The importance of music—especially as part of cultural practices, which are inherently social organizations—as a social connector and marker of identity has been the focus of many ethnomusicological research studies (see Austerlitz, 1997; Pacini,
1995; Turino, 1984; 1993). Thomas Turino (2008) argues that the goal underlying indigenous participatory practices is to enhance social bonding and various sound features such as rhythmic repetition and dense sonic textures function to reach this goal (e.g., Zimbabwean mbira music and Aymara panpipe music in Peru).
Furthermore, he suggests that dense overlapping textures, wide tunings, and loud volume provide a “cloaking function that help inspire musical participation” (p. 46 italics in original). The focus of attention is therefore not on sound as an end product, but rather on the heightened social interaction integral to the performance activity.
Similarly, although Christmas bands draw upon the repertory and musical practice of Western hymnody and light classical pieces rather than create a new repertory, and although it is performed in a largely presentational way, they constitute large social organizations of musical and related performance where music functions to connect people in very special ways. Band members and their local supporters bond as a community: in this case, by adhering to a particular cultural practice and Christian ethics. Thus, at important occasions such as the annual ritual house visitations members of these communities experience a deep social engagement and solidarity in which music plays a crucial role. They experience a communitas (Turner, 1969) in which petty differences disappear and they unite through their common humanity.
Through their participation they not only learn what it means to be a member of a Christmas Band, but also ultimately these practices, with their enduring notions of discipline, order, and morality involve a performance of citizenship through their parading of respectability. Since the notion of citizenship was such an elusive one for this Creole community throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Christmas bands’ embodiment of respectability and their moral constitution of their collective selves is, I suggest, an enactment of their desire for the recognition of their inalienable right to citizenship. Even though the democratic elections in 1994 have changed the political situation for South Africans, the working class people among whom I did my fieldwork do not necessarily feel that much has changed for them.
Christmas bands consist of a variety of wind instruments, however, the overall sound of Christmas bands is quite unlike the sound of a typical wind band. This is due to a range of factors that may be perceived as unconventional performance practices in comparison with standard cosmopolitan performance practices and band styles.
Firstly, the bands are quite heterogeneous in their constitution: no band has a similar instrumentation format. Each Christmas Band is thus unique in some way, as each one is constituted with whichever wind and string instruments are at hand. Secondly, typical values for the preference of certain sound qualities such as wide tuning, a predilection for breathiness on the saxophones, relaxed phrasing and embouchure are passed on generationally, leading to a locally distinctive band sound. Thirdly, the saxophones, though sweet sounding, are played with a pinched reed, which gives the timbre a rather nasal quality. Fourthly, the unique sound of the Christmas bands is in part due to their choice of harmonic progressions. I describe the harmonic feeling, especially when used in succession. Although the hymn is based on chordal
progressions of the common practice, the arranger of the music is unaware of the rules associated with the practice and makes liberal use of consecutive fifths and octaves, enharmonic clashes, and he does not resolve the progressions at the ends of phrases with the usual cadence progressions but instead he may end the phrase on chord V with the added seventh or chord I with the added sixth. Finally, the arrangements are often in close harmony, giving these bands quite a unique sound. The result is similar to the “heterogeneous sound ideal” (Wilson 1992) of New Orleans second line brass bands. These factors, along with individualistic interpretations and practices (such as excessive vibrato on the saxophones) within the ensemble, are responsible for the production of a dense sound, which indeed can be seen to epitomize in many ways the sound of Cape Town and the entire Western Cape region.
Another characteristic of this regional sound is the ghoema rhythm, a syncopated underlying rhythm found in several Western Cape musical practices, usually played on a one-headed barrel drum with the left hand marking the beat and right hand playing the syncopated rhythm. The banjos and guitars drive this underlying rhythm in the Christmas bands as they do not usually incorporate drums. It can be transcribed thus:
Example 1. The ghoema rhythm can be heard in various genres of the Western Cape
These are essential sonic ingredients for what I refer to as the ghoema musical complex: the three parading “disciplines” in Cape Town, which includes the Malay choirs (male vocal groups) and the minstrel troupes (involved in the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival) and in which the Christmas bands have played an integral role. A representation of this characteristic sound and rhythm are emulated in what is often referred to as the “Cape Jazz” style brought to international attention by Abdullah Ibrahim, through works such as “Mannenberg is where it’s happening” (The Sun, 1974). I argue that the ensuing sound density masks individual performers and allows for members at various performance levels to participate in the ensemble, particularly when the bands are performing on the road marches and at community events. When the band performs in the community, this typical “Cape” sound is not only desired by the community but also allows individual members to perform comfortably without feeling self-conscious about their individual competence. Band members learn to play confidently within the ensemble very quickly. Having to learn to play the clarinet very quickly in order to join the band on their road marches, I really appreciated this attitude. This relaxed attitude allows for deep embodied social experiences of feeling and playing music together.
Conclusion
Shelemay (2011) claims that the study of musical communities has been ongoing:
“music historians have for decades given attention to collectivities of all types” (p.
354) and that large participatory groups, such as Ghanaian drum ensembles and Indonesian gamelan, have gained scholarly interest due to the close social relationships they engender because of performance (p. 352). Nevertheless, she
suggests that critical discussions about the concept of community or even the definition of a musical community are sorely lacking in musical scholarship (2011, 354). This last point is echoed by Schippers (2010, p. 92) who also suggests that the definition of community music is still largely unresolved. In her article about “music and the sensuous production of place,” Cohen (1995) suggests that “Music plays a unique and often hidden role in the social and cultural production of place and, through its peculiar nature, it foregrounds the dynamic, sensual aspects of this process emphasizing the creation and performance of place through human bodies in action and motion” (p. 445).
In my understanding of this concept of community music and the motivation to participate in this Commission on Community Music, I would suggest that group participation by amateurs, community bonding and social engagement along with notions of place related to a particular musical practice give coherence to our understanding of community music. The Christmas bands, through the physicality of their parades, both as a presence in their communities and their embodiment of the practice through uniform dress and military-style marching, certainly evoke notions of place for the Creole communities of the Western Cape. This place is often the city of Cape Town itself from which many of the earliest bands have emerged. The forced removals of the Creole communities from their erstwhile neighborhoods by the apartheid regime during the 1960s and 1970s have contributed towards the contestation of place for these communities and their parading practices in Cape Town. Although not an overt contestation, it is nevertheless enacted annually through three different parades (one by each “discipline”) in the (formally forbidden) city center. These parades in which “human bodies in action and motion” appropriate the business-oriented city center through a carnivalesque array of colorful uniforms, movement and music allow for community bonding and social engagement of a much larger community, now including their supporters. This annual participation in the parades engenders the renewal of communities that otherwise still feel quite marginalized politically, socially and culturally.
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