Neil Williams
SONGS OF THE WOMAN MIGRANTS: PERFORMANCE AND IDENTITY IN SOUTH AFRICA by Deborah James (Witwatersrand University Press)
Music in the urban wasteland of the post- apartheid Witwatersrand townships is the subject of this book. It chronicles the emergence of artistic expression in the form of music and dance, created by women in male-dominated environments. The expression of identity is sung and danced, a presentation of a culture that has emerged from the fusion of rural and urban experience and tradition.
It is also a tale of fortitude and hope. Women migrants to the Witwatersrand townships used dance to create and continue the idea of home. They reshaped the image of home from being a physical place to the idea that home is an inclusive intellectual space where the scattered people of the north could find acceptance and welcome. Songs of the Woman Migrants is a moving book, well-written and fascinating in its detail.
