Conference Agenda

ILAM has been engaged in digital return since around 2014. The process has opened up questions of ownership, access and knowledge. This has been of particular importance with regard to Hugh Tracey’s metadata, which was often erroneous, and his cataloguing system, which was adopted from western practices without critical reflection, and with the exclusion of the performers. The process has also brought to attention the one-sided approach to digital return, such that while recordings were returned to so-called communities of origin there were very few attempts to obtain feedback from these communities after the return.

In this presentation, I focus on one such community in Grahamstown, the place where ILAM is based. I describe how digital return unfolded and the processes by which attempts were made to involve the community in reviving an interest in the music. Hugh Tracey made a large number of recordings of the amaXhosa in the 1950s. Since around 8 years ago, we started returning these recordings to local DJs and other artists. I address in this presentation the negotiations and the outcomes of what occurs when a new generation of artists are involved in a dialogical process of digital return where their voices matter. How, I ask, can digital return restore relations with a new generation of musicians and artists for whom the power to engage with such content is critical?

The first issue of the UMS Musical Times was published in Cape Town, South Africa, in September 1854. Regarded as the earliest South African music periodical, this ten-page handwritten document was distributed among members of the United Musical Society (UMS), established two years earlier. The contents of the first issues comprised original writings by UMS members alongside material reproduced from existing publications, often accompanied by illustrations. Three known issues of The Musical Times have survived, reproduced in a photocopied compilation by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 1966. An inscription in this bound volume notes that the copies were made from manuscripts belonging to John Juritz and Percival Kirby, whose personal papers are likewise housed in UCT Special Collections. As some of the earliest written documentation of music-making in South Africa, the surviving issues of The Musical Times provide a valuable lens through which to examine 19th-century musical life in the Cape Colony, then under British rule. Most articles reflect this Western colonial sphere, concentrating on European music, composers, instruments and events. It is, however, particularly in the articles focusing on local happenings and African musics that a true glimpse into the social fabric of colonialism in the Cape Colony becomes apparent. This paper first outlines efforts to locate the original manuscripts of the surviving Musical Times, and their preservation and status within UCT Special Collections. Secondly, it examines how the periodical’s content, patronage, tone, publication format and other features reflect the colonial zeitgeist of 1850s South Africa.

De nos jours, il faut reconnaitre que nos instruments de musique avaient pour objectifs, en plus de la production sonore, d’autres rôles purement fonctionnels. A l’ère de la mondialisation, où le culturel et le capital font bon ménage, les décideurs et investisseurs africains se doivent de repenser une nouvelle vision dans l’exploitation et l’utilisation de nos instruments de musique traditionnels tout en restants vigilants de la sauvegarde de nos identités culturelles que charrient ces objets sonores. Alors, quelles stratégies adoptées pour aller vers la standardisation de certains instruments de musique traditionnels africains ? Si nous regardons derrière nous, nous constatons que la plus part des instruments modernes hérités proviennent de traditions parfois plus récentes que celles de nos instruments. La présente communication est de faite l’état des lieux de la question et de faire une analyser sur les enjeux socio-économiques pour permettre à nos décideurs de mieux se pencher sur la question.

tbc