Sonic Spaces of the Karoo: The Sacred Music of a South African Coloured Community

by Marie Jorritsma

Overview

Sonic Spaces of the Karoo is a pioneering study of the sacred music of three coloured (the apartheid designation for people "not white or native") people's church congregations in the rural town of Graaff-Reinet, South Africa. Jorritsma's fieldwork involves an investigation of the choruses, choir music, and hymns of the Karoo region to present a history of the people's traditional, religious, and cultural identity in song. This music is examined as part of a living archive preserved by the community in the face of a legacy of slavery and colonial as well as apartheid oppression.

Jorritsma's findings counteract a lingering stereotype that coloured music is inferior to European or African music and that coloured people should not or do not have a cultural identity. Sonic Spaces of the Karoo seeks to eradicate that bias and articulate a more legitimate place for these people in the contemporary landscape of South Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439902394
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	05/21/2011
Series:	African Soundscapes
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	201
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Marie Jorritsma is Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
List of Illustrations
List of Music Examples
Preface
1. Introduction: The Challenges of Inscribing Coloured Voices
2. Karoo People and Places
3. Hidden Transcripts: How Hymns Reveal History
4. Senzeni na: Interrelationships Between the Music of Mission and Independent African Church Denominations
5. Singing the “Queen’s English”: Church Choirs in Kroonvale
6. Mothers of the Church: Women’s Society Music and the Politics of Gender
7. Conclusion: Reflections on Karoo Sonic Spaces
Glossary
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Marie Jorritsma's book signals nothing less than a whole new departure in South African musical studies. It is the first serious attempt to account for the role of ‘coloured’ music in the country's wider acoustic landscape. This has never been tried before. Sonic Spaces of the Karoo is written in an accessible style, it is theoretically grounded, and it is rich in ethnographic description. I highly recommend it."
—Veit Erlmann, Endowed Chair of Music History, Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality

From the Publisher