Product Description: Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, often evocative, and sometimes cacophonous auditory sense. It answers such intriguing questions as: Did people in Shakespeare's time hear differently from us? In what way does technology affect our ears? Why do people in Egypt increasingly listen to taped religious sermons? Why did Enlightenment doctors believe that music was an essential cure? What happens acoustically in cross-cultural first encounters? The ear, as much as the eye, nose, mouth and hand, defines experience...read more

Product Description: How was Africa seen by the West during the colonial period? How do Europeans and Americans conceive of Africa in today's postcolonial era? Such questions have preoccupied anthropologists, historians, and literary scholars for years...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

First popularized by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon, the a cappella music known as isicathamiya has become internationally celebrated as one of South Africa's most vibrant and distinct performance traditions. But Ladysmith Black Mambazo is only one of hundreds of choirs that perform "nightsongs" during weekly all-night competitions in South Africa's cities.Veit Erlmann provides the first comprehensive interpretation of isicathamiya performance practice and its relation to the culture and consciousness of the Zulu migrant laborers who largely compose its choirs. In songs and dances, the performers oppose the class and racial oppression that reduces them to "labor units." At the same time, Erlmann argues, the performers rework dominant images to symbolically reconstruct their "home," an imagined world of Zulu rural tradition and identity.By contrasting the live performance of isicathamiya to its reproduction in mass media, recordings, and international concerts, Erlmann addresses important issues in performance studies and anthropology, and looks to the future of isicathamiya live performance in the new South Africa. Featuring an Introduction by Joseph Shabalala, the lead singer and founder of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the study of music, performance, popular culture, or South Africa.

Product Description: In recent years black South African music and dance havebecome ever more popular in the West, where they are nowwidely celebrated as expressions of opposition todiscrimination and repression. Less well known is therich history of these arts, which were shaped by severalgenerations of black artists and performers whosestruggles, visions, and aspirations did not differ fundamentallyfrom those of their present-day counterparts...read more