Sound of Africa!

Meintjes Louise Meintjes

Description

Boosting the bass guitar, blending the vocals, overdubbing percussion while fretting over shoot-outs in the street. Grumbling about a producer, teasing a white engineer, challenging an artist to feel his African beat. Sound of Africa! is a riveting account of the production of a mbaqanga album in a state-of-the-art recording studio in Johannesburg. Made popular internationally by Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, mbaqanga's distinctive style features a bass solo voice and soaring harmonies of a female frontline over electric guitar, bass, keyboard, and drumset. Louise Meintjes chronicles the recording and mixing of an album by Izintombi Zesimanje, historically the rival group of the Mahotella Queens. Set in the early 1990s during South Africa's tumultuous transition from apartheid to democratic rule, Sound of Africa! offers a rare portrait of the music recording process. It tracks the nuanced interplay among South African state controls, the music industry's transnational drive, and the mbaqanga artists' struggles for political, professional, and personal voice.Focusing on the ways artists, producers, and sound engineers collaborate in the studio control room, Meintjes reveals not only how particular mbaqanga sounds are shaped technically, but also how egos and artistic sensibilities and race and ethnicity influence the mix. She analyzes how the turbulent identity politics surrounding Zulu ethnic nationalism impacted mbaqanga artists' decisions in and out of the studio. Conversely, she explores how the global consumption of Afropop and African images fed back into mbaqanga during the recording process. Meintjes is especially attentive to the ways the emotive qualities of timbre (sound quality or tone color) forge complex connections between aesthetic practices and political ideology. Vivid photos by the internationally renowned photographer TJ Lemon further dramatize Meintjes' ethnography.

Sujets

• Republic of South Africa
• South Africa
• Cultural studies
• Afrique du Sud

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 05 février 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822384632
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

S O U N D O F A F R I C A !

Louise Meintjes

Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio

Duke University Press

Durham & London 

©  Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper 

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Trump Medieval by

Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data appear on the last

printed page of this book.

TO F R A N K X E M AG N E

for your love, your voice, your play.

A N D A L S O F O R

JA N E T D U D U D L A M IN I

ebunganini bakhe, nobuculi, nogqozi ekwenzeni kwakhe,

for friendship, song, performance.

Contents

Illustrations

ix

Notes to the Reader

Acknowledgments

xi

xiii

Demo Tape: About Sound of Africa! 

cut 

cut 

cut 

cut 

cut 

cut 

Mbaqanga



The Recording Studio as Fetish

Producing Liveness

Sounding Figures





Performing Zuluness

Imagining Overseas





A Final Mix: Mediating Difference

Print-Through

Notes



Glossary



Bibliography

Discography

Index













Illustrations

Hamilton Nzimande in a Johannesburg studio  West Nkosi, Downtown Studios  Hamilton Nzimande and Jane Dlamini on tour  Izintombi Zesimanjemanje in Doornforntein, Johannesburg  Neil Kuny, Music Master Studios, Johannesburg  Peter Pearlson,Studios, Johannesburg  Michael Mpholofolo, Johannesburg  Isigqi Sesimanje on stage, Johannesburg  Izintombi Zesimanjemanje in the Super Star Studio, Salisbury, Rhodesia  Izintombi Zesimanjemanje posing in one of their performing outfits, Johannesburg  Izintombi Zesimanjemanje on stage at the Rio Bioscope, Market Street, Johannesburg  Tefo Sikhale, Johannesburg  West Nkosi’s control-room improvisation, ‘‘My Final Romance’’ – Ngoma dancers outside Jeppe (Wolhuter) Hostel, Johannesburg  Ngoma dance-and-drum pattern  A South African captures a snap of the ‘‘Die Hard Brigade,’’ Isandlwana, KwaZulu-Natal  Icilongo player en route to a wedding, Keates Drift, KwaZulu-Natal  An elderly couple killed in an overnight attack by Inkatha, East Rand, Johannesburg  The Mahotella Queens on stage in Johannesburg  Mahlathini on stage, Johannesburg  Bethwell Bhengu, Johannesburg  Bethwell Bhengu’s ibhodlo for ‘‘Lomculo Unzima’’ 