| This dissertation presents an anthropological analysis of the historical development of urban African performing arts in South Africa. The conceptual framework is designed to explain the operation of factors that determine the nature of performance activity and to clarify the role of performance in the total process of African urbanization. Changes in African performance culture and social organization are traced from the rural areas and small towns to such early centers of urban development as Cape Town and Kimberley, and from there to Johannesburg. The African communities of Johannesburg provide the central focus of analysis, with comparative reference to other areas and cities. The study examines continuing links between urban and rural areas with regard to their effect of stylistic development.;A fundamental concern is the role of performance in the African struggle to create permanent identity and community structures in urban South Africa and the effect of involvement in this struggle on the evolution of performance expression. The diachronic perspective is superior to synchronic approaches in clarifying the meaning and effects of expressive cultural action and communication. Sources of information include documentary research, key informant interviewing, oral history, participant-observation, field recording, discographic collection, and stylistic and structural analysis.;The results advance the comparative study of processes of urbanization, especially in colonial situations. They support the argument that history and social science are indispensible to an understanding of performance culture. Conversely, they confirm the value of studies of expressive culture for comprehending processes of social adaptation. The theoretical model explains performance innovation as a result of the flow of social power within the total field of relations within which performances take place.;Within the context of colonization and segregation discussion concentrates on processes of social differentiation, cultural communication within and across group boundaries, and the emergence of class-based strategies of urban cultural adaptation. The underlying premise is that the process of expressive cultural development is not self-generating or self-contained. Rather, performers employ communicative modes specific to systems of performance expression in responding to historical, economic, political, social and ideological influences embodied in African experience. The task of analysis is to show what these modes of communication are, how they operate, their role in social action, and how external and internal factors have interacted to produce performance behavior itself. Particularly important is the recruitment, training, role, status, and activity of urban performers. The study documents the range and significance of various expressive resources made available to performers through culture contact and explores the dynamics of their recombination into new urban styles. |
