Stephanie Vos is a Lecturer in Musicology at Stellenbosch University. Her research engages with contemporary South African jazz practices as well as music under apartheid from multiple perspectives. In her doctoral research (Royal Holloway, University of London), she wrote about exile as theory, discourse and lived experience in South African jazz of the 1960s, with a particular focus on the music of Abdullah Ibrahim. More recently, the book Sulke Vriende is Skaars: Die briewe van Anton Hartman en Arnold van Wyk, 1947-1982 (Protea 2020, co-edited with Stephanus Muller) published the annotated correspondence between the erstwhile Head of Music at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Anton Hartman, and the composer Arnold van Wyk. The book offers a window into the unfolding and cultural aspirations and praxis of the (white) Western art music scene during apartheid’s heyday through the lens of two prominent protagonists. Sulke Vriende was awarded the KykNet Rapport Prize for Non-Fiction, as well as the ATKV Woordveertjie for Non-Fiction.
Stephanie’s more recent research interests in the contemporary South African jazz landscape started when she curated the ifPOP Jazz Conversations series (https://aoinstitute.ac.za/ifpop/conversation/) during her postdoctoral fellowship at Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (Stellenbosch University), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This is the direction she is currently focussing on in her writing and research.
Stephanie’s writing has been published in the South African Journal of Music Research (SAMUS), herri online journal (www.herri.org), Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath (Duke University Press, eds. Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter) and The Conversation Africa.
ResearchGate profile address: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephanie-Vos-5