Radio Soundings: South Africa and the Black Modern
Liz Gunner
Jan 2019 · The International African Library Book 59 · Cambridge University Press
Ebook
243
Pages
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About this ebook
Zulu Radio in South Africa is one of the most far-reaching and influential media in the region, currently attracting around 6.67 million listeners daily. While the public and political role of radio is well-established, what is less understood is how it has shaped culture by allowing listeners to negotiate modern identities and fast-changing lifestyles. Liz Gunner explores how understandings of the self, family, and social roles were shaped through this medium of voice and mediated sound. Radio was the unseen literature of the auditory, the drama of the airwaves, and thus became a conduit for many talents squeezed aside by apartheid repression. Besides Winnie Mahlangu and K. E. Masinga, among other talents, the exiles Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane made a network of identities and conversations which stretched from the heart of Harlem to the American South, drawing together the threads of activism and creativity from both Black America and the African continent at a critical moment of late empire.
About the author
Liz Gunner is visiting research professor in the School of Languages, University of Johannesburg. She has taught in South Africa, Sierra Leone and England. Her research primarily focusses on radio, popular culture, orality, and on the intersection of performance and the political in Southern Africa. She has published extensively in journals such as African Affairs, Research in African Literatures and Journal of Southern African Studies. Her most recent books include the co-edited Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Communities (2012) and Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature (with Graham Furniss, Cambridge, 1995).
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