Vuvuzelas, pop stars and back-up dancers: The politics of rhythm and noise at the 2012 Soccer World Cup in South Africa

Abstract

When South Africa hosted the Soccer World Cup in 2010, the sound of the vuvuzela dominated proceedings. In this article I consider the vuvuzela as both a symbol and a disruption of existing neoimperial assumptions about sound, race, gender, and global capitalism in South Africa. I begin by examining the construction of African sound, and the ‘African World Cup’ in the music video of Shakira’s Waka Waka (This Time for Africa), the official song of the event. I then discuss the extent to which the vuvuzela can be considered a queer intervention into this problematic construct, and I consider some of the ways in which theories of camp can be productively drawn into postcolonial queer theory in South Africa. Finally I examine some of the intersecting race, gender, and sexual dynamics that make this queer intervention necessary. Furthermore I suggest that a queer approach to scholarship on South African music can reveal the extent to which queer interventions are compatible with post-apartheid South African nationalism, despite attempts to declare queerness unAfrican.

SAMUS 32