CIM409 Week 4
Colonial & Post-Colonial
This week I have been thinking about how I might make a musical project, as opposed to a graphic, seeing as my undergrad was in audio production. I keep thinking back to one specific moment last year, when I was back in Africa for the first time in 17 years. I went to a club on a Friday night and was shocked at the style of the music that was playing. It was strangely familiar to my experiences in Australia and Europe - a DJ with some party lights and loudspeakers in front of a wide dancefloor full of intoxicated revellers having a lot of fun. However, it was the lack of a heavy kick drum that was so surprising to me: track after track would come on without a single heavy four-on-the-floor. The arrangement was also foreign to me - there were no breakdowns, buildups and drops as found in Western dance music; instead, it was a consistent shuffled hi-hat and shaker pattern, with slight variations between songs, that created a persistent ethereal, euphoric atmosphere.
There is no doubt that I sit in the coloniser camp. As a white person of English heritage who was born and raised in Zimbabwe, there is no question of that, and it also rings true of my position here in Australia, albeit they are wildly different in proportion of coloniser to colonised. I would like to use my unique position to analyse modern Southern African dance music from a Western perspective.
Modern Southern African Dance Music
Here is a link to a playlist on Spotify that I created during my holiday there in September 2023, from songs heard in bars, clubs, supermarkets and cafes:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5sPwvgss7bmQbgIMdH6UVw?si=ac3ccffb89884465
Note that a lot of these songs are considered a part of a genre called ‘Amapiano’ - which is so called because of the use of keyboards, synthesizers and computers for production (Long-Innes, 2022). According to Long-Innes, Amapiano is a sub-genre of South African house music, and 8 out of South Africa’s Top 10 hits of 2022 were Amapiano tracks. When I listen to these tracks, I notice the prolific use of vocoders and electronic music production techniques found in house music all over the world. However, it is the arrangements that are very different, with Amapiano generally lacking the ebb-and-flow of breakdowns, buildups and drops.
An interesting topic brought up in the class reading was cultural hegemony - the absorption of lesser cultures by dominant cultures, and the broader concept of a superior Western “us” vs “those” non-Westerners (Said, 1979), but I would argue that Amapiano could be a combination of these concepts. Yes, house music is considered Western (Saunders, 2007), which he describes as “performed by DJ’s, the four on the floor - a relentless beat that keeps the mood flowing. It’s a euphoric feeling”. However, I noted that Amapiano, despite being a sub-genre of house music, does not emphasis the four on the floor. So what’s going on here?
In Železa’s article (2010), famous Nigerian musician Fela Kuti is quoted as saying “It was then [when he went to the United States] that I really began to see that I had not played African music, I had been using jazz to play African music, when really I should be using African music to play jazz. So it was America that brought me back to myself.” And I think this paints a picture of how Amapiano works - African DJ’s are performing modern dance music that emphasises percussive rhythm and euphoria through digital production techniques, inspired by Western Music concepts, in a postcolonial environment (Ashcroft etal., 2013).
Reference List
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2013). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sae/reader.action?docID=1244807&ppg=217
Long-Innes, D., MSc. (2022). Bottom-up culture production: The growth of local music scenes in the digital age. In MSc. International Business & Politics. https://research-api.cbs.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/76451587/1412031_DOLO19AB_Masters_Thesis.pdf
Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. https://monoskop.org/images/4/4e/Said_Edward_Orientalism_1979.pdf
Saunders, J. (2007). House music the real story. Google Books. https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iYAD6DHbvXYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=house+music&ots=Bc-bBpY6Wy&sig=0jZQIk5HXj68EqJWyYqN8NS-z54#v=onepage&q=house%20music&f=false
Železa, P. T. (2010). Dancing to the beat of the diaspora: musical exchanges between Africa and its diasporas. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 3(2), 211–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2010.481976
