Helen Herimbi
When Kendrick Lamar’s seminal album, To Pimp a Butterfly was released this year, most people lauded its lyrical excellence. Some academics went as far as to start teaching the album in their literary classes.
That’s not a new thing in America. But for South Africans, decoding contemporary lyrics is often kept out of the classroom.
At this year’s Moshito Music Conference and Exhibition, which kicks off in Joburg tomorrow, deciphering South African lyrics will be the topic of a plenary called “The Kwaito Hip Hop Narrative: Did They Say That?”
It will be moderated by Professor David Coplan from Wits who has chosen to use Tumi and The Volume, Proverb and more as case studies. The panel will also include kwaito kingpin, Arthur Mafokate, bubblegum pioneer, Sello “Chicco” Twala, the People’s Poet, Mzwakhe Mbuli, soul singer, Simphiwe Dana and rapper, Reason among others.
Coplan is the perfect person to facilitate this talk because of his background as Professor Emeritus in Social Anthropology as well as the author of books like In Township Tonight: South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre, published in 1985.
The American-born professor has also given a talk titled “125 Years of Johannesburg’s Black Music” which makes him one of the few famous academics who chose to study and bring music – particularly music of black origin – into lecture halls.
I asked him for his thoughts on albums like Kendrick’s being studied. “I think it hasn’t become the trend in literary studies,” he started, “People in the States – it’s a big education system. People specialise in a much wider range of things. Literary studies have the problem of: are people really reading all this old, serious lit?
“One has to look at the word art that their own students are consuming voluntarily.”
Admitting that his students keep him clued up on the latest, Coplan says academia has a role to play in terms of music and culture. “I come from an anthropology department,” he explained, “But I wanted to study African music heritage and in South African (university) music departments there was nothing. There wasn’t a single book.
“So I thought because of the African studies thing we do in anthropology and I have a degree in ethnomusicology – I’d like to write about African modern music. So I was studying pop, bubblegum, jazz, maskandi – in terms of its social impact and the artists behind it. I wrote about that.
“The first role of academia is to preserve our cultural history,” he says emphatically, “The Jozi music scene existed in spite of attempts to kill it by forced removals, the death of Sophiatown etc. The regime didn’t like jazz and didn’t much care for pop either. The second role of academia is to understand ourselves because we forget right away.”
In his professional capacity, Coplan is supervising (Moshito head) Sipho Sithole’s PhD “on hip hop as an industry, the economics and the way people are either exploited or not exploited. Of course, he had to read all these American scholars for his thesis because there’s not much of that in South Africa.” So even if it’s not on an American level yet, at least academia is making strides when it comes to South African music.
l The Moshito Music Conference and Exhibition takes place at the SABC in Auckland Park, Johannesburg on September 10 and 11. Register your attendance via www.moshito.co.za