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Event: “Radio Soundings: South Africa and the Black Modern” (SOAS, 28 October)

By Africa in Words on 24 October , 2019 • ( 0 )

We are delighted to share that The SOAS Centre of African Studies, International African Institute and Centre for English Studies at SOAS invite you to the following seminar and book launch as part of the Southern Africa Seminar Series:

“Radio Soundings: South Africa and the Black Modern”
by Liz Gunner, University of Johannesburg

Monday 28^th October, 2019 at 5pm
Russell Square, London

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.

AiW snapshot image, courtesy of WitsPress

“This is the book we have all been waiting for – the first major volume on South Africa’s most widely consumed media: black radio.” – Isabel Hofmeyr

Speaker: Liz Gunner, University of Johannesburg (author)
Chair: Kai Easton, Senior Lecturer in English, SOAS
Discussant: George Ogola, University of Central Lancashire & Peter Brooke, University of Oxford

Books will be available at the event which will be followed by a wine reception. All welcome. More information about the event is available on the SOAS website: here

Rsvp/further information from Stephanie Kitchen, contact email: sk111@soas.ac.uk

Follow The Centre of African Studies at SOAS on Twitter @CAS_SOAS and Wits University Press @WitsPress