Township

The township musical

A term used to refere to a uniquely South African form of musical melodrama which evolved in the black urban townships of South Africa. It utilizes stock characters and situations and melodramatic and moralizing plots in which good, sympathetic characters suffer as a result of the pressures of urbnan life and the machinations of evil urban characters, but ultimately triumph. Devoted to entertainment and - at most - social satire, rather than to any overt political agenda or content. Formally the plays are interspersed with jazz music, songs and dance routines (often with on-stage musicians). Gibson Kente and Sam Mhangwane are generally considered the true originators and certainly commercially the most successful exponents of the township musical in its original form, but of course its roots lie much further back in the early part of the twentieth century. Strongly influenced by the African variety tradition of Motsiela, Matshikiza and others, and the post WW2 musical extravaganzas such as King Kong and Meropa, it arose from experiments by Kente and other young performer-writers who had begun to adapt the form of the jazz-musical to smaller-scale, domestic plays for township audiences in township performance spaces. Inheritors of the tradition have been many and include writers such as Mzwandile Maqina, *** and ***. While the form was long ignored by the media despite its commercial viability, and actively despised by the more politicised and intellectual of the the movements of the 70’s and 80’s, such as the Black Consciousness Movement and Mihloti, a number of the more serious writers also took up the form – utilizing adapting and even exploiting it. These include Matsemela Manaka, Maishe Maponya, Mbongeni Ngema, Junction Avenue Theatre Company, Zakes Mda, ****. By the late 1990’s it had become a central feature of what may be termed the South African style of theatre. From an academic point of view the form gained prominence largely to the efforts of Robert Kavanagh, who – although he certainly disapproved of it intellectually – recognized the importance of Kente and the township musical, and wrote about it in the journal S’ketsh and in his seminal work Theatre and Cultural Struggle in South Africa. Other writers such as Coplan, Larlham, Steadman and Kruger picked up on this influence and explored it further.

Township venues

A reference to venues in urban, (black) townships utilized for theatrical performances. These ranged from formal Community Halls, school and church halls to private homes, shebeens, streets and grave-sides. ***

After the fall of Apartheid and the new dispensation in 1994, the townships gradually became larger and economically more empowered. Also a number of new venues arose, including the Soweto Theatre in Jabulani (2012),

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