Kwaito's Promise

Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa

By:

Gavin Steingo

Format:

Paperback / softback

Series:

Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology CSE

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Description

In mid-1990s South Africa, apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela was elected president, and the country’s urban black youth developed kwaito—a form of electronic music (redolent of North American house) that came to represent the post-struggle generation. In this book, Gavin Steingo examines kwaito as it has developed alongside the democratization of South Africa over the past two decades. Tracking the fall of South African hope into the disenchantment that often characterizes the outlook of its youth today—who face high unemployment, extreme inequality, and widespread crime—Steingo looks to kwaito as a powerful tool that paradoxically engages South Africa’s crucial social and political problems by, in fact, seeming to ignore them. Politicians and cultural critics have long criticized kwaito for failing to provide any meaningful contribution to a society that desperately needs direction. As Steingo shows, however, these criticisms are built on problematic assumptions about the political function of music. Interacting with kwaito artists and fans, he shows that youth aren’t escaping their social condition through kwaito but rather using it to expand their sensory realities and generate new possibilities. Resisting the truism that “music is always political,” Steingo elucidates a music that thrives on its radically ambiguous relationship with politics, power, and the state.

Author Biography:

Gavin Steingo is assistant professor of music at Princeton University.

Release date Australia

June 21st, 2016

Author

Gavin Steingo

Audience

Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly

Pages

320

Series

Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology CSE

Dimensions

15x23x2

ISBN-13

9780226362540

Product ID

24009619

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