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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Performance, Self-Definition, and Social Experience in the Oral Poetry of Sotho Migrant Mineworkers |
Author: | Coplan, David B. |
Year: | 1986 |
Periodical: | African Studies Review |
Volume: | 29 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | March |
Pages: | 29-40 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | Sotho labour migration oral poetry Education and Oral Traditions Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/524105 |
Abstract: | Analytical concepts and methods used in the study of African popular culture are reviewed and subsequently elucidated by considering a specific form or genre of popular performance from southern Africa, the extemporaneous melodic poetry of Basotho migrant mineworkers. Sotho sefela is a form of popular culture created from traditional resources (lithoko or praise poetry) in the crucible of adaptation to migrant labour in southern Africa. It is an example of how shared interpretations of experience as well as specific conditions of labour define a social sector through a system of values and collective representations. As a means of psychic resistance and social consciousness, the performance and images of sefela serve a vital and positive social and self-imaging function. Bibliogr. |