An Examination of Past Musical Studies

The study of music in Namibia has a heritage just as much as the music itself. Early studies of Namibian culture tended to keep music at the periphery. For instance, the oldest text I was able to find about the country was by a hunter named Charles John Andersson from 1856, titled Lake Ngami. In it, he has a surprising amount of interaction with indigenous cultures, including a meeting with the famous Jonker Afrikaner, head of the Orlam clan and responsible for hundreds of Herero murders in conflicts such as the Bloodbath of Okahandja in 1850. Andersson has no qualms about expressing bias for some groups over others, and even those who he terms “his friends,” the Damara, he views with a certain level of disdain. In the only mention of music in over six hundred pages, he tells about a social event he witnessed while with the Damara in Ondonga (the “guitar” he mentions is a pluriarc):

"On another occasion, we attended a ball at the royal residence. An entertainment of this kind was given every night, soon after dark; but it was the most stupid and uninteresting affair I ever witnessed. The musical instruments were the well-known African tom-tom, and a kind of guitar. We did not join in the dance, but amused ourselves with admiring the ladies." (Andersson, 195-196)

Even scholarly work of the early 20th century often included a general section on the Arts, but without extensive analysis of music and the place it holds within the culture. It is only recently that significant work has been devoted specifically to the study of music in Namibia as it relates to culture. Significant researchers include Minette Mans, Emanuelle Olivier, Herve Riviere, Sabine Zinke, Megan Biesele, and Nicholas England. In my next post, I will focus on the work of the two most widely published researchers: Mans and Olivier.