Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Popular music – Political aspects – Zimbabwe'

The censorship of popular music in South Africa during the 1980s severely affected South African musicians. The apartheid government was directly involved in centralized state censorship by means of the Directorate of Publications, while the South African Broadcasting Corporation exercised government censorship at the level of airplay. Others who assisted state censorship included religious and cultural interest groups. State censorship in turn put pressure on record companies, musicians and others to practice self-censorship. Many musicians who overtly sang about taboo topics or who used controversial language subsequently experienced censorship in different forms, including police harassment. Musicians were also subject to anti-apartheid forms of censorship,such as the United Nations endorsed cultural boycott. Not all instances of censorship were overtly political, but they were always framed by, and took place within, a repressive legal-political system. This thesis found that despite the state's attempt to maintain its hegemony, musicians sought ways of overcoming censorship practices. It is argued that the ensuing struggle cannot be conceived of in simple binary terms. The works of Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, are applied to the South African context in exploring the localized nuances of the cultural struggle over music censorship. It is argued that fragmented resistance to censorship arose out of the very censorship structures that attempted to silence musicians. Textual analysis brought to light that resistance took various forms including songs with provocative lyrics and titles, and more subtle means of bypassing censorship, including the use of symbolism, camouflaged lyrics, satire and crossover performance. Musicians were faced with the challenge of bypassing censors yet nevertheless conveying their message to an audience. The most successful cases negotiated censorial practices while getting an apparent message across to a wide audience. Broader forms of resistance were also explored, including opposition through live performance, counter-hegemonic information on record covers, resistance from exile, alignment with political organizations and legal challenges to state censorship. In addition, some record companies developed strategies of resistance to censorship. The many innovative practices outlined in this thesis demonstrate that even in the context of constraint, resistance is possible. Despite censorship, South African musicians were able to express themselves through approaching their music in an innovative way.

The study interrogates the context reflectivity of postcolonial Shona popular music in Zimbabwe. It also explores the extent to which the legal environment in which the same music is produced, disseminated and consumed affects expressivity and artistic precision. The study is inspired by the New Historicism theory which assumes that every work of art is a product of the historical moment that created it and can be identified with the cultural and political movements of the time. The same is believed of popular music. The study is also beholden to the Marxist literary tradition for its assessment of the discourse of politics and socio-economic issues in popular music. For all the analysis, an Afrocentric eye view informs the thesis. Being qualitative in perspective, the research mainly uses the hermeneutic research design as an operational framework for the interpretation of lyrical data. Hermeneutics, as a method of textual analysis, emphasizes the socio-cultural and historic influences on qualitative interpretation. Postcolonial Shona popular music is purposively sampled and critically studied using the hermeneutic method to tease out latent social and political nuances in lyrical data. Interviews are roped in as alternative opinions to validate hermeneutic data. The research observes that the legislative environment in which Zimbabwean popular music is composed is, on paper, very conducive for the art but in practice severely restrictive. The constitution allows the artiste sufficient space to sing any subject but confessions by some critics alert on the incidences of some censored products. Even against that backdrop artistes have gone on to compose politically suggestive music. However, from the first decade of independence, the tendency for the artiste has been to flow with the meta-narrative or hegemonic discourses of the state, while in the later decades the artiste sounds critical of the nationalist government. Realising the power of music to articulate serious national issues; among other prescriptions, the study recommends that government creates a flexible and democratic legislation that allows for unbounded creativity and consumption of artistic products.
African Languages
D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This dissertation investigates the socio-cultural and musical transfigurations of a rural-identified musical genre known as música típica as it engages with the dynamics of Panama's rural-urban divide and the country's nascent engagement with the global political economy. Though regarded as emblematic of Panama's national folklore, música típica is also the basis for the country's principal and most commercially successful popular music style known by the same name. The primary concern of this project is to examine how and why this particular genre continues to undergo simultaneous processes of folklorization and commercialization. As an unresolved genre of music, I argue that música típica can offer rich insight into the politics of working out individual and national Panamanian identities. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Panama City and several rural communities in the country's interior, I examine the social struggles that subtend the emergence of música típica's genre variations within local, national, and transnational contexts. Through close ethnographic analysis of particular case studies, this work explores how musicians, fans, and the country's political and economic structures constitute divisions in regards to generic labeling and how differing fields of musical circulation and meaning are imagined. This study will first present an examination of late nineteenth and twentieth century Panamanian nationalist discourses in order to contextualize música típica's stylistic and ideological development as a commercial genre of popular music. The following chapter will construct a social history of música típica that takes into account the multiple historical trajectories that today's consumers and producers engage, negotiate, and contest in an attempt to ascribe social and cultural meaning to the role the genre assumes in contemporary discourses of national identity. Processes of folkloric canonization and reconstruction will then be examined in order to understand how the marketing efforts of the Panamanian government draw on a discourse of nationality. The role of corporate sponsorship in today's música típica scene will also be investigated, specifically addressing how the marketing of this genre by beer companies, national cultural festivals, and the Panamanian television industry builds on a foundation of commercial music practices. Subsequent chapters will focus on the local and transnational dynamics of genre formation and dissolution as revealed in the ideological discourses and socio-musical practices of música típica's practitioners, especially in accordion and vocal performance practices. An analysis of música típica's field of cultural production, with its particular mappings of identity, place, and sound, will provide insight into Panamanian modernity and the social experiences of Panamanians, especially within Latin American and global contexts.

This dissertation examines how a contested musical practice makes the problems of modernity in India audible. In particular, I look at the relationship between South Indian "fusion" musicians and India's recent economic and cultural growth attributed to the economic reforms of 1991. Fusion is the local name for a musical practice that combines South Indian classical music with elements from rock, jazz, and world music. During thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the South Indian city of Chennai between 2006-8, I attended countless concerts, interviewed dozens of people involved with musical production, and performed with musicians. I observed how musicians and audiences perpetuated the idea that fusion was contested and I documented the local debates that often expressed a deep uncertainty and ambiguity about the legitimacy of fusion. What can a contested musical practice reveal about the recent economic and cultural changes in contemporary urban India? Fusion is contested because its multiple and contradicting histories, definitions, and opinions make it a unique musical problem in Chennai. This problem is further complicated when the explicit intension of fusion as musical mixing is also understood as an example of persistent debates of cultural mixing that are so crucial to India's colonial history and postcolonial present. In this dissertation, I show how fusion triggers debates that provide a unique constellation of irresolvable tensions that help situate contemporary, urban, South Indian musicians within the changing relations between India and the West. The contestation about fusion has led to a lacuna of critical scholarship that this dissertation remedies. I argue that rather than being a reason to overlook fusion, fusion's contestation loads it with meaning and makes it a rich, unexamined site of expressive culture. It provides a unique domain to understand how musicians in Chennai represent the always-changing relations of India and the West through their discourse about music and musical sound.

by Wong Yan Chau, Christina.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 175-186).
Chapter I. --- Introduction --- p.2
Chapter II. --- Historical Background --- p.5
Chapter III. --- A Review of the Related Literature --- p.14
Chapter A. --- The Culture Industry Approach --- p.15
Chapter B. --- The Liberal-Pluralist Approach --- p.26
Chapter C. --- The Technological Approach --- p.31
Chapter IV. --- The Theoretical Perspective --- p.36
Chapter V. --- Methodological Approach to Study --- p.42
Chapter A. --- Content Analysis of Lyrical Messages --- p.42
Chapter 1. --- Method --- p.42
Chapter 2. --- Data --- p.43
Chapter 3. --- Analytic Framework of the Textual Analysis --- p.45
Chapter B. --- Analysis of Rock Music within Hegemony --- p.48
Chapter 1. --- Method --- p.48
Chapter 2. --- Data --- p.50
Chapter VI. --- Meanings in Rock Music --- p.52
Chapter A. --- Themes in each fictional mode --- p.52
Chapter B. --- Thematic content of Rock Music --- p.54
Chapter 1. --- The Ironic Mode --- p.54
Chapter 2. --- The Mimetic Mode --- p.64
Chapter a. --- Phenomena of Identity Crisis --- p.64
Chapter i. --- Loss of direction --- p.65
Chapter ii. --- Roots-seeking --- p.68
Chapter iii. --- Alternating identity --- p.69
Chapter iv. --- Alienation --- p.71
Breakaway --- p.71
A Stranger in the City --- p.74
Chapter b. --- Outlook on Life --- p.76
Chapter c. --- Social Problems --- p.79
Chapter i. --- War --- p.79
Chapter ii. --- Incivility --- p.81
Chapter d. --- The Experience of Growing Up --- p.82
Chapter i. --- Anti-patriarchism --- p.82
Chapter ii. --- Wandering --- p.83
Chapter iii. --- The Loss of Childhood --- p.84
Chapter e. --- Love --- p.85
Chapter i. --- Yearning for love --- p.85
Chapter ii. --- Frustrations with love --- p.86
Chapter iii. --- Wild love --- p.88
Chapter iv. --- Inauthentic love --- p.90
Chapter 3. --- The Leadership Mode --- p.93
Chapter a. --- The Exploratory Spirit --- p.93
Chapter b. --- Individuality and Non-Conformity --- p.96
Chapter c. --- The Authentic Self --- p.98
Chapter 4. --- The Romantic Mode --- p.102
Chapter a. --- Nostalgia for a Glorious Past --- p.102
Chapter b. --- Anarchy in the Demonic World --- p.105
Chapter c. --- Union with nature --- p.107
Chapter d. --- The Pastoral Utopia --- p.111
Chapter e. --- Fictional Characters and Objects Speaking --- p.112
Chapter 5. --- The Mythic Mode --- p.117
Chapter C. --- The World View of Rock Music --- p.120
Chapter VII. --- The Relations of Rock Music to Hegemony --- p.125
Chapter A. --- Messages of Rock and the Hegemony --- p.125
Chapter B. --- Music as a Contested Terrain --- p.130
Chapter 1. --- The Hegemonic Power: Cooptation and Marginalization --- p.130
Chapter 2. --- The Deviant Culture: Struggle by Means of adaptation and negotiation --- p.140
Chapter VIII. --- Conclusion --- p.155
Chapter IX. --- Limitations of the Study --- p.158
Chapter X. --- Future Studies on Rock Music --- p.161
Notes --- p.165
Bibliography --- p.175
Discography --- p.185
Appendix 1. The Sample of Rock Songs --- p.187

This is an ethnographic study of the fraught and complex cultural politics of music making in Palestine-Israel in the context of the post-Oslo era. I examine the politics of sound and the ways in which music making and attached discourses reflect and constitute identities, and also, contextualize political action. Ethical and aesthetic positions that shape contemporary artistic production in Israel-Palestine are informed by profound imbalances of power between the State (Israel), the stateless (Palestinians of the occupied Palestinian territories), the complex positioning of Israel's Palestinian minority, and contingent exposure to ongoing political violence. Cultural production in this period is also profoundly informed by highly polarized sentiments and retreat from the expressive modes of relationality that accompanied the 1990s peace process, strategic shifts in the Palestinian struggle for liberation, which is increasingly taking place on the world stage through diplomatic and cultural work, and the conceptual life and currency Palestine has gained as an entity deserving of statehood around the world. The ethnography attends to how the conflict is lived and expressed, musically and discursively, in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) of the West Bank, encompassing different sites, institutions and individuals. I examine the ways in which music making and attached discourses reflect and constitute identities, with the understanding that musical culture is a sphere in which power and hegemony are asserted, negotiated and resisted through shifting relations between and within different groups. In all the different contexts presented, the dissertation is thematically and theoretically underpinned by the ways in which music is used to culturally assert or reterritorialize social and spatial boundaries in a situation of conflict. Beginning with cultural policy promoted by music institutions located in Israel and in the West Bank, the ethnography focuses on two opposing approaches to cultural interventions in the conflict: music as a site of resistance and nation building amongst Palestinian music conservatories located in the oPt, and music is a site of fostering coexistence and shared models of citizenship amongst Jewish and Arab citizens in mixed Palestinian-Jewish environments in Israel. This follows with the ways in which music making is used to re-write the spatial and temporal boundaries imposed on individuals and communities by the repressive regime of the occupation. The ethnography also attends to the ways in which the cultural construction of place and nation is lived and sounded outside of institutional frameworks, in the blurry boundaries and `boderzones' where fixed ethno-national divisions do not align with physical spaces and individual identities. This opens up spaces for alternative imaginings of national and post-national identities, of resistance and coexistence, of the universal and the particular, that musically highlight the daily struggles of individuals and communities negotiating multiplex modalities of difference.

This dissertation examines the history of popular music in Lomé, the capital city of Togo, a small West African country that has thus far been largely excluded from ethnomusicological inquiry. Through ethnographic and historical research, it explores shifting practices of, ideas about, and sentiments towards, local popular music and their articulations with state power and political culture during the nearly four-decade lasting regime of late President Eyadéma. It divides this long timespan into three distinct periods of political domination. The first period covers the years between Eyadéma’s inception of power in a military coup d’état in 1967 through the rise of his charismatic authority in the 1970s. The second period covers the 1980s, a time of economic decline and growing socio-political tensions, during which the state relied increasingly on terror and violence to solidify its power. The final period covers the last years of Eyadéma’s regime, from the people’s struggle for democracy in the early 1990s through a forged political reconciliation, followed by a gradual process of economic and social liberalization leading up to Eyadéma’s death in 2005. Within this political framework and chronological outline, this dissertation captures an essentially disjointed history of local popular music, which involves musical characteristics and socio-musical processes that remain substantially unaddressed – as is Togo itself – in the extensive literature on African popular music. These characteristics and processes include the stifling of musical creativity and musical evisceration under state patronage, subtle dynamics of subversion among socially alienated musicians involved in seemingly unremarkable generic musical styles, and an overall predominance of imported popular music styles, rather than the hybrid national popular musics prominently featured in the ethnomusicological literature on West Africa. This work is structured around the theme of “absence,” a concept that was dominant in the local discourse on popular music in Lomé towards the end of Eyadéma’s regime. The young generation of urban Togolese, especially, mourned the absence of a set of local musical conditions, principally that of an identifiably Togolese popular music sound. By theorizing “absence” as a phenomenon of perception, rather than an objective state of non-existence, the analysis centers on the nature of the disjunctures between that which is desired and expected, and that which is. In addition to probing various political, economic, cultural, ideological, and discursive trajectories that led up to, and informed, the emergence of perceptions of absence around the turn of the millennium, this work also critically engages with the absence of Togo in the ethnomusicological literature. It identifies, analyzes, and historicizes paradigmatic trends and epistemological conventions that engendered a scholarly concentration on socially vital, stylistically innovative, and audibly “African” popular music cultures, the legacies of which, I argue, have not only inadvertently reinforced celebratory tropes of otherness that parallel those circulating in the context of the World Music market, but have also rendered a place like Togo invisible and inaudible to ethnomusicologists. The larger aim of this dissertation is thus to broaden the scope of the Africanist project on popular music towards the representation of a fuller spectrum of socio-musical experiences in postcolonial Africa through the inclusion of a place whose popular music history is characterized more by absence and alienation than it is by a tangible and assertive musical presence. The ethnomusicological analysis of post-independence popular music practice in Togo also contributes to the broader literature on this generally understudied country in Africa, by revealing and analyzing larger social and cultural responses to, and articulations with, Eyadéma’s autocratic regime, most importantly the absence of a genuine cultural nationalism in the context of Togo’s Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, a pervasive political disengagement among Togolese in the 1980s, and a short-lived search for a national identity around the turn of the millennium. This dissertation can thus be situated within the larger Africanist body of literature on postcolonial state power. By illuminating the complexities inherent in state-subject relations through an investigation of musicians’ modi operandi across various stages of Togolese political domination, it especially resonates with a body of work inspired by Achille Mbembe that has complicated interpretations of domination in the context of postcolonial totalitarian regimes.

This dissertation is an ethnography centered around two bands based in Guangzhou and their relationships with one of China’s largest record companies. Bridging ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural geography, media studies, vocal anthropology, and the anthropology of infrastructure, it examines emergent forms of musical creativity and modes of circulation as they relate to shifts in concepts of self, space, publics, and state instigated by China’s political and economic reforms. Chapter One discusses a long history of state-sponsored cartographic musical anthologies, as well as Confucian and Maoist ways of understanding the relationships between place, person, and music. These discussions provide a context for understanding contemporary musical cosmopolitanisms that both build upon and disrupt these histories; they also provoke a rethinking of ethnomusicological and related linguistic theorizations about music, place, and subjectivity. Through biographies of seven musicians working in present-day Guangzhou, Chapter Two outlines a concept of “musical subjectivity” that looks to the intersection of personal histories, national histories, and creativity as a means of exploring the role of individual agency and expressive culture in broader cultural shifts. Chapter Three focuses on the intertwining of actual corporeal mobilities and vicarious musical mobilities, and explores relationships between circulations of global popular musics, emergent forms of musical creativity, and an evolving geography of contemporary China. Chapter Four extends these concerns to a discussion of media systems in China, and outlines an approach to “sonic infrastructures” that puts sound studies in dialogue with the anthropology of infrastructure in order to understand how evolving modes of musical circulation and the listening practices associated with them are connected to broader economic, political, and cultural spatialities. Finally, Chapter Five examines the intersecting aesthetic and political implications of popular music sung in local languages (fangyan) by focusing on contemporary forms of articulation between music, language, listening, and place. Taken together, these chapters explore musical cosmopolitanisms as knowledge-making processes that are reconfiguring notions of self, state, publics, and space in contemporary China.

This dissertation is a study of popular music and state-controlled radio broadcasting in the Arabic-speaking world, focusing on Syria and the Syrian radioscape, and a set of American stations named Radio Sawa. I examine American and Syrian politically directed broadcasts as multi-faceted objects around which broadcasters and listeners often differ not only in goals, operating assumptions, and political beliefs, but also in how they fundamentally conceptualize the practice of listening to the radio. Beginning with the history of international broadcasting in the Middle East, I analyze the institutional theories under which music is employed as a tool of American and Syrian policy, the imagined youths to whom the musical messages are addressed, and the actual sonic content tasked with political persuasion. At the reception side of the broadcaster-listener interaction, this dissertation addresses the auditory practices, histories of radio, and theories of music through which listeners in the sonic environment of Damascus, Syria create locally relevant meaning out of music and radio. Drawing on theories of listening and communication developed in historical musicology and ethnomusicology, science and technology studies, and recent transnational ethnographic and media studies, as well as on theories of listening developed in the Arabic public discourse about popular music, my dissertation outlines the intersection of the hypothetical listeners defined by the US and Syrian governments in their efforts to use music for political ends, and the actual people who turn on the radio to hear the music.

A content analysis of Leonard Karikoga Zhakata’s sungura music unpacks shared experiences of Zimbabweans during a decade of crises.Various musicians composed music pregnant with cultural meaning. These genres defied the ruling Zanu PF party‘s propaganda. The ZANU P.F. flagged enemy was imperialist history, whose characteristic was bankrupt in civil justice. Common sense ‘umunthu’ (‘Humaness)’ philosophy could have witnessed the ruling party stand by the people at the height of economic decline. This dissertation argued that the sungura genre became a formidable force. The music had dramatic effect of unifying citizens of different distinct cultural traditions, often which set Shona, Manyika, Korekore, Changana and Ndebele apart. ‘Mugove’ ‘(Reward) and ‘Hupenyu mutoro’ (Life is a burden) lyrics manifested thought processes, ideas and actions which projected popular unity against ruling elite hegemony. Zimbabweans’ collective cultural awareness that could have defined social experiences indirectly or directly motivated formations of oppositional political establishments. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was the brainchild of political disillusionment chorused in “Hupenyu Mutoro’ (Life is a burden) and ‘Mugove’ (Reward) lyrics. The musical texts unravelled the hidden sin of gross graft by the powerful built on self aggrandisement at the expense of the vulnerable subalterns. The sungura genre manifested an art of aggressive entertainment and enjoyment yet passively and remotely awakening citizens to the obtaining dire economic hardships. The genre’s scholarly fabric and dynamics, cut deep into life sensibilities as exemplified by ‘Hupenyu Mutoro’. The deplorable life style experienced by the suffering majority epitomised by political repression and economic meltdown became catalyst for political participation and opportunities for plural voices.This dissertation argues that academic curricula harnesses the influential sungura genre in teaching a people’s story. Sungura music authenticates national historical versions that comfortably orbits around official realities of civil governance processes, what Fanon refers to as ‘a zone of occult instability (Fanon, 1963 p. 253). Unemployment, hyper-inflation, cholera out breaks, empty shelves in shops compounded with a ravaging parallel market prices became food for thought. Disllusionment nagged Zimbabweans below and above the poverty datum peg vis a viz the material power index of a handful citizens in the ruling party. Hence Zhakata’s ‘Hupenyu mutoro’ (Life is a burden) and ‘Mugove’ (Reward) became a classical and contested terrain that motivated the teaching and learning of Zimbabwean history.
Communication
M.A. (Communication)

This thesis explores some of the ways in which listening to South African popular music allows individuals to enter into imaginative engagements with others in South Africa, and in so doing, negotiate their place in the social landscape. Taking as its starting point the notion of the "musical imaginary" - the web of connotational meanings arising out of the interaction between music and society, rendering it a particularly suitable medium through which to imagine social actors - it focuses specifically on the role of music in constructions of 'race' and, to a lesser extent, of 'nation'. It examines some of the ways in which dominant discourses exert pressure on what is imagined, as well as highlighting the creativity of listeners who appropriate the musical imaginary for their own ends of identification. It attempts to depict the complexity of musical identification in postapartheid South Africa, in which individuals must negotiate multiple boundaries marking difference, including categories of 'race', ethnicity, gender and class. It also investigates perceptions of the role of music in generating new identities and modes of social interaction, and offers some speculations as to how an analysis of these perceptions may contribute to current theoretical models of change in multicultural societies.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

The research is an Afrocentric engagement that analyses selected songs by Tongai Moyo and Hosiah Chipanga in post-independence Zimbabwe. The study is informed by Afrocentricity, which provides the theoretical anchorage to the exposition and elucidation of the pursuit for independence, liberation and freedom of Zimbabweans in the post-independence era. The study analyses selected sungura songs composed and sung by Hosiah Chipanga and Tongai Moyo in post-2000 era. The study indicates that post-independence Zimbabwe of 2000 to 2010 reflects a decade of crisis. The exposition unfolds through a critical exegesis of selected songs by these sungura artists. The two sungura musicians are among the leading musical voices in Zimbabwe. The study is largely qualitative in nature and used interviews and questionnaires to solicit information from research participants. Respondents comprise musicians, music producers and academics in the Zimbabwe. The study stimulates more interest and research in sungura music as well as illuminating the significance of their messages to ongoing debates on the Zimbabwean crisis/crises thereby establishing the relationship between music and politics. This position is made against the backdrop of their commitment and courageous efforts by such protest musicians to comment on ‘big’ political and economic issues seriously affecting the performance of Zimbabwean economy. The study also establishes that cronyism, patronage and corruption have become major industries of the day in Africa. Through fighting for the voiceless masses, the study argues that Zimbabwe is faced by the crisis of governance and the nation has taken the medals of humiliating its own people. Pertaining to the leadership crisis in Zimbabwe, the study also shows that musicians who include Hosiah Chipanga and Tongai Moyo insinuate that the deep seated Zimbabwean challenges are a manifestation of a nation that is parentless. In their protest music, the artists reiterate that poverty, hunger, diseases and other forms of sufferings that the country encountered and continue to face are a sign of a country that is an orphan implying the dearth of people centred leadership. Additionally, findings from the study show that the land issue is one of the commonly identified factors that are ascribed to partial independence in Zimbabwe translating into crisis. The land question invited attention from Hosiah Chipanga as reflected in his post-2000 music where he suggests that Zimbabweans were to a larger extent betrayed by ZANU (PF) leadership.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
D. Phil. (Languages, Linguistics and Literature)

This ethnographic study concerns itself with the role that local rap performance plays in either reinforcing or challenging perceptions of 'race' amongst the participants of hip-hop culture in Durban, South Africa, and what this implies for the prospects of reconciliation. Using Cohen's (1989) theory of community and Grossberg's (1996) theory of affective alliances, I explore the ways in which music may create and maintain differences and commonalities between groups of people. It is my hypothesis that genre conventions and connotations, and the discourses that circulate about rap music (for example, rap music as a form of expression particular to the 'black Atlantic' diaspora and conditioned by a racially segregated society [Rose 1994]), allow hip-hop to either reinforce or challenge participants' perceptions of 'race'. I examine how musical and lyrical utterances thrust into a semantic historical and socio-political context limit how rap performance can mean and how, as a dialogic speech genre, rap can uphold, subvert or negotiate its genre associations, including, through the use of double-voiced discourse, dominant ideas concerning 'race' and cultural identity. Acknowledging the idiom as of a form of black cultural expression (Rose 1994), interviewees mention narratives of hip-hop's historical origins, rap artists' use of Five Percenter and Black Nationalist ideologies, and poverty, as factors that either reinforce or challenge notions of 'race'. The simultaneous transgression of and/or adherence to, racialized space and spatialized 'race' (Forman 2002) by different 'races', as well as the presence or absence of multilingualism, are viewed as indicators of the level of commitment to the notion of a democratic place for all 'race' and language groups in post-apartheid South Africa. It is the aim of this thesis to add to the body of knowledge concerning the nature of our post-apartheid identities, what influences them and in what way. And in a broader context, to explore the role of music in societies in transition and the role it might play in facilitating an ability to 'imagine culture beyond the colour line' (Gilroy 2000).
Thesis (M.Mus.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

The study explores the theme of protest as encoded in selected Kalanga music. In particular, the study focuses on the analysis of songs sung by Kalanga musicians such as Chase Skuza, Ndux Junior and Batshele Brothers, Ndolwane Super Sounds and Tornado Heroes within the period 2000-2013.The selected period is generally considered to be a crisis period in Zimbabwe. Further, the study also relies on views from key respondents obtained through semi structured interviews and questionnaires. The research adopts the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework and the hegemony theory to help identify the discourses as encoded in the theme of protest in Kalanga music. The two frameworks are engaged because they challenge critical thinkers to move away from seeing language as immaterial to acknowledging and believing that words are meaningful in specific political, social and historical contexts. The study establishes that Kalanga music is protest art that speaks on behalf of the people by pointing out the injustices and malpractices that take place in society. The selected music demonstrates the battles that are ongoing that the musicians are protesting against. The study notes that protest music raises the consciousness of the citizens on the wayward behaviour of individuals and institutions. The protest themes identified include; corruption, poor governance and poor leadership, unfulfilled promises, lack of unity, repressive and oppressive laws, a skewed representation of the nation’s history, deployment of Shona teachers in Matabeleland, decrying moral decadence, protest against jealousy and envy and protest against xenophobia. Findings of the study also demonstrate that music goes beyond simply reflecting and describing situations but it also becomes an avenue through which discursive spaces are opened. The study also shows that Kalanga music provides alternative platforms for the articulation of matters generally considered taboo within Zimbabwean spaces, Kalanga music has a potential to contribute to national cohesion and national growth using its constructive criticism of the political, social and economic state of Zimbabwe. The study has clearly enunciated that protest music assists in the interrogation of a society’s moral compass and in turn question some convictions. Kalanga songs are not merely frivolous components of various sects of Zimbabwean culture, or passing sources of insignificant entertainment. Instead, they and their singers are critical contributors to the shaping of those eras, playing irreplaceable roles as they spur collective mindsets of protest across many social aggregates through their appeal to the desires, the morals, the lamentations, the angers and the passions of the Kalanga people.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
Ph. D. (Languages, Linguistics and Literature)

This dissertation seeks to explore how the exercise of political power and the music industry impacted each other in South Africa under apartheid during the 1980s. It does so by looking firstly at the ways in which the South African government used music to promote apartheid. Secondly, it looks at the role of South African popular musicians in the struggle against apartheid in the country, specifically their role in civil society and the methods they employed to fight apartheid while avoiding censorship. It looks at key musical developments of the decade and explores their political implications, focusing on three popular genres: bubblegum (or disco), crossover and reggae. Thirdly, it explores the role of South African music and musicians in the struggle against apartheid outside South Africa. Finally, it looks at the role of music in the international anti-apartheid movement and the contribution of the international music community to the struggle.
Political Sciences
M.A. (African Politics)

Text in Afrikaans
Sekere bevindings oor die positiewe en negatiewe invloed van musiek en die funksies wat dit met betrekking tot menswees vervul, is as 'n verwysingsraamwerk gebruik om historiese gegewens oar die konstruktiewe en destruktiewe aanwending van musiek in hoofsaaklik Duitsland en die V.S.A. te analiseer. Dit het aan die lig gekom dat musiek konstruktief aangewend is met betrekking tot: Intellektuele vorming: Intellektuele vaardighede en kennisverwerwing is deur musiek bevorder. Die leergebeure is veraangenaam en meer effektief gemaak. Estetiese vorming: Deur musiek is 'n estetiese waardesisteem en 'n goeie kunssmaak ontwikkel en die wording van volwaardige, gebalanseerde individue bevorder. Religieuse vorming: Musiek is aangewend om religieuse denke en gewaarwordinge uit te druk en om kennisoordrag, evangelisasie, sending en die belewing van 'n innige geloofsgemeenskap te bevorder. Etiese vorming: Etiese waarhede is met behulp van musiek herhaal en ingeoefen. 'n "Morele atmosfeer" en die vaslegging van 'n waardesisteem is daardeur bevorder. Politieke vorming: Politieke gevoelens en menings is deur musiek uitgedruk om mense te be1nvloed om bepaalde standpunte, partye, regerings of politieke stelsels te ondersteun. Nasionale vorming: Musiek is gebruik om patriotisme te verwoord, die kulture van volkere te weerspieel, volksfeeste op te luister en nasionale eenheid te bevorder. Sosiale vorming: Musiek is aangewend as 'n bran van vermaak en ontspanning en as 'n kommunikasiemiddel. Dit het gehelp om 'n groepsidentiteit te vestig, 'n gemeenskapsgevoel en sosialisering te bevorder en mense se gedragspatrone te be1nvloed. Affektiewe vorming: Deur middel van musiek is gepoog om die gevoelslewe te orden en te veredel en om positiewe veranderinge ten opsigte van affektiewe toestande teweeg te bring. Fisieke vorming: Verskeie liggaamsaktiwiteite en fisieke vaardighede, ontspanning en verfrissing is deur musiek bevorder en dit is as 'n terapie aangewend. Musiek is oak destruktief aangewend deurdat die Christelike kerk ondermyn, religieuse aanbidding benadeel, die jeug se emosionele beheer, selfstandigwording en etiese waardestelsels negatief be!nvloed, aggressiewe en opstandige gedrag, militarisme, politieke venyn en rassehaat bevorder, beswyming ge!nduseer, gehoorsintuie beskadig en regerings omvergewerp is. 'n Aantal aanbevelings en waarskuwings met betrekking tot die aanwending van musiek in formele, nieformele en informele onderwys- en opvoedingsituasies het uit die analise voortgevloei.
Certain findings concerning the positive and negative influences of music and the functions fulfilled by it in the life-world of man were used as a reference framework in order to analyse historical data on the constructive and destructive applications of music in mainly Germany and the U.S.A. It came to light that music was constructively applied with regard to: Intellectual shaping: Music was employed to enhance various intellectual skills, to improve the acquisition of knowledge and to render the learning process more pleasant and effective. Aesthetic shaping: An aesthetic value system and a good artistic taste were developed and the shaping of complete, balanced individuals was promoted through music. Religious shaping: Music was employed to express religious thoughts and perceptions and to promote close community of faith, knowledge transfer, evangelization and missionary effort. Ethical shaping: Ethical truths were reiterated and "practised" and a "moral atmosphere" and a value system established through music. Political shaping: Political feelings and opinions were expressed through music and people were influenced to support specific viewpoints, parties, governments or political systems. National shaping: Music was employed to express patriotism, to reflect the cultures of nations, to add lustre to national gatherings and to promote national unity. Social shaping: Music was a source of entertainment and recreation and a means of communication. Through music the establishment of a group identity, socialization and a communal sense were promoted and behavioural patterns affected. Affective shaping: Music was a means of ordering and ennobling inner life and of facilitating positive changes in affective conditions. Physical shaping: Relaxation, recreation, physical skills and activities were promoted through music which was utilized as a therapy. Music was also destructively employed by undermining the Christian church and harming religious worship, by negatively influencing youth's emotional selfcontrol, ethical value systems and the actualization of independence, by furthering aggressive and rebellious behaviour, inducing trances, causing physical damage to hearing organs and promoting militarism, political viciousness, racial hatred and the overthrow of governments. A number of recommendations and warnings concerning the employment of music in formal, non-formal and informal educational situations resulted from the analysis.
Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology
D. Ed. (Historiese Opvoedkunde)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
Opposing the culture of différance created through American cultural media, this thesis argues, Arab hip-hop artists revive the politically conscious sub-genre of hip-hop with the purpose of normalising their Arab existence. Appropriating hip-hop for a cultural protest, Arab artists create for themselves a sub-genre of conscious hip-hop – Arab-conscious hip-hop and function as Gramsci’s organic intellectuals, involved in better representation of Arabs in the mainstream. Critiquing power dynamics, Arab hip-hop artists are counter-hegemonic in challenging popular identity constructions of Arabs and revealing to audiences biases in media production and opportunities for progress towards social justice. Their identity (re)constructions maintain difference while avoiding Otherness. The intersection of Arab-consciousness through hip-hop and politics of identity necessitates a needed cultural protest, which in the case of Arabs has been severely limited. This thesis progresses by reviewing literature on politics of identity, Arabs in American cultural media, Gramsci’s organic intellectuals and conscious hip-hop. Employing criticism, this thesis presents an argument for Arab hip-hop group, The Arab Summit, as organic intellectuals involved in mainstream representation of the Arab community.