Performing Affects: Precarity, Liminality, Belonging, and the Strategies of a Migrant Bandleader within a South African Music Scene

Abstract

This paper discusses my experience of migration, exploring the impact of precarity stemming from migrant status on creative choices within the Cape Town music scene. Employing the method of artistic autoethnography, the paper narrates my intra-African migratory and cultural displacement experience, centering on The Jo Kunnuji Experiment, a band I have led for over a decade. The analysis reveals the role of strategic essentialism as a survival mechanism in navigating the politics of discomfort and ultimately carving a distinctive creative niche. Music as a phenomenon for negotiating survival (a social action) thus highlights the economic decisions inherent in the creative process.