Commercial music radio,race and identity in South Africa

The South African context

Bekker and Prinsloo (1999) argue that group identification and identity politics will remain important in South Africa, despite government’s agenda of national identity building. The apartheid government segmented South Africans into four ethnic groups: black, white, coloured and Indian, with the assumption that each group was homogeneous. While the term ‘coloured’ is contested as a historical construction of the apartheid state, this and other racial categories have become pervasive and significant in the South African context, if only as markers of identification.

The link between radio and ethnicity also falls within the particular South African context and the history of radio. In the post-apartheid state, the SABC continued their designated language services, and language is very much linked to ethnic identity. For example, the Xhosa language service of the SABC, Radio Umhlobo Wenene is located in the Eastern Cape, while the isiZulu language service, Radio Ukhozi is based in KwaZulu Natal. Specific language services were set up to service particular communities in an attempt to provide media services to previously disadvantaged communities, though controversially these also potentially serve to further isolate communities. Only the English and Afrikaans language services (SAFM and Radio Sonder Grense – RSG respectively) are broadcast nationally.

Radio location and habitus

GHFM’s location in Cape Town is significant in terms of cultural geography, which may help explain its role in identity construction and performance. As Lee (1997: 127) argues, cities have their own habitus, that is, ‘certain relatively enduring (pre) dispositions to current social, economic, political or even physical circumstances in very particular ways, ways in which other cities, with different habitus formations, may respond to very differently’.

The first Dutch settlers in 1652 established a stop in Table Bay for the Dutch East India Company and their ships that sailed to the Dutch East Indies to replenish fresh fruit and vegetables. Later, slavery defined the culture of the city. Over 180 years, as many as 63,000 slaves were brought to Cape Town from East Africa, Madagascar, South India and Indonesia, among other places. They were used as labour on farms on the outskirts of the city, as workers in households and factories and as builders. As a result, the majority of South Africa’s mixed-race, or so-called coloured population live in Cape Town. This group actively engaged in processes of creolization to construct their identities from both ruling and subaltern cultures (Erasmus, 2001). Erasmus argues for the reconceptualization of coloured identities as cultural identities:

comprising detailed bodies of knowledge, specific cultural practices, memories, rituals and modes of being … coloured identities were formed in the colonial encounter between colonists (Dutch and British), slaves from South and East India and from East Africa, and conquered indigenous peoples, the Khoi and the San. The result has been a highly specific and instantly recognizable cultural formation – not just ‘a mixture’ but a very particular ‘mixture’ comprising elements of Dutch, British, Malaysian, Khoi and other forms of African culture appropriated, translated and articulated in complex and subtle ways. (2001: 21)

As a result, race and ethnicity in this context is not a social construct, but has been concretized by its economic roots. It is not a false consciousness or a mere super-structural manipulation, but has had direct effects in terms of people’s material conditions and their relations to modes of production (Carrim and Soudien, 1999). Coloured identities in South Africa, and people’s conceptualization of these identities differed during the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. During apartheid there were at least three competing forms of identity: those who identified themselves as coloured, those who rejected the notion of coloured and used the term ‘so-called coloured’, instead identifying as black; and those who instead self-identified as South African, using neither of the terms ‘black’ or ‘coloured’. During the post-apartheid era several competing identities have emerged: those who identify as coloured, sometimes using the term ‘bruin mense’ (brown people); those who continue to reject the notion of a coloured identity and use the term ‘so-called’ or who identify as South African; those who see themselves as ‘brown Afrikaners’; and those who have begun to construct an identity around a Khoisan heritage. These two additional categories of identification emerging during the 1990s further serve to highlight the complexity of the notion of a ‘coloured identity’.

While essentially a social construct, ethnicity is a lived reality for those who identify with the in-group. As a result, the micro-cultures in South Africa became isolated from one another because of the hegemony of the so-called macro-culture. One example is the rift between black and coloured communities in the Western Cape. This is not to say that these are homogeneous groups, although they are frequently perceived as such. Race and racism in South Africa is thus more complex than a simple black-white issue. As Nkomo et al. (1995) point out, there are variations in experiences of prejudice within the black community and gradations of prejudice among them. The tendency to homogenize all black people into the category of black obfuscates the racial or ethnic dynamics within the black population itself. The ‘bipolarity inherent in the white versus black construction … is unhelpful in coming to terms with the complex ways in which racism expresses itself in various settings, particularly in regard to intra-black dynamics’ (Carrim and Soudien, 1999).

To understand this contested process of cultural change it is necessary to look at and understand what people are doing in their everyday lives with particular reference to their relationships to the media. Radio consumption thus emerges as one important and often neglected site for the construction and negotiation of identities. In the case of GHFM, there is a clear association for listeners between the radio station broadcasts and its location in the city, perhaps reflected in the station’s slogan, ‘GHFM: Connecting Cape Town’. According to one listener:

I feel Good Hope always reminds me of what it is to be Capetonian because almost everything about their station is purely Capetonian and I’m just very proud to be a Capetonian. It’s part of my heritage. It’s who I am. And Good Hope being … How old is it now? About 46, almost 46 years old, being the oldest radio station in Cape Town is to me the true representative of a Capetonian. (Matty, interview, March 2011)

Thus somehow in being Capetonian, in this particular instance, the cultural habitus of the city results in GHFM being simultaneously coloured. In this context coloured refers to a historically racial but contemporary ethnic identity that is partly local, partly historical, partly social class and not simply reduced to race.

Radio as mediatized ritual

Radio is a naturalized pattern and presence in domestic time and space, filling ‘empty’ space and time with a familiar routine (Tacchi, 2002). Thus it was not surprising that many interviewees tuned in because their family members and friends listened, and had done so over a period of many years. The consumption of GHFM emerged most often as a familiar routine or habit, described by Brauchler and Postill (2010: 136) as actions ‘performed automatically and unreflectively which seem to actors to be natural and necessary – rather than cultural or symbolic – modes of behaviour’. The station becomes a kind of background noise for listeners, as well as providing structure during their day. For example, listeners often used the various components of the breakfast show to time themselves while getting ready to go to work or school.

Listeners’ radio listening is also integrated into their daily activities, with most listening while driving to work or school, or while completing chores or homework. Radio listening thus becomes embedded in the multiple discourses of everyday life (Silverstone, 1994) as listeners tune in while completing other activities, thus fulfilling what Bausinger (1984: 349) termed ‘parergic media activity’, that is, the range of parallel activities that take place in front of the television screen (in this case the radio set). Those interviewed identified the entertainment function of radio as being their primary gratification for listening, even though news bulletins are broadcast hourly.

GHFM is perceived by many listeners (and non-listeners) to primarily target a coloured audience and, as such, many listeners engage in a form of mediatized ritual by tuning in, particularly as for them it becomes a family or a community tradition. The majority of respondents indicated that they listened to the station because others in their family listened, and that it was a part of the fabric of their daily lives. ‘I grew up with GHFM, it was just always there’ (interview, 2009). Another interviewee said that:

Like, when I started listening to radio I kind of saw oh, my parents are listening to that, let me listen to it. And it became like that type of thing. I didn’t really say, okay that’s what I want. But then I started to enjoy it and I can remember clearly when I was in school. (Rank, interview February 2011) ²

Consumption of the radio station has thus become institutionalized over time as a kind of accumulated cultural memory, as well as being associated with the particular location of Cape Town, as explored further below.

Ja, I started listening to it when I was in primary school when Nigel Pierce was on in the morning. Then I used to listen to Nigel Pierce when I was in primary school, also driving to school in the morning.

Do you think that you will ever stop listening to Good Hope?

No, not while I’m driving. As long as I’ll be driving I’ll always be listening to Good Hope. (Jody, interview, February 2011)

It’s because I’m used to it. I’m used to the presenters. I’m used to the talk shows, the music, whatever they play there. I’m used to it so I’m comfortable listening to them. I’ve been listening to Nigel Pierce since I’ve been at primary school and I’m used to it. (Chester, interview, March 2011)

I can’t explain why I like it. I just like it. (Sheena, interview, Feb 2011)

As Tacchi (2002: 241) says, ‘radio can be seen to fill empty space empty time with a familiar routine, so familiar that it is unremarkable’. Consumption of GHFM becomes naturalized and routinized, with many listeners unable to articulate the reasons behind their choice, though simultaneously indicating that they would be unlikely to change their stylistic preference.

And maybe the dad listened to it and the mom used to listen to it. So that was the station that blared in any case in the kitchen. So the kid just follows it. (Yolanda, interview, November 2010)

GHFM listeners tune in to the station by force of habit it would seem, where ‘habit’ refers to actions ‘performed automatically and unreflectively, which seem to actors to be natural and necessary – rather than cultural and symbolic- modes of behaviour’ (Brauchler and Postill, 2010: 136). While audiences draw a link between GHFM and a ‘coloured’ identity, listener interviews show that listening often arises out of habit and not as a deliberate choice to reflect assumed personal cultural identity. Ironically, though listeners indicate that they listen mostly out of habit, they also express that their listening preferences are linked to their coloured identities.

GHFM and identity construction

While the target audience of the station has diversified over time, GHFM was originally conceptualized by listeners as a coloured radio station, and many listeners still choose to listen because of this associated identity. As one long-term listener reflected:

It’s been a radio station that I could identify with because there were coloured DJs on the station [at] that time. There was a stage when there was one guy, Dmitri Jegels, he was basically from the area that I came from, and lots of other Good Hope DJs, there was one DJ that went to school with me, and that attracted a person to listen to the radio station. (Jody, interview, 2009)

Much like the role that community radio stations played years later in the 1990s, people were attracted to GHFM because it was one of the few media spaces that allowed people of colour to be media producers, and not just consumers (other examples might include community radio stations). Another listener reflected that, ‘I think that it’s a station that’s always been there for coloured people’ (Christine, interview, 2009). Despite the fact that little of the broadcast content overtly targets any particular ethnic or racial group, listeners continue to strongly associate the station with a coloured identity (real or imagined). While broadcast content analysis is not a part of the present study, a cursory inspection of the content revealed that there is occasional mention of coloured identity, for example, a humorous segment that deals with coloured stereotypes or language, or specific reference to coloured people; most of the content (music included) is fairly general and typical of music radio. The only programme that might be seen as coloured is the Ready D Show, which airs Mondays to Thursday between 7 and 9 p.m. Hosted by popular local club DJ Ready D, and former member of 1980s hip-hop group Prophets of the City (POC), the show features two elements that are stereotypically coloured: hip-hop music and an interest in modifying cars, primarily for street racing. This is linked to the GHFM ‘rides and vibes’ events at which listeners are invited to ‘come and show your ride and enjoy the vibe’ and attract thousands of people. Hip-hop emerged in the coloured townships of the Cape Flats in the early 1980s and was particularly powerful in Cape Town, where it functioned as a vehicle to work through the tensions of being racially marginalized (Watkins, 2001).

Listeners’ engagement with the station is thus frequently based along racial lines and assumptions about the intended audience and intended meanings, though this may in fact reflect a false consciousness. As Castells (2004: 63) writes, ‘race matters, but it hardly constructs meaning any longer’. So for many of the interviewees, GHFM represents a comfortable space, linked to an imagined community of listeners. For them there is feeling that their coloured identity is an integral part of their listening experience, but at the same time these are personal understandings of ‘coloured’ that are not necessarily perpetuated by the radio broadcasts.

I do feel that it’s more of a coloured thing, you know what I’m saying? Because most of the time there’s always these mixes and – you know? So yes, and we all know the coloured culture, that that’s the style. That’s what gets a party going, you know what I’m saying? (Dewin, interview February 2011)

While the radio station does not set out to target any specific ethnicity, when asked to describe who they imagined the target audience to be, listeners always described it in racial terms. Here we see how listeners cannot articulate specific moments of sound that define the station in racial terms for them, rather it is the overall texture (drawing on Tacchi, 2002).

Definitely coloured, hey, because you will get more coloured callers and African callers as well, you know? Maybe you will hear once in a while a white person or something. (Sheena, interview, February 2011)

I do. I do perceive it as a coloured station. If you compare 5FM and the listenership and who listens to 5 then I think 5FM could be predominantly a white station and Good Hope would cater to coloured people. (Rifqa, interview, March 2011)

Probably because most of the DJs are either coloured or black, and it’s just the perception of the topics that they raise, the humour, stuff like that. It just feels coloured to someone who can relate to the things they talk about and the accent and just various things. (Rifqa, interview, March 2011)

For listeners, their consumption of GHFM becomes an integral part of the construction of their own social worlds. The consumption of radio broadcasts becomes a symbolic moment at which the audience is able to individually and collectively imagine their own identities as ‘coloured’. While the coloured identity is arguably a fictional product of history and a collective imagination, radio broadcasts become a symbolic resource providing listeners with a coherent ‘narrative of the self’ (Giddens, 1991:199).

Listeners’ notions of identity were also linked to particular uses of language as signifying practice. Apart from the occasional on-air discussion of coloured slang by DJs, many listeners also raised the fact that DJs also sometimes subconsciously used particular phrases of ways of expressing themselves, which they considered to be particularly coloured. One example of this may be adding the suffix ‘ne’ to sentences, which is equivalent to ‘hey’. Listeners also reflected on a local Cape Town or coloured accent as a cultural marker, which allowed them to identify the broadcasts as being coloured. In fact, language does usually serve as a boundary marker of ethnic identities as a complex signalling system (Downing and Husband, 2005). On the Facebook pages in particular, this expression of language was most evident. Instead of using standard English, many listeners instead chose to write in a local slang, thus self-identifying and identifying themselves, and also being identified by the readers as being coloured.

The snowball sample also revealed a number of peripheral listeners, who tuned in to the station occasionally or unintentionally when in the proximity of others listening, but who articulated that they did not listen frequently or that the station was not their first choice. While non-listeners were not the primary focus, their views reveal some insights into audience perceptions of the station. Here one sees radio listening (or in this case non-listening) emerging as a marker of social distinction or cultural capital, with listeners’ socio-economic status linked to their discursive positioning.

Well, like I say, they don’t always play the type of music I listen to. And also they sort of portray the image of a gam ³ radio station. It’s like the reason that I haven’t been to Galaxy ⁴ yet is because the type of people that I see or hear talking about it is not the type of people that I’d like to hang out with. And it’s sort of similar. Well, it gives me the same feeling of the Good Hope listeners. I’m sure most of them go to Galaxy, or they seem the type. So ja. You know the obnoxious coloured type, the loud type or whatever. (Charles, interview, February 2011)

There was a strong sense of class bias, in that non-listeners associated the station not just with coloured ‘culture’, but with a very working-class coloured ‘culture’; and in this instance saw consumption of GHFM as an expression of ‘low culture’, versus more ‘high culture’ manifestations such as talk radio. These respondents saw the average GHFM listener occupying a social space characterized by low social and economic capital (Bourdieu, 1984). The act of consuming GHFM thus becomes an act of reproducing social difference, with listeners choosing the ‘anti-Kantian aesthetic of the immediate, the sensual and the representational’ (Corrigan, 1997: 30).

It’s like the type of people I hear talking about Galaxy are the type of people that listen to Good Hope, or most of them. I mean, for instance, I’ll maybe drive past a smokkie, ⁵ then you’ll hear Good Hope playing or you know, it’s clear that it’s Good Hope that they’re listening to or maybe you’ll hear Nigel Pierce speaking there, blah blah. You know what I mean? (Denzil, interview, February 2011)

This extended beyond the private act of listening to the station to include more public activities such as joining station-related groups on Facebook or attending public events organized by the radio station. As one respondent reflected:

Guilt by association, I guess. I don’t want to be associated with those people on that page. Well, firstly I don’t think I’m so crass. And they just seem very … I wouldn’t say lower class or something to that effect, but just, you know, I can’t really say gam. (Jon, interview, February 2011)

Well, I guess you could just probably say they’re lower class, they’re very loud, they’d swear and go on and wear very flashy clothes or have flashy cars. They want to be seen, you know? (Russell, interview February 2011)

I wouldn’t say materialism-driven station, but I think the listenership might be, based on what coloured culture has developed over the years itself as opposed to Good Hope initiating a materialistic culture. (Rifqa, interview, March 2011)

These peripheral listeners were particularly interesting in that they did not wish to identify as GHFM listeners, yet indicated a strong working knowledge of station content which indicated that they did indeed listen frequently enough to be identified as such. These listeners strongly associated the station with a coloured identity, but one that they did not wish to associate or identify with, by virtue of class positioning. Through station broadcasts we see the cultural distinction of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ where the ‘subjects’ of the broadcasts strongly identify with old apartheid identity categories and hence a ‘coloured’ identity, which they feel the station reifies.

Here we see audience members selecting GHFM in order to fulfil specific gratifications (Katz et al., 1974) related to their cultural identities – either to identify themselves with the station or to distinguish themselves from it. The gratifications identified by the listeners themselves are primarily entertainment, that is, they listen for the music and entertaining talk; but they also listen for the combination of music and talk or overall texture which they perceive as coloured, and which they see as fulfilling their needs for confirmation of their cultural identities. But as we see through the interview excerpts above, not all audience members necessarily take up their ‘designated place within this ideological hailing and framing’ (Moores, 1997: 217) and choose to deliberately dissociate themselves from the particular notion of coloured identity portrayed by GHFM.

While the audience is not a single, stable entity, radio consumption communicates social meaning and becomes a site of struggle over social distinction. Media messages may be received differently by audiences, depending on socio-historical and geographic contexts. Moreover, it then becomes necessary to chart the spatial and temporal dimensions and to identify the dynamics of location and mediation in order to fully understand the conditions of consumption (Moores, 1997).

Fandom and online social networking

Fandom is usually associated with Hollywood and its associated cultural products, though Fiske (1992) shows that all popular audiences engage in various degrees of semiotic productivity which are sometimes turned into a form of textual production to help define the fan community. Within the context of GHFM, this emerges through individuals’ expressions of admiration for particular DJs, as well as their engagement with the station on the online social networking site, Facebook. Through engagement with radio DJs and other listeners online, listeners transcend the audience–public divide by becoming a kind of ‘identity-public’ (Livingstone, 2005), by making their coloured identity visible. While listeners find it hard to express their reasons for listening or to find clear links between their assumed identities as coloured and the radio station content, the link to culture seems to emerge more clearly online; particularly as race is more frequently referenced in the online spaces.

While it may be uncertain how important celebrity discourse is in individuals’ articulations of their identities, Brauchler and Postill, (2010) argue that celebrity actions sometimes ‘anchor’ other practices by providing points of reference; providing another example of the ritualized dimension of radio listening practice. The majority of listeners interviewed stated that morning show host, Nigel Pierce, was their favourite presenter. Those who did not list Pierce did not indicate any strong preferences for any other DJ. The strong expressions of admiration for this particular DJ were overwhelmingly positive, as seen below:

He’s fabulous. Really, there isn’t another DJ like him.

But then what if Nigel Pierce leaves the station? Would you still listen to Good Hope?

He left it once and it wasn’t the same. The morning slot, it wasn’t the same and then he came back. The rest of the show, it’s okay. But I would rather prefer listening to him. (Karima, interview, February 2011)

Nigel, definitely Nigel. Always Nigel. (Sheena, interview, October 2010)

But I mean, like, Nigel Pierce has been there for years. And when he stopped working there that’s when I stopped listening to Good Hope. (Sheila, interview October 2010)

Ja, because I used to listen to him every morning and then he stopped. His show wasn’t on in the morning any more then there was nothing to listen to in the morning. It was boring. (Roston, interview, March 2010)

And people relate to him. He’s a coloured dude, his fan base is coloured. People relate to him. (Jon, interview, February 2011)

Loyal listeners felt that they ‘knew’ Pierce through their parasocial relationship with him and a sense of perceived intimacy as a result of his particular conversational mode of direct address. Nigel Pierce self-identifies as ‘coloured’, which may in part contribute to the imagined relationships listeners forge with him; though by virtue of his position as radio DJ he is middle-class, he seems to strive to create a working-class persona on-air in an attempt to maintain this popularity with listeners.

The issue of social distinction emerged again strongly, with peripheral listeners associating Pierce with a working-class coloured culture and perceiving this in a negative light. Some of these listeners compared his show and the entire station to tabloid newspapers, distancing themselves both ideologically and geographically; and describing the regular listeners as those who live above their means and engage in various forms of conspicuous consumption. Ironically, one of the photographs available to the radio station’s Facebook group shows a local comedian in the studio reading from a copy of Die Son, a well-known local tabloid. Tabloids are a controversial terrain in South Africa, critiqued for being a-political, sensational and frivolous, while simultaneously praised for reaching a black, working-class majority not catered for by the mainstream press (for more see Wasserman, 2010).

The station’s mode of address is primarily casual and listeners are interpellated as an audience who merely consume and engage on matters of popular culture; versus a public who are critically engaged in a Habermasian rational-critical debate over matters of public citizenship. The comparison to tabloid journalism is thus not necessarily that far-fetched; and listeners who critiqued the station and the DJ Pierce, often made this comparison.

Well, I think basically he [Pierce] portrays somebody from.… Not that I have anything against people from Mitchell’s Plein [working-class coloured suburb], but he’s not professional in the line that he is. That’s my perspective of things.

How is he unprofessional?

I think he’s really gam, you know? And his listeners are mostly Mitchell’s Plein. (Patrick, interview, March 2011)

However, most listeners interviewed during the project maintained their admiration for Pierce, despite these views; in fact showing little to no awareness of this alternate negative view of the station, or choosing to ignore it. Pierce is well known for being a ‘shock jock’ with a brand of humour sometimes considered offensive, which has previously led to him being fired from GHFM as well as other radio stations. ⁶

Many listeners also indicated that they extended their listening practices by engaging with the station on the online social networking site Facebook, as an extension of fandom. The station and various shows are also on Twitter, but more people engaged on Facebook than Twitter, as evidenced by the number of people signed up as members of station Facebook groups, versus the number of Twitter followers. While internet access in South Africa is still limited, with just over 10% of the population online, ⁷ people are increasingly accessing the internet via their cellphones, and the mobile internet is allowing more people access, particularly those who cannot access the internet via desktop computers.

As of 28 March 2011, the Nigel Pierce Facebook page was ‘liked’ by 38,622 people; featuring a variety of comments related to his physical appearance, clothing and skills as a DJ, with one fan going so far as to write, ‘Nigel Pierce for President!’ By comparison, the general GHFM Facebook page only has 13,283 fans. Listeners indicated that they consolidated their radio listening through further interaction with the programme and DJ via Facebook.

The Nigel Pierce show. Usually when I’m listening to the Nigel Pierce show I’d go on Facebook and I’d check the status updates and read the comments. It would be like Nigel Pierce would put up a status and then people would comment on it. (Chester, interview, February 2011)

Through these kinds of online practices, we also see the development of an online community as listeners interact with each other via the online social networking site. For GHFM listeners, the Facebook groups and the interaction and conversations on these pages create a sense of belonging to an imagined coloured community of other GHFM listeners. The online interaction is a transformation of the private listening experience into a collective expression of group identity.

The music on GHFM

In a globalized world music may not be a force for identification, but might help develop cultural identities or allegiances, as some music appeals to identifiable groups of people (Folkestad, 2002). Many of the listeners interviewed listed the music played on the station as one of their primary reasons for listening to the station. GHFM follows the contemporary hit radio format, playing mainstream RnB, pop and hip-hop music, which is also often heard on other stations. ‘We should consider music as a phenomenon which is remade with divergent meanings in its inscription within particular discourses’ (Richards, 1998: 165). The ideological power of music to position listeners is often overlooked when music is viewed simply as entertainment. Music has been seen as a badge or label of identification (Frith, 1981), and in this instance self-identification as a GHFM listener becomes a badge of belonging to a community self-constituted as coloured.

Research has shown differences in the music preferences of majority and minority groups in the UK (Russell, 1997); with some studies indicating that the expression of different preferences mediates social identity by helping group members distinguish themselves from other groups (Tarrant et al, 2002). In North America, modern form of music are often used as ethnic trademarks, with one example being the way Jews in the US and Ukrainians in Canada use country and western music to mediate the transition from being Europeans to Americans (Folkestad, 2002).

There is a large body of literature that explores the relationships between music and the formation of cultural, social and national identities. For example, Bailey (1994) and Folkestad (2002) explore the role between music and the creation of national identity; while several authors have explored the relationship between rap, hip-hop and cultural identities (e.g. Watkins, 2001). Others, such as Hebdige (1987) have explored musical expressions of cultural identities, with some (e.g. Gerard, 1998) exploring the racial aspects of music, in the history of jazz music for example.

Music has been shown to play a key role as a marker of distinction in club culture, with certain music genres believed to signify the type of clubber who listens to them (Moore, 2003). Similarly, the music played on a radio station, and with which the listeners identify, may be socially constituted in particular ways – as coloured in the case of GHFM.

While most of this music is primarily mainstream American, a kind of glocalization occurs, through which international music is embedded in a local context, and as such, comes to acquire local meanings. While this aspect of GHFM consumption needs further exploration, one might argue that the role of musical taste can be theorized as the means by which social distinctions are made as opposed to being ‘natural’ or ‘personal’. The Kinky Afro parties hosted by GHFM’s DJ Pierce are one example of the station’s use of music to increase audience and create a sense of cohesion around music. Featuring classic ‘old school’ hits from the 1980s and 1990s, the parties attract thousands of listeners and the music is repeated on Pierce’s morning show on Fridays.

Conclusion

GHFM is a commercial radio station, and as such the audience are interpellated as consumers and not primarily as citizens or members of a community. However, through listeners’ perceptions of the station as coloured, they choose to consume it as a marker of their racial identities. The various characteristics of radio, together with the specific broadcasts of GHFM and its embeddedness in daily life might thus contribute toward the internalization of a collective social identity (drawing on Morris, 2008). Radio may be a vehicle for the maintenance of social identity, but the converse may also be true: that is, that social identity might determine radio listening choices and patterns. Personal uses and preferences for radio sound are structured on an individual and a social level, with issues in the public sphere intrinsically woven into the private practice of radio listening habits (Tacchi, 2002). While GHFM listeners re-articulate normative discourses of identity and old apartheid constructions in their reflections on their media consumption, this study shows the act of tuning in to be a critical part of their dialectical identity-forming process.