Status Report

The public school year is almost at and end, and the university final exam season is in its last week.  My travel schedule is nearly complete, though I still have to travel south on the Garden Route toward the Indian Ocean, make a day trip to Lesotho, and spend one last time in Johannesburg.  With Dennis' help, video and photo sessions will be finished in early December, leaving me mostly to ponder the entire collection of videos, photos, audio recordings, transcribed songs, field notes and transcribed interviews.  Graduate student Meaghan Dunham worked on song and interview transcriptions during her time here, using simple I-Movie editing to separate songs on video and Finale software.  

ASU Grad students Meaghan and Lee with UFS student and Musicon Teacher Tsolofelo

National choral competitions are coming up soon, offering me one final opportunity to record folk songs in languages with which I have had little interaction so far.  There are 11 official languages in this nation, and I've been successfully collecting songs and recording choirs singing in 9 of those languages so far.  The languages of Ndbele and Swati are still at large, and the reason is that most Ndbele speakers don't actually live in South Africa, except on the borders near Zimbabwe and Swati is a language from the neighboring nation of Swaziland, where I have not traveled.  Both of these languages are considered "Nguni" languages, meaning that their origins are the same as the Zulu and Xhosa.  I have utilized the services of several directors, who can speak English as well as several other languages, so my songs can be correctly translated and my research notes checked for accuracy.

Zionist Church in the Eastern Cape - Xhosa church members  - Sunday morning arrival

Inside the Zionist Church - Music Underway Immediately

I have spent some time in the past week pouring over dissertations, articles, books, and unpublished writings on the topic of freedom songs, folkloric songs and the development of choral music throughout the 20th century.  My sources need to be converted to electronic documents for further analysis, which requires conversion of paper to pdf files, not always the easiest task to accomplish.  Fortunately, I have had the resources of the most magical copy machine in the Music Department at the University of the Free State, as well as the graduate assistant Lee Roueche, to assist me in completing the conversion of all files.  Lee has archivist skills, which means she can read deep into library data bases to determine the availability and feasibility of accessing materials.  She has good investigative skills too, so when I hit a wall, I sometimes just ask her a question and she comes back to me an hour later, a day later, or a week later (whatever it takes) with an answer.

Evening drive to Grahamstown, Eastern Cape from Bloemfontein, Free State

I have spent hours listening to choirs sing, and then listening to recordings of those same choirs, some of which I did myself and some which I paid others to record.  Every room, and every township, and every choir, and every director is so different, that each experience has been new and challenging.  Sometimes opportunities creep up when I least expect it, and I have benefited greatly from having photographers traipse around with me on those occasions.  Other times, disappointing results follow long waits and exhausting or expensive travel.  But it is all worth it in the bigger picture sense that I have seen and heard singers and songs from the hearts of so many different communities and from so many viewpoints that I understand singing in a way I did not before.  People sing for many complex reasons and for no reason at all.  Sometimes when I am really trying to understand songs and singers, it turns out that people do things because they are fun or because they always do these things every Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. or because without the music, they - like me  - would be lost souls.

Suzi listening at the Music Library of Rhodes University

So here's a fun saying that I have learned.  One says it when one has given instructions or explained how to accomplish something.  The expression is "....and Bob's your Uncle."  I think it may come from the British, and find it very funny.  There is no "Bob"  - it just means that everything has been explained, everything is easy as pie, and there's no need to further analyze anything.  So, all I have to do now is see the graduate students safely to their flights on Monday, pick up my husband on Wednesday, book the hotel on the Garden Route for the following week, attend the national choral competitions on the weekend, meet some Ndebele and Swati musicians there, clean out my office, schedule the final session in Johannesburg, do it, and fly home...........and BOB's MY UNCLE!