Too Messy for Wikipedia

Hello everyone!  My name is Patrick Metzger.  This first post is really just to greet everyone who might be reading this and to give you an idea of where I come from and what I hope to do in this blog.  I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I'm currently a student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, concentrating in Music Composition.  You will notice that the title of this blog is relatively vague.  That is because I hope to cover many issues surrounding the music of Namibia.  As of this posting, I am nearly three months into a year-long research project on this topic, stateside.  In addition, I recently applied for the Fulbright to Namibia in Ethnomusicology, where I would hope to continue my studies with genuine field work.

As the title of this entry suggests, I hope, in this blog, to give a depiction of the complexities of Namibian culture at large, and specifically culture surrounding Namibian music.  In researching this topic, what I've been able to discover the most about is not necessarily the music of Namibia itself, but rather the popular representations of that music, and the difficulties involved in learning about it.  This is exemplified well by the current Wikipedia article (of the same title as this blog, Music of Namibia), which makes no mention of the music of the Ju/'hoansi or the Himba or the Rehoboth Basters or church music traditions (among many others).  Most of the information given deals with popular recorded music mediums, which are admittedly important (and I will be discussing as well), but by no means representative of the "whole picture," if such a thing is possible.

In fact, the most informative part of the Wikipedia article is one of the items suggested for "Further Reading" at the end: Music as Instrument of Diversity and Unity, by Minette Mans.  This article is freely available to download as a PDF here.  I would consider Mans the foremost expert currently on Namibian music.  She is an educator who has had a great influence on the education systems in place within the country since it gained its independence in 1990.  I will be referring to her work in more detail in these postings.

Before going too much further, I want to state plainly that I am by no means an expert on this subject as of yet (one of the reasons that I feel I can't accurately edit the Wikipedia article).  I have never lived in the country, and I am relatively new to deeper study of it.  That being said, I welcome opinions and critiques on my work.  In fact, I think it imperative to the creation of a more accurate portrayal.  So please, let me know if you feel any crucial details have been left out or misrepresented.

I hope that the first two contrasting sources can begin to stir up some thoughts.  My next post will be a (very) brief history of the country.  I look forward to hearing from those of you who want to comment, and I will post again soon.

Links

Wikipedia: Music of Namibia

Minette Mans: Music as Instrument of Diversity and Unity (Full Text PDF)