Hidden Histories of Religious Music in a South African Coloured Community

Abstract

This chapter explores persistent traces of both indigenous and Euro-colonial music traditions in the church music of South African coloured people (a group of mixed racial heritage that was marginalized and oppressed by the apartheid regime). The author characterizes these persistent historical traces in coloured people’s performance style as “hidden transcripts” (following James Scott). Through the powerful historiographic tool of ethnomusicological listening, this chapter points to colonial as well as “African” traces surviving in contemporary musics and locates both encounter and resistance in contemporary performance styles, even those most closely related to colonial repertoires.

Performing the sacred – Aspects of singing and contextualisation in South Africa

“…As descendants from indigenous peoples known collectively as Khoisan, European settlers and slaves, the people known as 'coloured people', and officially designated as one of the apartheid government's four main racial categories, have long endured oppression (Jorritsma 2011(Jorritsma , 2016). Jorritsma conducted research on the choruses, choir music and hymns of the Karoo region to present a history of the people's traditional, religious and cultural identity in song.…”