Attentive to her positionality as a European scholar, Titus turns her musicological ear to maskanda. She invites readers into the pleasures of hearing Zulu musicians' syncretic creativity, while gaining an understanding of the stylistic features that musicians value. Readers will be inspired to explore this dynamic, abundant world of listening, vexed as it is by histories of racism, sexism, coloniality and scarce resources.

Louise Meintjes, Professor of Music and Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA, and author of Dust of the Zulu: Ngoma Aesthetics after Apartheid

South African music followers and educators have long been waiting for a major intellectual study of the famous and much beloved musical form, Zulu maskanda guitar. This is at last it. Barbara Titus addresses the music and its exponents from more perspectives than we thought possible, from the artistic to the social to the philosophical. Ethnomusicologists must add this study to their libraries.

David B. Coplan, Emeritus Professor in Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa