Project

"Ghoema vannie Kaap": The Life and Work of Taliep Petersen (1950 to 2006)

Program

African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellowships

Department

Music

Abstract

The proposed research project concerns the revision of my doctoral dissertation, "Ghoema vannie Kaap": The life and work of Taliep Petersen (1950-2006), for publication as a monograph. The envisaged output is a musical biography of late South African musician and songwriter Taliep Petersen that is concerned with a discussion of his various projects as situated within his lived experience and the broader sociopolitical environment of South Africa during the period from 1950 to 2006. Furthermore, by discussing Petersen's artistic output against the background of South African coloured identity discourse, this publication will attempt to answer certain critical questions about individual and collective identity formation in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.