Structure, secrets, and Sesotho: Migrants' performance and Basotho national culture

Abstract

Lesotho's economic and political dependency on South Africa affects every aspect of Basotho social and cultural life. In response, the concept of Sesotho, Basotho language and culture, has been reflexively ideo-logized to refer to anything that Basotho regard as their own, unadulterated by ‘external’ influences. Sesotho has become a koma, a sacred secret, a cognitive and behavioural defence against the loss of Basotho cultural identity and the limited resources to which this identity gives title. Creative leadership in Sesotho performance is now exercised by artists occupying a position of structural marginality in Basotho culture. Migrant working men and women have created new performance genres that enlarge Basotho cultural boundaries and increase their permeability, challenging idealized or authoritative notions of what constitutes Sesotho. The Basotho tavern singers turned recording artists, to whom the task of making and remaking Basotho ‘national culture’ has fallen, are focused on. Their songs reveal the dynamics of gender, genre, and expressive authority in the politics of performance. Employing their ‘marginality’ to address openly the tension between the ‘useful fictions’ of structure and the reality of social behaviour, these performers creatively produce as well as reproduce Sesotho. The work of these performers represents a ‘structure of feeling’: an articulation of experience with larger social forces and expressions of ideology, of authoritative genres and metaphors with what Bakhtin called the common people's creative culture of laughter'.

Lesotho se ekonomiese en politieke afhanklikheid van Suid-Afrika raak elke aspek van die Basotho se sosiale en kulturele lewe. As reaksie is die begrip Sesotho, die taal en kultuur van die Basotho, refleksief geïdeo-logiseer om na alies te verwys wat die Basotho as hulle eie beskou, onvervals deur invloede van ‘buite’. Sesotho het 'n koma geword, 'n heilige geheim, 'n bewussyns-en gedragsverweer teen die verlies van die kulturele identiteit van die Basotho en die beperkte middele waaraan hierdie identiteit uitdrukking gee. Skeppende leierskap in Sesotho performance word nou aan die dag gelê deur kunstenaars wat hulle struk-tureei op die periferie van die kultuur van die Basotho bevind. Trekarbeiders, sowel mans as vroue, het nuwe vorme van voordrag geskep wat die kultuurgrense van die Basotho en hulle deurdringbaarheid uitbrei, en die geïdealiseerde of gesaghebbende denkbeelde van wat Sesotho behels, uitdaag. Die artikel word toegespits op Basotho-shebeensangers wat opnamekunstenaars geword het, en op wie die taak g? vai het om die 'nasionale kultuur' van die Basotho te skep en te herskep. Hulle liedere openbaar die stukrag van geslag, genre en uitdrukking wat in die strategie van die voordrag tot uiting kom. Deur die benutting van hui posisie op die periferie om die spanning tussen ‘gerieflike fiksies’ van die sisteem en die werklikheid van sosiale gedrag aan te spreek, word Sesotho deur hierdie voordraers geproduseer en gereprodu-seer. Die werk van hierdie voordraers verteenwoordig 'n ‘gevoelstruktuur’: 'n uitdrukking van ervaringe waar-in dieper sosiale kragte meewerk; die uitdrukking van ideologie, van gesaghebbende genres en metafore met wat Bakhtin the people's creative culture of laughter'genoem het.