In Township Tonight: South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre

Rating:
Summary: Dances not Dirges: Culture under Apartheid
Review: In 1986, Paul Simon's album, "Graceland" focused international attention on the music and people of South Africa. The music was not the mournful dirges of apartheid victims but rather the vibrant sounds of a cultural affirmation. Anyone interested the people and culture behind the "Graceland" sound need look no further than David Coplan's "In Township Tonight!"

Those who might shy away from an academic work, for fear of encountering dry-as-sawdust pedantic prose, will be pleasantly surprised. Coplan's writing is clear and unencumbered. Coplan provides a brief survey of the dynamics of Black South African culture in the nineteenth century. This serves a backdrop to the book's primary focus, Black music and culture in urban South Africa during the twentieth century.

Coplan's account is intersting and exciting, sad yet homorous. Through rigorous research and passion for his subject Coplan provides the reader with a compelling look at one of the most unusual societies of the twentieth century, apartheid South Africa. The reader is taken beyond the simplistic South Africa of media sound bites to a world of complex characters where music is part of life and where, in the background one hears the irrepresible peep of a penny whistle.