Musical Inculturation, Theological Transformation, and the Construction of Black Nationalism in Early South African Choral Music Tradition

In their encounter with Europeans under colonialism and apartheid, black South Africans struggled to preserve their African identity. From the middle of the nineteenth century, an emergent urban black intellectual elite used choral music to articulate the experiences and aspirations of their people. This paper discusses their use of choral music as expressive culture and a form of cultural nationalism that sought to maintain a balance between the integrity of their African identity and their Christian experience by reformulating and reinterpreting elements of biblical Christianity to correspond to their African worldview.