The becoming of an archive: perspectives on a music archive and the limits of institutionality

ABSTRACT

The call on South African music departments to critically engage with their curricula in order to reflect the broader music landscape wherein they function has been ongoing for the past 40 years. While some departments did engage in strategies to transform their curricula, various scholars have pointed out that most of these institutions have to some extent remained fixed within conservative syllabi and ideological practices conceived to serve the previous dispensation. It is within this field of discursive engagement and political actions directed towards change that archives can play an important role in decolonising higher education institutions. While recognising that archives work to a slower historical beat than what is currently (often militantly) demanded in debates on decolonisation in South African universities, this article wishes to argue that this temporal differential is important in terms of long-term institutional and curricular reform. This article will consider these questions with particular reference to the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS), an archive-centred music research project in the Music Department at the University of Stellenbosch. This article will posit that DOMUS’s collection practices and projects may serve as examples of active and radical strategies with the potential to affect change within conservative institutional spaces.