Ebony and ivory in imperfect harmony - re-experiencing music education at the University of Cape Town

Abstract

In this paper, I re-experienced my time as a music education student from 1973 to 1976 at the University of Cape Town (UCT). I used an autoethnography, based on autobiographical memory work, interviews, archival visits, and literature reviews, to re-experience my life as a Coloured music student at a former White higher education institution during apartheid. A critical, reflexive, and interpretive-analytic paradigm informed this autoethnographic study, which was grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT). My study was analytical and interpretive of the self but simultaneously culture, society, and the institution, with its racist and hegemonic practices, were critiqued. My contestation of my Coloured identity at UCT in the mid-1970s was underpinned by the philosophical and sociological conceptualisation of the intersections of race, racism, class, and music. As such, in this paper, I regard normalised and taken-for-granted White supremacy as a powerful force and argue that it played, and continues to play, an active role in perpetuating structural inequality at higher education institutions.