Critical Reading Review 9

Hammond, Nicol. “The Disharmonious Honking of the Vuvuzelas: Homogenization and Difference in the Production and Promotion of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa.” Soccer & Society 12, no. 1 (2011): 46-55.

 Summary
The author starts out by explaining the importance of sports (soccer and rugby in particular) to the history of South Africa. They then describe the complex music scene of modern South Africa that arose as an aftereffect of apartheid. Because of race segregation, black South African music is associated with traditional practices and "primitivism" while white South African music is associated with "modernity." Unfortunately, the promotional campaign for the World Cup in South Africa in 2010 reinforced these stereotypes a lot of the time. At the very end of the article, the author made the argument that the music of the World Cup was portrayed as the "feminine" element of it and that the soccer games themselves were portrayed as the masculine element, and that the vuvuzelas played during the matches operation outside of the gender binary and South Africa's potential for queerness. I felt like the author should have touched on this more, because it was a pretty big claim to make and wasn't explored much. I can see where the author drew the conclusion from, but without further discussion it felt like a bit of a stretch to me.

 Discussion Question:
What are some potential ways to unify South African musical artists across races?

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