Abstract:

This article explores the relationship between discursivity and the writing of history. It takes as its example the discursive formation of ‘world music’ in the late 1980s and charts the consolidation of world music as a body of judgements about music through the example of the embrace and then rejection of the Zimbabwean group, the Bhundu Boys, over a period of years. This period was one in which four members of the group died—three because they succumbed to the AIDS virus and one who committed suicide. The challenges faced by the Bhundu Boys as human beings were severe; where the irony is that, when they most needed support from the people who embraced them, they were shunned and scorned by their former champions. The shunning of the Bhundu Boys can be argued to reveal the mechanisms of discursive formation and of a way of writing popular music history.

Author: Mike Jones