African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance

By Veit Erlmann

Book Overview

In recent years black South African music and dance have
become ever more popular in the West, where they are now
widely celebrated as expressions of opposition to
discrimination and repression. Less well known is the
rich history of these arts, which were shaped by several
generations of black artists and performers whose
struggles, visions, and aspirations did not differ fundamentally
from those of their present-day counterparts.

In five detailed case studies Veit Erlmann digs deep to expose the roots of the most important of these performance traditions. He relates the early history of isicathamiya, the a cappella vocal style made famous by Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

In two chapters on Durban between the World Wars he charts the evolution of Zulu music and dance, studying in depth the transformation of ingoma, a dance form popular among migrant workers since the 1930s. He goes on to
record the colorful life and influential work of Reuben T. Caluza,
South Africa's first black ragtime composer. And Erlmann's reconstruction of the 1890s concert tours of an Afro-American vocal group, Orpheus M. McAdoo and the Virginia Jubilee Singers, documents the earliest link between the African and American performance traditions.

Numerous eyewitness reports, musicians' personal testimonies, and song texts enrich Erlmann's narratives and demonstrate that black performance evolved in response to the growing economic and racial segmentation of South African
society. Early ragtime, ingoma, and isicathamiya enabled the black urban population to comment on their precarious social position and to symbolically construct a secure space within a rapidly changing political world.

Today, South African workers, artists, and youth continue to build upon this performance tradition in their struggle for freedom and democracy. The early performers portrayed by Erlmann were guiding lights-African stars-by which the present and future course of South Africa is being determined.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226217248
• ISBN13: 9780226217246
• Release Date: September 1991
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Erlmann's most accessible

African Stars, if you are interested in the development of twentieth century Zulu performance practice, is an excellent starting point. Additionally, it stands out as the most accessible book by Veit Erlmann that I've read to date (Music Modernity and the Global Imagination, and Nightsong are both great, but very dense works). Erlmann in this book focuses on the development of Zulu popular styles in Natal (that is to say, minstrelsey, ragtime, isicathamiya) in the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century. Erlmann is particularly successful in bringing to light the remarkably blurred distinctions between the social classes and also the rural/urban dichotomy within Natal. This blurring helps to give rise to these styles, Erlmann argues. Additionally, the depth of research present in this book is phenominal. Erlmann really is able to bring these various figures to life with exceedingly well-documented points on their lives. My only complaint is minor, and it involves the timeframe. I simply would have liked the book's scope to add ten years to the end date of its range. But again, minor. All in all, it's a great book to read, and a pretty accessible one at that.

Talented, under oppression

Written in the twilight years of apartheid, this book conveys some of the spirit of black South Africans as they struggled against a cruel dictatorship. Erlmann surveys the field from 1890 to 1990.In going through his descriptions of the people, one has to wonder. In a different and better period, some of the musicians and actors might have become world famous. The comparison to African-American singers is inevitable. Yet for most of the performers that Erlmann mentions, only fragments of memory and aging photos and LPs remain.