Tydskrif vir letterkunde

Breaking the silence: Zimbabwean women’s musical narratives of resistance

Doreen Rumbidzai Tivenga — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I examine how contemporary Zimbabwean women musicians Hope Masike and Feli Nandi use music as a site of storytelling and resistance within an industry dominated by men. This dominance, which perpetuates the silencing of women, is rooted in their historical exclusion from the music scene, shaped by restrictive patriarchal gender norms that have either limited their participation or relegated them to peripheral roles such as backing vocalists. In addition, certain musical instruments, such as the mbira, have traditionally been reserved for men. Drawing on bell hooks’ concept of “talking back”, I analyse how Masike and Nandi’s work challenges restrictive gender norms by articulating women’s lived experiences of struggle, resilience, and defiance. Masike has sustained a decade-long career in the mbira genre traditionally dominated by men, while Nandi’s transition from backing vocalist to solo artist exemplifies the reclamation of artistic autonomy and the shaping of her own identity as a musician. Both artists blend traditional instruments with contemporary genres, creating hybrid musical forms that assert women’s agency. Using textual analysis of selected songs and music videos—paying particular attention to lyrical meaning as well as visual and aesthetic elements— supplemented by audience reception on YouTube, I demonstrate how Masike and Nandi transform personal and often-silenced experiences into public acts of empowerment, amplifying women’s visibility and contributing to social commentary and cultural change.

Re-defining Ghanaian hiplife songs by women as liberatory narratives

Hannah Woode Amissah-Arthur, Theresah Patrine Ennin, Christabel Aba Sam — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A careful study of contemporary Ghanaian hiplife songs by women reveals a rich lode of subtle sexual innuendoes, liberatory remarks, resistance discourses, and overt and covert protests. The name “hiplife” is a compound of hip-hop and highlife, which points to the two major influences that constitute the genre. Its most marked features are rap lyrics in Twi, Fante, Ga, Ewe, Pidgin English, and other local languages, which are performed over programmed beats, bass lines, and sampled loops. One of the inherent features of hiplife music is its objectification of women in many forms. However, recent Ghanaian women hiplife artistes have created music that counters these images and portrays women as more than the sum of their bodies. In this article, we employ a poststructuralist feminist approach to analyse selected songs by women hiplife artistes in Ghana, asserting that Ghanaian women hiplife artistes create music that is revolutionary and sexually liberating. We then contend that this emergence of a new wave of hiplife music by the women is both an indication of the democratic landscape that makes it possible for women’s voices to be heard and for their views to be validated, as well as a resistance movement that seeks to change the narrative. This article has implications for African feminism, gender, and the creative industry, as it contributes to the discussion on ways through which the creative industry can be harnessed not just for entertainment but also for a reorientation of ideas and values.

“Da Art of (Abortion) Storytellin”: Listening for reproductive justice in Black popular music

Jordan Ealey — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Black women have approached and continue to approach the topic of reproductive justice with equal parts nuance, care, and play. The candid way in which contemporary Black women rappers express their experiences with abortion and reproductive care sets up the grounds upon which this article stands. In this article, I explore Black popular music by artists such as Digable Planets, Coco Peila, Lauryn Hill, and Noname to examine the presence of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. I argue that Black musical artists use storytelling as a method to lay claim to their personal agency and provide nuance to the divisive nature of the politics of abortion. Additionally, the focus on storytelling offers individual listeners both healing and communal connection. Drawing on Black feminist theory, hip-hop feminism, and sound studies, I contend that these songs fall into three forms: the anthem, the testimony, and the elegy. I identify these songwriting styles as contributing to a larger history of Black artists, especially Black women, using music as a form of political protest and struggle. These diverse forms offer complexity to “abortion stories” and create a new kind of protest music—one filled with a Black feminist ethic of care and sociopolitical resistance.

The impact of women’s singing on political and social mobilization in the Sudanese revolution

Omar Mohammad-Ameen Ahmad Hazaymeh — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Women’s singing is a dynamic expression of cultural and political resistance in Sudanese society. More than an artistic practice or social ritual, it contributes to shaping collective awareness and formulating protest discourse. Sudanese women’s singing is an extension of historical and aesthetic memory that is rooted in popular consciousness. It is connected with social and national occasions and serves as a means of mobilization, provocation, and establishing national identity in times of political movement and change. In this paper, I aim to explore Sudanese women’s singing as a catalyst for political and social mobilization during the 2018 revolution by analyzing two songs by Alaa Salah and Nancy Ajaj. These singers were chosen as models of the intersection between women’s voices and revolutionary acts. I used an analytical and cultural approach to textually and contextually read these songs and connect them with women’s singing heritage and the political and social circumstances that surrounded the revolution. My findings revealed that the two songs reflected a deeply embedded heritage of women’s singing that played an important role in provoking emotional, religious, and political meanings inspiring the participants during the revolution. By situating these two performances within wider dimensions of gender, nationalism, and postcolonial identity, I highlight the role of Sudanese women’s singing in creating a living archive of resistance by bridging national folk traditions with modern political activity, thus reassessing cultural and artistic dimensions of the revolution.

Patriarchal orientations and womanist protests in pre-colonial Urhobo women’s songs

Stephen Kekeghe, Moses E. Darah — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The subject of conflict between men and women constitutes much of cultural productions. Existing studies on gender experiences in African literature have paid attention to written literature, with scant evaluation of oral arts. Pre-colonial Urhobo women deployed songs to interrogate the vexatious issue of male chauvinism and to express its oppressive outcomes in songs known as ile ekan (satirical songs). In this study, we examine Urhobo women’s protest against patriarchal orientations in pre-colonial songs, showing how the women’s protest songs reflect experiences of relationships between men and women. We purposively selected five songs that explore this theme and recorded, transcribed, translated, and subjected them to qualitative, textual analysis. The songs are: “Okoro”, “Ohwọghwia” (Adulterous man), “Orharhe Oshare” (Useless man), “Emuojẹ” (Abomination), and “Uvi Aje” (A precious wife). The selected songs are mainly performed during traditional festivals, burials, and marriage ceremonies. We deploy womanism, an African-oriented gender theory that emphasises accommodationist relationships between genders. Our analysis reveals that pre-colonial Urhobo women expressed their dissatisfaction with men’s patriarchal and self-serving interests. Contrary to the popular view that African women were comfortable with patriarchal manifestations, we argue that, right from pre-colonial times, some Urhobo women composed songs to express their disenchantment over some of the experiences of patriarchy, including the practice of polygamy and the act of adultery. This further underlines the fact that human existence is sparked by emotions, and spousal jealousy is not limited to any cultural or historical space.

The language of Black women’s music: MmaAusi’s role in preserving Setswana heritage

Kealeboga Aiseng — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I examine MmaAusi’s music as a dynamic site of Setswana language preservation, cultural protest, and liberatory expression, situating her work within a broader transnational lineage of Black women’s musical storytelling as a form of resistance and cultural memory. Through a multidisciplinary analysis of three selected songs spanning her career from 2008 to 2022, I investigate how MmaAusi employs linguistic richness, deliberate cultural references, and sonic innovations to challenge the enduring forces of coloniality, cultural globalisation, and gendered marginalisation. Applying an intersectional feminist lens, I reveal her artistic oeuvre as a powerful feminist counter-narrative that actively reclaims and revitalises Setswana identity while simultaneously echoing broader Pan-African and diasporic struggles. I trace these musical connections, drawing parallels between her work and traditions as diverse as Zimbabwe’s mbira spiritual music and Afro-Cuban Yoruba ceremonial songs, demonstrating how her sound is both locally grounded and globally resonant. By forging what I term a mmino-wa-Setswana aesthetic—a distinctly Tswana musical sensibility—MmaAusi not only catalyses cultural sovereignty but also delivers a potent social critique of post-colonial and contemporary societal issues. Ultimately, I position her work as a vital model for sustaining indigenous epistemologies and linguistic heritage in an increasingly homogenising world, affirming the role of Black women artists as crucial guardians and innovators of cultural knowledge.

African American women in opera and the dilemma of representation

Anita Gonzalez — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I examine strategies employed by African American women singers to negotiate and resist racialized stereotypes within operatic and musical theatre traditions from the late 19th century to the present. Through case studies of Abby Mitchell and Catarina Yarborough, I analyze how Black women vocalists used performance style, character interpretation, image-making, and geographic mobility to pursue artistic careers within industries shaped by blackface minstrelsy and entrenched racial hierarchies. Mitchell’s performances reveal the constraints placed on Black women whose artistry was often framed through tropes of servitude, while Yarborough’s international career demonstrates how racial ambiguity and operatic exoticism enabled alternative pathways to visibility, even as they required strategic distancing from Black identity. I further consider Audra McDonald’s 21st century interpretation of Mama Rose in Gypsy as a contemporary intervention that reclaims vocal intensity, rage, and presence as expressions of African American womanhood. McDonald’s performance reframes a white-authored role to evoke the historical exclusions of Black performers, particularly those associated with the Theater Owners Booking Association circuit. I conclude the article with a discussion of Finding the Light, a newly commissioned opera initiated by Louise Toppin and Marquita Lister, which brings the lives of Mitchell and Yarborough into dialogue with the experiences of contemporary Black women vocalists. By producing and shaping their own narratives, Toppin and Lister model a future-oriented strategy for reimagining representation in opera. Collectively, these case studies demonstrate how African American women have used vocal performance not only to navigate systems of exclusion, but also to assert agency, authorship, and humanity within—and beyond—canonical performance traditions.

Glocal memory in the Black Atlantic triad operas by Black women composers

Innocentia J. Mhlambi — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Since the turn of the 20th century, Black opera imaginaries have established a unique voice that addresses the particularities of the Black condition and Black situatedness. Scholarship on Black opera composers paid less attention to Black women opera composers who continue to remain hidden at the margins of global Black cultures. With the advances made by feminist epistemologies, interest in women’s cultural productions and histories has increased, which reveals that Black women opera music composers are highly conscientious in their engagement with social issues affecting continental African and African Diasporic communities. However, contradictions in contemporary Black consciousness over the past century introduced new complexities in understanding what has come to constitute Black identity and its ties to ethnicity and nationalism. Despite these divergent developments in contemporary Black global history, Black opera women composers’ contributions offer other lenses to engage Black people’s experiences from Africa and the African Diaspora, covering settler colonialism, enslavement, struggles for freedom, and post-liberation. Conversations opened up by Shirley Graham (writer, playwright, composer, and activist); Mark Darnford-May, Mandisi Dyantyis, and Paulina Malefane (film, music, and artistic directors respectively); and Shirley Thompson (an English composer, conductor, and violinist of Jamaican descent) within Black global liberatory politics show a Black consciousness that interlinks to race, gender, transnational Black politics, and the interrogation of the failures of post-slavery and post-colonial states in Diasporic and continental African communities. Therefore, despite the regionalised nature of the histories covered by the operas I will discuss in this article, there is an interconnecting thread in all of them that calls into question turn-of-the-21st century pathos that have characterised global Black politics. In attempts to engage the nadir of these regressive global Black political views, in this article, I draw on cultural memory theory and Pan-Africanism epistemologies to read Graham’s Tom Tom (1932); Dyantyis, Darnford-May, and Malefane’s Son of Man (2006); and Shirley Thompson’s Sacred Mountain: Incidents of Nanny of the Maroons (2015) as sites and anchors that dramatise the relevance and centrality of turn-of-the-20th-century Afrocentrists’ calls for Black unity, Black solidarity, and Pan-Africanism.

Women’s liberation and protest through transnational storytelling

Anita Gonzalez, Innocentia Mhlambi — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Twyfelbos. François Loots.

Reinhardt Fourie — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Atrium: Gedigte 1970–2025. Marlise Joubert.

Marlies Taljard — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstact.

Brief op veertigduisend voet. Tom Dreyer.

Joan Hambidge — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

vloei/stof. Gilbert Gibson.

Marni Bonthuys — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Kolam Fourie Botha

Gerda Taljaard-Gilson — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Ek’t Act. Klara du Plessis.

Ruan Coetzer — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Stinkhout. Philip Rademeyer.

Lida Krüger — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.

Wilma Stockenström: Met my wysvingertop. Ronel Foster (red.).

Neil Cochrane — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No abstract.