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Where Singing Matters
WHERE IS THE WAY
Song and Struggle in South Africa
By Helen Q. Kivnick
Penguin
One reason progressive commentators are drawn to South Africa is
that morality is so unambiguous there. However impossible
unknotting apartheid may prove, progressive action against it
clearly matters--even when it's only "cultural" action. As a
progressive who loves singing, Helen Q. Kivnick is doubly
motivated, because whereas most African music is preeminently
rhythmic, southern Africans are heirs to as complex a set of vocal
traditions as any people in the world. A social psychologist who
has coproduced two renowned field recordings that this book in
effect chronicles, Kivnick puts flesh on the truism that in black
Africa, music is inextricable from everyday life. At religious
services, union meetings, weddings, parties, teas, newfound
acquaintances break into song without notice, reinforcing African
identity whether by affirming tribal traditions or by bridging
them. Miss Kivnick establishes the political relevance of her
cultural passion beyond doubt--the songs she describes so fluidly
serve as crucial sources of pride, solace, solidarity, and direct
or metaphorical protest. Her folkie disdain for the entertainment
industry and her tendency to brush past inconvenient
contradictions--the divisive potential of the oft-noted Zulu self-praise
tradition, for instance, or the extent to which choral
societies drain energy that might serve more unequivocally
political ends--in no way diminish her insight into apartheid's
perverse structural details (especially homelands policy) and the
astonishing resilience and diversity of its intended victims. This
is an overdue addition to a body of political analysis that fails
to give South Africa's popular arts the attention they amply
reward.
New York Times Book Review, 1991
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