""This is one of the best books to have emerged from South African musicology in the last decadeIt opens up a new level of discourse about music during the apartheid era: a level on which the theoretical, the ethical, the historical and the aesthetic play against each other in newly meaningful ways.""
--Roger Parker, Cambridge University (UK)

""Composing Apartheid endeavors to trace the relationships between names, concepts and realities as they variously interacted, and continue to interact, on the musical landscape, and it does so as historically and socially responsible scholarship.""
--Grant Olwage, from the Introduction

"Composing Apartheid" is the first book ever to chart the musical world of a notorious period in world history, apartheid South Africa. It explores how music was produced through, and was productive of, key features of apartheid's social and political topography. The collection of essays is intentionally broad, and, the contributors include historians, sociologists, and anthropologists, as well as ethnomusicologists, music theorists, and historical musicologists.

The essays focus on a variety of music (jazz, music in the Western art tradition, popular music), major composers (such as Kevin Volans) and works (Handel's "Messiah"). Musical institutions and previously little-researched performers (such as the African National Congress's troupe-in-exile Amandla) are explored. The writers move well beyond their subject matter, intervening in debates on race, historiography, and postcolonial epistemologies and pedagogies.

This book includes contributions by Lara Allen, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; Gary Baines, Rhodes University (South Africa); Ingrid Byerly, Duke University; Christopher Cockburn, University of KwaZulu-Natal; David Coplan, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (South Africa); Michael Drewett, Rhodes University; Shirli Gilbert, University of Southampton; Bennetta Jules-Rosette, University of California, San Diego; Christine Lucia, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; Carol A. Muller, University of Pennsylvania; Stephanus Muller, University of Stellenbosch (South Africa); Brett Pyper, New York University; and Martin Scherzinger, Princeton University.

"Grant Olwage" is a senior lecturer at the School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Music notation: a South African guide presents a new and uniquely South African approach to learning about staff notation - especially for musicians who are educated in the tonic solfa system. As they work through the book, learners build up an understanding of each aspect of notation by experiencing it as music. Tonic solfa is used in the earlier chapters to help learners relate the sounds to the concepts. In addition, the free CD offers 99 music clips played on a keyboard, illustrating some of the examples of notation given in the book. The book is aimed at mature school pupils and adult learners whose first language may not be English. However, it will be useful to students of music from any sector of society, whether they are enrolled in a formal course or want to find out more on their own. Each chapter is devoted to particular aspects of notation. Most of the chapters are built around a piece of music generally familiar to South Africans. Because South Africa has a strong vocal and choral culture, examples are often drawn from the choral repertory. The book and CD include many examples of South African music, as well as samplings of classical western music from all eras, and jazz. Examples and exercises are drawn from this rich representation, and by means of self tests learners steadily become confident in reading and writing music in staff notation. They will also build up a strong knowledge of how music works, by seeing the structures of a wide range of music from diverse cultures in South Africa.

The present Reader is a selection of texts on South African music which are chosen not only for their importance or the frequency of citations, but with the express purpose of providing the reader with a deep understanding of the music itself. Consequently, there are readings that are chosen because they have been influential, but there are also many which, though published, have not enjoyed very wide circulation. There are those which are of obvious historic interest, and others which speak to contemporary issues. Among other things, the volume provides an excellent sense of the varying ideologies and approaches that determine the relationship between author and subject. The reader is indispensable to scholars and enthusiasts of South African music and it is of great interest to ethnomusicologists more generally. It is also an excellent resource for those who do not have immediate access to harder-to-find articles, and is perhaps most vital to those who are looking to find a way into the world of South African music.