This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Music and Anthropology
This paper draws on long term ethnographic study of South African Zulu song and dance traditions. It revisits instances of ngoma vocal performance in order to explore the sonics and concept of the sound of breath, and connects that to popular political expression in the USA during the global turbulence of the last two and a half years.
Louise Meintjes is the Marcello Lotti Professor of Music and Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. She has worked as an ethnographer in Johannesburg and rural KwaZulu Natal for three decades, authoring Sound of Africa!: Making Music in a South African Studio (Duke UP, 2003) and Dust of the Zulu: Ngoma Aesthetics after Apartheid (Duke UP 2017), which won the Gregory Bateson and Alan Merriam prizes.
Date | Time
October 12, 2022 | 12:15 – 1:30 PM [PST]
Free and open to the public
Venue | Location
Humanities Building 1, Room 210
University of California, Santa Cruz