Radio Soundings: South Africa and the Black Modern

The International African Library

by Liz Gunner

Zulu Radio in South Africa is one of the most far-reaching and influential media in the region, currently attracting around 6.67 million listeners daily. While the public and political role of radio is well-established, what is less understood is how it has shaped culture by allowing listeners to negotiate modern identities and fast-changing lifestyles. Liz Gunner explores how understandings of the self, family, and social roles were shaped through this medium of voice and mediated sound. Radio was the unseen literature of the auditory, the drama of the airwaves, and thus became a conduit for many talents squeezed aside by apartheid repression. Besides Winnie Mahlangu and K. E. Masinga, among other talents, the exiles Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane made a network of identities and conversations which stretched from the heart of Harlem to the American South, drawing together the threads of activism and creativity from both Black America and the African continent at a critical moment of late empire.

242 pages, Hardcover

Published March 28, 2019

Reviews

[Dina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is essentially a key text for anyone interested in South African Black History. In the book, the author uses radio, but more specifically ideas of voice and sound to map out a suturing of community, publics and listeners. By focusing on key figures in Black history who worked with, in and for radio, the book untangles various sub-narratives of blackness and the ways in which radio helped shape these side narratives. We get a sense of the ‘structures of feelings’ that defined the relationships between listeners and announcers and radio drama plays.