The Editor

Christine Lucia was born in London and read music at Oxford (St Anne’s College, 1965-1968), completing a post-graduate certificate in higher education at Durham University in 1969. She completed a Licentiate in Piano Performance through the Royal Academy of Music in 1971 and emigrated to South African in 1974 where she taught at Diocesan School for Girls and Victoria Primary School, Grahamstown. She lectured at Rhodes University in the late 70s and completed her doctorate there, a cultural-analytical study of Schumann’s chamber music, in 1978. In Grahamstown Lucia met Andrew Tracey, Director of the International Library of African Music and was introduced to the performance and research of African music.

Lucia moved to Durban in January 1983 to teach music analysis at the University of Durban-Westville (1983) where one of her colleagues was pianist-composer Surendran Reddy. In 1985 she joined the University of Natal, Durban as a music theory lecturer. Here she encountered the music of Alfred Assegai Khumalo and other choral composers. In 1989 Lucia became Professor and Head of the Music Department at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW), whose choir included in their multi-cultural repertoire U Ea Kae? by Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa. Lucia also worked as a concert pianist and music critic in Durban, and studied tabla with Deepak Ram. In 1997, she became head of music at Rhodes University where she taught music history and focused on research. (See selected publications below.) She left to head up the Music Division of the Wits School of Performing Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2002. Dr Lucia retired from full-time academia at the end of 2007 and was Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Music at the University of Stellenbosch from 2009 to 2014. Her research has been sponsored by the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO), the National Arts Council (NAC), the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, and Stellenbosch University. She also owes a debt of gratitude to many individuals including Rosalie Conrad, Veit Erlmann, Betsy Oehrle, Joe Nhlapo, Bongani Mthethwa, Andrew Tracey, Musa Nkuna, Grant Olwage, Noluthando Mpola, Thembela Vokwana, Sibusiso Njeza, and Stephanus Muller.

Selected publications by Christine Lucia

1986 (Ed). Proceedings of the First National Music Educators’ Conference. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.

1987. ‘The Ethnomusicologist and the Educator’ In Papers Presented at the Sixth Symposium on Ethnomusicology, ed. A. Tracey, 36-39. Grahamstown: International Library of African Music.

1988 (Ed.) Proceedings of the Second National Music Educators’ Conference. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.

1992. ‘The Parrot and the Nightingale: Reflections on the ‘Encounter Between Two Cultures’’. University of Durban-Westville: Inaugural Address Series.

1995. ‘Schumann’s Tonal Analogue Revisited.’ SAMUS: South African Journal of Musicology 15, 15-24.

1995 (with Deepak Ram). ‘Learning the Tabla in Durban: the Guru-Sisya Relationship Transposed to a University Context’. In Proceedings of the Tenth Symposium on Ethnomusicology, ed. C. Muller, 104-109. Grahamstown: International Library of African Music.

1999 (with Penny Curling). ‘Music in the Healing of Long-term Psychiatric Patients: a Report on the Music Group at Fort England Hospital’ (with Penny Curling). South African Journal of Music Therapy 17, 7-24.

2002 ‘Abdullah Ibrahim and the Uses of Memory’. British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11(2), 125-43.

2005 (Ed). The World of South African Music: A Reader, introduced, compiled and edited by C. Lucia. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.

2005. ‘Abdullah Ibrahim and “African Pianism” in South Africa’. In Towards an African Pianism: Keyboard Music of Africa and the Diaspora, Vol. 1, eds. Cynthia Tse Kimberlin and Akin Euba, 53-67. California: MRI Press.

2005. ‘Mapping the Field: A Preliminary Survey of South African Composition and Performance as Research’. SAMUS: South African Journal of Musicology 25, 101-30.

2007. ‘How Critical is Music Theory’. Critical Arts 21(1), 166-89.

2007. ‘Travesty or Prophecy? Views of South African Black Choral Composition’. In Music and Identity: Transformation & Negotiation, ed. Eric Akrofi, Maria Smit & Stig-Magnus Thorsén, 161-80. Stellenbosch: SUN Press.

2008. ‘Back to the Future? Idioms of ‘Displaced Time’ in South African Composition’. In Composing Apartheid: Essays of the Music of Apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage, 11-34. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

2008. ‘Spirit of Africa: An Interview with Andrew Tracey.’ SAMUS: South African Music Studies 26/27, 127-43.

2009. ‘“The Landscape Within”: The String Quartets of Kevin Volans.’ SAMUS: South African Music Studies 29, 1-30.

2009. [2011] ‘Volans Chronology.’ SAMUS: South African Music Studies 29, 39-52.

2009. [2011] ‘Volans: Worklist 1970-2009.’ SAMUS: South African Music Studies 29, 53-60.

2011. Music Notation: A South African Guide. Pretoria: Unisa Press.

2011. ‘Die Sprache des Bilds im Klang: Zur Bedeutung der bildenden Kunst im Schaffen von Kevin Volans.’ Musiktexte 129 (May), 45-50.

2011. ‘Mohapeloa and the Heritage of African Song.’ African Music 9(1), 56-86.

2012 (with Michael Blake). ‘Don Maclennan and Music.’ In No Other World: Essays on the Life-Work of Don Maclennan, ed. Dan Wylie and Craig MacKenzie, 124-147. Cape Town: Print Matters.

2013. ‘Kevin Volans.’  In Komponisten dear Gegenwart: Edition Text + Kritik 50.

2014. ‘Composing Towards/against Whiteness: The African Music of Mohapeloa.’ In Unsettling Whiteness, Ed. Lucy Michael and Samantha Schulz, 219-230. Oxford: Interdicisplinary Press.