Inge Engelbrecht

BIOGRAPHY

Inge Engelbrecht is a part-time lecturer at the Music Department at Stellenbosch University. She obtained her BMus and HonsBMus (music education) degrees at SU and now lectures in the bridging Certificate in Music Programme. She completed her master’s degree (cum laude) in March 2017. Her master’s research focused on documenting the life and works of three composers who have strong ties to Genadendal, the first mission station in South Africa.

RESEARCH

“To acknowledge the sound of coloured people’s voices raised in song [is] an integral part of the very diverse and varied entity known collectively as ‘South African music’”. (Jorritsma, 2011).

The Afrikaans koortjie (little chorus) can be viewed as a vehicle for spiritual and cultural expression for certain groups and individuals of a specific cultural group in South Africa. The koortjie tradition is part of the cultural narrative of the coloured church community and is a largely unexplored field of research. It is an area of music scholarship that Inge is undertaking to establish the Afrikaans koortjie as the focus of her research–an exemplary instance of orally transmitted racial music in the coloured community–an instance that will allows the broader coloured community to create for themselves a rightful place in the musical panorama of South African oral history and culture.