Hartley Residency – Dr Juliana M. Pistorius (UCL) Seminar

Programme

Day 1: Tuesday 10 October 2023

16:00–17:30 Building 06, Room 1081

White Noise: Western Art Music and the Making of Race in Apartheid South Africa talk by Juliana M. Pistorius (UCL)

Session chaired by Hettie Malcomson

Abstract:

With the implementation of the Population Registration Act of 1950, South Africa’s apartheid regime legislated a racial classification system that divided people into white, coloured, and black. However, these categories were unstable and often arbitrary (Posel 2001; 2008).

Race classifications were informed by physical attributes such as skin colour and hair type, but also by social preoccupations including friendship groups, education, leisure activities, and cultural tastes. Participants in the so-called European high arts, for instance, were more likely to be endowed with the privilege of whiteness than those whose tastes veered towards the popular.

In this context, racial constructs expanded beyond biology, to incorporate culture, class, and history. The result was a system that stood open to individual interpretation, allowing for contestation, reclassification, and mobility.

This paper considers the complicated role played by Western art music not only in the construction and consolidation, but also in the destabilisation, of apartheid-era race categories. Attending more closely to what Kristen M. Turner (2015) has called a ‘whitening effect’ achieved by Western art music practice among Black communities. It builds on current work on the relationships between music and race (Ramsey 2003; Gilroy 2019) to look specifically at the hidden assumptions embedded in constructions of Western art music’s whiteness.

The paper draws on new archival research into international performers’ tours through apartheid South Africa to examine the mythical classification of ‘honorary whiteness’ and to the colour lines—both imagined and real—drawn around specific musical practices.

Day 2 - Wednesday 11 October 2023

10:00-12:00 Building 04, Room 4003

Postgraduate seminar led by Juliana M. Pistorius (UCL)

13:30-15:00 Building 58, Room 1023

Sonic Traces of Race: Archiving South African Mission History Talk by Erin Johnson-Williams (University of Southampton) 
Session chaired by Chiying Lam

15:30-17:00 Building 58, Room 1065

Closing Roundtable: Sonic Representations: The Politics of Music Archiving
Interventions and roundtable discussion with Juliana M. Pistorius (UCL) with the University of Southampton’s Samantha Ege, Liz Gre, Erin Johnson-Williams and Thomas Irvine.
Session chaired by Hettie MalcomsonRoundtable: ‘Sonic Representations: The Politics of Music Archiving’

• How do cultures of archival knowledge shape your research?
• How are oppressions and place inscribed in archival knowledge? (NB Mari Matsuda’s intersectional ‘other question’ method: ‘When I see something that looks racist, I ask, "Where is the patriarchy in this?" When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, "Where is the heterosexism in this?" When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, "Where are the class interests in this?"’ (Matsuda 1990, 1189)
• What particular issues around archival knowledge are complicated by music, in particular?
• How do hierarchies of archiving – such as notational literacy / educational standardisation – influence your research and/or practice?