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The Groovology of White Affect

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The Groovology of White Affect

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Abstract

This chapter proposes a sweeping theorization of white affect. Taking as starting point that boeremusiek functions as Trouillot’s “savage slot” in white cultural expression, boeremusiek’s affective modalities (as set out in the preceding chapters) are shown to be indexically linked to each other and to the performance of whiteness to form a “mimetic archive” of racial embodiment available for activation in the present day. The activation of boeremusiek’s affective modalities follows a predictable quasi-liturgical pattern, centered around ideas of boeremusiek’s purported savagery and its white salvage. Drawing on literature that equates whiteness with Protestant religiosity, the repeated (modernist) redemption of boeremusiek through performance and narrativization is framed in terms of Christian soteriology—a theoretical stance borne out in an extensive analysis of soteriological anxiety at a contemporary boeremusiek festival. The book concludes with a reworking of Charles Keil’s “participatory discrepancies” for the study of affect, arguing that the “power” of boeremusiek resides in its selective and patterned unveiling of the racial desires underpinning white pleasure, and that these affective “participatory discrepancies” continue to propel white racial embodiment and prejudice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rosaldo (1989), p. 107.

  2. 2.

    Rosaldo 1989, p. 8, 107.

  3. 3.

    Clifford (1986). Earlier iterations of some of the ideas in this chapter were worked out in Froneman (2014).

  4. 4.

    Kingsbury (2007), p. 235.

  5. 5.

    Schoeman (1978), pp. 48–49.

  6. 6.

    Krog (1997), https://mg.co.za/article/1997-12-23-five-poems-by-antjie-krog/

  7. 7.

    Malan (2012).

  8. 8.

    Coetzee (1988), p. 167.

  9. 9.

    Coetzee (1988), p. 167.

  10. 10.

    See Trouillot (2003), p. 18.

  11. 11.

    Coetzee (1988), pp. 167–168.

  12. 12.

    Trouillot (2003), p. 22.

  13. 13.

    Trouillot (2003), p. 23.

  14. 14.

    Silverstein (2003), pp. 193–229.

  15. 15.

    Trouillot (2002), pp. 220–237.

  16. 16.

    Silverstein (2003).

  17. 17.

    Silverstein (1993), pp. 38–39.

  18. 18.

    Silverstein (1993), p. 41.

  19. 19.

    Moore (2020), p. 14; Silverstein (1993).

  20. 20.

    Silverstein (2003).

  21. 21.

    Williams (2015).

  22. 22.

    With regards to the importance of language in the articulation of musical affect, I’m building on the work of Porcello et al. (2010), pp. 51–66; Gray (2013); Feld et al. (2004), p. 47.

  23. 23.

    Mazzarella (2017), p. 8.

  24. 24.

    Mazzarella (2017), p. 145.

  25. 25.

    Mazzarella (2017), p. 8.

  26. 26.

    Benjamin quoted by Mazzarella (2017), p. 9.

  27. 27.

    Silverstein (2005), pp. 6–22.

  28. 28.

    Gray (2013), pp. 8–9.

  29. 29.

    Mazzarella (2017), p. 5.

  30. 30.

    Bosman (1953), p. 39.

  31. 31.

    Bosman (1953), p. 39.

  32. 32.

    Speaking within the context of a decades-long exile in London, the composer Stanley Glasser “remembers” precisely this caricature of boeremusiek as marker of South African innocence: “Go to a Vastrap and see what you can do with it. Go to a Vastrap evening in Nelspruit or wherever. And see what it means, the dancing, the life, it’s all part of the music … I’m talking about if there’s a dance in Nelspruit on a Saturday night and all the farmers are coming in and the locals are coming in and there is a Boereorkes. Where do you guys … do you ever roll up to that sort of thing? No. I used to love it in Bethel, going to a dance in the local hall, with a Boereorkes playing. It was so lively and everybody was in a good mood and you’d see African children looking through the window and everybody was enjoying it in their own way.” Glasser (2001).

  33. 33.

    “Die beswaar word soms t.o.v. tradisionele nommers geopper: sou hulle te eentonig of tot herhaling geneig wees. Die antwoord hierop is voor die hand liggend: luister na iets anders, maar moet tog net nie die oorspronklike artikel probeer oormaak nie. Hy het immers ʾn egte herkoms en het aan ʾn doel beantwoord, nl. om deur te hou tot dagbreek toe. As die ander instrumente reeds flou is, blaas die konsertina nuwe lewe in die geselskap. As die nuwe geslag ʾn nuwe soort musiek wil hê, gee dit vir hom maar moenie ons tradisionele Boeremusiek verbaster nie. As hy ʾn museumstuk moet word, laat hom ʾn egte stuk wees. Sommiges onder ons hou nogal daarvan om telkens ʾn uurtjie in die museum deur te bring en uit die verlede die genot te put wat in die hede ontbreek.” Anon (1955).

  34. 34.

    Kentwell (2017); Nye (2019), pp. 210–237; Finley and Martin (2017), pp. 179–196; Driscoll (2016).

  35. 35.

    Perkinson (2004), p. 3.

  36. 36.

    Perkinson (2004), p. 2.

  37. 37.

    Perkinson (2004), pp. 59–60.

  38. 38.

    Perkinson (2004), p. 58.

  39. 39.

    Perkinson (2004), p. 43.

  40. 40.

    Perkinson (2004), p. 45.

  41. 41.

    Perkinson (2004), p. 45.

  42. 42.

    Bell and Gibson (2011), p. 561; Mazzarella (2012), pp. 309–327.

  43. 43.

    Mazzarella (2017), p. 9.

  44. 44.

    Rawick (1972), p. 128. This passage is also quoted by Roediger (1999), p. 95.

  45. 45.

    Boeremusiekgilde (2004), p. 122.

  46. 46.

    List of oppositions taken from Surya (2002), p. 386.

  47. 47.

    For an example, listen to this rendition of Klipwerf Vastrap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4cjQTt2g3M

  48. 48.

    Gunkel (2004), p. 7.

  49. 49.

    Rawick (1972), p. 132.

  50. 50.

    Mazzarella (2017), p. 94.

  51. 51.

    Mazzarella (2017), pp. 91–96.

  52. 52.

    Keil and Feld (1994).

  53. 53.

    Keil and Feld (1994), pp. 22–23.

  54. 54.

    Keil (1994), p. 96.

  55. 55.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 1. Mazzarella’s The Mana of Mass Society is similarly concerned with “The Social in the Subject” and “The Subject in the Social.” See Mazzarella (2017), p. 26.

  56. 56.

    Keil (1994), p. 96.

  57. 57.

    Toynbee (2000), pp. 146–148.

  58. 58.

    Keil and Feld (1994), pp. 21–23.

  59. 59.

    Toynbee (2000), p. 147.

  60. 60.

    Toynbee (2000), p. 147.

  61. 61.

    Toynbee (2000), p. 147.

  62. 62.

    Feld (1994).

  63. 63.

    Mazzarella (2012), p. 303.

  64. 64.

    Mazzarella (2006), pp. 473–505.

  65. 65.

    Gray (2021), p. 329.

  66. 66.

    Frankenberg (1993).

  67. 67.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 5.

  68. 68.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 5.

  69. 69.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 4.

  70. 70.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 8.

  71. 71.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 6.

  72. 72.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 8.

  73. 73.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 9.

  74. 74.

    Keil (n.d.), p. 1.

  75. 75.

    Bateson (2000), p. 37.

  76. 76.

    Barfield quoted by Feld (1994), p. 121.

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  1. Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Willemien Froneman

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Froneman, W. (2024). The Groovology of White Affect. In: The Groovology of White Affect. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40143-5_6

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