Choir on the Suburban Train: Creating a Sense of Solidarity among Black South African Train Commuters
2014
Abstrakt
The paper focuses on a phenomenon of regular music performance taking place on suburban trains operating between Mamelodi and Pretoria, South Africa, and the related social practices such as founding of choirs and social clubs by its fellow commuters. Using the ethnomusicological concept of participatory performance by Thomas Turino and the psychological concept of flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi it contributes to the wider anthropological discussion of micro-level social formation among South African urban poor in the post-apartheid situation.
It is based on the author's music-ethnographic research, which took place in Pretoria, Mamelodi and elsewhere in SA in several periods between 2006 and 2011.