Paper short abstract:

This paper looks into the visual and musical aspects of the ‘hip-hopera’ Afrikaaps. It analyses how visual and sonic aesthetics converge in the performed production of history, and how they are employed in attempts at authenticating a recently asserted linguistic and cultural ‘identity’.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks into the visual and sonic aspects of the 'hip-hopera' Afrikaaps. Afrikaaps was produced in 2010 by a group of musicians and spoken-word artists from Cape Town and the rural Western Cape Province of South Africa. The show premiered at an annual Afrikaans cultural festival; it then had a three week-run at a theatre, located in a predominantly white, English-speaking part of Cape Town. The documentary by Cape Town film maker Dylan Valley (2011) follows this group of local artists creating the stage production as they trace the roots of Afrikaans to KhoiSan and slaves in the Cape. The show and the film aim to 'reclaim and liberate Afrikaans from its reputation as the language of the oppressor, taking it back for all who speak it.' (Valley 2011) The paper presents an analysis of how visual and sonic aesthetics converge in the performed production of history, and how they are employed in attempts at authenticating a recently asserted linguistic and cultural 'identity'. Special attention is given on the one hand, to the formats of visual and musical presentation employed in the production, and on the other, to how a group of young Capetonians assume pride in the particular local historical and linguistic perspective in their everyday lives.