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STRUCTURE AND LAYOUT
There is convincing evidence that commonalities and consistencies which existed in the ‘thought world’ of literate black South Mricans substantially influenced the specific jazz-related music materials which they chose as media of entertainment and expression. The focus of analysis in this work is for the most part this ‘thought world’: the concepts and beliefs dominant in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and which appear to have influenced both the choices and perceptions of styles.
There is sufficient evidence to endorse the claims by Ballantine (1993:11), Bozzoli (1983;40), Sole (1983:75), Lodge (1983:339) and Marks & Rathbone (1982:2) that there is no definitive relationship between the existence of class strata and cultural choices. (« While there may be economic classes in the making in South Mrica, there have been few ‘class cultures' » (Bozzoli 1983:40/41)). In the jazz milieu, specifically, the same entertainment-style could be supported by educated, sophisticated teachers, nurses, clerks and social workers and at the same time by illiterate manual labourers, mine-workers or domestic helpers. Nevertheless, there is at least some evidence to support the hypothesis that there are in cultural activities and music styles other than American jazz (although some were closely related to jazz), limited periods in which there are distinguishable glimpses of class-based tendencies to support certain activities. These will be referred to for contextual purposes where appropriate.
Consciously or unconsciously, the black South Mrican entertainment stage – with jazz and vaudeville as the increasingly major components amongst other styles like choral singing and ‘serious’ art music – reflected the divergent and often conflicting ideologies of the varying degrees of education, westernisation and urbanisation of black society. For some, jazz represented an « international musical vernacular of the oppressed »; black music proclaiming solidarity with black Americans (Ballantine 1993:8). For others, it was a vehicle appropriated for the expression of a unique, burgeoning African pride (and unlike Ballantine, this author argues that these two groups were at certain times quite disparate); for some black liberal pedants, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, the fact that jazz was acceptable to South Mrican whites was of even more importance than its relationship with American jazz.
The focal point of this thesis is an attempt to analyse the ideological input, the characteristic manner of thinking, of at least one sector of society into the ‘coalescing culture’ of jazz, as well as (and sometimes distinct from) that of jazz-related styles. The difficulty of such analysis has faced Coplan, Ballantine and Hamm: the ‘untangling’ and interpretation of what were for the most part subliminal motivations for, and traits exhibited in, the choice of jazz-related music entertainment styles. Furthermore, the sole available ‘hard evidence’ of such a ‘thought world’ or motivating ideology, is what was written in that period, mainly in the press, and therefore, by definition, by representatives of the black intelligentsia. This work will thus for the most part of necessity emphasise the ‘input’ or ideological motivations for cultural choices of the educated, or elite, members of black South Mrican society. An attempt will be made to deduce the ideological aspirations or motivations for cultural choices of the masses of semi-urbanised, illiterate black South Mricans. However, this will be done from the perspective that such deductions are, for the reasons expressed above, speculative: while made on the basis of such evidence as can be inferred from the advantage of historical hindsight, they are nevertheless presented as subjective opinion rather than objective academic truth. In every instance an attempt will be made to provide as much substantiation as available in arriving at such opinion.
The constraints of both the newspaper research referred to above, and the limited number of remaining musicians available for interviews who are both representative of the proletarian masses and who can make a meaningful contribution to this work in terms of articulating thoughts from which significant deductions can be made, are the same constraints which have faced other researchers in this field. Where claims of purported motivating ideologies or ‘views’ which influenced the cultural choices of the lumpenproletariat are made by other writers, while they may in fact be accurate, they are essentially speculative.
In the case of interviews with musicians representative of the various styles under discussion, the opinions expressed are as varied and subjective as there were interviewees, or more specifically, as there were socio-political interests represented. All these opinions are valid and authentic and of infinite value in providing different perspectives – substantiating, contradicting or demonstrating utter oblivion of the thoughts expressed in the press. However, their greatest value lies in the illustration of the point which approaches, but is not identical to, that made by Bozzoli: that different classes could support the same entertainment structures; however, their input into these forms was motivated – consciously or unconsciously – from different socio-political, or even asocio- political, perceptual stances (Bozzoli 1983:42).
CHAPTER 1 STRUCTURE AND LAYOUT
CHAPTER 2 AN OVERVIEW OF URBAN POPULAR MUSIC IN AFRICA
CHAPTER 3 AN OVERVIEW OF MILESTONES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN STYLES
CHAPTER 4 THE INFLUENCE OF IDEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS AND BELIEFS ON PERCEPTIONS OF WESTERN MUSIC STYLES
CHAPTER 5 THE RISE OF AFRICAN JAZZ AND RELATED STYLES VIs-A-VIS AMERICAN JAZZ
CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
