In "Indian Ocean Soundscapes," Carol A. Muller brings the perspective of an ethnomusicologist to an encounter with the Indian Ocean world. Muller, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, earned her BA in ethnomusicology at Natal University in South Africa and her Ph.D. at NYU. She is a specialist in the music of South Africa, gender studies, critical ethnography, and social history. Born in Capetown, where, as she points out, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean connect, Muller finds in the Indian Ocean cultures a whole history that is not western and that offers exciting ways of conceptualizing her own areas of interest.

Muller points out that for the people of KwaZulu Natal, the Indian Ocean has traditionally been a place of cosmological empowerment. The idea of empowerment informs much of the music of the western part of South Africa. Some of Muller's work has focused on how black women in South African religious communities imaged patriarchal authority. Always, she says, careful study can unpack political processes by carefully listening to the sound of South African music, as well as situate generational conflict and the politics of gender.

In her analysis of gumboot music and dance, Muller describes it as about labor migrations and about the regimentation and authority of the places black South Africans worked. Using a language of command called "fanakalo" (translated "Do it like this"), gumboot dancers both illustrate and undermine their relationship to the workplace. A seasoned gumboot dancer herself, Dr. Muller can have a roomful of novices joyously stomping out a few basic steps within minutes.

Muller's publications include Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire: Nazarite Women's Performance in South Africa (University of Chicago Press, 1999) as well as work on migrant musical performance, indigenous religious practices, gumboot dance, women's narratives, white South African popular music, and South African women in jazz. Her articles and reviews appear in Research in African Languages, Ethnomusicology, African Languages and Culture, and other sources. She is currently working on two books. The first is titled A Home Within: Cape Jazz Song in Exile; it examines jazz, gender, race, and exile in the life and performances of South African-born Sathima Bea Benjamin. The second is a handbook on South African music. As a possible future project, she would like to make available some of the excellent work done on music by students in South Africa, observing that most South African ethnomusicology is now being done outside the country.

CD

Suggested Resources for South African Music and Culture:
Sources of Information for Integrating Music into Study of World History, focused on Indian Ocean

Journals

African Music (South Africa), Yearbook for Traditional Music, Worlds of Music, Ethnomusicology, Current Writing (South Africa), Agenda (South Africa) Conference proceedings, South African Ethnomusicology, purchase through website of International Library of African Music, also instruments for sale. Not overly intellectual, but often good research, begun in early 1980s with first meeting of Ethnomusicologists in SA (about 10 of them, to over 100 in early 1990s!)

Audio Recordings

• Historical, International Library of African Music (Hugh Tracey, now Andrew Tracey, based at Rhodes University in Grahamstown), Sound of Africa series (recordings from late 1930s through 1960s), 200 LPs, some reissued through Smithsonian Folkways (Washington DC)
• Contemporary, reissues of 1950s and early 1960s by Gallo Records, archivist Rob Allingham roba@gallo.co.za, cannot purchase recordings directly from Gallo, but through website www.oneworld.co.za
• Many websites with music for sale now, just do a "South African" and "music" keyword search on search engine, often have artist profiles
• Some musicians with own websites, eg. www.johnnyclegg.com
• Combination of independent record labels, independent labels distributed through major labels (eg. Sony, BMG, Warner Brothers, EMI), and a few signed to majors.
• Afropop series with NPR; Rough Guide to World Music: South Africa
• Smithsonian Folkways, Putumayo and Shanachie are three US independent labels doing lots of world music in a more scholarly way.
• Booktrader, Lars Rasmussen new series on South African musicians, started with comprehensive discography of Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), then Sathima Bea Benjamin, recently a book of photographs of South African jazz shot in Cape Town 1958-1960. To contact LR: booktrad@post8.tele.dk or www.anitkvar.net/booktrader
• Also, to purchase recordings of Abdullah Ibrahim and Sathima Benjamin go to ENJA records site www.ehjarecords.com, or the Sun Records Store in Johannesburg koohinoor@netactive.co.za

Video and DVD recordings

• Growing self-consciousness about value of South African culture in export market, desire to retain control of production.
• Jeremy Marre's series: Beats of the Heart, one video/DVD "Rhythm of Resistance: Black South African Music" (also has one on Indian Film Music Industry, on Roma musicians-one each on gypsies in north Africa and in Europe)
• African Wave. Films for the Humanities (Princeton), 12 part series on individual South African Musicians
• Best place to find South African productions is in the duty-free shops in Johannesburg International airport!, these in PAL have to be converted to NTSC system, but can be done quite easily.
• Brother with Perfect Timing (on Abdullah Ibrahim), Gumboots! (On Broadway production of gumboot dance performance, includes 53 minute documentary of both the history of gumboot dance and the making of the production), Ladysmith Black Mambazo Live at the Royal Albert Hall (London), Graceland: The African Tour and Paul Simon: Graceland etc. I found all these on www.amazon.com
• Historical reissues: Villon Films, 77 W. 28 Ave. Vancouver, BC, V5y 2K7, Canada Reissued on South African made feature films of 1950s: Song of Africa, Zonk!, African Jim, Come Back Africa, Dolly and the Inkspots
• Remakes of previous hits: Ipi Ntombi (very controversial), PBS Home Videos! Umabatha (the Zulu Macbeth).

Books Written on South African Music and Cultural History (available in US, some only in South Africa)

New Series by Kwela Books and South Africa History online (really innovative publishing) Kwela@kwela.com and www.sahistory.org.za, Info@sahistory.org.za Social Identities South Africa Series

• Kala Pani: Caste and Colour in South Africa by Rehana Ebr.Vally
• Coloured by History, Shaped by Place edited by Zimitri Erasmus

Eric Axelson. Vasco da Gama: The Diary of His Travels through African Waters 1497-1499) (Stephan Phillips, PO Box 1230, Somerset West 7129, South Africa, 1998).

Edited collection: Senses of Culture edited by Sarah Nuttal and? By Oxford (about 2000)

Early 20th Century Writing on South African Music

• Hugh Tracey: Dances of the Witwatersrand Gold Mines (ILAM)
• Percival Kirby: Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa
• 1950s on, issues of Journal of African Music Society · 1980s, Proceedings of Ethnomusicology Symposiae, available through ILAM website.
• Vail and White: Power and the Praise Poem-Mozambican song and oral history

Books Published on South African Music in last three decades

• Christopher Ballantine: Marabi Nights! (Ravan 1993)
• David Coplan: In Township Tonight! (Longmans 1985)
• Veit Erlmann, African Stars (Chicago, 1992) and Nightsong (Chicago, 1997), Music, Modernity and the Global Imagination (Oxford 1999)
• Deborah James, Songs of the Women Migrants (Edinburgh UP,1999)
• Margaret McCord. The Calling of Katie Makanya. (David Philip, 1995)
• Denis-Constant Martin. Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town, Past and Present (2000, David Philip)
• Maxine McGregor. Chris McGregor and the Brotherhood of Breath. (Bamberger MI, 1995).
• Molefe, and Mzileni (eds). A Common Hunger to Sing: A Tribute to South Africa's Black Women of Song 1950-1990. (Kwela books, 1997)
• Carol Muller, Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire: Nazarite Women's Performance in South Africa, with CD Rom (Chicago 1999)
• Carol Muller, Forthcoming 2003 ABC-CLIO, South African Music: A Century of Transformation
• Carol Muller (Editor), Izihlabelelo zamaNazaretha, the Hymns of the Nazaretha. Translation of Hymns of Isaiah and Galilee Shembe from Zulu to English (University of Natal Press, Pietermartizburg, forthcoming 2003)
• Carol Muller with Sathima Bea Benjamin. A Home Within: Cape Jazz Singing in Exile (Oxford University Press, American Musicspheres series) forthcoming.

Much unpublished research exists in South African university libraries, by students who do not pursue academic careers, I am hoping to get some of it published in a series on South African music.

Maps

• Vasco da Gama, with narrative.
• Mission Stations in Inanda Native and Mission Reserve (1940s)

Photographs/Images

• Indian Orchestra (Vanesh Neeran MA Thesis)
• Shembe (CD Rom)

Audio-Visual Examples

• Ladysmith Black Mambazo Live at Royal Albert Hall, talking with Joseph Shabalala at start, and then performance.
• Rhythm of Resistance
• Gumboots!
• Paul Simon: Graceland
• Ipi Ntombi: An African Dance Celebration

Musical Examples

• Sai Baba
• Ladysmith Black Mambazo, sound alone
• Shembe
• Sathima singing I Only Have Eyes for You
• Abdullah Ibrahim

Carol A. Muller

Assistant Professor of Music
University of Pennsylvania

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