SYMPOSIUM UPDATE

Music and Exile: Songs, Styles and Subtexts
4 and 5 February 2011, 9:00-17:00

Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg

The Goethe-Institut in partnership with the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival invites you to the Music and Exile: Songs, Styles and Subtexts Symposium of 2011, a follow-up on 2010’s Music and Exile: North-South Narratives Symposium. The engaging discussions about music and exile that had opened up at the 2010 symposium will be continued in 2011, but with an emphasis on the role of songs in South African and global exile. The programme includes presentations and discussions by scholars, performers and composers, and covers wide variety of musical styles, including Western art music, jazz and popular music.

On the local front, the programme will feature a discussion led by Chats Devroop with musicians Dorothy Masuka, Abigail Kubeka, Roger Lucey and Steve Gordon about their experiences of exile. A session is devoted to the musical connections between South Africa and the United Kingdom that were forged through the South African jazz opera King Kong (performed in London in 1961), a key event that marked the first step not only to international careers but also to exile for many musicians, including figures like Miriam Makeba.

Casting the net slightly wider, the symposium will also reflect on instances of international exile such as German musician Eisler and writer Brecht’s exile in Hollywood during the Second World War, and the impact of the Second World War and ideas of exile on some of Stockhausen’s vocal compositions. Furthermore, the contexts and debates in international and local exile, the impact that cultural exchanges resulting from exile have on musical styles, as well as specific instances of music, place and displacement will be explored.

The line-up of speakers include, among others, Xoli Norman (writer and composer), Philip Miller (composer), Lefifi Tladi (composer, poet and artist), Jean-Pierre de la Porte (philosopher and research director at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Infrastructure), Chats Devroop (Tshwane University of Technology), David Coplan (University of the Witwatersrand), Stephanus Muller (Stellenbosch University) as well as the German musicologist and music critic, Albrecht Dümling.

Members of the public are welcome and attendance is free. Kindly send an e-mail to reserve your place at the symposium to dpt@johannesburg.goethe.org. For more information, e-mail Stephanie Vos or Akhona Ndzuta at musicandexile@gmail.com.

A concert featuring the songs of Brecht, Eisler and Weill performed by Eva Meier and Paul Cibis on 4 February 2011 at 19:30 at the Wits Theatre, preceded by a pre-concert talk by Albrecht Dümling. For more information on the concert, visit www.join-mozart-festival.org.