The disharmonious honking of the vuvuzelas: homogenization and difference in the production and promotion of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa

Author:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In 2010, sixteen years after it became a democracy, South Africa became the first African nation to host the Soccer World Cup. This paper explores the role that the music plays in constructing, imagining and managing the sound space of the World Cup, which markets South Africa to foreign spectators and local audiences alike. It begins with a consideration of persistent debates on the possibility of identifying a South African music, following by a consideration of the often exoticist, primitivist representations of that music perpetuated by the 2010 Soccer World Cup advertisements. It then considers the extent to which this primitivism, which actively undermines attempts to represent South Africa's preparedness for hosting the event, is counterbalanced by the sonic production of a normatively Western gender binary employed to demonstrate social and economic development. Finally, it will discuss the extent to which this rigid binary, reinforced in musical representations of South Africanness, makes invisible South Africa's rich history of gender queer performance, and raises the question of the effectiveness of the 2010 Soccer World Cup music and advertising in promoting a positive image of South Africa to the world and encouraging ordinary South Africans to support this event.