Kwaito ISSN 0043-8774 the world of music 2/2008 2/2008 the world of music Editor: Jonathan P. J. Stock Book Review Editor: Recording Review Editor: Helena Simonett Dan Bendrups • Local Advisory Board: Andrew Killick, senior lecturer, University of Shefield Kathleen Van Buren, lecturer, University of Shefield • International Advisory Board: Linda Barwick, associate professor, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Australia Max Peter Baumann, professor of ethnomusicology, University of Bamberg Martin Boiko, lecturer, Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Latvia, and Latvian Academy of Culture Rafael José de Menezes Bastos, professor, Department of Anthropology, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil Shubha Chaudhuri, director, Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology, New Delhi, India Scheherazade Qassim Hassan, lecturer, Department of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology, University of Paris X-Nanterre, Paris, France Josep Martí, professor, Department of Musicology, Instituto Mila i Fontanals, C.S.I.C., Barcelona, Spain Svanibor Pettan, professor, Music Academy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Adelaida Reyes, professor of music, Jersey City State College, Jersey City, N.J., USA Francis Saighoe, professor, Department of Music, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana Yosihiko Tokumaru, professor emeritus, Department of Music, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan Bonnie Wade, professor, Department of Music, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA Bell Yung, professor, Department of Music, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Impressum: • the world of music (3 vols. per year) Journal of the Ethnomusicology Programme, Department of Music, University of Shefield Editor: Jonathan P. J. Stock • Department of Music, University of Shefield, • 34 Leaveygreave Road • Shefield S3 7RD • UK • Phone: +44-114-222 0483 • Fax: +44-114-222 0469 • E-mail: j.p.j.stock@shefield.ac.uk • Web Site: http://the-world-of-music-journal.blogspot.com/ Subscription and advertising inquires to be sent to the publisher: • VWB – Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, Amand Aglaster Besselstr. 13 • D-10969 Berlin • Germany Phone: +49-30-251 0415 • Fax: +49-30-251 1136 E-mail: info@vwb-verlag.com • Web Site: http://www.vwb-verlag.com Copyright © 2008 VWB – Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, Amand Aglaster, Berlin All rights, including photomechanical reproduction, are reserved ISSN 0043–8774 • ISBN 978-3–86135–816-9 Subscription rates 2008: € 58,00 for subscribers in Germany—€ 70,00 for subscribers abroad (Rates include postage and handling; order form on back page [Visa Card accepted]) The opinions expressed in this periodical do not necessarily represent the views of the members of the advisory boards or of the institutions involved. Cover Illustrations, used with permission by YMag and Gavin Steingo. the world of music vol. 50 (2) – 2008 Kwaito Jonathan P. J. Stock Editor Gavin Steingo Guest Editor Helena Simonett Book Review Editor Dan Bendrups Recording Review Editor VWB – Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung Berlin 2009 Journal of the Ethnomusicology Programme The University of Shefield Vol. 50(2) — 2008 CONTENTS Kwaito Gavin Steingo Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Is Kwaito South African Hip-hop? Why the Answer Matters and Who It Matters To . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Sonjah Stanley Niaah A Common Space: Dancehall, Kwaito, and the Mapping of New World Music and Performance . . . 35 Martina Viljoen On the Margins of Kwaito . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Tanja Bosch Kwaito on Community Radio: The Case of Bush Radio in Cape Town, South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Sizwe Satyo A Linguistic Study of Kwaito . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Gavin Steingo Producing Kwaito: Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika After Apartheid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Articles Sharlene Swartz Book Reviews (Helena Simonett, ed.) Bruno Nettl Paul Niemisto Mark E. Perry Laurent Aubert, The Music of the Other: New Challenges for Ethnomusicology in a Global Age . . 121 Ruth Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians: MusicMaking in an English Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Javier Campos Calvo-Sotelo, Fiesta, identidad y contracultura: Contribuciones al estudio histórico de la gaita en Galicia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 4 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 Daniel T. Neely Kathleen Hood William Hope Lara Greene Michael E. Veal, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Jonathan Shannon, Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria . . . . . . . . . . . 128 David F. García, Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music . . . . . . 131 Robin Moore, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba; Vincenzo Perna, Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis; Sujatha Fernandes, Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures . . . . . . . . . . 134 Recording Reviews (Dan Bendrups, ed.) Kapi‘olani. Kūlia I Ka Pūnāwai. Los Angeles: Daniel Ho Creations 80046 (2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Marshall Islands Musical Transitions: Marshallese String Band Music Today and Yesterday. Moonlight Leta Volume I. Majuro, Republic of the Marshall Islands: Moonlight Recording Project (2007) . . . . . . 143 Mali: Buwa. Berlin: Benkadi foli series 1, volume 1 (2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Thiruvasagam: A Classical Crossover. Composed and orchestrated by Ilaiyaraaja. Chennai: Ramana Records (2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 About the Contributors .......................................... 149 the world of music .......................................... 153 Keola Donaghy Brian Diettrich Nick Hockin Hollie Longman the world of music 50(2) - 2008: 75-89 Kwaito on Community Radio: The Case of Bush Radio in Cape Town, South Africa Tanja Bosch Abstract Through qualitative interviews in Cape Town with Bush Radio staff and participant observation conducted at the station between 2002 and 2004, this article explores Bush Radio’s use of kwaito music, and how it contributes towards a rhizomatic development of community. Located within a cultural studies framework, this article approaches kwaito as cultural text capable of generating multiple meanings. In particular, it argues that those who work at Bush Radio strategically use kwaito music to create and sustain a divided community in search of a new black identity. Furthermore, the article also addresses how kwaito is speciically constructed and contested on the airwaves of Bush Radio and by station staff. 1. Introduction The 50km broadcast footprint and low-powered 250 watt transmitter of South African community radio station, Bush Radio, means that it often takes some ine tuning to ind it on the dial. Once you’ve locked on to 89.5FM though, there’s no doubt that you are tuned in to “the mother of community radio in Africa,” as the station’s slogan promises. The alternative political talk shows and features, specialist hip-hop, jazz and blues programs, and “world” and kwaito music, set the station apart. In exploring the relationship of Bush Radio to kwaito music, I draw on a cultural studies framework, treating kwaito as cultural text capable of generating multiple meanings (Grossberg 1993). Bush Radio is a community radio station based in Cape Town, South Africa. It originated as the Cassette Education Trust (CASET), an audio-cassette production facility formed in the early 1980s, during the height of apartheid. During this period, the main newspapers catered largely to the country’s white minority and sided with mining capital; and the nature of radio and television in South Africa between the formation of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in 1936 and the 76 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 early 1990s was determined by the ruling National Party’s strategies for its continued existence and dominance (Tomaselli, Tomaselli and Muller 1987). During apartheid, television and radio broadcasting were owned and controlled by the state-run SABC and biased in favor of government. As Bush Radio’s irst employee, Sandile Dikeni, says, My concept of radio was based on public radio, which was basically bad apartheid propaganda kind of radio made for blacks. But because we hated the radio programming we tended to hate radio as well as a concept. For instance, there’d be a news program, and at the end of the news they’d have the news analysis, which is like ten minutes of state propaganda just coming straight at you. How bad terrorists are, how bad the liberation movement was, how we should become scared of them. Really basic bad, bad propaganda about how beautiful the South African government is—and how neat the plan is of how to divide people into the different homelands. What we knew as people who lived our lives under those systems, is that those systems were not working for us. Those were the kind of things that really alienated many of us from radio. (Dikeni, personal communication, 30 August 2003) Despite this SABC dominance, alternative print media lourished in the 1980s. The so-called people’s media emerged in the 1980s and popularized anti-apartheid discourse (Tomaselli 1989), since the alternative news sources openly supported mass-based political opposition (Jacobs 1999). Publications and pamphlets could easily be reproduced using photocopy machines and distributed via existing political networks. The alternative press acted as a catalyst for political changes such as the un-banning of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC) and the release of ANC leader, Nelson Mandela, both in 1990. However, unlike the strategic use of print media, the democratic movement overlooked broadcasting as a site of struggle for the most part. There were, however, two important exceptions: the African National Congress’s Radio Freedom, and CASET. Founded in 1967, Radio Freedom was the underground radio station of the ANC and was broadcast on short wave from neighboring African states. As part of the ANC’s cultural wing, Amandla, Radio Freedom provided an alternative to the strongly censored South African Broadcasting Corporation, merging political content and news with popular music of many banned artists. The Cassette Education Trust (CASET) produced and distributed cassette tapes containing speeches from banned activists, local music, and revolutionary poetry in Cape Town in the early 1980s. CASET fulilled a basic news function in its coverage of political meetings, rallies, and demonstrations. By spreading information about insurgence in one part of the country to another, it increased solidarity and support for the liberation movement. Furthermore, as Dikeni explained, CASET challenged the apartheid regime on several levels, including in the sphere of media. I remember we did this vox-pop of these people in this one major rally in Cape Town where organizations were unbanning themselves. My name is so and so, I come from the South African National Students Congress, and I declare SANSCO unbanned from today! And I come from the women’s league and I declare the Women’s League unbanned from today! It was obviously illegal, but just try and catch us, you know, Tanja Bosch. Kwaito on Community Radio • 77 it was that kind of an excitement. So we were part of an entire process of deiance as well, and so we became also a statement of deiance. In our case, a statement of deiance of the broadcast regulations and laws that governed us at the time. (Dikeni, personal communication, 30 August 2003) After the irst national democratic elections in June 1994, the subsequent liberalization of the airwaves and the formation of an Independent Broadcast Authority (IBA)1, provision was made for community radio as a formal structure, intended to give previously disadvantaged groups access to the airwaves. CASET evolved into a radio station known as Bush Radio, largely because its ofices were on the campus of the University of the Western Cape, created for blacks, and thus known colloquially as the “bush college.” Today Bush Radio broadcasts 24 hours a day on 89.5FM, with a balance of 60% talk and 40% music. Talk shows and documentaries deal with issues including health, gender, children, governance and democracy. Specialist music shows feature genres of music not freely available on other radio stations, for example, drum and bass, reggae, and blues. Programming is produced by volunteers drawn from the target community, and the station uses horizontal communication to encourage dialogue within the communities of the Cape Flats, as well as between those communities artiicially created and fragmented during apartheid. The Cape Flats refers to a sandy stretch of land about 50 miles long on the outskirts of Cape Town, referred to colloquially as the “dumping ground of apartheid.” Several townships for black and mixed race or so-called “coloured” (people of mixed race) people still exist within the Cape Flats, and the housing is mostly tenement style with large areas of squatter camps or informal housing. 2. Kwaito: Cultural Identity, Ownership and Youth Culture 2.1 Coloured Identity vs. Black Identity Jantjies and other staff members claim that Bush Radio’s deliberate selection of kwaito on its daily play lists is directly linked to issues of black culture, youth identity, and ownership. According to operations manager, Adrian Louw: I think it’s an expression of black township youth identity. I’d like to see it evolve into the supporting of black consciousness. Black identity and the whole issue of coloured identity, it’s a very convoluted thing. I think a lot of people at Bush Radio see themselves as black rather than as coloured. And if you want to use the term coloured then most of the people working here are coloured, working toward a form of black consciousness and black identity. I think Bush in many ways is trying to develop that black consciousness. But not only with kwaito, I mean, hip-hop too, just opening 78 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 up young people’s eyes to what’s out there, and some form of black consciousness. (Louw, personal communication, 30 May 2003) In South Africa, the term black has thus not always been used to encompass all minority groups not classiied as white in Apartheid South Africa. Those identiied as, and who self-identify as coloured, are usually not included under the terms “African” or “black.” However, kwaito has come to signify a more inclusive “blackness” or black pride in a country where black culture and identity were once marginal despite a black majority population. As Louw relects, the nature of black identity in South Africa, and more speciically in the Western Cape, is more complex than one might imagine. Black identity and the whole issue of coloured identity, it’s a very convoluted thing. I think a lot of people at Bush Radio see themselves as black rather than as coloured even though it’s about a 60% split. And if you want to use the term coloured most of the people working here are coloured, working to a form of black consciousness and black identity. Because of how the identity issue has been used by the previous government and even today. You know, you have to be proud of your coloured identity—I mean what the hell is coloured identity? I identify more with the Xhosa than the coon carnival. I think Bush in many ways is trying to develop that black consciousness. (Louw, personal communication, July 2003) In fact, even the use of the term “community” to represent the station’s constituency was originally rooted in a progressive political notion of the community as black. As Rashid Lombard, one of the irst trustees on the board of Bush Radio, said of the audience: I’d like to deine it as black because I’m very much still into black consciousness. It’s the black community, not coloured, not African, not Indian—black. And I think that’s a critical thing that I hope they [Bush Radio] still have that vision of getting it into people’s minds. (Lombard, personal communication, July 2003) Here again, Lombard relects on how people at Bush Radio have always preferred to refer to themselves as black, rather than use the apartheid category of coloured. South Africa has a complex ethnic composition, roughly divided by the apartheid state into black (73%), Indian (3%), Colored (8%) and White (16%). In addition there are 11 oficial languages with 15 others recognized by the constitution (Leicester et al., 2000). Prior to 1994, the momentum of resistance and struggle camoulaged ethnic and racial differences (in direct opposition to the state propaganda of apart-ness) and substituted them with homogenizing terms such as “the people,” which became fragmented after the 1994 elections (Marais 1998). As a result, in the South African context race and ethnicity are not social constructs, but have been concretized by their economic roots. It is not a “false consciousness” or a mere super-structural manipulation, but has had direct effects in terms of people’s material conditions and their relations to modes of production (Carrim and Soudien 1999). Race in South Africa is not imagined. While essentially social constructs, race and ethnicity are lived realities for those who identify with the in-group (Ramsey 2003). As a result, the micro-cultures in South Africa became iso- Tanja Bosch. Kwaito on Community Radio • 79 lated from one another because of the hegemony of the so-called macro-culture. One example is the rift between black and coloured communities in the Western Cape. This is not to say that these are homogenous groups, although they are frequently perceived as such. Many of the people at Bush Radio would have been racially classiied by the apartheid state as coloured. In fact, outsiders have been known to criticize Bush Radio for being too white and coloured, and exclusive of black identity. In terms of language, for example, the station broadcasts primarily in English, with about 20% of broadcasts in Xhosa and 10% in Afrikaans. Bush Radio’s location in Cape Town is signiicant in terms of cultural geography. As Lee (1997:127) argues, cities have their own habitus, that is: certain relatively enduring (pre) dispositions to current social, economic, political or even physical circumstances in very particular ways, ways in which other cities, with different habitus formations, may respond to very differently. As the oldest and traditionally most socially and politically liberal city in South Africa, Cape Town certainly has its own particular habitus. To some extent then, Bush Radio uses “community” geographically to refer to people who live in Cape Town and who share a certain communitas or culture. The irst Dutch settlers in 1652 established a stop in Table Bay for the Dutch East India Company and their ships that sailed to the Dutch East Indies to replenish fresh fruit and vegetables. Later, slavery deined the culture of the city. Over 180 years, as many as 63,000 slaves were brought to Cape Town from East Africa, Madagascar, South India, and Indonesia, among other places. They were used as labor on farms on the outskirts of the city, as workers in households and factories, and as builders. As a result, the majority of South Africa’s mixed race, or so-called colored population, live in Cape Town. This group actively engaged in processes of creolization to construct their identities from both ruling and subaltern cultures (Erasmus 2001). Indeed, Erasmus argues for the reconceptualization of coloured (racial) identities as cultural identities: comprising detailed bodies of knowledge, speciic cultural practices, memories, rituals and modes of being...coloured identities were formed in the colonial encounter between colonists (Dutch and British), slaves from South and East India and from East Africa, and conquered indigenous peoples, the Khoi and the San. The result has been a highly speciic and instantly recognizable cultural formation – not just “a mixture” but a very particular “mixture” comprising elements of Dutch, British, Malaysian, Khoi and other forms of African culture appropriated, translated and articulated in complex and subtle ways. (ibid.:21) The complexities of “coloured” identity notwithstanding, cultural brokers at Bush Radio have strategically appropriated “blackness” in order to create alliances. 80 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 2.2 Ownership This issue of ownership is central. At Bush Radio people feel a sense of ownership of the music when they choose to play it on their programs. When the station goes out into the community for outside broadcasts, the staff on duty always carry kwaito. One gets the sense that they are expected to play kwaito at these gatherings. At the Beach Broadcasts, for example, a series of outside broadcasts held on the Cape Flats beaches and sponsored by the Department of Safety and Security, kwaito featured predominantly. Youth crowded around the station’s mobile unit and kwaito was often high up on the list of the songs they requested. People danced to this music, and impromptu dance competitions took place with the brave showing their moves in the centre of a circle. As Bush Radio’s programme integrator, Adrian Louw, said: There’s ownership of the music, I think that’s the key thing. It originates out of the townships. It’s township music. There’s nothing like it anywhere in the world. It’s owned by Langa, it’s owned by Gugulethu, it’s owned by Soweto, it’s owned by the townships, and I think people are very proud of it, the youth especially. (Louw, personal communication, 30 May 2003) As seen from Louw’s words, for the staff at Bush Radio, kwaito seems to represent a (re)claiming of an inclusive black cultural identity, asserted for the irst time via popular culture. Furthermore, when foreign interns visited the station, probably largely as a result of the way the music was portrayed to them by the staff of Bush Radio, they almost always ended up passionately enjoying kwaito and leaving with this music blaring through the headphones of their MP3 players. In reality, neither Bush Radio nor the township really owns kwaito—a healthy degree of cynicism tells us that it is really only the record companies, and perhaps to some extent the artists. that beneit from, control the development of, and as such in essence, control kwaito. However, on a micro level, it is often radio DJs who control the transmission and dissemination of kwaito in the townships. What is perhaps most interesting is that more than merely signifying black identity, for the people at Bush Radio kwaito has become a unifying force in the daily activities of the radio station. What remains is a residual challenge for a community radio station which frames itself as a vehicle of social change—for kwaito also encourages and promotes ownership, in the sense that it embraces the mainstream capitalist ideology (Steingo 2005). The focus has shifted away from ownership of the music, to ownership of any other kind, with music videos encouraging material aspirations, particularly as this was not previously possible for black South Africans. 3. Kwaito as Constructed on Bush Radio In 1994, the IBA mandated stations to devote at least 20% of their airtime to local music (Mutume 1998). While one can ind locally produced hip-hop, RnB, pop, and various other genres, IBA legislation made it easy to broadcast kwaito as it is an ex- Tanja Bosch. Kwaito on Community Radio • 81 clusively local music genre. However, for Bush Radio, the choice of kwaito music was not simply one of convenience. According to Bush Radio producer and morning show DJ, Victor Jantjies: It is music that South African people can recognize and be proud of, especially the youth. It creates an original feel because it’s a combination of African beats. I play a lot of kwaito music on the radio because I want the listeners to know that there is good local music as well, and they can be associated with it. (Jantjies, personal communication, February 2002) But the many criticisms of kwaito have been an issue for the station. Kwaito comes under attack for a number of reasons despite its portrayal as a positive expression of black identity through its creation of the irst black owned record labels, and by bringing African languages into popular musical genre for the irst time. Firstly, the lyrical content of the music has been widely criticized. Tokollo from the group TKZ compares it to rap’s early days: “Parents never liked it either. They say it was full of swearing, but the youth loved it. Now kwaito is like that, but it’s South African” (cited on www.rage.co.za/kwaito3.html, accessed on 15 January 2006). Certainly, many people often mention the music’s vulgar and sexually explicit lyrics. But as Bush Radio’s Sitshongaye explains, this analysis may be because of misinterpretation due to inaccurate translation into English, as well as the removal of words out of their original cultural context. Kwaito is not as explicit as hip-hop. But sometimes you ind that Xhosa is very expressive language. Like say umqundu is ass, you can use it, but because way back in the day you could use it easily even if you’re a child. But that’s a very expressive word to use, but these days with the changing times it’s regarded as being too disrespectful, you’re rather saying bum or mpundu. Thebe is one example, he uses words like that [i.e., like umqundu] because it’s not regarded as being disrespectful in Xhosa, but some other people who are more like Model C people, people who study in multiracial schools, they see it as being rude because that’s how they grew up, and so they don’t understand. But people from the townships, they don’t regard it as being rude, because it’s part of culture and tradition. (Sitshongaye, personal communication, 4 June 2003) As an English-speaking and English-educated young black man, Sitshongaye displays here an understanding of his native language, Xhosa. He makes a valid point—analysing kwaito lyrics in the fashion in which he has done almost certainly allows this kind of relection and understanding. Nevertheless, the average young listener or fan might not have the same analytical frame of reference through which to understand the music. Similarly, kwaito songs often refer to women derogatorarily, and in music videos women are usually portrayed scantily clad, much as in international mainstream hiphop music videos. Stephens (2000) relects on the inclusion of women in kwaito music as a deliberate use of superluous “singing and dancing girls”, this as a marketing ploy. Women in kwaito have often fallen into these kinds of stereotypes, with kwaito liberated from any need to be politically relevant (Impey 2001). 82 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 People sing about partying, life and all that. So you’ll be sitting at home listening to say Thebe and he’s singing about I’ve been at a party and “natibana neses febe,” and febe is bitch. And he’ll be singing like I’ve been at a party and I saw some girls and they were sitting down with their legs open and they were feeling horny, you know stuff like that. And he will sing about that in Sotho or Zulu. But the youth don’t regard that as being rude, they regard that as something that’s true, that’s happening. (Sitshongaye, personal communication, 4 June 2003) Kwaito artists have countered the criticisms by saying that their genre is a breakaway from the seriousness of life and that it accurately represents the lives of youth in South Africa (Boloka 2003); moreover, contrary to popular perception, relatively few kwaito artists or songs are vulgar, sexist or violent (Coplan 2005). Another critique that the station faces is that there is often no substantial lyrical content. The force of this criticism should be understood within the context of Bush Radio as a station which is generally accepted as one which promotes social change, often through music such as conscious hip-hop. As DJ Pam Lunga said: Sometimes you’ll ind there’s a good instrumental but there’s nothing going on in the song lyrically, just “hola, hola, hola” right through the song. And that’s wack! And then you ind a combination where the lyrics are bad and the instrumental is bad. And some people actually like it. Arthur is one of those people, it’s like “haibo, haibo, haibo”, the whole song is haibo, and people love it. And there’s another one, “injaincha,” a dog is a dog, and it’s just repetitive. (Lunga, personal communication, 4 June 2003) However, this did not mean that Lunga stopped playing kwaito on her show. As she explained, she would try to ind the kwaito music that she felt was most progressive, and play this to her audience. I try to choose which kwaito I play because not all kwaito is good. The beats are often similar, the lyrics are repetitive and there’s no message in most of the songs. But I try and play the good kwaito. Like the Yizo Yizo 2 soundtrack, some of the songs in there talk about crime, people who’ve been in prison and how they regret that, and also the HIV/ AIDS issue. There’s a song by Boom Shaka for example called “Don’t Be Ashamed”—don’t be ashamed of your brother, of your sister of your skin colour. (Lungu, personal communication, 4 June 2003) And in some ways, her responses may well relect pressures exerted on Bush Radio’s management for station programming to be “developmental,” often without a full discussion about the similar importance of entertainment, or acknowledgement of the possibly patronizing notion of using music or the medium of radio to inluence a community who are purportedly in need of social change. After all, kwaito is pure entertainment. Kwaito’s use of repetition, what Bergman (1985) describes as the call-and-response technique where the musician sings one line and the listeners repeat a part of it in response, is much like the performative modes of African-American secular speech and the practices of the African-American Holiness Church. Boloka (2003) provides the example of Arthur Mofokate’s song “Mnike” in which Arthur says Tanja Bosch. Kwaito on Community Radio • 83 “Hey Queen, Hau Mnike!” and together with the backing vocalist the listeners say “Mnike”. This makes it easy to memorize the songs, and increases interaction between artist and listener. This is also very similar to apartheid-era slogans used during marches or at political meetings. For example, the speaker at a gathering would call out Amandla! (power), with the crowd responding Awethu (to the people); or “Forward the people” with the response being “forward”; and the later inlammatory call of The Azanian People’s Liberation Movement (Azapo), “One settler,” followed by “One bullet.” These call-and-response techniques of political protest were also repetitive, intended to motivate large crowds. In this sense, the performance of kwaito by both musician and audience member is situated in a rich historical context. Moreover, it is merely by virtue of this residual meaning in the production process and consumption of kwaito that Bush Radio’s explicit choice to broadcast this music represents a desire to ally itself with the development of a black identity via popular culture. Nonetheless, given the criticisms of the genre, Bush Radio is faced with a dilemma. The station is associated with the development of entertainment-education projects that encourage the embedding of socially conscious lyrics in music (for example, the 2002 HIV-Hop project which used hip hop music to reach youth with messages about HIV/ AIDS). Yet the station also simultaneously plays kwaito, which often carries lyrics and messages contradictory to those encouraged in the station’s entertainment-education based hip-hop for social change project. Ultimately, however, many of the station staff believe that the beneits of promoting kwaito music on the air far outweigh any possible negative effects. Because the music is black owned and controlled, the station believes they are contributing toward the (re)creation of a uniied black identity. In fact, kwaito does appear to be bringing groups previously separated by apartheid closer together. Various so-called ethnic groups or tribes such as the Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, etc. were forcibly removed to ethnic homelands in the countryside, each with its own political administration, independent of the government of the Republic of South Africa. Now people from various cultural backgrounds may ind themselves living in the same township and, as Sitshongaye points out, learning each other’s languages through kwaito. Most of the kwaito is in Sotho and tsotsitaal. But you’ll be surprised—I’m Xhosa but I will listen to that CD and I just sing, I don’t know what it means, but it will be ringing in my mind, as if I, and then maybe you bump into a guy who is Sotho, a friend of yours memorized the lyrics. And I’ll walk out, singing the song as if I know it, and he’ll be like do you know what that means? And then he’ll explain to you. But some of the lyrics you can understand, because sometimes the artist tends to repeat the lyrics in different languages. And another thing that makes you understand is the tsotsitaal—if you grew up in the township you tend to understand. When you go to socials you hook up with different people from different backgrounds and cultures, you talk, sometimes you speak tsotsitaal and you mix it with Xhosa and you mix it with Zulu, that’s how you learn. So you mix and if you say a word that someone doesn’t understand then you explain it in Zulu or Xhosa. So that’s how kwaito is, it bonds people together, the 84 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 youth especially. If you don’t understand somebody will explain to you. (Sitshongaye, personal communication, 4 June 2003) Additionally, kwaito is helping to build bridges between the “black” and “coloured” communities in Cape Town, as described above. Furthermore, many of the people that work at Bush Radio believe that kwaito will eventually develop to the point where it can be used for social change in the same way that hip-hop has been proliically used, primarily in the United States. While not widely publicised, this has already started to happen with a few performers such as Trompies leader Eugene Mthetwa attempting to promote a positive social role for kwaito by working in campaigns against HIV/ AIDS, and saying that “Kwaito has been a dominant force in popular culture since 1995. If we used it constructively it could really empower” (in Coplan, 2005:19). Coplan (ibid.:21) further argues that kwaito lyrcis are today socially engaged, expressing black youth’s insistence on enjoying their freedom and majority status, and further embodying their demand for a new society that fulills their “modernist material aspirations and accepts their pleasure principle as a valid replacement for the now painfully passe politicised ideology of social sacriice.” But kwaito’s lyrics are still often percevied to be less dense than those of rap music, and it does not share hip-hop’s history as a community-based, awarenessoriented medium. According to Louw: Kwaito is relatively young. Or at least the form of kwaito we see now is very young. And what needs to happen is that the skills need to be improved, and it is happening— people are rapping in Xhosa and trying to build in that consciousness into their lyrics. If you compare the percentages of conscious hip-hop to the commercial stuff then the commercial stuff still outweighs it. I think it’s too early right now. Because if you look at the construction of the music, it’s very repetitive, it’s very simplistic. Its simple phrases, simple phrase construction, nothing complex. Kwaito itself as an art form has not had a chance to develop yet, or getting the content in. Or maybe now is the time to get that moving. (Louw, personal communication, 30 May 2003) Privileging music characteristics such as “complexity” is problematic, and again raises the notion of paternalistic control over a community without agency. Here, perhaps, we see that Louw and others make assumptions about the music based on limited exposure. The band Skwatta Kamp (a play on squatter camp, the term for illegal settlements, usually comprised makeshift housing) for example, produced politically subversive lyrics, criticising the ruling black political elite, with consequent calls to halt airplay of their songs (Coplan 2005); Arthur Mafokoate released a song with the chorus “Don’t call me kafir”, a derogatory term for blacks during apartheid. The politics of popular music and popular culture do not require explicit verbal encoding to be political (Coplan 2005). Further, even with songs that are purely dance oriented, the so-called apolitical kwaito is in fact political, precisely in its negation of politics (Steingo 2005). Tanja Bosch. Kwaito on Community Radio • 85 4. Kwaito and Rhizomatic Community “A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:27). As explicated by Deleuze and Guattari, the rhizome generates connections through its characteristics of heterogeneity, disjunction, multiplicity, multiple entry points, and routes rather than roots. In a botanical sense, a rhizome is an underground tuber that ramiies and diversiies, producing new buds, opposed to what Deleuze and Guattari call “arboric systems of knowledge” based on the model of a tree, which symbolizes linear thinking and hierarchical structures. The rhizome moves between the lines established by the arboric systems, and as such is “fuzzy” rather than aggregated, with both “this” and “not this” co-existing simultaneously. Community radio develops in rhizomatic fashion, growing globally more like the grass than the trees. Hundreds of low powered FM stations have sprung up in the United States as a result from assistance from non-proits like the Prometheus Radio Project, while the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) has almost 3000 members and associates in 106 countries (www.amarc.org, accessed 25 January 2005). It may be argued that community radio is not necessarily becoming more powerful than media conglomerates, but is growing horizontally, creating ripples under the surface. Like a rhizome, community radio stations form networks of connections across which people and ideas low and disperse. More speciically, the internal workings of a community radio station like Bush Radio are particularly rhizomatic. At Bush Radio titles often have no real meaning and responsibilities are shared. If you are a producer you may also be expected to present programs or read the news when the regular news reader is off sick. Everyone is expected to learn how to operate the on-air studio and to know basic editing skills. There are no dedicated studio operators or editors at Bush Radio. Further evidence of this subversion of hierarchical strategies is the manner in which people interact. As Louw said: At Bush, yes, I’m the program integrator and I do this, that, and the other. Basically Adrian is the person that will make the decision, that sort of thing. I take out the garbage every Thursday, you know. Where are you going to ind that at a commercial radio station? Where the executive director buys a parcel of ish and chips and has it with the staff. That’s something that somebody told me once. She hasn’t been to any place where people are sitting around a table having some ish and chips and you can come and take some out of that person’s packet and actually just share. And I didn’t realize it until she said it and that’s so strange. You don’t get that anywhere else. And I think we’ve been lucky in that way because there’s not much to do in Salt River, there’s nowhere to go at lunch so we’re forced to work together and eat together. Celebrating everybody’s birthday, celebrating when somebody leaves. That doesn’t happen at many places. Here at Bush we get together we say thank you to that person, 86 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 if we have money we buy some cake. (Louw, personal communication, 20 August 2002) In the South African case of Bush Radio, both the airwaves and the physical space of the radio station serves as a meeting point for the various communities of Cape Town and their interest groups and organizations. People involved in different types of struggle are often brought together by Bush Radio, which also assists them in various ways. The gay and lesbian service organization Triangle Project is currently being strengthened through the training of some of their members to participate in production activities on In The Pink, the gay and lesbian programme. Bush Radio’s programming is rhizomatic, comprising pockets of information located at various times. Unlike commercial radio which has a distinctive format, Bush Radio’s programming is distinctive for its diversity. You will hear every kind of music from blues and jazz to hip-hip, kwaito or drum ‘n bass. Commercial RnB, rap or even traditional music are also played on the station. Talk programs range from call in programs on African politics to informational programs on AIDS. On Friday evenings you can listen to talks by Michael Parenti and on Sunday afternoons you can hear Conversations with Writers. On Saturday afternoon teenagers talk about underage drinking and drugs, and on Sunday afternoons Abantu Abakhulu broadcasts programs to the elderly. The listeners’ ability to choose a program to listen to is much like the rhizome where many points are linked together, not necessarily in sequence, allowing one to move from one point to another. Similarly, Bush Radio’s interaction with kwaito is another example of the creation of a rhizomatic community. Kwaito listeners are not just black township youth, but comprise a more diverse cross-section of the Cape Town community. White and so-called mixed race or coloured communities also have access to kwaito via Bush Radio, and in doing so, assert their identiication with a uniied black culture, represented by kwaito. Many of the listeners call Bush Radio from public phones, quickly sending a “dedication” (message) before they run out of coins. The unmistakable beep in the background, clearly identiies the call as originating from a public telephone. While mobile telephony has taken off in the last few years with most South Africans owning cellphones due to the affordable pre-paid “pay-as-you-go” system, calls from cellphones are still prohibitively expensive. The rhizomatic listening patterns of the audience also emerges when one inds that once a call is made to Bush Radio, the telephone is often passed from hand to hand, as several other members of the household or listening community take turns to send our their dedications. 5. Conclusion Kwaito is problematic, but while the negatives aspects of the music are recognized, the music itself represents a uniied black cultural identity, which highlights it as one of the only facets of popular culture to perhaps bridge the divide between black Tanja Bosch. Kwaito on Community Radio • 87 and colored and between various black ethnicities. Like any other cultural product, music generates multiple meanings; and meaning becomes the source of struggle as it is continually contested. Undeniably, contestation is part of cultural consumption. Certainly, as the irst music genre owned and controlled by black South Africans, kwaito represents a break from the apartheid past and a move toward the formation of a new cultural terrain. Kwaito demonstrates how mass media helps the creation of a ‘new’ South Africa by implanting a new common culture based on consumption, and it is through this new culture that identities are forged (Boloka 2003). An exciting tension surrounds popular music in the 1990s: invention facing tradition, creativity confronting stagnation, tolerance versus intolerance, rebellion against authority, commercialism versus authenticity. This tension is not a simple struggle of positive and negative...it is much more than a struggle to decide what music we hear, when we hear it, where and how. (Ullestad 1992:37) Like Jamaica’s dancehall (Stolzoff 2000), kwaito is associated with darker skins, and to some extent reproduces the social order out of which it is born in terms of gender and sexuality. Bush Radio’s deliberate decision to broadcast kwaito relects a conscious decision to build and to maintain a community—in this case a group of individuals whose self-identiication places them under the umbrella term black. Identities forged out of musical traditions are imaginary, multiple and temporal (Boloka 2003). Bush Radio’s use of kwaito music thus represents a consciously intended creation of community, arguably imagined (Anderson 1983) but also rhizomatic. Kwaito no longer represents merely the hybrid—it has become indigenous. As Storey (1996) points out, meaning is a social production. Therefore, evaluated as a text, kwaito does not issue meaning about new identities in a new society, but becomes a site where the articulation of a variable meaning can take place. Note 1 In April 2001 the IBA merged with the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA) to form the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA). A new bill passed by Parliament stated that the merger was needed because of the rapid convergence in the ields of broadcasting and telecommunications. References Anderson, Benedict 1983 Imagined Communities: Relections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bergman, Billy 1985 African Pop: Goodtime Kings. Poole: Blandford. 88 • the world of music 50(2) - 2008 Boloka, Gibson 2003 “Cultural Studies and the Transformation of the Music Industry: Some Relections on Kwaito,” in Herman Wasserman and Sean Jacobs, eds., Shifting Selves: Post-apartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity, 97-108. Cape Town: Kwela Books. Carrim, Nazir, and Crain Soudien 1999 “Critical Anti-Racism in South Africa,” in Stephen May, ed., Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education, 153-71. London: Falmer Press. Coplan, David 2005 “God Rock Africa: Thoughts on Politics in Popular Black Performance in South Africa.” African Studies 64, no. 1:9-27. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari 1987 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Erasmus, Zimitri 2001 “Re-Imagining Coloured Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” in Zimitri Erasmus, ed., Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town, 13-28. Colorado Springs: International Academic Publishers. Grossberg, Lawrence 1993 “Can Cultural Studies Find True Happiness in Communication?” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4:89-97. Impey, Angela 2001 “Resurrecting the Flesh? Relections on Women in Kwaito.” Agenda 49:44-50. Lee, Martyn 1992 “Relocating Location: Cultural Geography, the Speciicity of Place and the City Habitus,” in Jim McGuigan, ed., Cultural Methodologies, 126-41. London: Sage Publications. Marais, Hein 1998 South Africa: Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transition. London: Zed Books. Mutume, Gumisai. 1998 “Bringing Local Sounds to Radio.” Inter Press Service 17 January. www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-5046201.html, accessed 25 January 2008. Ramsey, Guthrie, Jr. 2003 Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stephens, Simon 2000 “Kwaito,” in Sarah Nuttall and Cheryl-Ann Michael, eds., Senses of Culture: South African Cultural Studies, 256-73. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stolzoff, Norman 2000 Wake the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Storey, John 1996 Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture: Theories and Practice.Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Tanja Bosch. Kwaito on Community Radio • 89 Tomaselli, Keyan, ed. 1989 Rethinking Culture. Bellville, South Africa: Anthropos Publishers. Tomaselli, Keyan, Ruth Tomaselli and John Muller, eds. 1987 Narrating the Crisis: Hegemony and the South African Press. Johannesburg: R. Lyon. Ullestad, Neal 1992 “Diverse Rock Rebellions Subvert Mass Media Hegemony,” in Reebee Garofalo, ed., Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, 37-54. Boston: Southend Press.