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- ItemUnsung : South African jazz musicians under apartheid(SUN PReSS, 2007) Devroop, Chatradari; Walton, Chris, 1963-BOOK BLURB: South African jazz under apartheid has in recent years been the subject of numerous studies. The main focus, however, has hitherto been on the musicians who went into exile. Here, for the first time, those who stayed behind are allowed to tell their stories: the stories of musicians from across the colour spectrum who helped to keep their art alive in South Africa during the years of state oppression.
- ItemSong in Gold Pavilions : Ronald Stevenson on music(SUN MeDIA, 2009) Walton, Chris, 1963-BOOK BLURB: There is an undeniable fascination in reading the words that composers write. Whenever a composer puts finger to typewriter rather than pencil to manuscript paper, we inevitably hope that he might proffer us some insights into the workings of the creative musical mind - that source of much mystery since the act of composition left the realm of low artisanship for that of High Art some two or three centuries ago. Composers who deal with words as naturally as they write notes are, however, a breed of exceeding rarity. Ronald Stevenson belongs amongst them and the proof of it is to be found amply in this book.
- ItemMusic and identity : transformation and negotiation(AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2007) Akrofi, E. A. (Eric Ayisi); Smit, Maria; Thorsen, Stig-MagnusBOOK BLURB: Significant political and social changes worldwide have affected music life and the role of music in society. A group of scholars from Nordic countries and from Southern Africa became interested in analysing this process and formed a research network focusing various musics' relation to individual and social indentities. This volume is the result of the Swedish South African Research Network (SSARN) that started in 2002. the unique approach is an underlying debate in the network on how different scholars have interpreted concepts as identity, musical encounters, values, and authenticity. Thus, researchers with different professional backgrounds and theoretical and methodological approaches juxtapose various concepts of identity and its relation to music and musicians. This volume broadens the concepts to include identities, which are fragmented, dislocated, repressed, modernised, liberated, chosen, and narrated. The transformation and negotiation of identities lie within the multiplicities of contrasts and nuances, which unfold in our contemporary environment. It entails processess as diverse as localisation and globalisation, appropriation and assimilation, Westernisation and Africanisation. Musicians have to transform and negotiate their identities within a continuum that includes indigenous elements, traditional beliefs, and customs, versus city living and modernity containing hybrid forms of musics and arts. Music can in the sense be instrumental in empowering and enlightening individuals and groups, but can also hamper the development of human relations. This volume offers 25 essays, written from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, in which the authors grapple with issues of music and identity in order to open interest for and on-going academic discussion on this topic.
- ItemGender and sexuality in South African music(SUN ePReSS, 2005) Walton, Chris, 1963-; Muller, StephanusBOOK BLURB: For many years now, the manner in which gender and sexuality impinge upon musical creativity has been a focus of mainstream debate in Europe and the USA. This book, based on the papers of a conference organized by the University of Pretoria, is nevertheless the first of its kind to tackle these issues in a specifically South African context. How is it, for example, that a white, gay composer could during apartheid write cantatas glorifying the same nationalist society that deemed him to be perverse? What role did gender play in the career of the premier Afrikaner woman composer of her day, whose success was matched only by the ridicule she inspired amongst her peers? And to what extent can gendered and sexualized hierarchies be discemed in African popular and indigenous music? These and many other questions are addressed, ranging from the straight and narrow to the queer and wide. The result is a book that is invigorating, even at times uncomfortable: a frank, scholarly, full-frontal portrait of a hithero ignored, but vital area of South African music theory.
- ItemA composer in Africa essays on the life and work of Stefans Grove(SUN PReSS, 2006) Muller, Stephanus; Walton, Chris, 1963-BOOK BLURB: Stefans Grové (*1922), regarded by many as Africa’s greatest living composer, possesses one of the most distinctive compositional voices of our time. He studied in Cape Town under Erik Chisholm before becoming the first South African to be awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. He took his Master’s at Harvard under Walter Piston, attended Aaron Copland’s composition class at the Tanglewood Summer School, and subsequently taught for over a decade at the renowned Peabody Institute in Baltimore before returning to his African roots in the early 1970s.