The song of a woman: An enactment of social life, and the expressive enterprise of human society

Abstract

This contribution deals with an individual song performed by Mamolatelo Matlala at the tribal capital of Modjadji, the rain queen of the Lobedu people. The aim of the article is to present the oral genre of individual women's song as performance event, as aesthetic mode of communication which abounds in both traditional and modern societies. The song underlines the perception that the system of migrant labour is one of the essential factors which hastened the political and socio-economic decline of the indigenous peoples in South Africa. This performance event should be interpreted as an enactment of social life, used as expressive platform to comment on the social life of women in Lobedu society. The essential approach in this paper is the continual assessment of the interaction between extratextual and intratextual information in a performance event. The purpose of the contribution is to highlight the power of Mamolatelo's song, as it facilitates the articulation of social issues, thereby asserting the identity of rural Lobedu women, and challenging the existing power relation of a still dominantly patriarchal discourse.