Abstract:
David Kramer and Taliep Petersen’s Ghoema (2005) tells the story of slavery at the Cape of Good Hope. The musical “writes back” with respect to early Afrikaans music and regards Cape culture as “a history of the ghoema”. The drum – the ghoema – becomes the symbol of persistence and creativity of those held in bondage at the Cape. The article is structured around a short introduction on South African identities, followed by theoretical insights with respect to creolisation as formulated by the identity theoretician Édouard Glissant and concluded with an illustrative discussion of the musical.
