Writing the history of art music in Africa: a case of symbolic interactionism

Abstract

There are two pertinent issues with regard to written histories of art music in Africa. First, the non-existence of written histories, and second, deficiencies in existing literature. A categorisation of literary tropes – contemporary hagiography, the self-promotion of difference, and the self-promotion of prescribed Africanisation – which I argue bars African scholarship on art music from partaking in global discourses, is presented in the first part of the article. These nationalist historiographical practices are read as acts of strategic essentialism. In the second part I present a problematisation in the context of the material archive, using the ethnography of my visit to the collection of modern African music at Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, Germany, as the point of reference. From this I conclude that the promotion of the intellectual ownership of knowledge on Africa by Africa should serve a much greater purpose than the symbolic act of postcolonial restoration of simply transferring physical ownership of archives. Finally, I explain how strategic essentialism and the transfer of the physical ownership of archives can both be understood as exercises in symbolic interactionism.