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MICHAEL BLAKE'S STRING QUARTETS AND THE IDEA OF AFRICAN ART MUSIC

Abstract This article considers if and how the five string quartets of the South African composer Michael Blake, written between 2001 and 2014, could be considered as contributing to the compositional and discursive construct that is ‘African art music’. ‘African art music’ has often been evoked in connection with the compositional practices of West African composers especially but has received little consideration and scrutiny of its possible applications to South African composition. The political and artistic isolation of South Africa from the rest of Africa during much of the twentieth century is an obvious reason why this has been the case. But there is also the possibility that white South African composers during and after apartheid have engaged in composition from different intellectual and aesthetic starting points, compared to their African counterparts, due to the specific kind of coloniality they inhabit. The five string quartets afford a perspective on how Michael Blake negotiated the continuities of compositional authority and universalised commitment to a traditional Western sound ideal in the string quartet, with the self-awareness that white composition in post-apartheid South Africa arguably requires.