Sound, memory and dis/placement: Exploring sound, song and performance as oral history in the southern African borderlands

Impey, Angela

Abstract

This paper draws on research conducted in the borderlands of South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. It proposes that sound, song and the affect of music-making represent a much under-utilised historical research resource, particularly in contexts of spatial and social rupture. Through the revitalisation of two traditional mouthbows and the jews harp – instruments once played by young Nguni women while walking, but remembered now by elderly women only – it explores music’s capacity to operate as both historical text and oral testimony, providing a focus for mobilising collective evocations of self and place, and aimed at raising the level of the voices of a community whose livelihood and sociality are at variance with broader socio-economic and environmental development processes in the region.

Citation

Impey, A. (2007). Sound, memory and dis/placement: Exploring sound, song and performance as oral history in the southern African borderlands. Oral History, 36(1), 33-44

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Mar 2, 2010
• Journal: Oral History
• Print ISSN: 0143-0955
• Publisher: Oral History Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 36
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 33-44
• Publisher URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40179966