Singing the African continent

Abstract

During the past 18 months students at South African universities have called for free, decolonised and Afrocentric education. While the first part of the call is clear to all, the other two are worth investigating in more detail. What does the call for decolonisation and Afrocentrism mean generally, and what are the implications for tertiary music education or a music journal that carries the term ‘Africa’ in its title and scope? ‘The Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa (JMAA) [...] is an accredited, internationally refereed journal that aims to combine ethnomusicological, musicological, music educational and performance-based research in a unique way to promote the musical arts on the African continent.’ Originally the term decolonisation meant the ‘process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country’ . The term referred to the political process of gaining independence only. However, it is now being used in a way that conflates this meaning with the ideas of postcolonialism. This term, too, was initially used in a purely political sense to describe ‘the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism’ . However, it ‘can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism’ . During the period following decolonisation ‘previously subjugated individuals sought to assert control over not only territorial boundaries – albeit ones carved out by the imperial powers – but also their language and history’ . This latter meaning is the one the student movement seems to apply to the idea of a decolonised education. A manifesto from the student group Inkqubela active at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town, calls for a ‘deep and continuing discussion on what it means to be a performing arts campus in an African Country’ . However, the two aspects – political independence and independence of thought, history and culture – are intricately linked, and fall together in the students movement’s idea of an African or national South African identity. Yet at the same time the search for this identity reveals the impossibility of defining what is authentically African or South African, or of going back to this mystical authentic state. Both concepts, that of history and that of identity, are therefore questioned by some postcolonial scholars: