If you haven't already heard the rendition of the South African National Anthem currently getting a lot of online attention, listen to the video below. But be warned: your ears may bleed.
I am currently working on a paper on the musical marketing of the upcoming soccer world cup in South Africa, and while this incident isn't directly related, I think I may try to find some way to work it in there. Funny and scary all at once.
Here is the Mail and Guardian report on current responses
Showing posts with label Identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Identity. Show all posts
Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturday, March 03, 2007
In which the New York Times features
De La Rey made it onto the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday. I have been having a really hard time writing about it (partly because blogger refused to post and then lost the first draft I put together, though I think that that one didn't make it online is probably a good thing). I find it so hard to strike a balance between self-righteousness and utter naïveté on this issue. My advisor really knows what she is talking about when she says I need to read to develop the vocabulary I need to write. But quite honestly, why is it so difficult to write about Afrikaans culture? While I wouldn't put the song up there among my favourites, I quite like it. As enough people have said before, it is a catchy tune. And I do like the strategy of reclaiming a pre-apartheid history for Afrikaans. I do not align myself with a right-wing perspective, though, and recognize the capacity within this piece of music for alignment with causes I think are fundamentally flawed. But how to find the middle-ground....
It seems to me the pivot point is somewhere around the issue of the old South African flag, and most specifically the colour orange. When the new South African flag was chosen, it was stated specifically that the colours had no specific symbolism, aside from their use in some of the many previous flags that had been associated with South Africa. In general, the red, white and blue reference the Union Jack and the old SA flag, while green black and yellow recall various struggle organizations flags, including that of the ANC. The one colour that was excluded was the orange that had formed the lower bar on the old flag. The word "Orange" was also left off the new name for the province formerly known as the "Orange Free State". It was, however, adopted by the residents of Orania, a Northern Cape Afrikaner town with aspirations of independence. And I have vague (and I suspect unconfirmable) memories of orange being associated with a "no" vote during the 1992 referendum that led to the end of Apartheid. Is that too much symbolic weight to put on a single colour? I also have a remembered association between a horrendously violent act filmed and broadcast by the South African media in the 1980s, and the green, yellow and black flags that hid the faces of the perpetrators. What types of violence get demonized or justified by the state, and under what circumstances? The way that colours and flags get handled here, in the US, is very different from the way they are considered in SA, but in experiencing the American consideration of their flag, I think I am beginning to understand not why, but at least how, a flag can become such a contentious issue.
To return to the music, though, I must point out that none of the reports I have linked to yet note that the original statement by the Department of Arts and Culture, which seemed to ignite the already smoldering controversy, was not in fact a spontaneous effusion, but was issued at the request of the Afrikaans magazine Huisgenoot. The issue was then picked up by the FAK (which is where I first encountered it), and then by the national press, including the newspapers I have already linked to. The Blue Bulls Company then allegedly censored the song during rugby matches at Loftus Versveld, and then revoked that decision in the face of public outrage, though the company deny that any official decision along those lines was ever made, and claim that the song was played at last weekend’s match at Loftus.
Now is it just me, or does it begin to look like the controversy is really being fomented among white (I might even go as far as to suggest primarily Afrikaans) commentators? The DAC statement is pretty nonchalant in comparison to the FAK reaction, while the report in the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld, that I translated previously is significantly more agitated and even potentially inflammatory than that issued by the Citizen, or any of the other newspapers I have linked to. The New York Times buys into the ominous pessimism of the Beeld article somewhat more than the equivalent English South African press, but the assumptions made by that article about connections between Afrikaans culture and apartheid (no, they are not the same thing), and the direct connection, almost equation, drawn between De La Rey and Hendrik Verwoerd (most notably by the fronting of the article with a photograph of the diminutive statue of Verwoerd that overlooks Orania) which indicates the lack of subtlety concerning Afrikaans history that is precisely what this song and its popularity seem to be responding to, somewhat undermines the credibility of that report. I would suggest, though, that the noisy enthusiasm with which the Afrikaans community has opened this debate, indicates a strong desire to be heard. Michael Wines, the New York Times journalist, did make at least one strong point when he suggested that Afrikaners are afraid of their culture being “tossed into history's dustbin” (pg. 2) (this may have been an idea culled from the Sunday Independent, but as their articles are only available for perusal by subscribers, I am unable to confirm this). Certainly Afrikaans culture is rarely promoted along with post-apartheid South African culture in a broader sense: it is not exotic enough for either the world music or the international cultural tourism markets and too strongly negatively inflected by international opinion to fit into either pan-African or revisionist, Rainbow Nation rhetoric. And yet, the Afrikaans music industry, in particular, is big in South Africa. However it may look from the outside, contemporary Afrikaans musical culture did not spring spontaneously to life around this song alone. While I can't find stats for Afrikaans music sales right at present (I'm sure they must be out there), I can assure you that the Afrikaans music industry has a significant market, not least because the generational gap that is so evident among many audiences, is negligible among audiences for Afrikaans music. Musicians like Bok, Dozi, Karen Zoid, Chris Chamelion, Steve Hofmeyr, and the list goes no, play to audiences that span age-groups, while Afrikaans music crosses market-defined genre lines like classical, folk, pop, rock, and to a lesser degree, hip hop and jazz. There is no correspondingly strong white English South African industry, not because the music is not out there, but because, I would argue, assimilationist politics, coupled with post-apartheid white guilt and/or exodus created a self-conscious rupture in English South African music, as composers and performers attempted to navigate the opposing boulders of ‘paternalism’ and ‘eurocentrism’ that litter the rivers of postcolonial creativity. Afrikaans culture, from the Voëlvry movement, and beyond, has taken up the challenge, and is encountering the accusations and pitfalls that have kept me fearfully mute.
But New York heard this one. Free speech is a treacherous and ethereal idea, in situations like these.
It seems to me the pivot point is somewhere around the issue of the old South African flag, and most specifically the colour orange. When the new South African flag was chosen, it was stated specifically that the colours had no specific symbolism, aside from their use in some of the many previous flags that had been associated with South Africa. In general, the red, white and blue reference the Union Jack and the old SA flag, while green black and yellow recall various struggle organizations flags, including that of the ANC. The one colour that was excluded was the orange that had formed the lower bar on the old flag. The word "Orange" was also left off the new name for the province formerly known as the "Orange Free State". It was, however, adopted by the residents of Orania, a Northern Cape Afrikaner town with aspirations of independence. And I have vague (and I suspect unconfirmable) memories of orange being associated with a "no" vote during the 1992 referendum that led to the end of Apartheid. Is that too much symbolic weight to put on a single colour? I also have a remembered association between a horrendously violent act filmed and broadcast by the South African media in the 1980s, and the green, yellow and black flags that hid the faces of the perpetrators. What types of violence get demonized or justified by the state, and under what circumstances? The way that colours and flags get handled here, in the US, is very different from the way they are considered in SA, but in experiencing the American consideration of their flag, I think I am beginning to understand not why, but at least how, a flag can become such a contentious issue.
To return to the music, though, I must point out that none of the reports I have linked to yet note that the original statement by the Department of Arts and Culture, which seemed to ignite the already smoldering controversy, was not in fact a spontaneous effusion, but was issued at the request of the Afrikaans magazine Huisgenoot. The issue was then picked up by the FAK (which is where I first encountered it), and then by the national press, including the newspapers I have already linked to. The Blue Bulls Company then allegedly censored the song during rugby matches at Loftus Versveld, and then revoked that decision in the face of public outrage, though the company deny that any official decision along those lines was ever made, and claim that the song was played at last weekend’s match at Loftus.
Now is it just me, or does it begin to look like the controversy is really being fomented among white (I might even go as far as to suggest primarily Afrikaans) commentators? The DAC statement is pretty nonchalant in comparison to the FAK reaction, while the report in the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld, that I translated previously is significantly more agitated and even potentially inflammatory than that issued by the Citizen, or any of the other newspapers I have linked to. The New York Times buys into the ominous pessimism of the Beeld article somewhat more than the equivalent English South African press, but the assumptions made by that article about connections between Afrikaans culture and apartheid (no, they are not the same thing), and the direct connection, almost equation, drawn between De La Rey and Hendrik Verwoerd (most notably by the fronting of the article with a photograph of the diminutive statue of Verwoerd that overlooks Orania) which indicates the lack of subtlety concerning Afrikaans history that is precisely what this song and its popularity seem to be responding to, somewhat undermines the credibility of that report. I would suggest, though, that the noisy enthusiasm with which the Afrikaans community has opened this debate, indicates a strong desire to be heard. Michael Wines, the New York Times journalist, did make at least one strong point when he suggested that Afrikaners are afraid of their culture being “tossed into history's dustbin” (pg. 2) (this may have been an idea culled from the Sunday Independent, but as their articles are only available for perusal by subscribers, I am unable to confirm this). Certainly Afrikaans culture is rarely promoted along with post-apartheid South African culture in a broader sense: it is not exotic enough for either the world music or the international cultural tourism markets and too strongly negatively inflected by international opinion to fit into either pan-African or revisionist, Rainbow Nation rhetoric. And yet, the Afrikaans music industry, in particular, is big in South Africa. However it may look from the outside, contemporary Afrikaans musical culture did not spring spontaneously to life around this song alone. While I can't find stats for Afrikaans music sales right at present (I'm sure they must be out there), I can assure you that the Afrikaans music industry has a significant market, not least because the generational gap that is so evident among many audiences, is negligible among audiences for Afrikaans music. Musicians like Bok, Dozi, Karen Zoid, Chris Chamelion, Steve Hofmeyr, and the list goes no, play to audiences that span age-groups, while Afrikaans music crosses market-defined genre lines like classical, folk, pop, rock, and to a lesser degree, hip hop and jazz. There is no correspondingly strong white English South African industry, not because the music is not out there, but because, I would argue, assimilationist politics, coupled with post-apartheid white guilt and/or exodus created a self-conscious rupture in English South African music, as composers and performers attempted to navigate the opposing boulders of ‘paternalism’ and ‘eurocentrism’ that litter the rivers of postcolonial creativity. Afrikaans culture, from the Voëlvry movement, and beyond, has taken up the challenge, and is encountering the accusations and pitfalls that have kept me fearfully mute.
But New York heard this one. Free speech is a treacherous and ethereal idea, in situations like these.
Monday, February 12, 2007
More on De La Rey
Yet another link relating to the De La Rey story. Thanks to my parents for forwarding this one to me. It is in Afrikaans, but I will look for a translation this evening, after class.
And while I was writing that, my parents forwarded me a second link, this time from an English newspaper, reporting on the same concert. The two reports are markedly different, though, so if I can't find a translation of the first, I think I will have to translate it myself.
UPDATE:
I couldn't find a translation, so my own translation follows. I just must state categorically, however, how important it is to read this report along side the report from the Citizen. I am obviously dependent on these reports for my assessment of events, but I can't help but suspect that the sensationalism of the Beeld report is deliberately overstated, and I must say that I consider it very irresponsible journalism. My hope is that what could be a positive phenomenon is not turned into a problem. It's all in the interpretation, after all.
And while I was writing that, my parents forwarded me a second link, this time from an English newspaper, reporting on the same concert. The two reports are markedly different, though, so if I can't find a translation of the first, I think I will have to translate it myself.
UPDATE:
I couldn't find a translation, so my own translation follows. I just must state categorically, however, how important it is to read this report along side the report from the Citizen. I am obviously dependent on these reports for my assessment of events, but I can't help but suspect that the sensationalism of the Beeld report is deliberately overstated, and I must say that I consider it very irresponsible journalism. My hope is that what could be a positive phenomenon is not turned into a problem. It's all in the interpretation, after all.
‘Everyone is a general’
By Retha
Grobbelaar
General Kees de la Rey was called loudly again yesterday to lead the boers. About 3000 people attended a Bok van Blerk concert at the Hillfox center in Weltevredenpark on the West rand in order to hear his song “de la Rey”.“I’m here for De la Rey. I really like the words. It’s our culture that is standing up again,” said Ms. Bianca Bredenkamp (19).
“Bok awakens everything in me. He sings about things that we have forgotten, and he brings us together again,” said Mr. Kobus Laurens (37).
Ms. Nina Mouton (48) claims that the song proves that Afrikaans is still important for many people. “I am certainly a part of the De la Rey generation. It’s where our roots are,” she said.
At least ten old national flags were carried by audience members during the
performance. This came after Van Blerk told Beeld earlier that he doesn’t have a personal attachment to the old national flag.“I don’t identify myself with the old national flag. We’re moving on” he said.
Mr. Herman Webster (35) was one of the people carrying the old flag.
“I am here to support my people. He sings about things that were taken from us, and that we want to take back,” said Webster, who was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the old flag.
When van Blerk sang “De la Rey”, his fans stood as one man. People sang along in full voice, with their fists raised in the air, as the old flag was waved.
“You are all generals” said Van Blerk at the end of the song.
When he thereafter sang about South African sporting hero, the Springbok rugby player Bryan Habana, the fans stood up and left.According to Mozi Records, the agent for van Blerk’s album, De la Rey, the album had sold 106 983 copies by the 6th of February.
Follow-up on the De La Rey story
Tim Du Plessis has a much more hopeful take on the De La Rey saga than I have hitherto read. The suggestion that living "in gated suburbs and fortified houses" is tantamount to "inward emigration" is a little annoying. It is difficult to feel engaged in the country when you are constantly on high alert for your basic safety. But I guess I would have to go back to the original source of that idea to really take it up (how I wish journalism followed the same strict referencing standards as academia). In the interim, though, I am prepared to take that as no more than a gesture in the direction of other theorists on the white South African condition, and accept the article as a whole as a useful and positive contribution to a fascinating debate.
Also, here is Jetstreaker's comment on the story, as well as a link, from Jetstreaker, to Bok van Blerk's official website.
Reading some of the information on Bok's website alongside the news articles I have linked to already, I guess the concerns that the department raised were really more about potentially problematic uses of the song by extremists, rather than the song itself, and I have been a bit sidetracked by the latter. The song, as we have been reminded over and over, is not problematic in and of itself. But neither, I rush to add, is a basic Afrikaner solidarity generated around it. The reinvigoration of Afrikaner identity is critical to the future of diversity in South Africa. Claiming South African-ness, South African identity, is how young Afrikaners are going to develop a sense of investment in South Africa and its future. You have to feel proud of your place in South Africa's history in order to build on that for the future, and a sense of pride in a pre-Apartheid South Africa seems like a pretty good starting point, to me.
On the other hand, I do struggle with the whole idea of diversity in the first place, because creating groups, as Henri Tajfel and John Turner have showed, almost inevitably leads to conflict, and the idea of diversity, at least as a political ideology, is premised around the demarcation of difference. Being away from home, and working with people with a whole variety of different experiences from my own is invariably an enriching, and I am beginning to think absolutely necessary part of developing an independent intellectual life and the ability to think creatively and originally. That is very directly tied to notions of diversity. I suspect, though, that the problem resides in the creation of exclusivity, the idea that a culture is only "pure" or authentic when it is performed by what I will refer to as 'original culture bearers'. It is a half-formed idea for me at present, but it responds to my experience of what gets promoted by organizations like UNESCO as Intangible herritage, or by institutions like Carnegie Hall as South African culture (cf. my post on Jeremy Taylor's New York performances. Ag Pleeze Deddy was banned by the Apartheid Government for "mixing languages". Why then was the Graceland collaboration celebrated? (see Louise Meintjes wonderful 1990 article for more info. You need access to Jstor to get it via that link, but if anyone knows of an open-access version, I would be delighted.) Was it just a different historical moment?), or by the whole World Music industry, or even, historically, by the discipline of Ethnomusicology (though this is changing, or has changed, to some degree, at least).
Ok, so that is really just be thinking aloud, and doesn't read particularly easily, but as I intend to work on all of this much more over the next few years, it isn't totally irrelevant.
Also, here is Jetstreaker's comment on the story, as well as a link, from Jetstreaker, to Bok van Blerk's official website.
Reading some of the information on Bok's website alongside the news articles I have linked to already, I guess the concerns that the department raised were really more about potentially problematic uses of the song by extremists, rather than the song itself, and I have been a bit sidetracked by the latter. The song, as we have been reminded over and over, is not problematic in and of itself. But neither, I rush to add, is a basic Afrikaner solidarity generated around it. The reinvigoration of Afrikaner identity is critical to the future of diversity in South Africa. Claiming South African-ness, South African identity, is how young Afrikaners are going to develop a sense of investment in South Africa and its future. You have to feel proud of your place in South Africa's history in order to build on that for the future, and a sense of pride in a pre-Apartheid South Africa seems like a pretty good starting point, to me.
On the other hand, I do struggle with the whole idea of diversity in the first place, because creating groups, as Henri Tajfel and John Turner have showed, almost inevitably leads to conflict, and the idea of diversity, at least as a political ideology, is premised around the demarcation of difference. Being away from home, and working with people with a whole variety of different experiences from my own is invariably an enriching, and I am beginning to think absolutely necessary part of developing an independent intellectual life and the ability to think creatively and originally. That is very directly tied to notions of diversity. I suspect, though, that the problem resides in the creation of exclusivity, the idea that a culture is only "pure" or authentic when it is performed by what I will refer to as 'original culture bearers'. It is a half-formed idea for me at present, but it responds to my experience of what gets promoted by organizations like UNESCO as Intangible herritage, or by institutions like Carnegie Hall as South African culture (cf. my post on Jeremy Taylor's New York performances. Ag Pleeze Deddy was banned by the Apartheid Government for "mixing languages". Why then was the Graceland collaboration celebrated? (see Louise Meintjes wonderful 1990 article for more info. You need access to Jstor to get it via that link, but if anyone knows of an open-access version, I would be delighted.) Was it just a different historical moment?), or by the whole World Music industry, or even, historically, by the discipline of Ethnomusicology (though this is changing, or has changed, to some degree, at least).
Ok, so that is really just be thinking aloud, and doesn't read particularly easily, but as I intend to work on all of this much more over the next few years, it isn't totally irrelevant.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Sense of Humour
Just when I'm beginning to take it all too seriously, someone comes along and makes me laugh.
Thank you, Eugene Eckard, for this great post!
Thank you, Eugene Eckard, for this great post!
Friday, December 09, 2005
White Africans
There was an interesting, though somwehat troubling article and response in yesterday's Mail and Guardian, under the headline "How to be a White African". It was an extract from the book The White Africans by Gerald L'Ange. What worried me about it was that although both the article and the response pretended to be liberal and inclusive, the extent to which they expressed a concern with classification and difference made me wonder how we are ever to move beyond it. I get that there is still a massively uneven distribution of wealth and resources, and there are still a shocking percentage of racists around, but classifying a person as priveleged, wealthy and racist because they are white is equivalent to classifying them as poor, uneducated and criminal because they are black. These stereotypes are the real problem. I have sung choral music in African languages. I teach this music to my choir, and wrestle with issues of authenticity every time I do. Does that make me African? There is an entirely black choir on the television in front of me right this moment singing "Benedictus" from some or another mass. It is in latin. Does that make them not African? Does the fact that I choose to attend the Christmas concerts of Chantecleer and the Welsh Male-Voice choir rather than Afro-tenor make me not African? and if I'm not African, what am I? I speak English, but so does everyone at my university. I don't speak any other european language, but I do speak Afrikaans. I don't speak an nguni language, though. So what does that make me? I'm going to further my studies in the United States next year. A friend of mine is planning to do the same. For her, it is a way out of South Africa. For me it is a way in. I'm going to the united states because I need to be a highly qualified and capable an academic as possible in order to come back to South Africa to work. No matter what anyone says, this is where I want to be. And I don't just want to be here, and fool around. I want to contribute. I want to make a difference. and yet this article suggests that "any group of ‘outside educators’ who had grown up and been educated in a privileged situation where teachers are educated by former European systems, curricula and processes and those elites who travel to Europe, North America and overseas to continue an elite education, are distanced from the people they might, hopefully, return home to teach." So what is one really supposed to do. I don't really want to leave, but I feel that I have to if I am to make this career work. Does that make me disloyal to Africa? does that make me not an African?
LINKS TO OTHER ARTICLES ON WHITENESS AND AFRICANNESS:
Meditations71 writes about seeing South Africa through Western Eyes
LINKS TO OTHER ARTICLES ON WHITENESS AND AFRICANNESS:
Meditations71 writes about seeing South Africa through Western Eyes
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