Shoot!

The photo is one I took while on my first "shoot" at the Soweto campus of the University of Johannesburg. The singers are being filmed for my research and book project and I am freaking out at the responsibilities involved with keeping everyone on schedule and on task. There is a whole lot that goes on at a "shoot". It was fun, and exhausting.

We are having a holiday weekend in South Africa, thanks to Women's Day on Monday. The holiday commemorates women who participated in the overturning of the Apartheid Government and many other contributions. In the early 20th century, women in Durban used their persuasive powers with their husbands who supervised treatment of interned Boers for more humane treatment. Women have repeatedly led and joined in political action throughout the 20th century and are now heading households, participating in government and contributing in just about every imaginable way to this re-developing nation.

Freedom songs, protest songs, songs of complaint, songs for social action...all these terms have a socio-political implication in the text, and many of them have used a style combining harmonic, rhythmic and formulaic elements that became quite recognizable. For some composers and choral directors, it is too far out of fashion for their choirs to sing them, and for others, critical that their choirs have a number of them in the repertoire. For Nobel prize writers, and distinguished literary giants I heard at the opening of the Wits University South African Theatre Festival, the hark back to the days when those songs were so pervasive in Black culture is still extremely important, because the memory of why they were needed is so important. I was in Johannesburg briefly during the festival and the time of the annual Nelson Mandela Lecture. The keynote speaker was Argentine born Ariel Dorfman, who is a poet, playwright, novelist and social justice advocate world wide. If you are interested in reading this year's lecture it is available at this website.

Because I have met South African musicians who want to steer our conversations away from my interest in the freedom song genre, I had begun to wonder if I was really studying something important, or just looking for an interesting history lesson. After hearing the conversation led by Dr. Dorfman the night before the Nelson Mandela annual lecture, I am more convinced than ever that text, context and social justice need a place in music education, every bit as much as years of analysis of form and style or months and years of practice teaching and education theory studies.

I took a trip from my little country home in Empangeni, on the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal, to the big city of Johannesburg. On my first hour in the city, I witnessed a horrible auto accident that I think was fatal and on my second hour, I met Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo, a cultural icon of traditional South African folk music. He's the guy who was appointed by Nelson Mandela to solve the problem of the national anthem. He is also the eldest living composer, born in 1932 and considered the grandfather of South African choral composition. My students and colleagues at the University of Zululand arranged the meeting, and they assisted me with preparing for the interview with Professor Khumalo. What I did not know was that by the end of the day, I would secure a promise for two of his compositions, based on South African Nguni folk traditions to be contributed to my song book effort.

The next day, I met with staff members at the SAMRO centre, (South African Music Rights Organization) to obtain the legal permission and discuss my project further. The legal part of the discussion took all of 10 minutes, but the follow up hour and a half was full of new ideas and contacts for me, that the staff wanted me to have. Enriched by the experience, I hired a videographer and jumped in Wayne's van, just in time for a rehearsal at the University of Johannesburg, Soweto Campus. Wayne is the world's most fabulous driver and transportation company entrepreneur and has himself contributed greatly to my work, as he is the person who organized the famous train ride from Soweto to Johannesburg that Dennis and took in 2009.

Suzi with UJ Director Neo Motswage

Back home in Zululand now, I am wrestling with the logistics of teaching a class with 189 students, and finding time to transcribe interviews and schedule meetings with the people whom I have found to consult. I can now add "I am teaching Music" to my list of phrases that I can utter in isiZulu, and thanks to Sister Biejla my Zulu language teacher and colleague in the College of Ed at UniZulu, I hope to formulate sentences of my own choosing soon.