Voices Of People Research Articles

Musical Understanding: The Ethnoaesthetics of Migrant Workers' Poetic Song in Lesotho

ne of consequences of expanding presence of non-Western scholars in humanities is vitalizing criticism, on both epistemological and political grounds, of our ways and means of depicting colonized traditional peoples. In pursuing accurate representation of their participation in events, we must seek every available means of hearing and comprehending the voice of people. Ethnographically, people's voice consists in expression of what Clifford Geertz (1983) has called knowledge: a people's conceptions and perceptions of themselves and of their situation in society and history, formulated in terms and occasions of their culture. Such knowledge clearly plays a key role in ways people respond to, and seek to control, shifting pressures and conditions of their communal and individual lives. Cultural performances involving music, dance, verbal art, and other aesthetic media serve both to formulate local knowledge and to communicate its shared understandings in total context of social institutions, relationships, and realities. As James Fernandez (1986:105) argues for deepsong of Asturian countrymen, Songs and verses may not be final causes of interpersonal relations, but they are surely efficient causes for way cattle keepers and miners represent their situation to themselves. Even before Klaus Wachsmann's pioneering collection, Essays on Music and History in Africa (1971), musical traditions, genres, instruments, tech-

Flying Through the Fear Barrier

The story of the TKN — the Society for Academic Courses, known as the ‘Flying University’ — which was set up to counter the omissions and distortions in state education. ‘Our greatest achievement was breaking the barrier of fear, bringing people together for the purpose of self-education, and simply sustaining the will to carry on.’ Two distinguished representatives of the thriving ‘alternative culture’ in Poland visited the USA and Britain respectively last year. One spoke about the activities of the ‘Society for Academic Courses’ which is responsible for university lectures in private apartments, trying in particular to set the record straight as regards Polish history; and the other spoke about the successes of the leading Catholic publishing house which has just celebrated its 25th anniversary. Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, while visiting the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, gave an interview to Marek Nowak, the full text of which appeared in Studium Papers (Ann Arbor) 3/1984; a condensed version is printed below. During a visit to London, Jacek Wozniakowski described the work of the Znak publishing house, of which he is the Director. (See box ‘Znak: Making people's voices heard.’)

Speaking “common sense”; about the Soviet threat: Reagan's rhetorical stance

This paper examines the symbolic resources employed by Ronald Reagan to characterize his anti‐Soviet policies and increased military expenditures as common‐sense adaptations to a real threat. The pattern of his rhetorical efforts is to establish a basic context of assumptions about Soviet conduct, using the metaphor of savagery and a set of decivilizing vehicles as primary resources. The resulting image is “literalized”; through an interplay of metaphor and evidence in which the trope calls attention to supportive information and discounts inconsistent data. A Presidential persona incarnates the people's voice to lend a further note of rationality to the heroic call for a strong America. Attempts by critics to combat Reagan's rhetoric are frustrated by the absence of a compelling substitute for his image of Soviet barbarism.

V. A. An Interview with Wang Xizhe by the Guangzhou People's Voice

Abstract In order to publish Comrade Wang Xizhe's "Strive for the Class Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the reporter of the People's Voice interviewed Comrade Wang Xizhe. Their conversation is abstracted as follows: Question: When did you begin writing this article ?

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society.

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society.

The People's Voice in Guangzhou is Inaugurated

(A dispatch by our journal's correspondent, datelined Guangzhou) In December last year, a "Study Group of Scientific Socialism" was formed in Guangzhou, and it began to publish a monthly entitled The People's Voice. In the first issue of the journal, the study group announced in its inaugural statement: "During the course of this Long March and in the excellent situation in which the Party Central Committee is devoting its effort to grasping the key link of class struggle and bringing about great order across the land, we are resolved to contribute whatever little strength we have to this great revolution. Because of this, we have formed of our own accord the ‘Study Group of Scientific Socialism’ and started publishing the journal The People's Voice. We are determined to exercise correctly the democratic rights we have in an effort to wave the banner and cheer the series of Marxist principles and policies laid down by the Party, to criticize and expose in depth the reactionary ideological system of Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four, 1 and to sweep away all the remaining evil elements of feudalism and fascism."

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society

The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society

A Letter to the People From People's Voice

A Letter to the People From People's Voice

Jerry Simpson: The people's voice

This article discusses the significance of Jerry Simpson as a symbol of Kansas Populism between 1890–1895. It maintains that the “third‐party'’ influence of the movement and of Simpson as a leader derived from the grass‐roots urgency which William Jennings Bryan crystallized in the Democratic party with greater authority.