Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-28T05:43:25.832Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Subjunctive pleasure: the odd hour in the boeremusiek museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2014

Willemien Froneman
Willemien Froneman*
Affiliation:
Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602, South Africa E-mail: willemien.froneman@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper introduces the subjunctive as a modality of engaging in musical life, in this instance the contemporary white folk music scene of boeremusiek in South Africa. The genre has repeatedly been portrayed as forever vanishing – a discourse that still characterises contemporary events put up by the largest boeremusiek organisation in South Africa, the Boeremusiekgilde (Boeremusiek Guild). The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of discourses of nostalgia and salvage on participants' experiences of liveness in the present. It is shown how a deep dissatisfaction for live performance developed throughout the genre's 20th-century history. The repeated framing of present enjoyment in terms of past models of nationalist duty cast the actual actions of participants in the mode of subjunctive possibility, it is argued. As rituals of mourning, boeremusiek events bemoan personal histories fundamentally tainted by political transgression: the loss of intimate spaces of white innocence.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Baudrillard, J. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press)Google Scholar
Bodenstein, M. 2010. Author's interviewGoogle Scholar
Boeremusiekgilde. 2004. Boeremusiekgilde: 15 goue jare 1989–2004 (Noordstad, Boeremusiekgilde)Google Scholar
Bruinders, S. 2006. ‘“This is our sport!” Christmas Band Competitions and the Enactment of an Ideal Community,’ South African Journal of Musicology, 26 & 27, pp. 109–26Google Scholar
Bruner, J. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassia, P.S. 2000. ‘Exoticizing discoveries and extraordinary experiences: “Traditional” music, modernity, and nostalgia in Malta and other Mediterranean societies,’ Ethnomusicology, 44/2, pp. 281–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, J. 1986. ‘On ethnographic allegory,’ in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Plessis, J. 2009. Author's interviewGoogle Scholar
Epstein, M. 2001. Filosofiia vozmozhnogo. Modal'nosti v myshlenii i kul'ture [The Philosophy of the Possible: The Modalities in Thought and Culture] (St. Petersburg, Alateia). Summary of the book in English retrieved from http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/phil_poss_summary.html (accessed 6 February 2012)Google Scholar
Ferreira, I.L. 1995. Die Boeremusiekgilde se vyf goue jare 1989–1994 (Valhalla, Boeremusiekgilde)Google Scholar
Froneman, W. 2012a. ‘She danced alone: Jo Fourie, songcatcher of the Groot Marico,’ Ethnomusicology Forum, 21/1, pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Froneman, W. 2012b. ‘Pleasure beyond the call of duty: perspectives, retrospectives and speculations on Boeremusiek’, PhD thesis (Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch University)Google Scholar
Hartman, A. 1955. ‘Waarheen boeremusiek?’ Dagbreek en Sondagnuus, sec. Klank en kleur, p. 1Google Scholar
Hedtke, L., and Winslade, J. 2004. ‘The use of the subjunctive in re-membering conversations with those that are grieving,’ Omega – Journal of Death and Dying, 50/3, pp. 197–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedtke, L., and Winslade, J. 2005. Trafficking in the World of Possibilities Narrative Network NewsGoogle Scholar
Kotzé, T. 1987. ‘Die misvloernuwejaar,’ in Die vlugroep van die Kelkiewyn (Cape Town, Saayman & Weber), pp. 44–53Google Scholar
Middleton, R. 2007. ‘O brother, let's go down home: loss, nostalgia and the blues,’ Popular Music, 26/1, pp. 47–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, G. 2007. The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945–1980 (Aldershot, Ashgate)Google Scholar
Moore, A.F. 1998. ‘U2 and the myth of authenticity in rock,’ Popular Musicology, 3/6, pp. 5–33Google Scholar
Muller, S. 2001. ‘Spaces of nationness: on myth, masks, music and Afrikaner identity,’ Tydskrif vir Nederlands en Afrikaans, 8/1, pp. 142–72Google Scholar
Plastino, G. 2007. ‘Lazzari felici: Neapolitan song and/as nostalgia,’ Popular Music, 26/3, pp. 429–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roodt, P., and Roodt, B. 2009. Author's interviewGoogle Scholar
Rosaldo, R. 1989. ‘Imperialist nostalgia,’ Representations, 26, pp. 107–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, K. 1988. ‘Nostalgia – A Ploemic,’ Cultural Anthropology, 3/3, pp. 227–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, V.W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul)Google Scholar
Van den Berg, R.J. 1976. Die musiekaktiwiteite van die SAUK. MMus thesis (Potchefstroomse, Potchefstroomse Universiteit vir Christelike Hoër Onderwys)Google Scholar
Wilson, J.L. 2005. Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Cranbury, NJ, Rosemont Publishing)Google Scholar
de Lange, David. Suikerbossie/Roosterkoek Settees. Singer, GE 264. 1936Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, Steve, ‘DKW’. Duisend en een. EMI, CDEMIM 361. 2010Google Scholar
Rauch, Laurika. Stuur groete aan Mannetjies Roux. Select Music, CD200003-2. 1996Google Scholar
de Lange, David. Suikerbossie/Roosterkoek Settees. Singer, GE 264. 1936Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, Steve, ‘DKW’. Duisend en een. EMI, CDEMIM 361. 2010Google Scholar
Rauch, Laurika. Stuur groete aan Mannetjies Roux. Select Music, CD200003-2. 1996Google Scholar