Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa

Editorial: A publisher’s perspectives on the use and abuse of artificial intelligence in academic journal publishing

Mike Schramm — 2024-01-22

No abstract.

Sounds of displeasure: a textual and sonic reading of ‘The Masses’ by Ghanaian hiplife artist Sarkodie

Matthew Eshun — 2024-01-22

Protest songs and their utilisation to articulate the sentiments and displeasure of people have most often been studied on a textual level with a focus on the lyrics only. Using ‘The Masses’, a wellknown Ghanaian protest song by the hiplife artist Sarkodie as a case study, this article proposes a more comprehensive approach to analysing protest songs, which includes the reading of textual and sonic elements. ‘The Masses’ is an example of hiplife music – a Ghanaian popular music genre that fuses vernacular music, traditional dance music and popular music styles such as highlife, reggae and dancehall, with African-American hip hop elements. ‘The Masses’ is first contextualised through a literature review and an exploration of its reception. The analysis that follows draws on approaches by Killmeier and Christiansen on the determinative nature of advertisement music (2011), Krims’s categorisation of rap genres (2000), and Bradley’s theorisation on rap as a linguistic art (2009). It concludes that Sarkodie artfully utilised ‘The Masses’ as a protest song to articulate the sentiments of the Ghanaian public via an inventive use of rap’s oratory devices, intensified by imaginative sonic colouring.

How Karlien van Jaarsveld and Refentse Morake became ‘Huisgenote’: a Foucauldian problematisation

Lestie Hughes — 2024-01-22

This article problematises the relative openness or closedness of Afrikaner identity formations manifested in the song and video ‘packages’ of ‘Sing vir Liefde’ (‘Sing for Love’) by Karlien van Jaarsveld and ‘What a Boytjie’ by Refentse Morake. By bestowing the Van Jaarsveld song a Huisgenoot Tempo Award and ascribing transformational potential to the Morake song, Huisgenoot underscores a correlation between its perceptions of desirable Afrikaner identity formations within the new South Africa and those represented by these songs. A Foucauldian lens is employed to focus on the problematisation pivotal to the care of self, and as a means to identify formations of domineering identity constructs within post-1994 South African ‘games of power’. A profit-oriented approach is seen to create pastoral, power-generating media sources, the likes of kykNET and Huisgenoot, that are susceptible to encouraging texts seemingly intent on crosscultural reconciliatory efforts, but that nonetheless foster a defensive identity formation modelled on the Afrikaner nationalist narrative prevailing during apartheid. The analysis of Van Jaarsveld’s and Morake’s music videos leads to a Foucauldian conclusion – aware of its inevitable textual entrapment – that both songs subscribe to an identity formation that is premised on exclusivist, superior notions of Afrikaner identity.

Interrogating the nuances of West African melodies: cadential conventions in Ogu songs

Joseph Kunnuji — 2024-01-22

Whereas writings on African melodies have addressed their structures, shapes and forms, the way characteristic traits such as cadential practices aid to nuance the musics of different ethnolinguistic groups remains largely undocumented. Relying on Ogu songs, this article argues that there are group-specific stylistic practices that nuance the melodies of West African peoples. It examines ten songs selected from bands in Badagry (Lagos State, Nigeria), in the public domain, and the work of two iconic Ogu musicians from the Republic of Benin. The analyses reveal that Ogu melodies often display two important focal tones that share different aspects of ‘tonic function’ between them: an important tonal centre, and the primary resting note which assumes the status of a concluding tone at cadences. This and other stylistic characteristics and conventions could signal Ogu sensibilities in songs. These findings engage and extend previous descriptions of West African melodies by Kubik (1968), Ekwueme (1980), Kwami (1992) and Agawu (2016). The article concludes that there is a need to devote attention to the specifics of all musical practices in Africa, since artistic nuances on the continent could be glossed over when focusing only on regionally dominant practices.

Music as research: the integrated doctoral degree in music from a South African perspective

Winfried Lüdemann — 2024-01-22

The integrated doctoral degree in music is a relatively new qualification in the South African tertiary education system and there is no broad consensus yet about its precise format or its artistic and scholarly requirements, even if there is agreement that it somehow fits into the field of what has become known as practice-based or artistic research. This article examines some of the key issues concerned, especially those of a music-specific (as opposed to a broadly aesthetic) nature. Consequently, it focuses on crucial epistemological and methodological questions through the perspective of concepts such as emergence, semiosis, truth, qualia, presence, intentionalism and authenticity. The discussion is informed by ideas from the work of philosophers and scholars such as Henk Borgdorff, Marcel Cobussen, Denis Dutton, Hans-Georg Gadamer, David Bentley Hart, Martin Heidegger and Simone Mahrenholz. A generic model is presented for a doctoral degree based on the notion of ‘music as research’.

What my body told me: towards a bodily interpretation of Clare Loveday’s Johannesburg Etude No. 1

Mareli Stolp — 2024-01-22

The relationship between performance and analysis has been a consistent point of discussion in music discourse for at least the past four decades. This article uses Johannesburg Etude No. 1 (2012) by South African composer Clare Loveday as a case study to explore ways in which searches for musical meaning may proceed from insights generated in and through a performer’s body – how bodily knowledge may become an entry point into music analysis. I draw on musicologists Nicholas Cook and Suzanne Cusick to establish frameworks through which performance may be approached not as an ‘end point’ of structural music analysis, but rather as the primary point of entry into analytical endeavours. I offer a ‘bodily analysis’ of Johannesburg Etude No. 1, which I first performed in 2014 as part of the Cape Town public arts festival Infecting the City. This analysis is connected to notions of an ‘urban imaginary’, an affect which I suggest is characteristic of an African metropolis such as Johannesburg.

Sonic labyrinths: form and creative process in like knotted strings (2022) for string quartet

Njabulo Phungula — 2024-01-22

like knotted strings for string quartet was commissioned in 2020 by the New York City-based Jack Quartet (through their Jack Studio programme), completed in 2022 and premiered in January 2023. In Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, The Garden of Forking Paths (2018 [1941]), the character Stephen Albert describes the fiction of the author Ts’ui Pen as works which explore all the possible narrative alternatives, in contrast with other authors whose fiction considers only a single outcome. Gary Saul Morson (1994:19), addressing a similar subject, argues that narrative offers both advantages and challenges to our comprehension of time. The metatextual nature of these themes – infinity (related here to narrative possibilities), memory and perception – gave me the impetus to compose like knotted strings, where they are reflected in such a way that musical material comments on the creative process itself.

Addressing the pipework in South Africa’s oldest playable organ: a materialist-political history

Jonathan Edward Hughes — 2024-01-22

A domestic organ built by William Hill between 1832 and 1837, currently housed at Wesley Methodist Chapel in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), is amongst the oldest pipe organs in South Africa. It is thought to have belonged to Lt Gen. Sir Henry Somerset and his wife Frances, who were tied to the British settlement of the Eastern Cape in 1820. The organ’s age, in relation to this history of settlement, has allowed it to generate interest as an artefact of early colonial life in Makhanda. Several authors have written about the Hill organ, among whom Percival Kirby and Albert Troskie have been keen to stress the instrument’s unchanged nature. However, the idea that the organ has remained unchanged is not reflected in the material and archival history of the instrument. The pipework and a documented history of regular repairs suggest that the Hill organ has been significantly changed at least once since its initial construction. In addressing these omissions, I hope to destabilise existing narratives and perceptions of the instrument. By focusing on its ‘unchanged’ nature as a point of merit, authors such as Kirby and Troskie have hindered a nuanced understanding of the organ’s societal context and impeded an appraisal of its legacy as a settler colonial artefact.

In memoriam – Latozi ‘Madosini’ Mpahleni (1943–2022)

Thandeka Mfinyongo — 2024-01-22

No abstract.

Book review: The Artistry of Bheki Mseleku

Samuel Boateng — 2024-01-22

No abstract.

Book review: Mr Entertainment: The Story of Taliep Petersen

Schalk D van der Merwe — 2024-01-22

No abstract.

CD review: Songs of Greeting, Healing and Heritage

Bronwen Clacherty — 2024-01-22

No abstract.

CD review: Prismatica: Contemporary South African Piano Music

Dominic Daula — 2024-01-22

No abstract.

The 47th International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance World Conference

Damascus Kafumbe — 2024-01-22

No abstract.