Annotation
The course aims to understand musical culture from the perspective of the Global South. The notion of the global periphery refers here to the contemporary postcolonial context.
The main interest of the course is to offer a detailed study of a South African popular musical “genre“ called kwaito or, by its international name, house music. It emerged during the transformation period in the late 1980’s and continues to flourish till today as one of the most vital ways of youth musical entertainment. Using an example of South African electronic dance music, the course offers the students an insight into complex webs of meaning-making processes and “modes of aesthetic experience” from Southern urban and peri-urban perspective. At the same time, it may serve as a practical example of studying popular musical culture in a non-Western context.
The course is based on reading, discussing and interpreting texts (most prominently the recent book "Kwaito's Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa" by Gavin Steingo but also other, more general and related texts from ethno/musicology, postcolonial studies, anthropology of globalization, sociology, philosophy, aesthetics et al.) as well as on analysing, discussing and interpreting songs/tracks and other rich audio-visual material – both professional films, local music video production and ethnographic captures, including my own.