Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Modernist narratives and popular music
- 2 Rock and the facts of life
- 3 Changing patterns in society and music: the US since World War II
- 4 “If I Were a Voice”: or, The Hutchinson Family and popular song as political and social protest
- 5 Some thoughts on the measurement of popularity in music
- 6 Elvis, a review
- 7 Home cooking and American soul in black South African popular music
- 8 Rock ‘n’ roll in a very strange society
- 9 African-American music, South Africa, and apartheid
- 10 “The constant companion of man”: Separate Development, Radio Bantu, and music
- 11 Privileging the moment of reception: music and radio in South Africa
- 12 Music and radio in the People's Republic of China
- 13 Towards a new reading of Gershwin
- 14 A blues for the ages
- 15 Graceland revisited
- 16 Dvořák in America: nationalism, racism, and national race
- 17 The last minstrel show?
- 18 The Role of Rock, a review
- 19 Genre, performance, and ideology in the early songs of Irving Berlin
- 20 Epilogue: John Cage revisited
- Index
7 - Home cooking and American soul in black South African popular music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Modernist narratives and popular music
- 2 Rock and the facts of life
- 3 Changing patterns in society and music: the US since World War II
- 4 “If I Were a Voice”: or, The Hutchinson Family and popular song as political and social protest
- 5 Some thoughts on the measurement of popularity in music
- 6 Elvis, a review
- 7 Home cooking and American soul in black South African popular music
- 8 Rock ‘n’ roll in a very strange society
- 9 African-American music, South Africa, and apartheid
- 10 “The constant companion of man”: Separate Development, Radio Bantu, and music
- 11 Privileging the moment of reception: music and radio in South Africa
- 12 Music and radio in the People's Republic of China
- 13 Towards a new reading of Gershwin
- 14 A blues for the ages
- 15 Graceland revisited
- 16 Dvořák in America: nationalism, racism, and national race
- 17 The last minstrel show?
- 18 The Role of Rock, a review
- 19 Genre, performance, and ideology in the early songs of Irving Berlin
- 20 Epilogue: John Cage revisited
- Index
Summary
In the 1960s and 70s, work on a census-catalogue of manuscripts of Renaissance polyphony took me to virtually every country in Western and Eastern Europe. I listened to popular music on the radio on these trips, watched musical programs on television, attended live pop performances, and bought recordings. But it wasn't until a trip to southern Africa in the early spring of 1978 brought me into contact with a body of music so vibrant and so inseparable from the dramatic events unfolding there that I considered writing about music in a culture other than my own.
Though UN boycotts of South Africa were not yet in effect when I was invited to lecture on American music at the University of Natal in Durban, I consulted with black American friends and organizations before accepting. Their advice was to go, to experience conditions in that country at first hand.
On my arrival in February of 1978 I began to realize that my preconceptions of South Africa had not prepared me for its social and political realities, and certainly not for the richness, complexity, and vitality of its musical life. I began hearing some extraordinary music on Radio Zulu, about which I knew nothing at the time; so I visited its studios, and also obtained commercial recordings of the music I'd heard.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Putting Popular Music in its Place , pp. 139 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995