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Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024
Thesis (MMus)--Stellenbosch University, 2026.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
2026
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| _version_ | 1867613887080169472 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Grayer, Fiona Marian |
| author2 | Vos, Stephanie |
| author_browse | Grayer, Fiona Marian Vos, Stephanie |
| author_facet | Vos, Stephanie Grayer, Fiona Marian |
| author_sort | Grayer, Fiona Marian |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | Stellenbosch University |
| description | Thesis (MMus)--Stellenbosch University, 2026. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/136040 |
| institution | Stellenbosch University (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:43:16.997Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| publishDateRange | 2026 |
| publishDateSort | 2026 |
| publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| publisherStr | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| spelling | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/136040 Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024 Grayer, Fiona Marian Vos, Stephanie Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Music. Thesis (MMus)--Stellenbosch University, 2026. Grayer, F. M. 2026. Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024. Unpublished masters thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/items/56db944c-2514-4c33-a792-29e99f316e91 Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies, Emeritus Professor of African Music Performance at the University of Cape Town, is among South Africa’s foremost traditional artists and cultural historians. As the founder and leader of South Africa’s globally celebrated ensembles, Amampondo and Ibuyambo, Plaatjies has spent more than three decades reshaping the soundscape of African traditional music. His distinctive neo-traditional blend of sound, rooted in collaboration and reinvention with artists from various cultural backgrounds, and his ability to revive, revamp and communicate old cultural practices and teaching methods, has led to countless teaching and performance engagements locally and abroad. Taking its frame from Plaatjies’s years as lecturer and later professor of African Music at the South African College of Music (SACM), University of Cape Town (1992-2024), this thesis explores his life and career as a lens through which to examine how African performance practices, grounded in lived experience and oral tradition, challenge Western epistemologies and contribute to broader debates on decoloniality and epistemic justice in music education. The key argument this thesis advances in both content and form, is that Plaatjies’s presence and contributions to UCT must be understood in relation to the worlds he inhabits and brings into the institution. It demonstrates how his life and practice unfolds across multiple worlds and historical moments, bridging ancestral, rural, urban, institutional and global spaces. In doing so, he functions as an interlocutor between distinct musical and cultural systems, mediating African music’s place within contemporary academic and global frameworks. Adopting a life-writing approach, the research draws on in-depth interviews with Plaatjies, archival materials and secondary sources. The study suggests that African music embodies a living epistemology, a way of knowing and being in the world. Plaatjies’s career illuminates new possibilities for embedding African music at UCT and beyond, advancing African-centred perspectives within higher education in post-apartheid South Africa. Few studies have centred the lived experiences of figures such as Plaatjies who embody these epistemic shifts within South African higher education. By situating Plaatjies’s career within the broader context of national transformation, this study addresses that gap and contributes to redress the historical marginalisation of African music in tertiary spaces. Masters 2026-04-21T08:15:52Z 2026-04-21T08:15:52Z 2026-03 Thesis https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/136040 en Stellenbosch University 192 pages : ill. application/pdf Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| spellingShingle | Grayer, Fiona Marian Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024 |
| title | Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024 |
| title_full | Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024 |
| title_fullStr | Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024 |
| title_full_unstemmed | Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024 |
| title_short | Dizu Zungula Mzikantu Plaatjies: Converging worlds of African Music at the University of Cape Town, 1992-2024 |
| title_sort | dizu zungula mzikantu plaatjies converging worlds of african music at the university of cape town 1992 2024 |
| url | https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/136040 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT grayerfionamarian dizuzungulamzikantuplaatjiesconvergingworldsofafricanmusicattheuniversityofcapetown19922024 |