Tradition, Identity and Performance

The story of contemporary African popular music has had a new interface of television. Television has become a medium from which musical cultures are acted and disseminated to the wider audiences. The introduction of television in South Africa in 1976 introduced new challenges and opportunities for black musicians to renegotiate their performance practices against the increasingly intense commercialisation of music. Television provided a stage for the holistic view of contemporary performance cultures. It is argued that television constructs tradition for practitioners such as artists, producers, audiences, media, record and fashion industries. Television thus plays the role of providing evidence for social constructions of reality in contemorary African music cultures. This reading will help shed light on the relationships between tradition, identity and performance and a valuable addition to popular music and media studies.