Cape Town Harmonies: Memory, Humour and Resilience

ARMELLE GAULIER holds a doctorate in political science from the Bordeaux Institute of Political Studies. She conducted research on the musics of the Kaapse Klopse and the Malay Choirs in 2006 and 2008, and was granted two masters degrees from the University of Paris 8-Saint Denis for dissertations based on her fieldwork in Cape Town. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Bordeaux Institute of Political Studies. Her research focuses on the relationship between music, politics and identity, with a particular interest in the symbolic power of music, and in musical practices and experiences of citizenship, especially within groups of migrants. DENIS-CONSTANT MARTIN was until 2016 an Outstanding Research Fellow of the French National Foundation for Political Science. He was successively attached to the Paris Centre of International Studies, then to the Bordeaux centre Les Afriques dans le monde. He was a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies (STIAS) at Stellenbosch University (2007, 2013 and 2015). His research focused on the relationship between culture and politics. After doing fieldwork in Eastern Africa, the Commonwealth Caribbean and the United States, he studied the New Year Festivals in Cape Town, with a special interest in the musics of the Kaapse Klopse and the Malay Choirs. He has published many academic articles and books, including: Coon Carnival, New Year in Cape Town, Past and Present (David Philip, 1999) and Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa (African Minds, 2013).