Full Description
The first in-depth study of Kaapse klopse, a carnival tradition in South Africa_x000D_
_x000D_
Remixing Race is the first ethnographic monograph centered on Kaapse klopse, a South African carnival tradition, and it uses this genre as a critical lens to explore how sound mediates racial identity in the postapartheid era. Drawing on immersive fieldwork, interviews, and performance analysis, the book employs methods from sensory ethnography, sound studies, and critical race theory to foreground participants' lived experiences and aesthetic practices._x000D_
_x000D_
The study reveals how klopse has expanded since apartheid's end, particularly among youth and women, serving as a site of cultural resistance and self-making. Participants use klopse to respond to the racial and spatial legacies of apartheid and to marginalization within the everyday social, political, and economic conditions in which they live._x000D_
_x000D_
Challenging the reductive portrayals of klopse as either escapist or criminal, the book critiques the use of imported aesthetic categories and instead centers local meaning-making. Remixing Race shows how klopse operates as a dynamic, multisensory space where performers negotiate identity, history, and belonging—without collapsing their creativity into identity politics or erasing their social positioning. It offers a model for how ethnographic and sonic methodologies can illuminate the affective and political dimensions of racialized cultural expression.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Companion Website
Note on Language
Introduction: Voorsmakkie
ONE—Remaking Race and Value in the Era of "Nonracialism"
TWO—Goema's Cape Town: Carnival and the Reclamation of Space
THREE—Sonic Orientation: Sociality and Inauthenticity in Sentimentals
FOUR-Moeniel's Open Ears: Deurmekaar Sociality, Openness, and Remix in Moppies
FIVE —Nostalgia for an Imagined Future: "Coon Songs" and the Legacy of Blackface Minstrelsy
SIX—Struggling for Value in the Neoliberal City
Epilogue: Back-March
Notes
Bibliography
Index
