Thanks to Harold Marcus for his offer and ideas. I would encourage
adding a book like *In Township Tonight: South Africa's Black City
Music and Theatre* by David Coplan (Longman) which covers three
centuries of history as reflected in popular city music, dance, and
theatre. Urban, African popular expression is often left out of the
discourse and representation of African history, when there is often
so much social commentary, historical discussion, etc. in these
genres. It is not just a South African phenomenon, as the same is
true in the North African and East African contexts with which I am
familiar and, of course, there are the much discussed, but rarely
codified and exa- mined griot texts in West Africa.
These raise questions of where history lives in a society, where the
"records" are, who is a historian, etc, and the whole interesting
debate of "history of Africa" vs. African history. I would be happy
to discuss this more, and to receive a copy of the syllabus. To
get at some of these questions in my own courses, I also make use of
African film--Yeelen, for example, is very interesting on these
questions.