I recently wrote about the vuvuzela neither to praise nor to malign it. Mine was and still is an attempt — only an attempt — to interpret its bewitching power. It was not a perfect attempt. Otherwise I would not have come across as if I was saying people should either subject themselves to the vuvuzela or get lost. Nothing could be further from my truth. It is more fruitful to consider the meaning of the vuvuzela prior to, and outside of, the question of whether it is likeable or detestable, civilised or uncivilised, hospitable or inhospitable, a psychological aide or a health hazard, environmentally friendly or not and whether it is reasonable or irrational. These obviously important but rather simplistic binaries, are matters which will catch up with us in due course.
The vuvuzela is neither for your or my comfort. This simple point has been especially but inadvertently brought home (again !) by people who bemoan the manner in which the vuvuzela drowns out and replaces singing human voices.
I have been duly accused of being “un African” for choosing (literally) a monotonous piece of plastic in place of the legendary African singing voice. Less than a century ago, African miners engaged in glorious song-and-dance sessions outside their hostels every weekend. Visitors from afar came to watch and record these glorious events. More happened there than meets the lazy eye. They sang songs and danced dances from “home” — and home was far away – as far as Blantyre or Lusaka. They sang joy and recited pain. They danced for fun and chanted militant spirituality. At these events, redemption songs were sung, lament was dramatised, liberation heralded, history redrawn and surrender mimicked even as it was fearfully derided. Though the music and the dances were from home, the setting was not “home” and therefore creativity was demanded of them. This is where and how isichatamiya — the music made famous by Ladysmith Black Mambazo — was born.
In similar ways and settings African-Americans produced negro spirituals, jazz, blues and more recently hip-hop. When kwaito broke on to the South African music scene some protested how “noisy”, “repetitive”, “monotonous”, “patriarchal” and “uncreative” it all sounded. Similar if not worse complaints were and are still levelled at the vuvuzela blowers. In time, kwaito was to manufacture a singer (does he ever actually sing?) called Mandoza and his hit single, nkalakatha — a song that softened many a previously hardened heart. For all his colourfulness and vuvu-blowing ability, “Sadaam” Maake –- the alleged founder of the power of the vuvuzela on the soccer pitch, sometimes called the number one Bafana supporter — is no match for Mandoza. Nor does Maake have the vuvuzela patent, poor fellow, but that is a matter for another article.
How dare I compare vuvuzela blowing to music making? Surely, even bad music is not comparable to the monotone sound of the vuvuzela? But the vuvuzela blower never promised or intended to make music.
The vuvuzela enters the fray to deepen, disrupt and plunge into crisis all the above traditions of song, dance and performance. Like these traditions of art, the vuvuzela phenomenon is a complex and subversive commentary on and of our times. While it was already making its subversive if also sporadic appearance during the 1995 African Football Cup, 15 years later, the vuvuzela drone has become the quintessential sound and feel of the South African soccer game. The vuvuzela sound is not music. It is an interruption of music as you and I have known it. It is a jolting replacement of music-making with a constant, sharp and amplified monotonous hum of a thousand vuvuzelas.
The sooner we will wake up to the fact that the vuvuzela sound depicts a refusal by the working classes to entertain the middle- and upper-classes, the better. Vuvuzela blowing denotes a refusal — not an inability — to sing. It is an option for harmonic noise of a special kind rather than harmonic music of the familiar kind. It is assertiveness designed to affect and to solicit reaction — even if that reaction is the insertion of ear plugs, the switching of TV channels, or the screening out of the vuvuzela sound during match broadcasts.
This is not about narrowly conceived notions of hospitality and inhospitality. After all, the encounter between (South) Africa and the world did not begin on the 11th of June 2010. We have several hundred years’ worth of opportunities for mutual hospitality — opportunities that continue to unfold in our times, opportunities taken, opportunities flouted and opportunities abused (in worse ways than the sound of the vuvuzela). Yet, if we were willing to radically redefine our sense and taste of “music”, we may yet “see” and ”hear” “the music” in the trance-inducing hiss of thousands of vuvuzelas blurring in monotonic unison — occasionally breaking into short-lived sporadic vuvu choruses during a soccer match. With a little more courage we might venture to seek to understand both the power and the sound of the vuvuzela.
I will be the first to admit that it was in sense (only in a sense), a bit of an overstatement to dub the vvuzela sound the desperate cry of an entire continent in an earlier article. The overstatement pertains to the reference to all of Africa. Not all of Africa is taken with the vuvuzela. Not all South Africans embrace and/or appreciate the vuvuzela. Generally, the vuvuzela offends the tastes and sensibilities of the middle, upper and chattering classes — African middle and upper classes included. For this reason, in any given South African match, by far the largest concentration of the vuvuzelas per capita, will be found among the folk seating in the cheap seats — seats which are pejoratively called the “extra-strong seats” in South African football supporter’s lingo.
The vuvuzela is emerging as a working-class instrument of self-expression during a soccer match. Could vuvuzela blowing be part of a sort of a silent “peasant’s revolt” first within South Africa, but also on the continent and beyond? One of the “fears” of the middle classes relating to the vuvuzela is that its sound might become the most memorable aspect of the Fifa 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Some are even suggesting that Fifa might never award the World Cup to an African country because of the vuvuzela. I suppose the vuvuzela might be a slightly better excuse for not awarding the cup to the continent that the non-excuses we have not been given for the past 80 years. But vuvumania could spread across the world. Retailers from other parts of the world — especially in Europe — are already reporting growing sales of the infamous plastic trumpet.
Few visitors to South Africa will leave the country without purchasing a vuvuzela — if only for sentimental and ornamental reasons. When I flew overseas recently I saw dozens of colourful vuvuzelas protruding from hand luggage carry-bags — several dozen must have been shoved into the main luggage. Friends begged me to bring one “for the kids”.
Nothing I say or do will affect the sales or usage of the vuvuzela during matches. The vuvuzela is already out there and indications are that it is growing in popularity. It will not always be hegemonic — hegemony is seldom total, if ever. But we owe it to ourselves to try to understand its power and attraction at this point. Even the banning of the vuvuzela by various football associations might have the unintended consequence of drawing the working classes to the vuvuzela by sheer force of suspicion alone. The millions who love, buy and use vuvuzelas cannot be doing it simply because they are dim-witted, selfish and inhospitable.
Does it mean the vuvuzela sound is not dangerous? I have no objective reason to disbelieve the scientists who say it is. Not anymore than I have reason to disbelieve those scientists who have counseled that smoking (including passive smoking) causes lung cancer. Like its power of attraction, could it be that the “danger” of the vuvuzela also lies in the coded message it carries from the working classes to the upper classes, from the poor to the rich and from Africa to Fifa? What might that message be? This is where Bob Dylan comes handy. The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind – and it is coming soon to a stadium near you.
Prof Maluleke – Your message came across loud and clear the first time, in fact, pictures of the first opressed “masses” picking up rocks at a riot jumped to mind, and that seemed to have ended not too badly, not so? I am now part of that opressed mass which has just slightly changed its membership to now be more even rainbow coloured, though the suffering is mostly the same. From that point of view, I can quite understand the revolt of the peasants, but, and this is a big but, is there no other way to show our disrespect and disgust for the cushion classes than to damage other people’s hearing AND our own, making the Chinese stinking rich in the process? Do you honestly think that there is a future for deaf mucisians anywhere in the world? Picture the sound of 40 000 drums of various sizes and sounds. Now that is a sound that could frighten anyone without damaging ears, environment or do nothing for at all to improve the lot of the average South African at the bottom, who did not even get to make the vuvu. I remember the sound of the drums when it still relayed messages at night. Wow! What a spine chilling sound. Why does Africa insists on being its own worst enemy? It honestly have the potential and the resources to be the greatest in its very own unique un-European, un-American, un-Asian way. So why don’t we?
@ “Could vuvuzela blowing be part of a sort of a silent “peasant’s revolt” first within South Africa, but also on the continent and beyond?” (Silent? Not so much!)
Revolutionary? No. Revolting? Yes. I
nchoate, yes.
Ridiculous, yes.
And meaningless–despite the effort to dignify it by attributing revolutionary motives to those who blow them.
The vuvuzela is a noise maker like a child’s toy of that name. It is childish, not revolutionary. Like over-loud conversation, it is masquerading as an aspect of local ‘culture’ or, in this case, as a revolutionary statement. Is ‘rudeness’ truly revolutionary or is it just a substitute for effective action to change one’s circumstances through one’s own efforts? The vuvuzela draws attention to the human capacity for absurd behaviour, nothing more.
There is something ‘cool’ about the vuvuzela. It’s reassuringly lowbrow and seems to unite SA across culture lines, given that – much like Australia – an affection for lowbrow culture is part of our national spirit. I see no harm in that. We have never been a pretentious nation.
@ Siobahn “The vuvuzela draws attention to the human capacity for absurd behaviour, nothing more”
The only thing absurd here is your response. If thats the way people choose to celebrate then its up to them. They have as much right to their absurd behaviour as you do to wishing for cups of tea and cucumber snacks at the matches where everything is nice and quiet and civilised.
I’m in the USA at the moment. The press seems to regard the vuvuzela simply as something that ruins soccer – journalists here seem generally horrified that it even exists.
Speaking for myself, the vuvuzela is much like a private resounding fart. I am sure that each successful parrrrrp serves the same for releasing seratonin levels sufficient for similar pleasure of letting go a good one, except this time public expulsion of mass farts on demand for all to revel in. Whooopee.
Whatever the Vuvuzela is described to be and purports to be, cultural or otherwise, it is also (and importantly so) a commodity…one that is making huge profits from their sale to whihever classes are buying them. They are very cheap and easy to make: a simple injection mould is made and they are mass-produced.
The simplicity in their manufacture also accounts for the simplicity of their monotone and monotonous function.
….
Yes it is certainly blowing a lot of wind. Pity it has no tune other than a mindless endless noise to entertain mindless endless minds.
…..
With all due respect to the intellectual capacity of the Author and his subsequent commentarians, I cannot recall any gadget, toy, creed or cry that has so defined any world Cup Final in recent memory. Seeing thousands of real Portuguese fans (yes the ones who came from Portugal) walking jubilantly down Somerset Rd, Greenpoint yesterday, most of them blowing a vuvu, that for me was evidence enough that this charming yet much-maligned little “Chino-plastic-Afro-cultural-traditional-weapon-thingy” has firmly lodged itself into the hearts and minds and minds of people all-ages aroundn the Globe. These will not remember it as a Chinese plastic horn, but as an African experience of a lifetime. Such branding for South Africa cannot be bought with any kind of money. Now shut up and blow!
We do not go to sports event to wear ear plugs or muffs. We go to watch the game, to hear the cheers, to hear the groans, to hear the songs of encouragement to the teams but no more in South Africa. We go to hear the most deafening noise. Spectators can no longer speak to each other, the coaches cannot communicate with their players and the players cannot ask or shout for the ball.
On Radio 702 they had a scientist from the hearing institute or something like that. He told us that 4 vuvuzellas make more noise than a Formula One race car.
There may be a great ‘atmosphere” with these ear damaging contraptions but they spoil the game, they lose the ‘class’ of spectator participation and the are spoiling the WC. The vuvuzella has nothing to do with a cry from the depressed, it is simply a very stupid thing to do and as years pass, with nothing being done, more and more people are going to lose their hearing as is the case with many musicians.
South Africa will be remembered for the most awful, noisy world cup and FIFA hopefully will ban then before any more damage is done.
The costumes and crowdn participation make for a fantastic atmosphere but the vuvuzella spoils all of that and what for??
No doubt the vuvuzela is noisy and can indeed be irritating. It is one thing to hear the sonorous drone of vuvuzelas in a stadium ( which sounds like a swarm of bees)
It is quite another if someone seated right behind you insists on blowing his/her vuvuzela hard and repeatedly.(With all that deluge of delirious decibels , I would be inclined to agree that the vuvuzela cannot be very good for your health)
However , I wonder if the vuvuzela can be characterised accurately as a “working class instrument” as Prof Maluleke semms to indicate.Is it not simply a South African soccer lover’s instrument regardless of their alleged “class”?Admittedly there may well be fewer vuvuzelas among those seated in expensive seats typically bought by top companies for their top management and guests.However are the people seated in those expensive seats your “typical soccer lovers” or are they more like rugby and cricket lovers who happen to attend certain well chosen soccer matches (like the world cup, Afcon and so on) for “networking purposes)?
For those with little time, the only comment on this page worth reading is the one by gabi.
And this one of course – haha.
I happened to be in Germany on work-related issues when the opening match of the 2010 SWC kicked off. The locals of this great country of beer and song are pretty peeved off at South Africa for allowing the continuous blowing of the vuvuzela. This instrument destroys the atmosphere of goodwill usually prevalent at the viewing of these matches on telly, especially in a beer-hall. “Dummkopf” was a word bandied about freely and regularly on that specific evening.
Upon returning to China, I went to my favourite pub in Haikou city which is owned by an Australian mate of mine. I know that prior to the start of the SWC, he had vigorously advertised the live screening of all matches in his bar. According to him, opening night was a sell-out. Expats and locals alike crammed the joint, eager to see South Africa take on Mexico. By half-time, just about everyone had left, blaming the irritating drone of the vuvuzela as the main cause for the loss of interest. A Hollander apparently coined the phrase “bunch of mindless idiots’, referring to the vuvuzela blowers.
There are so many options available for South Africans to project our image as a soccer-loving nation, yet, on the international stage, we choose to do it through the vuvuzela at the expense of alienating ourselves from the international community. “Dummkopfe” or “mindless idiots”, I ask you?
Sound and noise are different. There is a saying in English which goes like; ‘Empty vessels make the most noise”. It would sound cranky if said “sound” because the latter carries some sentiment not present in the former. A song is an art which can communicate a message to as many people at the same time. It purposes by communicating, consulting, persuading, opposing, kindling, fellow creatures, in the form of words or just sound. A message given in song can be imagined even if the language used is unknown. We understand when an animal is in danger or happy because they use variation in tone. They also use sound, not noise, to communicate.
It is understandable that entertainment has a cost. But we use entertainment to bury our sorrows or to transfer our thoughts away from the self, but we do not stop rationalising when doing so.
It is evil to profiteer at the expense rational argument and cooperative action which we possess, different to animals. It renders people servile and subhuman from preventing them from developing fully the faculties of rational argument, by pretending that soccer is all about a meaningless din.
Commentators are employed due to their knowledge of sport, and they help us understand the game better. SA has an opportunity to be soccer-loving country, only for the vuvuzela. Love for something you do not know is love for something else.
When one is lost he makes loud noise to be heard.
@ themba tantrum
Thank you for your comment. However, I was responding to the issue of whether blowing the vuvuzela is a ‘political’, revolutionary act. In my view, it is not. I agree with you: the vuvuzela is fun—for the person blowing one. It is not fun to listen to. It is intrusive and, I have no doubt, damaging to the eardrums–as is ‘heavy metal’ music amplified to hearing-destroying levels. [Clinical studies have found that fans of loud music lose as much as 30% of their hearing before age 30.]
Celebration is a good thing and often involves shouting,singing, clapping, etc. It is when the medium of technology is introduced that celebration becomes mere noise. The ‘vuvu’ is like a Tanoy, only less useful.
FIFA and China have a vested interest in seeing vuvuzelas sell. Both profit. They know it will be a ‘fad’ for the tourists but they also know that within days of arriving home the ‘vuvu’ will be abandoned to the bottom of the toy box or the back of a cupboard. In SA the ‘vuvu’ will be ubiquitous and will continue to intrude on the concentration of the fans and the players.
BTW: I detest cucumber sandwiches. And cress. And cricket.
Oh, and I don’t drink tea. But thanks for asking.
The vuvuzela will most definately be banned at all future world cups, wherever they may be held. That says it all.
For the civilised world, idiocy is short lived.
Excellent reflections Tinyiko (!) The FIFA 2010 World Cup will no doubt go into history as having triggered the spread of vuvuzelas around the planet…to some it produces a sound of joy and support that ought to be embraced, to others it’s just irritating noise that should be banned…but what if the latter indeed is a ‘sound of dissonance’, to urge us to address all that is still not right in our local and global communities???
How appropriate that on the continent on which mankind’s evolution began, so has our devolution begun.
I think the beauty of the Vuvuzela is that you not need to be musical to play it. and inside everyone is the need to make a noise, even if only in retaliation the the annoying blower next to you.
I was at the soccer match yesterday between Nigeria and Korea republic. Two things struck me
1 Some vuvuzela blowers were quite creative and artistic and actually entertained us
2 A number of the vuvuzela blowers were actually foreigners.
Hence (a) It is possible that the “intellectual” commentators who are trying to portray the vuvuzela as a “backward south african instrument” that will “not be accepted in the civilised world” are only speaking for themselves and not soccer lovers.
(b)Come next soccer season you may find a number of vuvuzelas at Higbury, Stamford Brook and similar foreign soccer venues
A “working-class” instrument? People who could afford to go to the games were from the top end of town. Vuvuzelas were in abundance. People in fan parks were from the bottom end of town. Vuvuzelas were in abundance there too — blown at either venue by men, women, black, white, rich, poor. So where did you draw this bilge about it being “working-class” from? It’s a toy, a fad — like tops, marbles and yo-yos. It’ll blow over one day, like fads invariably do.
An entire nation devoted to the music of Giacinto Scelsi! (look him up on Wikipaedia)
To vuvuzela is to make noise! That is why the original creators of this contraption came up with it. It was created for that purpose (to make noise). There are others, this one happens to be cheaper to produce….
I understand that many of the commentators here do not understand the why and where this culture comes from but that is fine. The Vuvuzela might not be part of the culture you’ve read about but it certainly is (their culture) for the “mindless idiots” who live it.
@ Grant
Good point re: devolution. But sad.
Ban the vuvuzela?? …. Never!
Everyone has the right to cut of their noses to spite their own faces …. or blow their eardrums out to irritate the ‘chattering classes’.
Just as the Chinese have the right to make mega-profits off the hysteria of the lumpen masses.
Prof., Are we ever going to hear about the royalties or the lack thereof of our brother Sadaam Maake? History reminds us of a certain Sadaam, whose ‘royalties’ we snatched away by the Yanks. Good luck to the African version.
@Thandinkosi Sibisi – “backward south african instrument” that will “not be accepted in the civilised world”” – Come now, that is stretching the argument against vuvus a bit, not so?
Firstly, it is not a an African instrument, it closer resembles the fanfare trumpets that were used (not any more, since we evolved since then) to anounce the arrival of royalty to the general population. It bears as much resemblance to a horn as a corkscrew does to a pencil.
Secondly, it is not produced locally, so it is doubly not South African.
Then, the civilised portion of the globe, especially in South Africa, have banned smoking in public since it “might” cause harm to innocent bystanders. Now, we know that the vuvu definitely does cause harm to others (no maybe) so, does that mean I can light up in public again since there is less chance of me accidentally harming someone smoking?
In the pursuit of being truly African one must always guard against those insidious imperial bloody agent ideas creeping in, like the fan-fare trumpet, which, as usual, we can thank the Romans’ love of pomp and circumstance for. Even they had the sense to not use it often, and then always pointed away from innocent bystanders’ ears.
http://www.bbtrumpet.com/items.html
The vuvuzela is being reflected in all the major internet memes:
http://graphjam.com/2010/06/24/funny-graphs-the-vuvuzela-explained/
One thing noticeable about the people who are making grumpy and funny noises about the vuvuzela are the same people who do not love soccer in the first place; and are only noticing the sport now because the whole world is and they cannot watch the seven o’clock news without the mention of soccer. They are the same pessimists that told everyone that the organisation of the tournament is a mess and will be a total failure. If only they knew anything about soccer they would know the origins of the instrument and what it symbolises. I am tired of these negative, foreign media worshippers, nay-saying, self-doubters that can never utter anything positive and believe everything portrayed by the media. Perhaps they should have arranged a violin concert or a nudist self-discovery camp somewhere on a farm in the Northern Cape.
You know nothing about soccer, you have got no love for it; and if there was ever a team you supported, that team, is Manchester United or Arsenal. I am saying this because the only time you will go to a stadium is when such teams visit our shores; or even worse, the first and the last time you would probably set foot in a stadium is now during the world cup – thereby depriving a seat at the stadium for a true soccer fan. Shame on you! You crass racial bigots!