OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Bruinders, Sylvia"

Browsing by Author "Bruinders, Sylvia"

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Open Access
A chronicle of cultural transformation: ethnography of Badagry Ogu musical practices
(2020) Kunnuji, Joseph; Bruinders, Sylvia
This thesis examines the musical practices of Badagry Ogu people from both historical and contemporary perspectives and provides strategies for their further integration into the changing social and economic landscape characteristic of 21st-century Lagos. Badagry emerged as a Nigerian town bordering the Republic of Benin in the 19th-century colonial delineation processes, which neglected ethnic frontiers. Consequently, Badagry Ogu people, being a minority ethnic group and geographically peripheral in Nigeria, have been politically, economically and socially marginalized for generations. Using ethnographic methods in studying selected indigenous musical bands (Gogoke, Gigoyoyo, Kristitin and Akran Ajogan), a biographical sketch of master drummer Hunpe Hunga, and an applied ethnomusicology method of collaborative music composition and arrangement, I chronicle the musical heritage of Badagry Ogu people. In addition, I suggest an approach for its recontextualisation into different creative economies. I engage Thomas Turino's framework for identity and social analysis, including the concepts of cultural cohorts and cultural formations, in exploring the different attitudes, among Badagry Ogu people, towards indigenous music. I advocate for and outline a contemporary approach for musical recontextualisation as a means of inclusivity and economically empowering performers of indigenous Ogu music in Badagry. This thesis includes my additional arrangements to the studio recordings of Gogoke. The recontextualisation process, which commenced with Gogoke's recording of indigenous instruments and vocals in Badagry Lagos Nigeria, reached its full fruition in the overdubs of Western musical instruments in Cape Town, South Africa. To further explore the theme of inclusivity, I examine current gender practices in Ogu communities evident in the gendered musical practices of contemporary Badagry. With its indepth analysis of Ogu genres, musical instruments, gender issues and a framework for recontextualising African indigenous musics, this thesis, while filling the gap in the study of ethnic minorities in Nigeria, is a significant contribution of the nuanced artistic practices of Badagry Ogu people to African music scholarship.
Open Access
Bassists of iKapa (the Cape) : a brief analysis of the development of the bass guitar in the musical genres of Mbaqanga and Ghoema in Cape Town, South Africa with a focus on the biographies and techniques of two of Cape Town's most prolific bassists, Spencer Mbadu and Gary Kriel
(2010) Johannes, Shaun; Bruinders, Sylvia
As a bassist from Cape Town, I feel the necessity to investigate, analyze and document the bassists of years gone by who have been major contributors towards the advancement and conceptualization of the Cape Town and, more largely, South African bass-playing fraternity. Unfortunately several bassists have passed away prior to the commencement of this thesis. Two of these bassists are Sammy Maritz and Johnny Gertze who both performed with Abdullah Ibrahim (previously known as Dollar Brand). Therefore the motivation for this thesis is to capture the contributions of two bassists who are still alive and actively working in the South African music industry that are based in Cape Town, namely Gary Kriel and Spencer Mbadu. While there have been other bassists in Cape Town like Basil Moses, Charles Lazar and Philly Schilder who also have made contributions to the music industry and more so the bass playing fraternity in Cape Town, I feel that the contributions made by Mr Kriel and Mr Mbadu have a far greater significance for the reasons I outline below.
Open Access
Kwaito's Legacy of Aestheticizing Freedom: Amapiano in Langa township and the World
(2023) Eaby, Dion; Bruinders, Sylvia
An electronic dance music originating from South African townships around 2012, amapiano (literally ‘the pianos') represents a contemporary musical and cultural form which offers a means of expression for black youth. Currently the most popular music in the country, this thesis examines the form through the lens of kwaito and its literature, a music which emerged in a similar fashion shortly before the first democratic elections in South Africa. My introduction presents the kwaito literature as well as the relevant theories it raises and makes the argument for using these theories to address amapiano as a post-kwaito phenomenon. Chapter One investigates Kwaito as History, both as a shared history and a historiography. It analyses the use of a plethora of voices present in contemporary, urban historical accounts and how these can be read. The second chapter outlines the aural aesthetic encompassed by amapiano, arguing for the value of musical analysis in the study of similar forms. The following two chapters examine aesthetics as a broader sensory experience and how this allows for the mitigation and reversal of socio-economic circumstances and the formation of groupings along aesthetic lines (aesthetic formations), respectively. While these chapters focus more on the local function of the music, Chapter Five explores a wider conception, specifically its Afrodiasporic role in challenging the perception of Africa as the past, placing Africans as active agents in the present and future. I do this through an investigation into digital community spaces, Afrodiasporic influences, and various localisations. The final chapter examines amapiano artist Focalistic's Ke Star and the song's associated media, to demonstrate the role of aesthetics such as amapiano in the township, as well as the township aesthetic in amapiano. My conclusion posits along with many practitioners that “amapiano is the future”, both in the form of aestheticizing a freer future as well as representing the future of research.
Open Access
The Makhweyane bow of Swaziland: music, poetics and place
(2017) Stacey, Cara L; Bruinders, Sylvia
This dissertation investigates how the contemporary performers of the Swazi gourd-resonated bow, the makhweyane, create music. Since David Rycroft's study of Swazi bow music in the 1960s and 1970s, little study has been devoted to this musical instrument. The makhweyane is played by a handful of people, each appearing to consider him or herself the last bearer of this tradition. Despite this, however, musical bows have been co-opted as icons of Swazi national identity, and, along with the Incwala (the "first fruits" festival) and Umhlanga ("reed dance") ceremonies, are used as public affirmation of Swazi cultural homogeneity to rally support for the monarchy. The research investigates how musicians create new music for this single-stringed instrument. It also explores, through oral testimony, musical analysis, and practice-based methodologies, the discourse surrounding composition and musical innovation on this rare instrument. Players learn and create through both solitary and participatory exploration and music-making. This research explores how current makhweyane music can be read as oral testimony with regards to the lives of musicians, but also how diverse current praxis serves many functions: as "radio" for lone travelers, as comfort for broken hearts, and as individual acts of citizenry within a broader national environment. This dissertation explores the musical, technical, and social parameters engaged when creating new repertory - the myriad invisible spectres to whom players play and for whom players compose - and the shape that new, resilient makhweyane sounds are taking. It extends David Rycroft's musicological analysis of the 1960s and 1970s to include an investigation into current dialectics between individual notions of creative innovation and musical memory, and the national cultural imaginary. My findings suggest a reframing of 'traditional' musicians from elderly 'culture-bearers' to responsive, innovators and active contemporary musicians, along with their urban-based, younger counterparts. Opening with the King's call for new compositions to be created, this dissertation reads the makhweyane as a prism for Swaziness, for learning and storytelling, for the imagination and remembering, and for creation.
Open Access
Mashairi: a surviving art of the Swahili Muslim peoples of Lamu Town, Kenya
(2021) Mwaniki, Simon; Bruinders, Sylvia; Olali, Tom Mboya
This research focuses on the phenomenon of Swahili poetry and its continued existence amongst Swahilis in Lamu Town, a performative art that is gradually waning in traditional contexts. When people talk about mashairi (poems) in Lamu Town they are referring to both Swahili songs and poems, the two terms are used interchangeably. Mashairi also refers to a form found in Swahili poetry. I look at the usage of the text from these mashairi as lyrics employed in duas (special Islamic prayers) and traditional songs and dances specifically performed by women during Swahili weddings. It is an art that has existed for hundreds of years dating back to the 11th century through oral sources. I begin by defining the East African region, who the Swahili people are, while providing a historical background of their origins and the Swahili language. I also explore Arabic influences on Swahili culture, language and literature as part of the Re-Centring AfroAsia project (Musical and human migrations in the pre-colonial period of 700-1500AD) that has sponsored this research project. Swahili poetry continues to celebrate traditional lyrics in songs and dances performed by women in contemporary Swahili culture. There are specific members of the community who are known to possess mashairi compositional skills. Families planning weddings and duas will request that these poets compose a corpus of mashairi with detailed specifications. They are then used as lyrics in songs and dances attached to these ceremonies or they are performed as stand-alone songs. Mashairi had first existed as oral literature and stand-alone songs owing to archaic wedding songs and dances. They continue to be an essential defining feature of Swahili traditional practices. I give a laconic history of classical Swahili poetry; how Arabic facets directly or indirectly influenced this art after Arabs developed ties with Africans living on the Swahili littoral. I provide a condensed historical background on the life of one of the first and most prolific Swahili poets, Fumo Liyongo, and briefly explore factors that influenced his compositions. I rigorously analyse lyrics of songs and dances whose texts have been derived from modern mashairi and compare their themes, narratives and structure with classical mashairi. I also scrutinize the role and importance of the art of mashairi as a source of lyrics and the efforts of two poets from Lamu Town whose compositions are socially impacting the society. This art has survived for hundreds of years and has come to symbolize the enduring spirit of the Swahili people.
Open Access
Music to move the masses : protest music of the 1980s as a facilitator for social change in South Africa
(2011) Mohr, Claudia; Bruinders, Sylvia
In this research project I will endeavour to show how protest music, specifically during the 1980s, became an instrument with which musicians and the public themselves strived to counteract the social perceptions generated under apartheid. I will show how the protest music movement of the 1980s was able to contribute to the greater cultural revolution of the era by providing a medium through which South Africans could formulate a new collective identity. In this regard it is important to note that the term ‘protest music,’ as applied throughout this research project, refers to any music that in its form, aesthetic nature or context can be seen to raise objections against the status quo.
Open Access
Renewal of Ogu Musical Culture Through Jazz Intervention
(2016) Kunnuji, Joseph Olanrewaj; Bruinders, Sylvia
This thesis instigates the discussion of the broad implications of cultural marginalization on Ogu music of Badagry, Lagos State Nigeria. Owing to the manner in which African States were carved out, without consideration for cultural boundaries, Ogu people were split through colonial delineation schemes with a minority within the Nigerian borders and the majority in Benin Republic. The same delineation process of the British and French administrations led to a multicultural Nigeria with over two hundred ethnic groups. In the ensuing battle for supremacy among the ethnic groups, in which number plays no minor role, the cultural integrity of the Ogu people began to wane. The complexity of social interactions in Nigeria witnessed the more populated and dominant ethnic groups casting their shadows on the smaller ones. The far-reaching consequence of such marginalization and social ostracism is cultural erosion and a xenocentric world-view of Ogu youths. Whilst elucidating the consequences of cultural marginalization, low self-esteem and the condescending mannerism of Ogu youths toward their traditional music, this thesis concomitantly discusses a possible method of forestalling the musical decay and restoring the integrity of Ogu music through the intervention of the jazz genre. Given the reality of globalization, mass transculturation, and the adoption of Western educational system by African States, musical syncretism cannot be evaded. Thus, this dissertation concludes by examining a method of documentation and reestablishment of Ogu musical integrity, which employs the adoption of jazz elements in creating a new Ogu musical style. Jazz is favoured as it is deemed with the potency of arousing the interest of the western-musicallytrained younger generation of Ogu people for whom jazz represents the highest level of harmonic complexity.
Open Access
Revitalizing an indigenous musical tradition: a study of Korankye's approach to sustaining the seperewa musical tradition
(2021) Agyefi, Papa Kow Mensah; Bruinders, Sylvia
The Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) convention of UNESCO is arguably the most powerful institutional voice in the field of conserving cultural practices on an international level. This initiative and other initiatives of UNESCO have become prominent guidelines and blueprints in international, national, and local policies since the Declarations of Masterpieces in 2001, 2003 and 2005 and the highly successful 2003 ICH Convention. There is a steadily increasing body of research on music cultures and their sustainability. Basically, sustainability is a set of mechanisms and acts in place in order to prevent humans from the destruction of resources in order to maintain an equilibrium that does not cause the quality of life of communities to decrease. However, there have been various contentions by many scholars as to what we mean by sustaining a musical tradition or culture. Scholars like Bell Yung (2009), Jeff Titon (2009), Baron Beardslee (2014) and others have argued that the romanticizing of these initiatives by UNESCO is not the best method as the initiatives themselves appear to have done more harm to cultural heritage than good. They suggest that other approaches should be explored to investigate the best ways to manage cultural heritage. It is in this vein that my research examines the role of Osei Kwame Korankye, one of the exponents of the seperewa tradition in Ghana, in sustaining the musical instrument and its tradition today. It explores his approach and how he uses multiple techniques in achieving this goal. I focus on his efforts as a seperewa player and a teacher of the instrument at the University of Ghana. Korankye's desire is to create and revitalize people's interests in the instrument and its praxis. He has taught the techniques of the instrument to foreigners and locals alike since 1994 when Professor J.H. Kwabena Nketia realized his importance as a cultural repository. Framed within the theoretical orientation of the capability approach, which seeks ways to enhance and understand possible range of choices, and the abilities of individuals as well as communities, I discuss ways in which Korankye's method leads to an intervention that addresses the sustenance of the seperewa. I argue that Korankye's model of sustaining the seperewa tradition is oriented towards the adaptation of music traditions to new performance contexts and teaching environments, hence he offers cultural communities a range of options to choose from rather than an imposed singular methodology.
Open Access
Songs in the dust: Riel Music in the Northern and Western Cape, South Africa
(2019) Britz, Engela; Bruinders, Sylvia
The centuries-old southern African dance form called rieldans (reel dance), or simply riel (reel), is believed to have emerged from Khoe-San dances. It is characterised by its distinctive footwork, animal mimicry, and courtship displays. In the post-apartheid, postcolonial South African context, the riel has emerged as symbol of indigeneity through largescale public performance of Khoe-San heritage. Despite colonial influences, it represents an historical link to the Khoe-San people for its performers who are, for the most part, persons of mixed descent who were classified as 'coloured’ under colonialism and apartheid. Due to a recent riel revival, which emerged from the alignment of Khoe-San and Afrikaans identity negotiations following democracy, the riel has attracted a fair amount of informal attention both locally and internationally over the last decade. However, it remains largely unexplored in performance scholarship. This study investigates riel music of the Northern and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa. The research is qualitative in nature with data collection through participant-observation, semi-structured interviews (including feedback interviews), archival and literature-based research, and organology. A brief history of the riel is presented through a synthesis of documentary evidence and oral history gleaned from fieldwork. This includes an investigation into the history of the ramkie - an instrument that is strongly associated with the riel. By drawing on emic interpretations of riel music in conjunction with Muller’s and Impey’s ideas about 'music as archive’, this study explores how riel music is an oral/aural archive of indigenous knowledge, memory and experience. Findings indicate that contemporary practice links the riel to pre-colonial Khoe-San practices from which it may have derived. An examination of the ramkie’s history reveals that it emerged from material and cultural exchanges in the Indian Ocean that link southern Africa to a vast trade network in pre-colonial and colonial times. Moreover, the instrument provides a glimpse into gender issues that influence riel music making. Like the dance that it accompanies, riel music exhibits characteristics that are indicative of its Khoe-San influence. An analysis of the liedjies (songs) shows that they deal mostly with themes of romance, place, and death and suffering, and that the music is a powerful platform for the expression of interpersonal concerns that provide a glimpse into the lived experiences of working-class coloured communities in the rural Cape.
Open Access
The symbolic significance of the ghaita as used in Moroccan Sufism
(2007) Paterson, Hilary; Bruinders, Sylvia
...a serendipitous discovery of the Aissawa Order of Morocco ... lead me to become interested in the music of Morocco and particularly the use of oboes by the people of that country. I had already heard recordings of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, another Moroccan group who uses oboes, but saw that this group is already very well documented, and hoped that a study of the Aissawa would be more interesting because of their relative obscurity. They are a particularly interesting group because they are one of the few Sufi Orders that use the ghaita in their spiritual ceremonies (even though it is used widely as a secular ceremonial instrument), and this fact tempted me to explore the importance of the instrument to the group.
Open Access
The Kalahari Desert Festival: Music and Dance as a Celebration of Heritage and Identity Amongst the ǂKhomani San
(2023) Adams, Eshcha; Bruinders, Sylvia
The Kalahari Desert Festival is a significant annual festival, which provides a platform for local ǂKhomani San and related regional communities to celebrate their heritage and identity through music, dance and other art forms. Held on indigenous lands in South Africa's Northern Cape Province, I discuss how the festival emerged as an important site of San cultural sustainability and appreciation since its establishment in 2013. To contextualise my discussion, I discuss the various ways indigenous people in southern Africa have been historically marginalised as a direct cause of colonialism and apartheid, and the subsequent scholarship on various San cultural practices including music and language, which have disproportionately been framed through dominant western scholarship. Within this context, I explore emerging decolonial scholarly literature and approaches which have been undertaken by black, indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) scholars in South Africa. By employing a method of historical reconstruction gleaned from interviews, proposals, news articles, footage and in-person experience at the Kalahari Desert Festival, I provide a detailed historical outline of the festival during its seven-year run between 2013–2019. Furthermore, I position the festival as a platform and catalyst for the celebration of heritage and identity, highlighting the significance of a cultural festival which is geographically ‘on the margins', by intentionally centring historically marginalised people. By presenting several emerging concepts and themes centred around cultural sustainability, I discuss how the festival can be seen as a catalytic space which promotes heritage and identity in various symbolic ways – helping local communities claim dignity, pride and agency towards self-determination as indigenous people within a post-apartheid socio-political South African climate. The Kalahari Desert Festival has, until my current discussion, never been the focus of any academic research studies. Being relatively new, I believe it is a significant research focal point, as I explore ideas of heritage, identity, cultural sustainability and artistic expression amongst the ǂKhomani San and beyond.
Open Access
The Processes of Learning and Teaching Cimbveka: Enhancing Music Education Practices in Primary Schools of the Southern Region of Mozambique
(2021) Gove, Joaquim Borges Armando; Bruinders, Sylvia
This study investigates cimbveka as part of Mozambican Copi people's indigenous music as well as the processes involved in teaching and learning the music. Cimbveka is an entertainment genre of traditional reed-pipe music that integrates song ('ndando). The reed pipes are played and the song performed interchangeably, making cimbveka a two-part music performance. For this study, I took cimbveka to formal education settings with the aim to unveil and to understand its pedagogic potential to music education. I applied ethnographic methods as the main research method in ethnomusicological and educational research. As part of ethnographic methods, the participant observation method allowed me to engage with the participants by closely observing and interacting with the participants. During the observation process I used conversational interviews to collect information both in formal educational settings and in community settings. This was appropriate to gather valuable information regarding aspects difficult to observe. Thus, using open-ended questions, commenting about the events and paying special attention to occasional conversation between participants, triggered the informants to talk about several issues that helped in making sense of the data collected. In addition to conversational interviews, I used the Community of Philosophical Enquiry (CPE) to grasp the participants' thoughts regarding music education, as well as their understanding about traditional music. While participant observation was useful for data collection, the combination of ethnographic content analysis and the constructivist paradigm was useful to analyse the data. The ethnographic content analysis was important in interpreting the information collected through the CPE and conversational interviews as those data carried more of the participants' subjectivity, and the constructivist paradigm was useful to understand the social interactions around the cimbveka learning processes. The results reveal cimbveka as a holistic concept in music knowledge transmission as its performance features particular musical aspects such as rhythm, melody, pulse, tempo, and so forth, distinctly. The remarkable distinctiveness of these musical elements in cimbveka performance makes cimbveka practice a scaffolding tool to music learning. In addition, once cimbveka is learned mostly by imitation and repetition with the aid of formative assessment, this study concludes that learning and teaching within cimbveka practices is constructivist and phenomenological. This makes cimbveka a powerful tool to enhance music education in both processes of learning and teaching.
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This is our sport!
(2007) Bruinders, Sylvia
The Christmas Band competitions are one of three coloured community music competitions that take place in the Western Cape between January and March every year, the other two being the klopse (carnival troupes) and the Malay choirs. Christmas bands, which first began holding formal competitions in the 1940s, developed out of city clubs established under British colonial rule in the Cape Colony and the Temperance movement, both of which imbued the bands with the idea of presenting a respectable working class ethos through the use of stylish uniforms, strict discipline and implied militarism in the marching files. The bands characterise and preserve notions of masculinity, bond local communities of supporters, help to train musicians, and through the annual enactment of an ideal coloured community help working class people to present themselves as upright and honourable members of society. The practices engaged in by the bands constitute a performance of identity: the articulation of a social identity, which, though marginalised and contested, is nonetheless proudly independent and united.
Open Access
Understanding the history of women's lives in Zanzibar through song and story: a gendered perspective
(2021) Clacherty, Bronwen; Bruinders, Sylvia; Nixon, Michael
This dissertation and the accompanying performance explore women's history through the song genre dandaro learned from women's singing groups in present-day Zanzibar. The study aims to show that songs, a part of oral tradition, are an effective way of adding to the minimal understanding we have of women's lives in Zanzibar and the Indian Ocean. The dissertation transcribes both the lyrics and the music of the dandaro songs and analyses them in relation to theoretical perspectives on archive and gender realities, as well as in the context of the history of Zanzibar. It also describes how and why I created a performance that reflected both the journey of my research as well as what the women and men I met shared with me. The dissertation and performance form a whole and the performed work is incorporated into the dissertation to show how the performance deepened the approach to the theory and data and vice versa. This study of dandaro songs reveals the existence of a transgenerational archive of information that preserves and transmits the image of strong womanhood and woman's agency, where women subvert gender norms and express their solidarity with each other.

Browsing by Author "Bruinders, Sylvia"

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