Abstract:
In this dissertation, I explore music styles from Tshianzwane village in
HaMakuya, in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, particularly malende,
tshigombela, and children‘s songs. I consider the music styles as embedded in
their extra-musical physical structure and abstractions; social rituals; frame of
reference; forms of habitus; social order; cultural capital; social meanings,
behaviour, power hierarchy, status, space, agency, institutions; formal-informal
education and means; symbols; musical instruments; dance; religion; ancestor
worship; traditional health practice; norms and values; mentorship and rites of
passage. I further explore how and why music performers and other cultural
patterns at Tshianzwane interpenetrate with each other and their living space
through social roles; demonstration-imitation learning method; enculturation;
dialectics of normative-interpretive, embodiment-hexis or cues, internalizationexternalization,
surface-deep structure, conscious-unconscious level, qualitativequantitative
understanding of music styles and genres and local-foreign context;
means of communication; reinterpretation and redefinition of concepts. In
conclusion, I consider how people and cultural patterns at Tshianzwane, through
interpenetration, form progressing and changing social web; social connections;
attachments; trance; state of flux in cultural patterns; synthesis of cultural
patterns; embedded contexts; shared culture and resultant cultural patterns. Since
cultural patterns, as a result of interpenetration, reflect each other, I point out the
challenges in socio-spatial mapping of forms of habitus and cultural patterns. In
my dissertation, I use John Blacking‘s work as my primary theoretical framework.
Furthermore, I use Pierre Bourdieu‘s theoretical framework, and Hugh Tracey‘s
and David Dargie‘s audio CDs on African tribal music to enrich my theoretical
ground. I collected my field data at Tshianzwane in collaboration with Joseph
Morake and Ignatia Madalane (students), Dr Susan Harrop-Allin (supervisor),
Samson Netshifhefhe, Obert Ramashia, Paul Munyai and Musiwalo (informants).
