Abstract
This article aims to examine the Afrikaans singer Coenie de Villiers’s use of music-related metaphors in a selection of his lyrics to highlight the often elusive, liminal nature of the human condition. Furthermore, we wish to assess how media components in one of the singer’s best-known music videos construct a comparable process of contextual meaning-making. Therefore our research question focuses firstly on how figurative allusions to musical meaning illustrate De Villiers’s commitment to questions of an existential nature in his lyrics. Secondly, we want to observe similar meaning-making within a multimedia text, focusing on the role of music specifically. Concerning our stated objectives, the following songs were selected for analysis: “Ek wens” (“I wish”, 2012:62), “Solo” (2012:90), “By jou” (“With you”, 2012:104), “Katedraal” (“Cathedral”, 2012:146), “Miskien” (“Maybe”, 2016) and “Hart van glas” (“Heart of glass”, 2011).
The overarching theoretical-philosophical framework on which our argument builds refers, firstly, to the thought of Arnold van Gennep and his concept of liminality as formulated in Rites de passage (1908). Derived from the Latin word limen (threshold), the concept points to a threshold constituting a passageway between two spaces, whether these may be imaginary or real. Van Gennep (1960:10–1, 21) identifies three phases within rites of passage. First there is a pre-liminal phase, during which initiates are symbolically (or physically) detached from their habitual social status. Then follows the liminal phase – a phase of transformation. During the post-liminal phase they are reintroduced to society as changed beings. Arguing that liminality points not only to “in-between” periods but also to periods within which liminal experiences may radically regenerate the individual and merge rational thought with sensory experience, Victor Turner (1969:81; 156) both endorses and extends Van Gennep’s ideas.
Within the realm of philosophical thought, Foucault (1984:3–4) identifies “real places […] which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which […] real sites […] are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. […] I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.” Such spaces, Foucault believes, could function like a “mirror” for self-reflection: “In the mirror, I see myself where I am not [...] Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me [...] I come back toward myself; I begin to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am.”
We also consider Foucault’s thought on transformation as related to “care for the Self”. Such ascetic practice he describes as “an exercise of the self on the self, by which one attempts to develop and transforms oneself, and to attain to a certain mode of being” (Foucault in Lotringer 1996:433). This idea we relate to Heidegger’s notion of “being” (Sein); “the self as the there (Da) of being (Sein)” (Stapleton 2014:44). Moran (2014:497) views Heidegger’s construct of Dasein as a “stepping over”, a “passage across”, a “surpassing”, for which he uses both nominal and verbal forms: Transzendenz, transzendieren (to transcend) as well as equivalent terms, in particular überschreiten (to cross, exceed, and to overstep, to transgress).
Drawing on these ideas as a framing context for our analysis, we find that in the lyrics of “Ek wens” (“I wish”), the cello and the flute are personified in that the protagonist longs for the physical closeness with the loved one that the playing of these instruments implies. In this regard, the wish is seen as belonging to the psychological realm of liminality, a space which De Villiers likens to that of a dream; compare Foucault (2006:555). However, in the lyrics of “By jou” (“With you”) a forest of blue gum trees is likened to “an orchestra of a thousand flutes”, figuratively alluding to the “crossing over” into a mystical domain of true meaning and deeper understanding of the Self as mediated by the loved one.
The lyrics of “Katedraal” (“Cathedral”) and “Solo” are religious. “Cathedral” implies a world without borders and a liminal spiritual experience that breaks away from traditional markers of religious practice such as stained-glass windows, bread and wine, a choir, and organ music. Instead, the focus is on lived spiritual experience, where the individual transforms within nature. On a critical note, it was observed that, despite the transfiguring nature of this text, De Villiers’s imagery of God and The Divine suggests conventional imaginings of God’s paternity.
In “Solo” De Villiers sketches “a dark auditorium” as a liminal space. While, typically, an auditorium would be filled with an audience, there is “seating for only One” in this space. Moreover, it is a place of silence; there is no applause, only “a solo melody” that pays “homage to God”. As is the case in “Cathedral”, transformation and becoming one with The Divine (“the elusive Absolute”) are achieved through quietude as an agent of change. In both “Solo” and “Cathedral” reference is made to human mortality. “Cathedral” ends with a citation of the phrase Libera me, Domine (“Deliver me, O God”) from the Latin Requiem Mass. Here, the lyrics again suggest transfiguration and oneness with God.
The lyrics of “Miskien” (“Maybe”) are fascinating in terms of ideas of liminality and transformation. Our reduction of the text shows that the lyrics comprise four successive rites de passage. The first, pre-liminal phase draws on the metaphor of the haiku, a Japanese verse form, which, in De Villiers’s lyrics, is made “out of sound”. At the moment of transformation, this (monophonic) sound transforms to “a larger symphony”, after which, in the post-liminal phase, it becomes “transitory and mute”. However, the lyrics then suggest a new rite de passage where the notes are transformed into “a blanket”.
The third rite de passage refers to a mirror, which, as argued by Lacan (2001:1‒2), Eagleton (1996:143) and Foucault (1984:3–4), represents a unique liminal space for processes of identification, change, passing over, and the deepening of self-knowledge. However, ironically, in the final rite de passage as portrayed in “Miskien”, the protagonist comes to the insight that music, words, and even love become “lies” in the small hours of the night. Therefore, in this song no “real” post-liminal phase may be discerned, whereby De Villiers overturns traditional cognitive thinking concerning transformation that presuppose forms of reintegration within societal structures. This leaves him with the realisation that humans are outsiders who travel through life alone and can bring meaning into their lives only through self-realisation.
Finally, our analysis considers the music video “Hart van glas” (“Heart of glass”). In this regard, the aim is to examine how media constituents work together towards figurative meaning-making within the overarching sphere of liminality.
It was found that ideas of liminality and “the journey” are strongly present in this multimedia text. The lyrics allude to De Villiers’s life journey, involving concepts of loneliness and finiteness. Still, his “voyage” consists of a crossing of the “threshold” to pass from the liminal space into greater self-knowledge and a spiritual “homecoming”. As an example of Cook’s (1998:100ff) “conformance” metaphor model, each of the media components contributes towards communicating this “message”.
However, a more detailed reading reveals that the musical dimension of the video mediates several levels of symbolic transformation. In this regard, Cook’s (2001:173) statement that meanings ascribed to music are “at the same time irreducibly cultural and intimately related to its structural properties” is found to be demonstrated in the video. While in this text De Villiers does not deploy music-related metaphors as strumenti, the music itself acts as an agent of figurative meaning. Our analysis confirms that, in this regard, musical expression brings about what Larson (2012:74) calls “embodied affective meaning”, transcoding social meaning via specific harmonic, melodic and rhythmic patterns. As figurative “gestures”, musical elements thus enable both a cognitive understanding of verbal and visual meanings and an emotive experience of De Villiers’s spiritual homecoming within a deeper Self. However, as part of a multi-media context, contrastingly, at the end of the video, visual materials once more suggest the idea of the individual as an outsider who travels through life alone. For in the final moments of the video, De Villiers is shown in a reflective position, signifying vulnerability and, in Foucault’s (1984:3–4) terms, a “coming back toward the Self” and an ongoing examination of the Self.
Keywords: Coenie de Villiers; Michel Foucault; Martin Heidegger; Jacques Lacan; liminality; lyrics; metaphor analysis; music video, Victor Turner; Arnold van Gennep
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans
Musikale betekenis en metafore van liminaliteit in die liedkuns van Coenie de Villiers