Mmino wa setso: songs of town and country and the experience of migrancy by men and women from the northern Transvaal.

[摘要] The thesis attempts to illuminate the process through which identitities, apparently stronglyethnic, are constructed by migrant women, and to examine how these differ from theequivalent identities constructed by men.The focus is upon northern Transvaal migrancy, and special emphasis is given to the centralrole played by musical performance - particularly that of the style called kiba - in constitutingmigrant associations. Men and women form separate dance associations: the thesis isconcerned particularly with migrant women, and sets the dance groups in the broader settingof female migrancy in southern Africa. This is a phenomenon which has been neglected inthe literature. The thesis criticises the adaptive emphasis of earlier Writings on migrantassociation, and the lack of local knowledge in Marxist accounts,Performers of the genre emphasise that the music is traditional,and their lyrics legitimatethe present experiences of contemporary composers by juxtaposing them with the pastexperiences of older ones. They view the roles they play in relation to their family members both living dependents and deceased forebears - in terms of stereotypes laid down by Sothocustom. But these independent migrant female performers of the genre, in contrast to theirrurally-domiciled and. dependent counterparts, are women whose disrupted and geographicallymobile upbringing has led them to seek out modernity and progress rather than an adherenceto the ways of traditionalists. They are primary breadwinners for their natal families.Custom and tradition provide an idiom in terms of which, while retaining affiliations to men'skiba sufficient to ensure their continued access to a performance space and an audience, theyenunciate an identity as relatively autonomous and emancipated migrants in an urban context.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand