, where I undertook fieldwork in 2004 and 2005. Historically, the international journeys of colonial officials, European missionaries and slaves from the Cape, along with large-scale migration of the indigenous peoples across the country’s frontiers, resulted in the encounters which gave rise to this congregational music. More recently, while the community appears static and fixed in a certain place, there is an ongoing occurrence of small journeys: mobile ministers, church members travelling between denominations, moving from place to place in and around Kroonvale and, perhaps most poignantly, the congregations’ move from the main town of Graaff-Reinet to Kroonvale as part of the implementation of the apartheid-era Group Areas Act (1950). In this article, I examine Clifford’s theories in conjunction with notions of music and place in order to argue that these short journeys have made an important contribution to the sound and style of congregational music in Kroonvale.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2018
Footnotes
This article is based on a plenary presentation given at the Christian Congregational Music conference held at the Ripon College, Cuddesdon, UK in August 2013. The conference theme centred on ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ using Clifford’s work as point of departure, hence the reliance on Clifford’s work here. My heartfelt thanks go to the congregation members and Kroonvale ministers who gave freely of their time, the conference organizers for covering some travel costs, and the University of the Witwatersrand Friedel Sellschop Fellowship for providing the main funding source for my travel to this event. Opinions expressed in this article are, of course, solely my own.
References
1 Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Clifford served as Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz for 33 years until his retirement in 2011. His work traverses the fields of history, literary analysis, anthropology, cultural studies, contemporary poetics and museum studies and has been widely cited and translated. Routes is viewed as a sequel to The Predicament of Culture: 20 th Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). The third book in this collection is titled, Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University PRess, 2013).
2 Clifford’s work is also concerned with the notion of the ethnographer as traveller and how the researcher’s travel is often erased from the subsequent written accounts. He states that by conceptualizing the work of anthropologists as localized in a ‘field’, aspects such as the ‘means of transport [to the “field” site] … the capital city, the national context … the university home of the researcher … [and] the sites and relations of translation are minimised’. Clifford, Routes, 23; his emphasis. For the purposes of this article, I focus on the notions of travel as applied to the Kroonvale community.
3 Clifford, Routes, 23–4.
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15 Clifford, Routes, 11.
16 Clifford, Routes, 33.
17 Descended from the indigenous KhoeKhoe and San populations, Karretjie People were ‘arbitrarily categorized as coloured within the apartheid system’. While this group was ‘opportunistically “discovered” as citizens by the main political parties at the time of the 1994 [first democratic] election’ their lives and circumstances have not changed for the better since that time. de Jongh, Mike, Roots and Routes: Karretjie People of the Great Karoo (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2013), 7, 105 Google Scholar.
18 De Jongh, Roots and Routes, 7.
19 Diaken Klerk, personal communication with author, 13 February 2005.
20 Clifford, Routes, 24.
21 This is a case of forced travel because coloured people were not permitted to attend the whites-only teacher training college in Graaff-Reinet. Many community members also obtained their degrees via the University of South Africa (Unisa), a well-recognized correspondence university.
22 Clifford, Routes, 31.
23 Newton-King, Susan, Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier 1760–1803 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, 28, 30 and 33.
24 Susan Newton-King, Masters and Servants, 249 n. 25.
25 For further discussion of the San musical influence on Xhosa music, see Kubik, Gerhard, ‘Nsenga/Shona Harmonic Patterns and the San Heritage in Southern Africa’, Ethnomusicology 32/2 (1988), 39–76 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Susan Newton-King, Masters and Servants, 16–17.
27 Davenport, Rodney and Saunders, Christopher, eds, South Africa: A Modern History, fifth edition (London: Macmillan, 2000), 44–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Slavery was introduced to South Africa under Dutch administration and then continued by the British. Starting when Jan van Riebeeck first established the Dutch East India Company’s refreshment station at the Cape in 1652, slavery numbers rose to 36,169 by 1834, when slavery was abolished in South Africa as well as in other British colonies. Armstrong, James C. and Worden, Nigel, ‘The Slaves, 1652–1834’, in The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840, ed. Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 109–10, 134 Google Scholar. See also Wayne Dooling, ‘Slaves, Slaveowners and Amelioration in Graaff-Reinet, 1823–1830’ (BA diss., University of Cape Town, 1989).
29 Armstrong and Worden, ‘The Slaves’, 136–7.
30 Armstrong and Worden, ‘The Slaves’, 146–8.
31 Minnaar, Graaff-Reinet, 111.
32 Later on, however, Khoisan people became increasingly caught between the battles of colonists and Xhosa, which meant that Khoisan servants working for either side often became the first casualties of a raid or attack. Hermann Giliomee, ‘The Eastern Frontier, 1770–1812’, in The Shaping of South African Society, 431.
33 Giliomee, ‘The Eastern Frontier’, 437 and Armstrong and Worden, ‘The Slaves’, 160.
34 The cattle killing took place after a young girl known as Nongqawuse prophesied that the resurrection of ancestral spirits would occur with an accompanying supply of food from heaven. Xhosa people destroyed crops and slaughtered livestock, which led to widespread starvation and death. As a result, many Xhosa people fled to the Cape Colony in search of work and food. Davenport and Saunders, South Africa, 142 and Westby-Nunn, Tony, Graaff-Reinet: An Illustrated Historical Guide to the Town; Including Aberdeen and Nieu-Bethesda (Capricorn Square, South Africa: Elephant Head Publications, 2004), 71 Google Scholar.
35 ‘Location’, a now obsolete term synonymous with ‘township’, is a specifically South African designation which refers to a segregated area on the outskirts of a town or city set aside for black residents. Kavanag, Kathryn, ed., South African Concise Oxford Dictionary, edited by the Dictionary Unit for South African English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 680, 1242 Google Scholar.
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37 DRMC records (Graaff-Reinet: unpublished notebook, 12 September 1934). The Dutch Reformed Church introduced the Evangelische gezangboek in 1814 (at a service in Cape Town) to be used in conjunction with the older Psalm book. This hymnbook contains 192 hymn texts set to 31 older Psalm melodies, 44 melodies of German origin and 15 contemporary Dutch melodies. Gawie Cillié, ‘Die musiek van ons Afrikaanse Gesangboek – 1944’ (The music of our Afrikaans hymnbook – 1944), in Die Gereformeerde kerklied deur die eeue: Referate gelewer by die kongres oor die kerkmusiek gehou in Kaapstad op. 9 en 10 Oktober 1962 (The Reformed church hymn through the ages: Reports given at the congress on church music held in Cape Town on 9 and 10 October 1962) (Cape Town: Tafelberg-Uitgewers, 1964), 65.
38 Temperley, Nicholas, ‘The Old Way of Singing: Its Origin and Development’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 34 (1981), 512–13, 544 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Old Colony Mennonites of northern Alberta, Canada, also make use of lead singers, known as Vorsänger. These church members sit facing the congregation and ‘take turns in announcing the number of the hymn and initiating the singing and are also responsible for performing short interludes between phrases that serve to lead the congregation to the first note of the next phrase’. Berg, Wesley, ‘Hymns of the Old Colony Mennonites and the Old Way of Singing’, The Musical Quarterly 80/1 (1996), 83 Google Scholar.
39 Gawie Cillié, ‘Die kerklied in Suid-Afrika, 1652–1800’ (The Church Hymn in South Africa, 1652–1800), in ´n Geskiedenis van die Afrikaanse protestantse kerklied: inleidende bydraes, ed. J.H.H. du Toit (Pretoria: NG Kerkboekhandel, 1983), 4.
40 Van Warmelo also included a category of liederwysies that could be traced back to secular songs, and both authors categorize some tunes that they were unable to trace back to any pre-existing melodies. van Warmelo, Willem, Liederwysies van vanslewe (Liederwysies of long ago) (Amsterdam: Balkema, 1958), 5 Google Scholar and Cillié, Gawie, Afrikaanse Liederwysies: ´n Verdwynende kultuurskat [Afrikaans Liederwysies: A Disappearing Cultural Treasure) (Johannesburg: SAMRO, 1993), 4 Google Scholar.
41 Gawie Basson, interview with author, 14 July 2004.
42 For a history of black choralism in South Africa, see Markus Detterbeck, ‘South African Choral Music (Amakwaya): Song, Contest and the Formation of Identity’ (DPhil diss., University of Natal, Durban, 2002).
43 Nhlapo, P.J. and Khumalo, S., ‘The Hymn and Christianity’, in Choral Music: The Voice of African Song (Braamfontein: Skotaville, 1993)Google Scholar, n.p.; cited in Detterbeck, ‘South African Choral Music’, 124.
44 For those readers interested in viewing transcriptions of selected music examples, see Jorritsma, Marie, Sonic Spaces of the Karoo: The Sacred Music of a South African Coloured Community (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, and Jorritsma, Marie, ‘Hidden Histories of Religious Music in a South African Coloured Community’, in The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 228–247 Google Scholar. Audio and video examples can also be found at https://ethnomultimedia.org.
45 Turino, Thomas, ‘The Music of Sub-Saharan Africa’, in Excursions in World Music, second edition, ed. Bruno Nettl, et al. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992), 165 Google Scholar.
46 Jacobus Bezuidenhoudt, interview with author, 8 December 2004; June Bosch, interview with author, 5 July 2006; and Jacobus Bezuidenhoudt, interview with author, 26 November 2004, 8 December 2004, 15 June 2005, and 6 July 2006.
47 Although the melody is repeated, variations of language use occurred in the performance of koortjies I heard during my fieldwork. Original texts in English were translated into Afrikaans and congregations often performed koortjies with interchanging verses in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa.
48 Virginia Christoffels, interview with author, 28 October 2005.
49 June Bosch, personal communication with author, 4 July 2006.
50 June Bosch, personal communication with author, 4 January 2010.
51 Casey, Edward S., ‘How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena’, in Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld (Sante Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996), 24, 34 Google Scholar.
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53 Clifford, Routes, 28.
54 Another example of a force moving through the Karoo region is the recent threat of drilling for gas in a process called hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’). See www.treasurethekaroo.co.za.
55 Alvin Peterson, personal communication with author, 10 September 2015.
56 Sadly, although denominations such as the Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists were more multi-racial than the Dutch Reformed Church, the official church of the apartheid state, generally separate worship venues existed for black, coloured and white people. de Gruchy, John W. and de Gruchy, Steve, The Church Struggle in South Africa, third edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 22, 38 Google Scholar.
57 Leon Barendse, interview with author, 11 November 2004 and Norman X. West, ‘Oosstraat-kerk was eers in wolstoor gehuisves’ (East Street Church initially housed in wool shed), Graaff-Reinet Advertiser, 5 November 1964.
58 Casey, ‘How to get from Space to Place’, 42–3.
59 Casey, ‘How to get from Space to Place’, 40.
60 Byerly, Ingrid, ‘Decomposing Apartheid: Things Come Together’, in Composing Apartheid: Music For and Against Apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), 259 Google Scholar.
61 See also Murray Schafer, R., The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994)Google Scholar and Attali, Jacques, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985)Google Scholar.