Cape Town Harmonies: Memory, Humour & Resilience

By Armelle Gaulier & Denis-Constant Martin

“Cape Town’s public cultures can only be fully appreciated through recognition of its deep and diverse soundscape. We have to listen to what has made and makes a city. The ear is an integral part of the ‘research tools’ one needs to get a sense of any city. We have to listen to the sounds that made and make the expansive ‘mother city’. Various of its constituent parts sound different from each other … [T]here is the sound of the singing men and their choirs (“teams” they are called) in preparation for the longstanding annual Malay choral competitions. The lyrics from the various repertoires they perform are hardly ever written down. […] There are texts of the hallowed ‘Dutch songs’ but these do not circulate easily and widely. Researchers dream of finding lyrics from decades ago, not to mention a few generations ago – back to the early 19th century. This work by Denis Constant Martin and Armelle Gaulier provides us with a very useful selection of these songs. More than that, it is a critical sociological reflection of the place of these songs and their performers in the context that have given rise to them and sustains their relevance. It is a necessary work and is a very important scholarly intervention about a rather neglected aspect of the history and present production of music in the city.”

— Shamil Jeppie, Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.824636

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Reviews

John Brown Childs, Professor Emeritus in Sociology, University of California Santa Cruz
07/03/2018
“I have benefitted from your openness to hearing the sounds, sights, and deep currents being expressed in the musics of the Cape Town Malay Choirs and Klopse. I greatly appreciate and have learned much from this openness to the physicality and the alert mindful creativity of those who make this music that emerges from both universality and “locatable distinctiveness”. Moreover, your emphasis on “cultural practices” as a wide “gamut of reactions to oppression, many of them pervaded by ambivalence”, is very illuminating. Indeed “ambivalence” is much too underrated in the social sciences. The ways in which the Choirs navigate countervailing currents is quite remarkable. The ability of both of you to be there, to experience these “local imaginaries” presents your readers with a wonderful multi-dimensional, richly flavoured comprehension of this Cape Town world, for which I thank you. I would also like to thank you for the chapter on appropriation. It is a very helpful analytical overview that will be useful in several discussions with which I am involved.”

Acknowledgements vii

Foreword xiii

Prologue xvii

INTRODUCTION 1

Part One: Memory and Processes of Musical Appropriation

CHAPTER 1 Music behind the music: Appropriation as the engine of creation 39

CHAPTER 2 In the footsteps of the future: Musical memory and reconciliation in South Africa 59

Part Two: Nederlandsliedjies and Notions of Blending

CHAPTER 3 The nederlandsliedjies’ “uniqueness” 77

CHAPTER 4 The meanings of blending 107

Part Three Moppies: Humour and Survival

CHAPTER 5 Assembling comic songs 135

CHAPTER 6 Behind the comic 179

CONCLUSION

Memory, resilience, identity and creolisation 219

Appendix 1 – Nederlandsliedjies lyrics 237

Appendix 2 – Cape Malay Choir Board adjudication reports 247

Appendix 3 – Moppie lyrics 253

References 321

Interviews with musicians, judges and experts 335

Video clips

Videos of Malay Choirs, mostly shot during official competitions, can be found on the “Malay Choirs” page of YouTube. Below is a list of links to a sample of excellent interpretations of nederlandsliedjies and Moppies.

Nederlandsliedjies

Jonge Studente: Wees Ewig Lustig

Jonge Studente: Groot Vogelen

Ottomans Sporting Club: Vriende wilt gij mijn aanhooren

Primrose MVC: Blom en Blaar

Young Men Sporting Club: Die Klok Slaan Acht

Young Men Sporting Club: Die Orkaane

Moppies – Comic Songs

Calypso Singkoor: Paris Hilton Vanie Kaap

Coronation Singkoor: Sokkie Dans

Coronation Singkoor: Sarah se Frikkedella

Ottomans Sporting Club: Gertie