“the past is far and the future is far”: power and performance among Zulu migrant workers

The study of isicathamiya, a tradition of competitive song and dance among Zulu migrant workers in South Africa, shows that performance is not necessarily a coherent expressive system with an underlying unitary organizing principle. The rich symbolic overlay in this tradition constitutes a performative, empowering strategy. It mediates migrant workers' ambiguous experience of alienation and powerless‐ness by framing social interaction in spheres of virtual time, constructing protective spaces, and metaphorically remodeling a social order beyond the given and now. This article focuses on the temporal organization of isicathamiya, the internal organization of performance groups, the complex symbolic representation of “home” in choir names, the construction of hierarchical social relationships and gender inequity in performance roles, the ritualization of regional opposition in competition, and the aesthetic expression of conflict in panegyrical song texts and sound patterns. [ South Africa, Zulu, ethnomusicology, performance, music, dance ]