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Repatriating Xhosa music recordings archived at the International Library of African Music (ILAM) and reviving interest in traditional Xhosa music among the youth in Grahamstown

- Madiba, Elijah Moleseng

  • Authors: Madiba, Elijah Moleseng
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: International Library of African Music , Xhosa (African people) -- Music , Sound recordings in ethnomusicology -- South Africa , Ethnomusicology -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Cultural property -- Repatriation -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Rap musicians -- South Africa -- Makhanda
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MMus
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/76599 , vital:30611
  • Description: This research looks at the feasibility of using repatriation as a tool for the revitalisation of indigenous music within a contemporary South African musical context. Using tracks from the International Library of African Music (ILAM), this investigation presents isiXhosa traditional and indigenous music to a group of musicians from a hip-hop background that would never have had access to this type of music before. The thesis then traces their creative use of the music within their own genres. Speaking to the legacy of the Hugh Tracey collection at ILAM and criticisms that have surfaced, this research also attempts to validate the efforts made by Hugh Tracey in collecting and documenting African music. Themes ranging from understanding the term “tradition” are addressed, as well as other technical terms in the vernacular while also exploring and analysing the results of the repatriation project. Practical issues regarding the sampling of indigenous music were interrogated carefully due to the fact that the complexity of African music was foreign to most of the participants. Their familiarity with the music, or lack thereof, either motivated or ended the musicians’ participation in the research project. An in-depth analysis of the results of the musicians’ interaction with the music is presented where this study finds, at the heart of this research, that the musicians performed as agents who easily took to revitalising the music.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

Performing whiteness; representing otherness : Hugh Tracey and African music

- Coetzee, Paulette June

  • Authors: Coetzee, Paulette June
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: Tracey, Hugh , Music -- Africa , International Library of African Music , Ethnomusicology -- Africa , Ethnomusicologists -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
  • Identifier: vital:2327 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016502
  • Description: This thesis provides a critical study of texts associated with Hugh Tracey (1903–1977). Tracey is well-known for his work in African music studies, particularly for his major contribution to the recorded archive of musical sound in sub-Saharan Africa and his founding of the International Library of African Music (ILAM) in 1954. My reading of him is informed by a postcolonial perspective, whiteness studies and African scholarship on ways in which constructions of African identity and tradition have been shaped by the colonial archive. In my view, Tracey was part of a mid-twentieth century movement which sought to marshal positive representations of traditional African culture in the interest of maintaining and strengthening colonial rule. While his recording project may have fostered inclusion through creating spaces for indigenous musicians to be heard, it also functioned to promote racist exclusion in the manner of its production, distribution and claims to expertise. Moreover, his initial strategy for ILAM’s sustainability targeted colonial government and industry as primary clients, with the promise that promoting traditional music as a means of entertainment and self-expression for black subjects and workers would ease administration and reduce conflict. I believe that it is important to acknowledge and interrogate the problematic racial attitudes and practices associated with the history of Tracey’s archive – not to undermine its significance in any way but to allow it to be better understood and used more productively in the future.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

The evolution of African music and its function in the present day

- Tracey, Hugh

The Sound of Africa: The best recordings of 1953 - Osborn Awards

- Tracey, Hugh

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