Search

Postage stamps have in recent years been positioned as token purveyors of nation, with countries disseminating carefully curated ideas of national identity to their own citizens and international audiences. This article complements existing research by using South African music-themed postage stamps to read the changing narratives of the nation, or 'music nationalism' in philately. The article analyses music-themed postage stamps issued in South Africa between 1961 and 2015. It confirms that the representation of music nationalism in apartheid philately aligned with Afrikaner nationalist politics, with clear divides between 'White' and 'Black' genres. Post-apartheid music-themed stamps draw attention to forgotten music histories previously overshadowed by apartheid ideology while still engaging with musical threads of the apartheid past. Most significantly, the article illuminates the other forces at play behind what many accept to be a process solely steered and controlled by the state, revealing much about South Africa's democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following its premiere in 2014, the Afrikaans opera Poskantoor (2014) was the first full-length Afrikaans opera to grace the South African opera stage for some decades. The production's musicological reception has been positive: Mareli Stolp argued, for example, that Poskantoor's comic medium enables the work to offer political and socio-cultural critiques, 'without adopting or supporting an openly political stance' (Stolp 2016, 152-53). My reading of the opera will contend that, described as a 'nostalgic story' and cloaked under a satirical guise, Poskantoor dangerously flirts with nostalgic reflections of Afrikanerdom that may be regarded as problematic, especially considering the country's apartheid legacy and the white elitism associated with the dissemination of opera in South Africa during the regime. In line with interdisciplinary approaches in global opera research that embrace the media of opera, this article focuses on Poskantoor's YouTube trailer - a paratext that unsettles the opera's nostalgic indulgences. Investigating the interactions between nostalgia and the avant-garde, this article explores the subtle interplay between references that indulge Afrikaner nostalgia (a prominent theme in Afrikaans cultural products post-1994), and an avant-garde aesthetic that attempts to distance Poskantoor from the genre's apartheid legacy. I argue that the latter succeeds in acting as a catalyst that questions Afrikaans musical and cultural remnants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]