Chakide —The teller of secrets: Space, song and story in ZuluMaskandaperformance

"Walking Like a Crab": Analyzing Maskanda Music in Post-Apartheid South Africa

“…Especially in the South African context, a dialogue between these two maskanda discourses is much needed. A prime concern of post-apartheid South African music scholarship-refl ected in research by David Coplan (2002), Louise Meintjes (2003), Carol Muller (1999Muller ( , 2004 and Kathryn Olsen (2000, among others-has been the deconstruction of the legacies of apartheid ideology that still strive to establish purist cultural categories. Th ese authors unearth the commercial exploitation that accompanies consumers' quest (both in South Africa and elsewhere) for "authentic" cultural expressions (see also Taylor 1997:21-31).…”

“…Its status as a genre, however, is determined by rather divergent musical characteristics, and the attribution of those features is oft en informed by ideological or political motivations. A number of recent South African publications carefully deconstruct these motivations, exposing the role of maskanda in the articulation of a Zulu identity in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa (Muller 1999;Olsen 2000;Coplan 2002;Olsen 2009). Th is literature builds on the earlier accounts of maskanda's rootedness in Zulu musics in that it regards these accounts as research subjects in themselves, and attempts to unearth their extra-musical motivations.…”