The influence of early Apartheid intellectualisation on twentieth-century Afrikaans music historiography

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis attempts to understand questions of our past in the present. It is broadlypremised on the assumption of complicity as an interpretive frame in which therelationship between Apartheid intellectualisation and Afrikaans music historiographycan be elucidated. Its protagonists are Gerrie Eloff, Geoffrey Cronjé, H.F. Verwoerd,Piet Meyer, Jan Bouws, Rosa Nepgen and Jacques Philip Malan. In each of the fourchapters, I attempt to construct metaphors, points of intersection or articulationbetween Apartheid intellectualisation and Afrikaans music historiography. Music isnever entirely absent: for Apartheid ideologues such as Geoffrey Cronjé and GerrieEloff musical metaphors become ways of enunciating racial theories, for the Dutchmusicologist Jan Bouws music provides entry into South Africa and its discourses, forJ.P. Malan music becomes a conduit that could facilitate national goals and for RosaNepgen music constitutes the perfect domain for and the gestating impulse of her ownoften ornate national devotions. Some of the themes addressed in this thesis includethe language and metaphors of Apartheid intellectualisation, discourses of paranoia,struggle, purity, contamination, the 'Afrikanermoeder' ('Afrikaner mother'), thecultural language of Afrikaner nationalism and the reciprocity between culturalfecundity and dominance of the land. The final denouement comprises a positing ofthe Afrikaans art song 'O Boereplaas' and the singing soprano Afrikanermoeder whoemerges as the keeper of Afrikaner blood purity, guardian of her race and prophet ofits fate and future.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University