Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation

Last updated
The logo of AOI AOI Logo.jpg
The logo of AOI

The Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI) at Stellenbosch University is an interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to music studies. Founded in 2016 by the music scholar and writer Stephanus Muller, the institute provides supervision to postgraduate fellows from a variety of disciplines and functions as an independent research hub in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. [1] Its mission is to create an institutional space for scholars and artists that encourages experimentation and risk taking. AOI's community include postgraduate and postdoctoral fellows, extraordinary professors, research associates, composers, performers, sonic residents, archival and heritage practitioners and international partners.

Contents

History

AOI represents an institutional development of a research-based archive project aimed at collecting and preserving the collections of South African musicians and music scholars: the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) at Stellenbosch University founded and headed by Stephanus Muller from 2005 to 2015. [2] By 2015, DOMUS had acquired more than seventy collections that had served as a basis for articles in periodicals, conference papers, postgraduate theses, film screenings, recordings and performances. [3] The archive thus played an important role in contributing to South African heritage and shaping debates on music in South Africa. Due to the scale of its acquisitions as well as institutional pressures, DOMUS was incorporated into a Special Collections Section of the Stellenbosch University Library and Information Services in 2015. [4] A year later, Stephanus Muller founded AOI as a new, autonomous institute in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University, continuing and extending the music research aspect of the original archive project.

The founding of AOI and its research agenda were also informed by concerns expressed by the Open Stellenbosch student collective, [5] [6] and the broader FeesMustFall movement. [7] These concerns related to the politics of exclusion in curricula and research and what was perceived to be the racist ideologies of apartheid South Africa still prevalent at institutions of higher learning. AOI marked 'an institutional reaction to the potentially rejuvenating, potentially destructive energy' of the student movements, and 'an effort to encourage thinking and creative work that could lead to stronger and better universities'. [8] It is therefore significant that the institute was established as an independent organizational research unit outside the Music Department and Conservatoire at Stellenbosch University.

Projects

AOI has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2016-2020) for a series of research projects entitled Delinking Encounters. [9] These included an ambitious digitization project of music archives in the Documentation Centre for Music, a Sonic Residency programme, [10] a critical edition project headed by Christine Lucia and focused on the music of Michael Mosoeu Moerane, [11] and an interdisciplinary forum for popular music studies, IFPOP. [12] Mellon funding further enabled the creation of an online digital publication spaceherri, [13] curated by the writer and film maker Aryan Kaganof. [14]

The institute is also host to the Hidden Years Music Archive, [15] funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, and is an institutional partner of the ‘Cultural relations between Switzerland and South Africa (1948-1990)’ project, located at the Bern University of the Arts in Switzerland. AOI has partnered with the University of York on the Newton Fellowship programme, entitled ‘South African Jazz Cultures and the Archive’. [16] [17] As a result of this partnership the institute supervised renowned jazz pianists Kyle Shepherd and Nduduzo Makhathini to become the first recipients of MMus-degrees in jazz studies in the history of Stellenbosch University. [18] [19] The institute is also the institutional partner for the Sterkfontein Composers Meeting, for which it has also received funding from the South African National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stellenbosch University</span> University in Western Cape, South Africa

Stellenbosch University (SU) (Afrikaans: Universiteit Stellenbosch, Xhosa: iYunivesithi yaseStellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant university in Sub-Saharan Africa, which received full university status in 1918. Stellenbosch University designed and manufactured Africa's first microsatellite, SUNSAT, launched in 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of the Western Cape</span> Public university in Bellville, Cape Town, South Africa

The University of the Western Cape is a public research university in Bellville, near Cape Town, South Africa. The university was established in 1959 by the South African government as a university for Coloured people only. Other universities in Cape Town are the University of Cape Town, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and Stellenbosch University. The establishing of UWC was a direct effect of the Extension of University Education Act, 1959. This law accomplished the segregation of higher education in South Africa. Coloured students were only allowed at a few non-white universities. In this period, other "ethnical" universities, such as the University of Zululand and the University of the North, were founded as well. Since well before the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, it has been an integrated and multiracial institution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South African jazz</span> Musical style in South Africa

South African jazz is the jazz of South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zim Ngqawana</span> A South African flautist, saxophonist and composer

Zim Ngqawana was a South African flautist and saxophonist. He was later known as Zimology.

Michael Blake is a South African contemporary classical music composer and performer. He studied in Johannesburg in the 1970s and was associated with conceptual art and the emergence of an indigenous experimental music aesthetic. In 1976 he embarked on 'African Journal', a series of pieces for Western instruments that drew on his studies of traditional African music and aesthetics, which continued to expand during two decades in London until he returned to South Africa in 1998. From around 2000 African music becomes less explicit on the surface of his compositions, but elements of rhythm and repetition remain as part of a more postcolonial engagement with material and form. He works in a range of styles including minimalism and collage, and now also forages for source material from the entire musical canon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darius Brubeck</span> American jazz keyboardist and educator (born 1947)

Darius Brubeck is an American jazz pianist, author, and educator. He is the son of jazz legend Dave Brubeck with whom he worked professionally in the 1970s, while also performing in his own bands, The Darius Brubeck Ensemble and Gathering Forces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bheki Mseleku</span> South African jazz musician (1955–2008)

Bhekumuzi Hyacinth Mseleku, generally known as Bheki Mseleku, was a jazz musician from South Africa. He was a pianist, saxophonist, guitarist, composer and arranger who was entirely self-taught.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nasheet Waits</span> American jazz drummer (born 1971)

Nasheet Waits is an American jazz drummer.

The Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) forms part of the Special Collections Division of the Music Library within the Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service and is located in the Music Department. Collections acquired through acquisitions, donations or bequests over more than 50 years form the main holdings and are mostly of South African but also of international significance.

Arnoldus Christiaan Vlok van Wyk was a South African art music composer, one of the first notable generation of such composers along with Hubert du Plessis and Stefans Grové. Despite the strict laws imposed by the Apartheid government during his lifetime, van Wyk's homosexuality was ignored by the authorities throughout his career due to the nationalistic nature of his music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cape Town International Jazz Festival</span> Annual festival in Cape Town, South Africa

The Cape Town International Jazz Festival is an annual music festival held in Cape Town, South Africa. The first one was held in 2000 to 2005 and is recognized as the fourth largest jazz festival in the world and the largest jazz festival on the African continent. The festival was called the "Cape Town North Sea Jazz Festival" due to its association with the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nduduzo Makhathini</span> South African Jazz pianist

Nduduzo Makhathini is a South African jazz musician from Umgungundlovu, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

The 24th Annual South African Music Awards was held at Sun City, in the North West on 2 June 2018. The list of nominees was announced on 19 April 2018 at Birchwood Hotel in Ekurhuleni. Mafikizolo, Mi Casa and Shekhinah each received a node of nomination Other artists with multiple nominations include Mobi Dixon, Distruction Boyz and Riky Rick. It was aired live on SABC 1 at 20:00 SAST (CAT). The show was hosted by Somizi Mhlongo, Dineo Ranaka and Mpho Popps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephanus Muller</span> South African music scholar (b. 1971)

Stephanus Muller is a South African music scholar and writer who has written about South African twentieth-century composition, exile, archiving, language politics, music and apartheid and university institutional transformation. As the last chairman of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa, he was a founding member of the South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM) in 2006. He also founded the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) in 2005 at Stellenbosch University, and the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI) at the same university in 2016. He received his BMus (performance) from Pretoria University in 1992, MMus (musicology) from the University of South Africa in 1998, and DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2001. Having studied with the writer Marlene van Niekerk, he also holds a MA in Creative Afrikaans writing from Stellenbosch University (2007).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hidden Years Music Archive</span> South African music archive

The Hidden Years Music Archive is an archive and interdisciplinary research project dedicated to the preservation and study of alternative and popular South African music. Established by David Marks in 1990, the archive holds a collection of around 175 000 items, which includes sound recordings, photographs, posters, programs, documents, press cuttings, notebooks, and diaries... The Hidden Years is a repository of urban folk tunes, township jazz expressions, country rock music, choir works, maskanda, and various traditional musics. In 2013 the archive was donated to the Documentation Centre for Music at Stellenbosch University and has since been managed by Dr Lizabé Lambrechts as the principal researcher and project leader. From 2017 the project has been hosted by the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation at Stellenbosch University.

Mimmy Martha Gondwe is a South African politician serving as the Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises since 2023. A member of the Democratic Alliance, Gondwe was Shadow Deputy Minister of State Security from 2019 to 2020 and the Shadow Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration between 2020 and 2023. She has been a Member of Parliament (MP) in the National Assembly since May 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Mosoeu Moerane</span> Musical artist

Michael Mosoeu Moerane was a choral music composer and the first black South African to write a symphonic poem, in 1941.

References

  1. Muller, Stephanus. "Africa Open looks 100 years ahead to launch music platform for the future". Press Reader. Cape Times. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  2. De Jongh, Santie (2015). ""Armed with a light bulb at the end of a chord": the ten year journey of DOMUS". Fontes Artis Musicae. 62 (3): 213-214.
  3. De Jongh, Santie (2015). "'Armed with a light bulb at the end of a chord: the ten year journey of DOMUS". Fontes Artis Musicae. 62 (3): 220.
  4. Lambrechts, Lizabe (24 August 2020). "The becoming of an archive: perspectives on a music archive and the limits of institutionality". Social Dynamics: 5. doi:10.1080/02533952.2020.1804122.
  5. Op-Ed. "Open Stellenbosch - tackling language and exclusion at Stellenbosch University". Daily Maverick. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  6. Staff Reporter. "Not open, says Open Stellenbosch". Mail and Guardian. Mail and Guardian. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  7. Muller, Stephanus (2016). Openings. Stellenbosch: Sun Media. p. 19.
  8. Meyer, Naomi. "Onderhoud met Stephanus Muller: Dekolonisasie van musiek". Litnet. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  9. Mellon Foundation Grants Database. "Stellenbosch University: Delinking Encounters" . Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  10. Africa Open Institute. "About Sonic Residency Programme". Africa Open Institute. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  11. Lucia, Christine. "Michael Mosoeu Moerane Scholarly Edition". African Composers Edition. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  12. Vos, Stephane. "Interdisciplinary Forum for Popular Music (IFPOP)". Africa Open Institute. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  13. herri
  14. Davey, Derek. "Our artistic herri-tage online". Mail and Guardian. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  15. Lambrechts, Lizabe. "Hidden Years Music Archive". Africa Open Institute. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  16. "South African jazz cultures and the archive". York University. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  17. Eato and Makhathini, Jonathan and Nduduzo. "South African jazz cultures and the archive: the playlist" . Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  18. Shepherd, Kyle (2018). Interrogating the own: a practise-based, auto-ethnographic reflection on musical creation with reference to the work of Abdullah Ibrahim, Zim Ngqawana and Kyle Shepherd. Stellenbosch University: Unpublished Master Thesis. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  19. Makhathini, Nduduzo (2018). Encountering Bheki Mseleku: a biographical-analytical consideration of his life and music. Stellenbosch University: Unpublished Master Thesis. Retrieved 25 August 2020.

33°55′52″S18°51′52″E / 33.93098°S 18.86436°E / -33.93098; 18.86436