Reading skylines: expanding musicological discourse in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In viewing the contemporary musical landscape in South Africa 20 years after the fall of apartheid, this article seeks to understand how the discourse of musicology might expand in an interdisciplinary manner to allow for the analysis of current compositions. In doing so, the article traces interdisciplinary tendencies in recent musicological scholarship to locate such an expansion in the study of heterogeneous compositions. These compositions attempt to critically engage with their environment and as such the article seeks an analytical approach that might unlock this critical potential. One such composition is Mocke Jansen van Veuren's Jozi Rhythmanalogues and thus it becomes a case study in the article. The work uses Lefebvre's notion of rhythmanalysis as a premise and is situated strongly in contemporary Johannesburg, South Africa. Through understanding this premise and attempting to unlock how it, through the unfolding of the composition, might engage with its environment, it becomes clear that interdisciplinary expansion of a fundamental grammar of musicology is needed.