Music and Social Change in South Africa: maskanda past and present by Kathryn Olsen (review)

Devotees of the Zulu solo guitar and guitar band genre known as maskanda will be very pleased to see this new study by Kathryn Olsen, one of the foremost authorities on the form. Those unfamiliar with maskanda will need the assistance of the copious discography the author has thoughtfully included: thank you, YouTube. The prologue begins with a lively, evocative description of a maskanda performance, but oddly doesn’t inform the reader as to the identity of the observer. I only mention this because this will be almost the last time the reader is treated to any actual on-the-spot ethnographic description.

The first chapter, ‘Maskanda researched’, provides the obligatory epistemological, methodological and theoretical self-reflection and even abnegation, where the author does her best to shuffle off the obligatory guilt over her identity as a white middle-class suburbanite who analyses and interrogates an ur-Zulu musical genre. As a self-declared feminist, she warns against the ‘cultural imperialism’ (read: ethnocentrism) of applying the tenets of European gender studies to Zulu women performers. It is rather a shame she does not take this advice in her subsequent social analysis. I am also not convinced that we need Slavoj Žižek’s ‘parallax view’ (2006) to understand descriptions of what is going on in live maskanda performance. What potential readers really want is not theories of observational positionality but an appreciative and illuminating tour of the genre and its exponents.

This the author provides beginning in Chapter 2, ‘Maskanda’s early years’, with a most helpful review of the musical history of maskanda from its early colonial origins, something the literature on the form has not previously supplied. This is followed by the kind of thoughtful and detailed account of the work of the pioneer of early ‘pop’ or electric guitar band maskanda Phuzushukela (John Bengu) that we would expect from this author. In the following chapter we are introduced to two of the other major innovators of the genre, Shiyani Ngcobo and Phuzekhemisi (Johnson Mnyandu), who represent for Olsen the opposing poles of folk authenticity and pop commercialization in the development of the genre. Predictably perhaps, the author ends up in ethnomusicology’s endlessly recycled authenticity trap. Of course, Shiyani Ngcobo’s acoustic retro style is more culturally faithful, subtle, varied, nuanced and affecting than Phuzekhemisi’s standardized, over-produced, rhythm-heavy electric product for the mass Zulu-and-beyond market. Unsurprisingly, poor Shiyani suffers jealousy, neglect and prejudice from his neighbours in his poverty-stricken village, and dies with his praises unjustly unsung by anyone but himself. Phuzekhemisi, in contrast, enjoys national fame and commercial success and lives on, enjoying their rewards. That all of this, in both music and musical life, is undeniably true in this case does not render the concept of traditional authenticity any less problematic, or the trap less dangerous. Despite such a caution, Olsen’s profound love for Shiyani as both an artist and a kindred soul is strikingly evoked, and her distress at his sufferings and untimely death is keenly affecting.

In Chapter 5, ‘Women playing maskanda’, the author considers in some depth another subject that is clearly close to her heart. Olsen has previously explained how the history and political economy of migrant labour among the Zulu-speaking people led to the emergence of maskanda as a male form of modern traditional music. She appears to regard such gender association as inherently negative, despite the positive and uncontested association of performance genres with one sex or another, one age group or another, one social category or another, or one occasion or another in times and climes throughout the world. The emergence of a wide range of female performers, ensembles (including guitarists) and even composers in maskanda could be seen as a positive, if only gradual, progression for the form. But such progress seems to represent only a lamentable...