Music and discourse archaeology: critical studies of GDR 'Rote Lieder' and Afrikaans 'Volk- en Vaderlandsliedere' as based on a model of interacting philosophical sub-theories

[摘要] English: Indoctrination through music is a well-known phenomenon which has been used for centuries as a strategy to influence society and instil certain beliefs and attitudes in people. Extensive research over the last few decades confirms music as a propagandist method to promote ideology. In this study, it is my aim to focus on two specific instances of such indoctrination, namely the 'rote Lieder which were sung in the German Democratic Republic, as well as Afrikaans 'Volks- en Vaderlandsliedere as deployed before and during the apartheid era in South Africa. After National Socialism, people were once again exposed to propaganda in the German Democratic Republic. Several mass organisations were formed by the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), including youth organisations such as the Young Pioneers, the Thälmann Pioneers and the Free German Youth, and society was introduced to songs of an ideological nature, encouraging belief in the communist system. These GDR 'rote Lieder were published in songbooks used especially by youth organisations. In this way the GDR government managed to gain support for the communist regime and a successful endeavour was initiated to circulate ideologically-loaded folk songs amongst the GDR citizens. In South Africa an Afrikaner ideology of racial segregation slowly emerged during the first decades of the 20th century, reaching a climax with a political take-over of the National Party in 1948. The songbook of the FAK (Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations), published in 1937, quickly gained popularity and promoted patriotism and nationalism among white Afrikaners, finding its way into Afrikaner homes, churches, organisations and schools, thus becoming unanimous with Afrikaner culture. Similar to the GDR, these songs were sung especially by the youth in schools and youth organisations. The governments of both the GDR and South Africa never formally disclosed the implementation of ideologically-driven songs to indoctrinate people, but this does not mean that they did not understand the value and effectiveness of using music and song text to sway large groups of people, and actively used these to convey political ideas. An ideology-critical analysis of a selection of folk songs taken from the GDR and FAK songbooks could therefore uncover underlying ideological structures which may have had a profound but possibly distorted effect on those who sang these songs. Against this background, this thesis investigates the extent to which ideology is present and operative in GDR songs and FAK 'Volk- en Vaderlandsliedere by distorting reality through misrepresenting the conditions of a particular set of social-historical circumstances; expressing the interests of those in power; mobilising meaning so as to establish and perpetuate relationships of domination, and concealing relationships of domination. In order to uncover such ideological content, the theoretical framework for ideology analysis, as presented by John Thompson with his depth-hermeneutical, multi-level critical approach, and sub-theories of Discourse Archaeology as proposed by Johann Visagie, are applied. By combining Visagie's Discourse Archaeology with the discourse of critical musicology, the underlying and sometimes hidden ideological deep structures found in political folk songs revealed deep-seated ideological beliefs concealed within these songs and unmasked hidden relationships of domination. The conclusion reached is that ideological indoctrination is present in both the 'rote Lieder' and the 'Volks- en Vaderlandsliedere to a substantive degree. This confirms that the sub-theories of Discourse Archaeology are highly-complex ideological-critical tools with which deep-rooted ideological meanings in political folk songs were identified and exposed in this study within two very specific socio-historical environments. Moreover, when utilised in combination, each of the models introduced and applied in this thesis offers its own below-the-surface analysis on different levels and in different fields using their own language to describe structures and systems in a way that is not possible with 'everyday' language, thus providing the analyst with an all-encompassing, powerful analytical framework with which to expose the philosophical deep structures of indoctrination through music that might have gone unnoticed in a more traditionally-oriented mode of musical analysis.

[发布机构] University of the Free State