Sounding futures: Black operatic voice in postapartheid South Africa
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Citation
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the participation and education of Black South Africans in opera and the processes of some of the opera industry’s institutions. The aim of this dissertation is to put Black vocal pedagogies, Black quotidian experiences, and institutional processes in conversation with South Africa’s colonial and apartheid pasts. In doing so this dissertation examines the ways in which Black pedagogies reflect self-hood and community in Black townships and the ways in which the opera industry unwittingly separates itself from such communities. This dissertation also contends that Black vocal pedagogies are possible sites for decolonization in South African opera. This dissertation delineates and theorizes a Black pedagogy of the operatic voice in South Africa and provides critical frameworks for such pedagogies. Covering South African history from roughly 1860s-present, this dissertation traces the origins of opera and operatic theatre in South Africa and how Black South Africans innovated the genre and developed their own educational methods. It demonstrates how such innovations developed alongside of and challenged the British and Dutch colonial projects. It also demonstrates how, through case studies of three contemporary opera companies, how opera and opera practitioners are participating in South Africa’s decolonization process. Fieldwork was conducted in Cape Town and its surrounding townships between in 2019 and 2022. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, virtual fieldwork was conducted between 2020-2021.
Description
2023
License
Attribution 4.0 International