SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This paper draws on research conducted in the borderlands of South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. It proposes that sound, song and the affect of music-making represent a much under-utilised historical research resource, particularly in contexts of spatial and social rupture. Through the revitalisation of two traditional mouthbows and the jews harp – instruments once played by young Nguni women while walking, but remembered now by elderly women only – it explores music’s capacity to operate as both historical text and oral testimony, providing a focus for mobilising collective evocations of self and place, and aimed at raising the level of the voices of a community whose livelihood and sociality are at variance with broader socio-economic and environmental development processes in the region.