The voice of a prisoner: recordings of Joseph Ntwanambi in the Ruhleben Prisoner of War Camp, Berlin, 1917
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v10i1.1231Abstract
The Xhosa WWI prisoner of war, Joseph Ntwanambi, whose recordings form the basis of this article, was recorded by two German ethnologists, first on wax cylinder by George Schunemann and then on shellac discs by Wilhelm Doegen and the Odeon recording company. These recordings of Ntwanambi may be the earliest recordings of Xhosa music which are accessible and still in existence. Regarding the prisoner himself, he was clearly recruited into the South African Army after enlisting into the South African Native Labour Corps, and sent to Germany during World War I where he was captured by the Germans and ended up with other African prisoners in the Ruhleben camp.References
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Bredekamp, H., J. Bruning and C. Weber. 2000b. Wunderkammern des Wissens, Berlin: Henschel Verlag. Theater der Natur und Kunst- Theatrum Naturae et Artis. Katalog. Wunderkammern des Wissens, Berlin: Henschel Verlag.
Dargie, D. 1987. Techniques of Xhosa Music: A Study based on the Music of the Lumko District. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Grahamstown: Rhodes University. Available: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001975.
Dargie, D. 1988. Xhosa Music, Cape Town: David Philip.
Dargie, D. 2014. Nank' undalamba: a Xhosa War Prisoner's Song, Berlin, 1917, in Riva, N., Klangbotschaften aus der Vergangenheit. Forschungen zu Aufnahmen aus dem Berliner Lautarchiv, Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 227-240.
Mohlamme, J.S. 1995. Soldiers without reward: Africans in South Africa's wars. Military History Journal 10(1): 33-37.
No author 2015. Indwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indwe [accessed 31 July 2015].
Peires, J.B. 1989. The Dead Will Arise. Johannesburg: Ravan.
Scheer, M. 2010. Captive Voices: Phonographic Recordings in the German and Austrian Prisoner-of-War Camps of World War I. In Doing Anthropology in Wartime and War Zones: World War I and the Cultural Sciences in Europe. Johler, Marchetti and Scheer eds. Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld and New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 279-309.
Stibbe, M. 2008. British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Swinney, G. 1995. The Sinking of the SS Mendi, 21 February 1917. Military History Journal 10(1): 38-39.
Ziegler, S. 2000. Die akustischen Sammlungen: Historische Tondokumente im Phonogramm-Archiv und im Lautarchiv, in H. Bredekamp, J. Bruning and C. Weber 2000A, 197-206.
Ziegler, S. 2006. Die Wachszylinder des Berliner Phonogramm-Archivs, Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
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2015-11-01
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“The Voice of a Prisoner: Recordings of Joseph Ntwanambi in the Ruhleben Prisoner of War Camp, Berlin, 1917”. 2015. African Music : Journal of the International Library of African Music 10 (1): 180-99. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v10i1.1231.
