Radio Soundings

Zulu Radio in South Africa is one of the most far-reaching and influential media in the region, currently attracting around 6.67 million listeners daily. While the public and political role of radio is well-established, what is less understood is how it has shaped culture by allowing listeners to negotiate modern identities and fast-changing lifestyles. Liz Gunner explores how understandings of the self, family, and social roles were shaped through this medium of voice and mediated sound. Radio was the unseen literature of the auditory, the drama of the airwaves, and thus became a conduit for many talents squeezed aside by apartheid repression. Besides Winnie Mahlangu and K. E. Masinga, among other talents, the exiles Lewis Nkosi and Bloke Modisane made a network of identities and conversations which stretched from the heart of Harlem to the American South, drawing together the threads of activism and creativity from both Black America and the African continent at a critical moment of late empire.

'… Gunner's investigation of the BBC archives as well as deep knowledge of Zulu sources living and passed away is second to none and gives her account of radio and the black modern a personal voice as well as the gravity of history.' Loren Kruger, Research in African Literatures

Liz Gunner is visiting research professor in the School of Languages, University of Johannesburg. She has taught in South Africa, Sierra Leone and England. Her research primarily focusses on radio, popular culture, orality, and on the intersection of performance and the political in Southern Africa. She has published extensively in journals such as African Affairs, Research in African Literatures and Journal of Southern African Studies. Her most recent books include the co-edited Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Communities (2012) and Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature (with Graham Furniss, Cambridge, 1995).