REPORT: LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD: THE STATE OF OUR

DISCIPLINE

Christopher Ballantine

INTRODUCTION
What is the state of music research in South Africa? More specifically, what are its
challenges and opportunities, its strengths and weaknesses? And if remedies are indicated,
what might these be? In mid-2010, four years after the founding of the Society for Music
Research in South Africa (SASRIM) an integrated association created from the merger
of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa and the Symposium on Ethnomusicology
it seemed appropriate to ask such questions. Adding some urgency was SASRIMs
forthcoming annual conference, named Echoes of Empires: Musical Encounters after
Hegemony; this was to be held at Stellenbosch University later the same year and would
double as a regional conference of the International Musicological Society. So, for the
purposes of this effort at collective self-reflection, I was asked to convene and chair a panel
that would occupy a plenary session at the conference.
The panel I put together consisted of six participants, whom I selected for their differences
of interest and experience, as well as of academic and social background. Listed
alphabetically, they were:
Lindelwa Dalamba, a Masters graduate in musicology from the University of
KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and a PhD candidate at St Johns College, University of
Cambridge;
Karendra Devroop, who had recently returned to South Africa after 13 years in the
USA to take up the position of Associate Professor and Director of the School of
Music at North-West University;
Sazi Dlamini, who had recently been awarded his PhD in musicology at UKZN and
had secured a lecturing post in its School of Music;
Winfried Ldemann, a professor of musicology at the University of Stellenbosch
and former chair of the (superseded) Musicological Society of Southern Africa;
Zelda Potgieter, an associate professor of musicology at Nelson Mandela
Metropolitan University and at the time the chairperson of the executive committee
of SASRIM;
Carina Venter, a Stellenbosch graduate pursuing her postgraduate studies in
musicology at Christ Church College, University of Oxford.
Each participant was asked to prepare a position statement that could be read in 10 minutes;
these statements were to be probing, even provocative, in the hope of generating debate,
since the session would conclude with 30 minutes of open discussion. Panellists were free

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to approach the topic in any way they wished. Merely to get the ball rolling, however, I
offered three examples of the sorts of issues they might perhaps wish to consider:
i. South Africa has emerged from a racially divided past and is supposedly trying
to create a post-racial future. Do you want music research to contribute to the
achievement of that future? If so, how? If not, why not?
ii. South Africa is a country of many different musical idioms, musical traditions, and
audiences. Frequently these are separated by chasms. Should researchers pursue
work that tries to bridge these chasms? How should they do this?
iii. We live in the new, democratic South Africa. Is there any exemplary New South
African music research? Any research that blazes a trail that others might be
encouraged to follow? Explain.
Our plenary was a lively and well-attended event. After I had introduced the panellists and
sketched our objectives, we moved on to the position statements.

SIX POSITION STATEMENTS

1. Lindelwa Dalamba

Jazz studies in South Africa are in a relatively healthy state, kept as such by scholars like
Lara Allen, Christopher Ballantine, David Coplan, Chats Devroop, Sazi Dlamini, Carol
Muller, Nishlyn Ramanna and Michael Titlestad, by compilers like Lars Rasmussen, by
writers like Gwen Ansell and by the musicians testimonies in various written forms. These
studies have largely avoided the unhelpful division of musical form from its prevailing socio-
economic contexts in their research. Indeed, their appraisals of the socio-economic contexts
in which the musical styles and the musicians they study act have influenced broader South
Africanist historiography, particularly in the fields of urban and socialhistory.
The historiography of jazz in South Africa has taken as its broad chronological context
the entry of African American musical idioms in the country from about the 19th century.
This chronological frame has been differently conceived by its scholars: perspectives have
emphasised, variously, class, gender and race. These perspectives are further articulated
onto a master topographic context, South Africa. Crucially, however, this seemingly inert
context South Africa has itself been articulated to a wider political process whose
dominant theme was, and whose consequences remain, apartheid. Thus, where scholars
examine how social groups have formed around, and expressed themselves through, the
creation, performance and consumption of jazz, the master context has been a South
Africa that was leading to apartheid, an apartheid South Africa, and a South Africa that
has emerged from apartheid.
Such a focus has led to immeasurably rich findings, particularly for that school that holds
to the Gramscian argument that culture plays a role in the establishment, maintenance
and contestation of political power. I do not propose to diverge from this tradition. I want
to argue instead that our master context is deceiving, and that our previous reliance on it
has led to some problems. We have allowed this master context far too strong a causal role
in some of our explanations, because it lent those explanations strength. In this way, and

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despite our emphasis on agency, we may have actually minimised the cultural role of the
musical arts in South Africa even as we scrupulously showed their political effects.
What are the alternative contexts, and why should they be pursued or even considered?
I want to suggest that in our writings about South African jazz we might consider returning
to the shop floor of our historical musicological terrain. For, despite the looming spectre
of apartheid, it was at the base of this superstructure that the majority of musicians in this
country struggled first for their mbaqanga, their daily bread. It is also from these struggles
that the overall silencing of counter-hegemonic musical expression was first effected, at
times before it was legalised. For example, it is by now well known that the Jazz Maniacs
and the Merry Blackbirds had some unpleasant encounters with white musicians in the
1940s, analysed by Ballantine. These white musicians were unionised and their unions
were racially exclusive; events on the shop floor could and did use the might of the state
to further their aims. Ballantines case study zooms in on this late-segregationist milieu to
demonstrate how union collusion with municipal authority repressed black musicians and
how this repression was only formalised by state policy long before the Separate Amenities
Act of 1950, a seemingly more cogent law for this scenario, came into effect.
How did jazz musicians interact with their professional, racial others? These were, after all,
the immediate adversaries in the world of professional music-making: the Paul Whiteman
versus Duke Ellington scenario, crucial to American jazz studies, needs to be delved into
more fully in ours. What kinds of music were white jazz bands playing and how were they
received? What sorts of myths about jazz, about black and white musicality were fostered
in these interactions? It is my contention that the roles of white jazz musicians urgently
need to be investigated in our writings, and not only exceptions like Chris McGregor;
we might do well to consider how jazz with its resonances of black struggle was also
appropriated by those on the right side of the colour bar here and the significances of this
co-option. Intriguing glimpses can of course be found, but we have yet to read a study that
considers jazz in South Africa as a regional non-racial totality.
A second alternative context is equally modest. White formal repression of black
commodity exchange and social labour is well known; less is known about those laws,
acts of parliament, or government proclamations that were directed specifically at the
arts. Christopher Cockburns recent examination (2008, 72) of how the racially divisive
Government Proclamation R26 of 1965 influenced the performance of Handels Messiah
is exemplary here. As is Michael Drewetts work (2008, 115-17) on state censorship
apparatuses: the Directorate of Publications, the 1974 Publications Act and various
Publications Appeal Boards. This work has room for growth in jazz musicology, for a
broader perspective on how state policies impacted on musicians as musicians, rather than
on the disenfranchised who were incidentally musicians.
The complex interactions of state power with economic concerns lead to my final point.
A crucial context in which these contested terrains for jazz occurred, is what early Jrgen
Habermas ([1962] 1989, 29-32) identified as the necessary precursor to the public spheres
role in the political realm: in South Africa this would be the literary or cultural public
sphere that preceded nascent formations of black political conscientisation. This arena
remains distinct from macro-politics, and though in South Africa it was policed, it could be
critical thereof. It is also distinct from capital, and though music such as jazz is subject to

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capital, this subjection is not total. For his historically specific context, Habermas argued
that this sphere provided the training ground for critical public reflection. Further, in this
sphere culture was claimed as a ready topic for discussion, prior to its commodification
and reification.
The relegation of South Africas jazzing tradition to this sphere is not an attempt to
attenuate its political urgency. Rather, it is to foreground the importance of leisure as a
sphere of activity and reflexivity, where people affirm what is socially valuable: time spent
with family and friends, community activities that confirm ones membership in a social
group, and a relatively autonomous sphere where individuals can flesh out their own social
identities. The political importance of this sphere is most keenly felt in South Africas
cultural history in, for example, the activities of the Black Consciousness Movement. But
it really occurs throughout our past: where leisure and popular culture fused in significant
ways to forge an alternative vision of society, of time and space, and an ideology that
sought to comprehend the structures of racial-capitalist exploitation. Here, elaborate
leisure cultures emerged with sports, music, dancing, drinking, drama and literature
being intertwined in a way that made an attack on one an attack on the entire edifice.
Re-orienting our studies to this realm involves a desire to be modest in our scope of
investigation but radical in our theoretical elaborations. It also means we should ask new
questions about old problems. Our jazz musicians were engaged in cultural politics from
below, where political participation was enacted through the medium of discourse (music
is discursive). By attending to their more immediate discursive arenas and contexts, rather
than focusing solely on large political structures, music history, then as now marginalised
in scholarly discussions of South African culture, could contribute its voice not only to
urban and social history as it has so successfully done, but also to its sister arts.

2. Karendra Devroop

I am grateful for the opportunity to address the critical issue of the state of music research
in South Africa. Having spent the last 13 years in the US while publishing research in
South Africa and elsewhere, I believe I bring a unique perspective to the question at hand.
I would like to challenge the research community to embrace two concepts that are widely
accepted abroad yet seem to be lacking in music research in South Africa: quantitative
research and interdisciplinary research. Quantitative research forms the basis for much of
the music research generated in the US, Asia, parts of Europe and more recently Australia.
A review of some of the leading music research journals abroad reveals that the bulk of the
published studies are indeed quantitative in nature.
What exactly is quantitative research? In a nutshell, it is statistically driven research that
provides data such as trends, patterns and baseline information on large populations.
In essence, quantitative research could be experimental, correlational or descriptive.
Experimental studies tend to be highly controlled studies in which variables are isolated
and researchers seek to establish cause and effect for example the effect of a certain
type of drug on a specific illness. These studies are found predominantly in the science
lab setting where variables can be controlled and manipulated. Correlational studies seek
to establish relationships between variables for example, the relationship between greater

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practice time and increased technical ability. Descriptive studies provide descriptive data
on large populations or samples for example, the percentage of people that voted for one
political party over another in an election.
Quantitative research in music is severely lacking in South Africa. A review of the major
research journals reveals little, if any, quantitative studies. Accordingly, we have no baseline
data on musicians, students, music teachers and consumers of music in South Africa. We
have no statistical evidence for basic questions such as the percentage of music students in
the country that are female, the amount of time students spend practicing, or the average
income of the various occupational categories in music. In fact, we have practically no
baseline data on any aspect of our profession.
There are tremendous benefits to conducting quantitative research, as evidenced by the
amount of data that can be captured on a specific population. For example, four years
ago a colleague and I conducted a national study on the entire population of students
majoring in jazz studies at tertiary institutions in South Africa. This large dataset enabled
us to publish four quantitative studies that provided baseline data on all such students.
The result was that we were able to provide statistical data on students job aspirations,
job expectations, expectations for income, performance and practice habits, individuals
that influenced them to major in jazz, challenges they envisioned towards achieving their
degree, and their career plans immediately upon graduating. The data obtained from this
study will enable educators to better prepare students for the realities of the job market,
thereby putting into practice our research findings. Keep in mind that this study was done
on just one subset of music majors at tertiary institutions in South Africa.
Having established the need and importance of quantitative research, the question that
needs to be answered is, how do we address the lack of quantitative research? My personal
belief is that there should be a three-step approach. Firstly, postgraduate music students
need to do coursework in statistics, research methodology and analysis, much as students
in non-music disciplines do. Such coursework would adequately equip our students with
the tools necessary to conduct quantitative research. Secondly, our students need to be
encouraged to undertake quantitative research studies. These studies need not be at the
advanced experimental or correlational level, but rather could be at the basic descriptive
level. Thirdly, our students should be encouraged to collaborate with other students and
staff in an effort to develop their research skills and get their feet wet with quantitative
research. Such an effort would go a long way towards helping our students develop their
quantitative research skills, while treading cautiously and relying upon the experience of
a collaborator.
The second concept that I would challenge the research community to embrace is that
of collaborative interdisciplinary research. The current trend abroad is for researchers to
collaborate with researchers from outside their field in an effort to address areas of mutual
concern. Such collaborative research efforts within music research in South Africa would
enable music researchers to tap into the expertise of our knowledgeable colleagues in fields
such as sociology, psychology, audiology, medicine and engineering. Interdisciplinary
collaborative research could lead to new and innovative research that would certainly push
the boundary of research in South Africa. The field of music and medicine is one such
example from abroad. In this field, the medical problems of musicians are investigated.
These problems could range from musculo-skeletal problems such as might arise from

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physical injury during music performance, to non-musculo-skeletal injury such as

headaches, fatigue and hearing loss. Research in this area simply cannot be executed by one
individual: it needs a team. My published studies in this area usually involved a minimum
of three researchers from fields such as medicine, audiology, engineering and psychology.
Using music and medicine as a model, music researchers in South Africa should seek
ways to address critical areas in music by collaborating with our colleagues in sociology,
psychology and statistics. Since musicians are part of society, collaborative research efforts
with sociologists will enhance our research efforts and provide greater insight into the
problems facing our profession. The same is true for research in psychology, audiology,
medicine and engineering. Music researchers need to start thinking outside the box and
outside of our profession as a way to move our research in a new direction.
Finally I would like to suggest that we rethink our perception of music research. In my
casual conversations with my colleagues and students, the general notion I get is that they
are reluctant to engage in research because it is too tough, tedious and time consuming.
Conducting and publishing just one research study is seen as a mammoth task that requires
considerable time and effort. Accordingly, many of my colleagues are reluctant to engage
in research, and those that do generally publish one study and fail to follow through. If we
truly want to inspire future young researchers to follow in the footsteps of our esteemed
colleague and researcher Professor Chris Ballantine, we need to rethink our approach to
music research and the manner in which we motivate and encourage our students.

3. Sazi Dlamini

I would like to start by attempting to tease out meaning from the terms suggested in framing
the topic:
South Africa is a country of many different musical idioms, musical traditions and
audiences. Frequently these are separated by chasms. Should researchers pursue work that
tries to bridge these chasms? How should they do this?

While I may not succeed in adequately addressing the questions posed, I feel that a clear
understanding of the topic statement is a necessary foundation for an apt response. A
traditional interpretation of a chasm is that of discontinuity, deep fissure, a scale of
apartness, hiatus, a void even, and a blank1. All of these explanations evoke an
imagery of space in its functions of separating physical objects. A conception of space as
primarily being a relationship between objects or entities further imbues chasms with an
essentially spatial character. In its abstract conception, space (particularly when viewed
as a chasm) may well (and perhaps only) be described as an absence of relationships, other
than distance and time, between entities under observation. With this understanding of the
term in mind, it is possible to challenge a problematisation of diversity in South African
musical culture that takes off from perceptions of the centrality of chasms, particularly
between the countrys many musical idioms. In taking a position, my approach begins with
an understanding of a musical idiom as involving expressive musical practices associated

1
In The Cambridge Thesaurus of American English (William Lutz 1994), the following words are given
as equivalents of the word chasm: gulf, gap, abyss, gorge, rift, arroyo, gulch, break, opening,
hollowspace.

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with a particular group of people, their language, performance traditions and geographic
location, and thus a musical expression issuing from elements of commonly shared
histories and social and cultural identities. There is perhaps in this regard a justifiable sense
of a chasm between our constructions of musical idioms and the extent to which they may
(or may not) represent social, group, cultural and individual identities.
Identity has been deployed most frequently in totalizing conceptions of difference, and
in particular cultural difference. A glib usage of the term has largely obscured its inherent
ambiguities and blunted its meaning, rendering it thus useful to a convenient shoring up of
a diversity of opinions as expressed in any number of global or localized political power
contentions. Encoded in such a superficial deployment of identity are assumptions of
belonging, of a tangible cultural homogeneity emanating from elements of shared histories
or language. Among other practices through which identities are expressed, the circulation
in production and consumption of musical idioms potentially presents an indispensable
tool with which to interrogate the vexed concept of identity. Such a positioning of musical
idioms, however, would potentially embroil them in equally vexatious ambiguities, similar
to those belabouring most everyday conceptions of identity, particularly in its indexing of
both difference and sameness. A broader insight into the inherent instability of identity,
and the manner in which it has shaped our discourses of social and cultural stratification,
may have implications for our conceptions of difference and/or sameness as it pertains
to the diversity of South African musical idioms. Thus the future relevance of a post-
apartheid musicology could be determined on the extent of the answers it avails to the
most basic and rhetorical of questions, such as: How different and/or similar are South
Africas many musical idioms?
In instances where such musical idioms have been historically or glibly associated with
disjunctive relationships between social, cultural, ethnic, race and class stratifications,
a deeper understanding of their representivity of difference (or sameness) is imperative.
South Africas diverse musical idioms and styles even as they are identified with historical
stratifications of the countrys cultural and ideological power contestations are all
characterized by a deep sonic materiality, which they commonly share with influential
musical practices of Western European and North American origins. Contemporary South
African musicology has significantly pointed to deep historical, musical and ideological
relationships between most of the idioms and styles listed below:
minstrelsy African jazz
vastrap mbaqanga
tikkiedraai majuba jazz
langarm close-harmony vocal jazz
nomxhimfi kwela
ghommaliedjies isicathamiya
isawundi umgqashiyo (isimanje-manje)
itswari South African gospel

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itimiti Soweto soul

imusic South African folk and rock
tulandivile maskandi
famo bubblegum
ingomabusuku Afro-jazz
indunduma Cape jazz
marabi kwaito
tsaba tsaba South African rap, house, hip-hop, etc.

My point is that a grasp of the organizing principles of traditionally European musical

elements already inheres in the resonant sonic processes of these idioms discrete ideological
representations. In essence, all such genres eventually and uniquely express the ideological
positions of their practitioners in relation to an overarching perception of prevailing power
and order. The chasms or should we say the relationships, or degrees, of uniqueness and
sameness? that may be perceived to exist between genres are ideological: they have been
determined by a combination of historical (temporal, economic, political), spatial, social
and discursive stratifications. As a corollary, and following my argument, these musical
idioms are closely linked by discourses, which describe the inextricable relationships that
have arisen between them as a result of their expressive mapping of the social consciousness
of diverse cultural subjectivities.
In the light of our conditioned perception of difference our deployment of a totalising
conception of identity only in its implication of difference, and not of sameness it
becomes imperative to respond, rather, by first tracing relationships between expressive
modes which we have, perhaps in the absence of a closer scrutiny, already assumed to be
discontinuous. Through this process, arguably, the chasms that are believed to separate
these diverse musical idioms might be outlined for discussion. Thus, if the chasms were
to be primarily understood as representing divergent expressions of feelings, interests,
aspirations, goals, worldviews, beliefs and traditions, our attitudes to them would change.
We would be less likely to see them as chasms. Instead, we might be more inclined to think
of them as surmountable ruptures between the musical practices of the seemingly opposed
but, in truth, homogenously constituted groups of people who make up our culturally
diverse society.
Musical idioms, in their function of representing group identity, are sustained or modified
in their transmission via socialising processes in and across culture. In their elaborations or
discursive departures as styles, musical idioms may indeed appear to underline difference,
or define boundaries and ideological disjunctures. Then again, it might still be claimed with
justification that the new is identical to its parent style, save for one or two modifications of
one or other element such as tempo, instrumentation, or rhythm. It is perhaps along these
trajectories of transmission (shared cultural traditions and social performative spaces) that
musical-stylistic departures attain to formal statuses of doctrine, principles of practice,
and law. The bearing and influence of their temporal transmission as traditions handed

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down from one generation to the next hinges on the ideological power of groups and
their claims to monopolies of political truth, and social and economic privilege. Chasms
of a kind may also be introduced to idioms as challenges in the contestations of their
communicative power and their ideological representation of group interests or in the
manner in which such idioms address themselves to hegemonic power. While there may
still be a lot of ground shared in other respects, adjunct styles as manners of practice,
or ways of doing, deriving from originally unified idioms may eventually be marked
by deep ideological gulfs. However, rather than consider such disjunctures as silent and
void, it is more useful to consider these as unresolved but potential discursive relationships,
particularly as they emanate from shared historical origins.
Finally, in the position I have taken, I would recommend a musicology that pays a closer
attention to the relationships existing between the diverse South African musical idioms
and traditions, to determine what meanings traverse our perceptions of difference or of the
chasms between them, and ultimately between us as producers and consumers of culture.

4. Winfried Ldemann

If one wishes to say something authoritative about the present state of music research
in South Africa, one would have to have made a comprehensive analysis of all the
published research in journals and books, in theses and dissertations, and of all conference
presentations over the last few years. Not having done that who has? all I can offer are
a few brief remarks and questions from my particular vantage point, thereby taking the risk
that I may have got it all horribly wrong.
Even a cursory glance at the last issues of SAMUS and the last SASRIM conference
programmes will indicate that there has been a growth both in quantity of output and
diversity of subject matter. If this has been brought about by the creation of SASRIM
then it is to be welcomed. It would be confirmation that the bold step taken four years ago
to overcome the division of music research into what I have always regarded as artificial
disciplinary and organisational compartments has been worthwhile. But has the growth
in quantity and diversity been accompanied by a growth in substance as well? Are we
witnessing a genuine broadening of the discipline or merely a shift in focus? Does it mean
that redundant topics and methods have been discarded? Or have old biases simply been
replaced by new ones? I hope that what we are witnessing is a real expansion of the horizon
and not a trendy swing of the pendulum.
In the written invitation to take part in this discussion, received a few weeks ago, I was
struck by a particular phrase: the panel would consist of six participants, representing
some diversity of academic and social background, experience and interest. Of course,
the intentions behind this are entirely laudable, but it also highlights one of the unfortunate
characteristics of many a debate in our country: we still find it extremely difficult to raise
questions or discuss ideas on their merit, because we are always representing or are seen to
be representing a particular social background. Being chained to a particular background,
or being blown off-side by the custodians of presently accepted dogma, stifles debate and
inhibits the free flow of ideas. Although I know all about the sociology of knowledge and
the critique against the autonomy of ideas, and though I am keenly aware of my own
background and the expectation that, in some way, I may be representing that background,

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I think we will never break out of the mould of our divided and racially categorised past
if we continue to think along such lines. This, of course, also applies to our disciplinary
backgrounds. We should transcend our institutionalised positions as ethnomusicologists,
musicologists and born-again musicologists and open our eyes to the many new challenges
confronting us here and now.
Most obvious amongst these challenges is the need to tell our various musical stories, and
to analyse and understand our diverse musics. Nobody will dispute that there is still a
great deal of research to be done in these areas. At the same time a number of new areas
of research are beckoning, all of them ground breaking and directly linked to our present
South African context. Hardly any of these are explored in the last edition of SAMUS or
at the present conference.
The last few weeks of football frenzy has seen the revival of the almost forgotten notion
of the rainbow nation and the power of sport to unite a nation (of course it has to be my
kind of sport, not yours). Music was also frequently held up to have the power to bring
people together. Again: my music, or your music? Are there echoes of empire to be heard
here? What I am trying to say is that the subject of music in a multicultural society such
as ours is vastly under-researched. One cant say this without immediately mentioning
the system of democracy within which this musical multiculturalism is supposed to play
itself out. A great deal of research has been done on music in bourgeois society, music and
fascism, music in tribal culture or in various ethnic or anthropological contexts, but where
is our research on music in democracy and the numerous implications of a democratic
musicalculture?
However unrelated to these questions it may seem at first, the study of the evolutionary
origin of human music has a direct bearing on our understanding of music today, also in
South Africa. Cosmology, palaeontology, palaeoanthropology as well as recent advances
in cognitive neuroscience and, woven through all of these, the theory of evolution: these
are all disciplines of crucial importance for our understanding of ourselves. Whereas the
old and the new musicologies were influenced fundamentally by the philosophical and,
by implication, the political discourses of their respective days again, do I hear empires
echoing somewhere here? it is becoming increasingly important for musicology to take
cognisance of the present discourse in the above-mentioned disciplines, a discourse that
is revolutionising contemporary thinking about many age-old questions. Linguistics has
taken this step long before us, and the same can be said of theology, but musicology is
lagging behind, again. Barry Ross argues that:
[t]he interest in the topic is largely fuelled by contemporary work in cognitive neurosciences
and brain studies, which have challenged the assumption that human musical behaviour is
a product of social forces alone. Research around musical issues in cognitive neuroscience
appears to suggest that there is a large biological component to the story of human
music, and current empirical and theoretical studies have only served to further reinforce
this idea. The interest in evolutionary questions follows logically: if musical behaviour
is to be regarded as having a biological manifestation, one would expect this biological
manifestation to have an evolutionary history. (2010, 8)

It should be obvious that the implications of these ideas are numerous and far-reaching.
The origin of music is one of the most challenging scientific riddles still to be solved.

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If musicology is to align itself to a greater extent with the current debates taking place in
the natural sciences, it will also have to take cognisance of the limits of what science can
say about our world. In this respect, musicology could learn a great deal from the debate
between science and theology. By means of a metaphor from linguistics, it could be said that
science investigates the grammatical or syntactic structure of the world and of reality;
but where do we find answers to the question of the semantics or meaning contained
in this structure, the question of the sense of it all, specifically in respect of humankind?
Musicians throughout the ages have felt challenged to respond to these questions. Music,
as much as science, philosophy and theology (or religion, if you will), has contributed
profoundly to the discovery and, conversely, to the creation and shaping of our world.
There is a distinct danger that, in its latest rush towards investigating the various discourses
around music, musicology is losing sight of this transcending quality of actual music.
It is my hope that SASRIM will help to stimulate research in the areas touched upon here,
always from the perspective of a democratic system that respects cultural diversity and
promotes human dignity.

5. Zelda Potgieter

To say all that could be said about this very significant matter in the space of ten minutes is
an almost impossible task. Instead I shall limit myself to providing some responses to the
questions suggested by our esteemed chair as a framework for this discussion.
The first of these questions asks whether we believe music researchers in South Africa
should set their sights on actively contributing through their work to a post-racial future
for this country. If so, how? Or if not, why not?
It goes without saying, I am sure, that we all celebrate the fact that for the past sixteen
years South Africans have been able to join the free world in embracing a culture of liberal
humanism wherein each individual is valued for who he or she is rather than for the
language he or she speaks, the colour of his or her skin, or the music through which he or
she expresses that personal sense of self. The question posed here, however, does not ask
us to agree or disagree with that sentiment. Instead it assumes that there is still work to be
done in order to bring such social reformation about, and asks whether we believe there
does exist, or should exist, a preferred epistemological grounding and also a preferred
methodological approach to musicology that is somehow tailor-made to this end.
Globally, liberal humanism is a social condition born of conflict and contradiction, one
that by its very nature continues to ask questions of itself because of its on-going concern
with what Catherine Belsey calls the inequality of freedom, wherein both liberal
humanism and the subject it produces appear to be an effect of a continuing history, rather
than its culmination (1985, 8). It is inevitable, therefore, that in some respects our quest
for a post-racial South African future (or, for that matter, a post-any-prior-conflict future)
will remain ever unfinished.
So what can or should we as musicologists do about it? Insofar as we subscribe to a
musicological approach wherein the subject is the free, unconstrained author of meaning
and action, the origin of history (Ibid.), we each are by default part of this continuing
history. What is asked of us today is whether we choose to affect this history in any particular

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way. And it is at this point that I, for one, begin to feel uncomfortable. It is one thing to
agree, as Philip Brett so unequivocally states, that musicology is cultural politics (1997,
45), but it is another thing entirely for a community of scholars such as ourselves to agree to
conspire towards the furtherance of any one particular political ideal. Here we should learn
some lessons from the mistakes musicology has made in the past. It is precisely this kind
of imperative, for example, that gave impetus to the ivory tower syndrome now widely
denounced as musical autonomy. The history of the would-be separation of musicology
and politics, as Brett further points out, is understandable against the background of
a century in which totalitarian states consciously mobilized all forms of expression to
their advantage and suppressed all dissenting voices (Ibid.). The last thing we need in
the furtherance of liberal humanism in the new South Africa is to create a new grand
narrative to return to a condition wherein we can be accused of consciously mobilizing
all forms of South African musicological expression and suppressing all dissenting voices.
In my experience, musicologists dont need this kind of conscious mobilization anyway;
indeed, I believe it is the surest way to elicit quite the opposite response, evidence of which,
I am sad to say, is already quite apparent after four years of SASRIMs existence, during
which a number of prominent local musicologists have deliberately chosen to distance
themselves from this society. Stephen Blum warns that [t]he narrative strategies that
consign earlier writing and discourse to a repertoire of isms, while urging us forward to a
necessary future (usually named with a new ism), are as totalizing as narrative strategies
can become (1993, 48) to which Lawrence Kramer responds by emphasising that the
post- in postmodernism should designate the moment of disengagement from the very
idea of such absolutes (1993, 26).
And this leads us to the second question that our chairperson suggested we consider
namely whether it is our duty as musicologists in South Africa today to harness our
energies towards bridging the chasms that divide its many different musical idioms, musical
traditions, and audiences; and, if so, how should this be done?
My short answer to this is both yes and no. My long answer is to begin by posing these
counterquestions: What is it we want to achieve in bridging these chasms? Do we want to
bridge them in order to celebrate, enrich and grow appreciation for the rich and diverse
musical heritage of our country, to further the cause of intercultural understanding? In
that case I would answer with an unequivocal yes. Alternatively, do we want to bridge
these chasms in order to suppress difference, because we believe that the acknowledgement
and institutionalisation of difference will inevitably equate with the perpetuation of
inequality? In that case I would answer no. Again I take recourse to the cultural political
preferences that characterise our postmodern condition, this time in the words of Gary
Tomlinson, who reminds us that postmodern critique always necessitates some degree of
what he calls a historiography of difference (2007, xiii), one wherein the job of the
musicologist is akin to that of the anthropologist insofar as he or she is faced with the
puzzle of the unfamiliar ways that other people construe the world and the challenge
to develop tools to bridge, in something more than a metaphorical way, the intervening
distance (xii). To preserve the integrity of this relationship between the musicologist and
his or her subject matter, therefore, critique offers decentring strategies: defamiliarisation,
fragmentation, the perplexities of dialogue, and chasmal divides of cultural difference and
distance (Ibid.). We cannot counteract hegemonic musical or musicological discourse

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by calling for a single, homogenised discourse in its place. We do our musics no service
in the process. Liberal humanism seeks out the idiosyncrasy of individual identity, and
thus necessitates the acknowledgement of difference. The rewards of such a non-uniform
approach are well worth the effort, says Tomlinson, since only in so doing do we truly
deepen our understanding and experience not only of the objects we study but also of
ourselves (Ibid.).
To address the final question our chair has posed for this discussion, what then do we
consider to be exemplary New South African music research? If there is a preferred
epistemological grounding and also a preferred methodological approach to musicology
that is tailor-made to this end, then I hope that it is one characterised by its lack of
conformity to any one narrative or any one set of disciplinary tools. The exemplary New
South African musicologist and there are many such around is one who speaks freely,
with his or her own voice and in his or her own terms; equally, one who allows the music
under investigation to speak freely and in its own terms.

6. Carina Venter
Politics is so yesterday. No one cares. We are so free now.
(cited in McGregor and Nuttall 2007, 175)

Justice Malalas sardonic observation points to and critiques an ideological position

suffused with 1990s South African utopianism. His remark should be counterpointed with
and contextualized by another, which appeared in The Times of 4 July: The problem with
South Africa, writes Malala, is that we are not angry enough at the things we should
be very, very angry about (2010) he is here referring to South Africa before and after
1994. Malalas first remark raises three themes or questions which thread through my own
considerations on music research in what is supposedly a post-everything South Africa:
the pervasiveness or absence of politics and freedom, and the nagging question whether
anyone really cares. These questions fire many others and trigger many instabilities
scaffolded by a favourite South African illusion: political correctness. As a brief aside, a
word on certain trendy terminologies of the New South Africa might be in order: at least
for me, there is no such paradigm as the post-hegemonic; and the notion of the post-racial,
similarly, is a mirage. We have to wonder whether these linguistic signifiers do anything
more than preside over the obsessed mind of apartheid.
But to return to my opening quote, and in particular to the potential juggernaut in everything
South African: politics. Music research, essentially, constitutes layers of narratives, be they
written, performed, remembered or imagined. In South Africa, such narrative-scapes are
deeply political. And the political, as the writer Andre Brink reminds us, is the private
(Coetzee and Nuttall 1998, 29). This conflation fuels a perpetual political and personal
tension between resisting and succumbing; it makes South Africa powerfully provocative,
and an environment in which staying sane is more than a virtuosic skill. The tension
between resistance and succumbing, for me, as I can imagine for many others present,
is particularly acute when we begin to talk about music. For what fires our interests and
sensibilities, be it towards a New South African music research or anything else, is in
the first place a deeply personal connection to music. In South Africa, this connection is

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usually politically freighted. It frames an eminent question: How can we retain aesthetic
consciousness without buying into a personal or collective aesthetic innocence? How, on
the other hand, do we write about music without being driven or crushed by apartheid?
The compounding of the political and the personal, the public and the private, designate
a deficiency in, and possibly even a continuous devaluation of, intellectual space in South
Africa. Intellectual space could mean many things. I would like to draw out a few points
against the broader background of what I perceive to be a shrinking intellectual space. In
my view, we are confronted by an emotional and psychological immediacy, a pervasive
awareness that we are always working in a volatile and violent intellectual environment,
which is threateningly close to the skin. It is an environment that could be powerfully
evocative and powerfully oppressive. This environment is compromised by a tertiary
institutional problem: our universities and, I am afraid, our music departments, are
caught between the politics of yesterday a relentless yet subtle will to power, control and
ideology and the new and critically necessary ideals of socio-economic and intellectual
empowerment made potent and impotent by its own rash compromises. The intellectual
position, more often than not, is coerced into reaction, into taking sides in contrived
binaries. The democratization of ideas and ideological positions (at best an ideal, we have
to wonder?) too often come with ruthless institutional consequences. There is little space
for manoeuvring. Possibilities are often delimited to one of the following: defensive or
retributive returning to yesterdays madness, desperate and final resorting to the foreign
(real or imagined) passport in the back pocket, or remaining in South Africa with its
imperative of inventing new and creative ways of staying.
I want to pursue the institutional question a bit more with a few remarks on SASRIM.
Four years (uphill) along the line there are certainly many positives to be gleaned. I am,
however, concerned by a disturbing discontinuity: the quick succession of chairs, vice-
chairs and journal editors, the possibility that SASRIM could become nothing more than
a constitution, a conference, and the annual ritual of an AGM. My criticism is not at all
levelled against SASRIM and the handful of diligent individuals thinking and pushing
forward. Instead, it is a pressing concern about personal, political, new or old chasms
that are too often nurtured in our academic institutions. If there are legitimate concerns
for the current state of music research in South Africa, as I believe the case to be, they
are symptomatic of past divisions and the struggle for survival in what could be a brutal
South African system, which specializes in draining intellectual and creative energy. And
it is not made easier by the absence of many scholars who, after the merger four years ago,
dismissively withdrew to yesterday.
Does anyone care to listen? Judging from this conference alone, the answer seems
depressing. In particular, it is the uninterestedness of an international community, which
gives me much reason for concern. Put simply: for South African music research to thrive,
engagement from elsewhere is pivotal. It is often the case that the self is understood
from elsewhere. Local interest seems to be dwindling. Do we, then, simply embrace, as
did Milton Babbitt in the 1950s, the fact that no one cares to listen? At least then we would
be free to do what we like behind the walls of our intellectual ivory towers in the far-flung
and isolated South. I am, however, not entirely convinced that Babbitts path is ours to
follow. This brings me to the question of the university: briefly, I would note with concern
that the university and by extension the music department has been remade from ivory

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tower into service station. There are, of course, notable exceptions and I am fully aware of
the pitfalls of generalization.
How, then, can we begin to imagine a meaningful and socially responsible aesthetic and
intellectual response to contemporary South Africa? One consideration, perhaps, has to do
with embracing local and, importantly, global scholarly risks. I quote from a book entitled
At Risk: Writing on and over the edge of South Africa:
To take a risk is to embrace uncertainty; to accept the possibility of danger, distress, or
disaster. It is also an inherently creative act: without taking a risk, there is no prospect of
surprise, change or unexpected gain. Risk-taking can be unnerving and fearful, but can also
be exhilarating. It is a way of taking on the unknown. (McGregor and Nuttall 2007, 11)

Fugards remark that the only safe place is inside a story seems particularly relevant
for South Africa today (Coetzee and Nuttall 1998, 29). What we need, then, are stories
mediated through the intervention of imagination. South Africa, without the intervention
of imagination, is an inhumane place of misunderstandings.
For me, writing about the current state, the past, and the future prospects of music research
in South Africa are incredibly difficult, precisely because it is, in many ways, deeply personal
and inextricably tied to other South African questions. I am aware that my contribution
asks many questions and offers few answers. In the present, and cast here in the role of
student, how else can it be? I will conclude, then, with one more haunting personal question,
to which the answer, I would hope, is a pertinent part of a South African paradigm for
intellectual and social engagement with music: How might the troubled sensibility survive
in South Africa without shedding its moral, social and political responsibility?

DISCUSSION2
Ballantine: In opening this discussion, I would like to venture a few short comments on
what weve heard. What strikes me is that, notwithstanding the wide diversity of
views that have come from our speakers, there have also been some remarkable
commonalities. At their most abstract, these commonalities seem to cluster around
three crucial perspectives. The first is a matter of focus, the second is a question of
methodology, and the third is what one might call a moral or ethical imperative.
Within these perspectives fleshing them out, as it were are a number of more
concrete themes, which I have tried to jot down. These themes are also injunctions
things that our panellists urge us to do, or implore us not to do. Among the
things that I think were being urged to do are the following:
transcend our institutionalized disciplinary positions;
take seriously the question of music and research in a multicultural democracy;
focus more on musics cultural role, and perhaps less on its explicitly political
role;

2
The discussion was recorded. This section is based on a full transcription, which I have shortened and
edited. Since it proved impossible to recognize all the speakers from the recording, only the panellists
are identified by name.

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reveal the deep but largely unexplored commonalities among South African
musics;
move towards strategies of quantitative research and collaborative
interdisciplinary research;
take research risks at both a local and global scholarly level.

Among the things that we are being urged to avoid are:

new grand narratives;
any hint of suppression of dissenting voices;
any attempt at musicological mobilization;
the temptation to stay locked into the grand narrative the master context
of apartheid as an explanation of everything;
old, entrenched, socially conditioned perceptions of difference.

Finally, it seems to me that what holds together these different things that were being
urged to do or to avoid their common denominator is an injunction to move away from
what Sarah Nuttall has called an apartheid optic (2009, 11).
Interlocutor A: Carina referred to a relative lack of interest on the part of the international
community, and you also see it reflected at our conferences. I think that
because of the apartheid optic, we lose relevance. If we wish to remain relevant
internationally, we need to be very aware of the fact that we cannot stay with
the politics of yesterday as our primary impetus for music research. Moreover,
we do not primarily publish overseas; we primarily publish nationally. Thats just
another symptom and another reason why there is not as much international
interest here as we would like to see.
Ballantine: Our conference theme is Echoes of Empires: Musical Encounters after
Hegemony. Is there anything about this theme that would not be of enormous
interest to music researchers across the globe?
Interlocutor B: I think that for a topic to be interesting to an international community, it
must be something that is not limited to one specific South African composer, or
one specific part of a composers work; it must be something that ties in with a
larger topic be it sociological, or anthropological, or whatever. I dont believe
that no one is interested in South Africa; its just that when a topic is incredibly
specialized, its not going to change anyones way of thinking, internationally.
Interlocutor C: Well, I would hope that the aspect of South African music study that would
change someones thinking would be its methodological side. Because of the
multicultural history of South African music, I think that we are in an excellent
position to be able to articulate new and exciting methodologies for the study of
music.
Interlocutor D: Yes. When I was abroad, I found a lot of interest in what music in South
Africa is about: what kind of jazz we do, what kind of classical music we do, how
practitioners of music in South Africa interact with one another.

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Interlocutor E: Ive also had conversations overseas where people would ask about such
things; but as soon as they are required to make an effort on a disciplinary level,
and engage with our music, the door is shut.
Interlocutor F: As a foreigner myself, I think that two points are coming together here.
On the one hand, framing things within a kind of apartheid heritage needs to
be overcome; on the other hand, I do agree that the issues being addressed here
are actually of immense importance to other parts of the world. South African
issues will actually spark responses abroad. In the Netherlands we are also dealing
with issues of multiculturalism, of inequality, of inaccessibility to education. Of
course, these issues arise in South Africa in a more condensed and urgent manner;
but now South African musicologists and ethnomusicologists have found each
other, and have come together to form a new scholarly body. And this is actually
unique for musicological societies around the world. I mean, we are not that far
yet in the Netherlands. So Im not sure what you should do to attract more foreign
scholars to come here: the problems that scholars address in South Africa are very
similar to the problems that arise elsewhere.
Interlocutor G: We also need to think about our own relationships to parts of the
international community. Given South Africas own history, our musical gaze has
been very much to the North; so we have taken cognizance of European and
North American theory. But new thinking has started to emerge from disciplines
that are developing insights about South Africas relationship within the global
South South America, South Asia, and so on. So instead of this perpetual gaze
to the North, we need to see what relationships we might forge with, and what
insights we might gather from, that part of the international community. And
thats potentially very energizing.
Interlocutor H: Im also a foreigner but from China. I feel excited about the relationship
between the Chinese academic world and South African universities. I myself
have a full-time position in African musicology, and I can say that SASRIM, as an
organization, is important to us in China and to the world in general. I think that
in the future your country will become more and more important in musicological
research, as we in China try to study Africa just as in the past centuries we tried
to study European classical music.
Interlocutor I: Professor Devroop, while I appreciate you are opening up new avenues for
music research, Im a bit worried. It seems to me that you are encouraging a sort
of managerial approach what we call in Afrikaans a worsmasjien approach to
research, where value lies only in the articles we publish, rather than in more
creative approaches.
Devroop: Let me clarify. I dont mean to put down or change what we are doing in South
Africa. I think its absolutely valuable, and theres a critical need for the type
of research that we are currently doing. Had it not been for the work of people
like Chris Ballantine, we would not have a wealth of information on music and
musicians who existed fifty, sixty years ago. So that we certainly need. And I
know from having lived in the US for 13 years, that theres actually a lot of interest
in South African music and music studies. The point I was making is that we need

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to start thinking about, and encouraging, a different type of research, without

dismantling whats currently in place. The problem is this. When you conduct
research and you submit it for publication, some journals especially in the US
are geared towards certain types of research in a certain format. For example,
the Journal of Research in Music Education publishes primarily quantitative research.
Now, the acceptance rate is less than ten per cent: something like eight out of a
hundred articles submitted will get accepted. So even if youve done one of the
finest studies ever to have come out of our country on a critical issue, if it doesnt
fit the format of JRME, its not going to be accepted. And the same is true for
some other journals. So we need to start embracing additional methodological
procedures of a quantitative sort.
Interlocutor I: Well, if that is what the international community is after, then I dont want
to play any part in it.
Devroop: But the flip side is also true. One of my first publications in South Africa was
almost turned down on the grounds that we dont publish quantitative research.
Yet this was the first national study of all of students majoring in jazz studies in
South Africa, and there was no other way for me to present the data other than
quantitatively.
Interlocutor I: While I appreciate the importance of that, it has come up many times at
this conference that what people say and what they think are two fundamentally
different things. I dont think mere counting can capture that.
Dalamba: Im probably going to sound parochial, but is this gaze towards the international
community not somehow acquiescing in hegemony? I mean, why are we so
concerned about having to fit into these processes of the international community?
You know, weve got stuff to do here as well. And the international community
has now assumed a position of power because they did their stuff as well. So, yes,
we can have a double perspective, but I dont think our research interest should
be shaped solely with an eye to the outside. Im not advocating provincialism or
parochialism, but I do think that weve got to be cognisant!
Interlocutor J: Im not sure if this relates to the current topic, but I have been a little concerned
by the implication that somehow research and the academy are legitimators of
musical activity. Im worried that we might be seeing the emergence of a new
grand narrative in the field of jazz studies a narrative of resistance and courage
and heroism and what-have-you that has entangled politics and music. Though
some of this is obviously appropriate, we need to be cautious: jazz studies in South
Africa is just twenty-five years old, and we seem already to be producing a canon
a canon that is distorted by the media, that has a lot to do with flag-waving and
perhaps not enough to do with music. I dont mean to belittle the contribution
that many jazz musicians made towards the political struggle, and Im not
assuming the political struggle is over. But simply conflating the two ideas takes
away something, and confuses two issues which already are confused enough.
So forgive me if I seem a bit sceptical firstly, about our power or right to act
as legitimators of musical activity, and, secondly, about our dangerous tendency
towards canonizing a new tradition. We need to be cautious. And respectful.

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Interlocutor K: Id like to speak to the word discipline. The question has arisen for me,
over the last couple of days, of whether we are engaged in a singular, albeit
attenuated, central disciplinary project or whether maybe what were doing,
and what SASRIMs objectives have been, are precisely to loosen some of those
bounds. Ive been struck, in some of our conversations, by the challenges of
speaking across those boundaries. Theres been the friction of having to clarify
what, within disciplines, are often foundational ways of talking about identities
or methodologies. The sorts of certainties that disciplines provide a shared
theoretical, as well as empirical, frame of reference, or canon have, I think,
been stretched by these engagements; and my personal sense is that thats been
enriching. Ive also had a sense that our international visitors have been listening
in on a very self-reflective and intense South African engagement. So I guess the
question for me and this goes to the heart of SASRIM as a project is to ask
whether, for all the chasms between methodologies and topics, theres not a sort
of proximity between such conversations, and whether this may tell us something
about, if not the state of our discipline, then the state of music in a particular
national context. In other words, for me the question articulated by this conference
is whether something is now coming into view that has theoretical value, scholarly
value, and then also social value.
Interlocutor L: In my view, the particular theme that was chosen for this conference is an
incredibly rich and useful one. And maybe what we in SASRIM are doing here
is actually a step ahead of what is going on in some parts of the international
musicological discourse.
Interlocutor I: I experienced that quite acutely. I recall that when I was at Cambridge not
long ago, they were only beginning to think that cultural studies was in any way
important to the study of music. I think were so much further along. [Audience
laughter.] And it seems unfathomable to me that people werent thinking about
those issues at all.
Ballantine: Id like to agree with that. If I look at this conference programme, and the
previous ones, it seems to me that SASRIM is really finding its direction. I think
the decision to merge the two old bodies has been powerfully vindicated. I dont
think theres any question of that. So Im not personally worried about the future
of SASRIM. Nor am I particularly concerned about the people who dont come
from abroad, though I agree it would be nice to have more of them. I am, however,
very concerned about the people who are practising the business of musicology
and music research in South Africa, but who are not here. Those are the ones that
worry me, because I want to know what theyre up to, and why theyre staying
away. [Audience laughter.]
Interlocutor L: I think that we need to change our way of thinking from trying to justify
diversity, and rather approach diversity from the other angle and say, How lucky
we are! We have access to all these different things, and to so much diversity; its
so rich; we can do so much amazing research! If we could embrace diversity and
see it as a great privilege, then perhaps our research might move in a different
direction.

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Ldemann: That was exactly the intention of my statement. Id like to prise us loose from
our entrenched positions. Weve been chained to these positions far too long; we
need to debate ideas, not positions. That is the gist of my argument: ideas on their
merits, and not positions.
Potgieter: Yes, I think that comes back very much to one of the central themes here, which
is the conscious decision we need to make, at SASRIM, not to adopt any new
meta-narrative. Because that, I think, is precisely what is keeping people away,
and what we need to make an effort not to embrace.
Christopher Ballantine
University of KwaZulu-Natal

REFERENCES
Belsey, Catherine. 1985. The subject of tragedy. London: Methuen.
Blum, Stephen. 1993. In defence of close reading and close listening. Current musicology 53, 42-54.
Brett, Philip. 1997. Round table VIII: Cultural politics. (16th Congress of the IMS.) Acta musicologica 69:1,
45-52.
Cockburn, Christopher. 2008. Discomposing apartheids story: Who owns Handel? InComposing apartheid:
Music for and against apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 55-78.
Coetzee, Carli and Sarah Nuttall, eds. 1998. Negotiating the past: The making of memory in South Africa. Cape
Town: Oxford University Press.
Drewett, Michael. 2008. Packaging desires: Album covers and the presentation of apartheid. InComposing
apartheid: Music for and against apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
115-36.
Habermas, Jrgen. [1962] 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of
bourgeois society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kramer, Lawrence. 1992. Music criticism and the postmodernist turn: In contrary motion with Gary
Tomlinson. Current musicology 53, 25-35.
Lutz, William. 1994. The Cambridge thesaurus of American English. Cambridge University Press.
Malala, Justice. 2010. Who will save us from graft? <http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/
columnists/2010/07/04/justice-malala-who-will-save-us-from-graft> Last accessed: 18
January 2013.
McGregor, Liz and Sarah Nuttall, eds. 2007. At risk: Writing on and over the edge of South Africa. Johannesburg:
Jonathan Ball.
Nuttall, Sarah. 2009. Entanglement: Literary and cultural reflections on post-apartheid. Johannesburg: Wits
University Press.
Ross, Barry. 2010. A fundamental explanation of musical meaning in terms of mental states. Unpublished
Masters thesis, University of Stellenbosch.
Tomlinson, Gary. 2007. Music and historical critique: Selected essays. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate.

SUMMARY
The most pressing questions facing music research in the new South Africa its health,
and the roles it might play in the creation of a post-racial democracy were the focus of
a lively panel at a recent SASRIM conference. The arguments traversed a wide range, and

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included the following headline issues: because musicological discourse of a progressive,

socio-political kind has ironically tended to minimise musics place within the cultural
public sphere, we now need urgently to develop a proper understanding of the cultural role
of the musical arts in South Africa; since the historical chasms presumed to underpin
social and musical identities are really ideological, musicology must pay closer attention to
the relationships that exist between and within diverse South African musical idioms, so as
to uncover their hidden meanings; we need to transcend our institutionalised positions and
embrace new challenges such as music in a multicultural society and the implications of
a democratic musical culture; rather than allowing ourselves, as a community of scholars,
to be coerced towards any musical and political monoculture, we should deepen our
appreciation of the countrys rich and diverse musical heritage and thus further the cause of
intercultural understanding; instead of endorsing the historically-rooted personal or political
chasms often nurtured in our academies, we should develop responses to contemporary
South Africa that are socially responsible, both aesthetically and intellectually; and, more
pragmatically, we need to foster quantitative and interdisciplinary research methods so
as to develop, for the first time, baseline data on musicians, music teachers, students and
consumers of music in contemporary South Africa.

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