Willemien Froneman
Biographic Data
| ID | 161050 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Willemien Froneman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Willemien |
| FAMILY NAME | Froneman |
| SIGNATURE | FRONEMAN W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stellenbosch University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7596-8866 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Failed comprehensiveness, successful minimalism
This article examines how the English Wikipedia community governed the emergence of large language model (LLM)-generated content between 2022 and 2025, tracing a protracted policy process that moved from early recognition of risk to repeated institutional failure and, ultimately, to narrow but enforceable rule formation. Drawing on process-tracing of publicly accessible revision histories, talk page deliberations, and Requests for Comment (RfCs),…
Is There a Sonic Climate of Zulu History
‘Stockhausenesque’
This article weaves a story around the scant evidence that survives of the first university-based electroacoustic studio in Africa and the musical experimentalism that developed alongside it at the fledgling music department of what was then the University of Natal. The time is the early 1970s, the setting the eastern seaboard city of Durban, the local political context the ‘Durban moment’ of growing political unrest infused by Steve Biko's Black…
The ears of apartheid
This article considers white popular music of the 1950s and 1960s as a zone of what J.M. Coetzee has termed apartheid’s confessional “heart-speech” – a zone that explicates a sonospheric understanding of apartheid and its pathologies of racial disavowal. Drawing on the work of Peter Sloterdijk, I show how white popular music written for background entertainment cultivated in white ears a warped aesthetic sensibility for disavowing black sonic pre…
After Fame
After Fame is an ethnographic account of aging and musical creativity in the everyday life of the then 90-year-old South African accordionist Nico Carstens. It consists of three parts: (1) a theoretical and methodological framing, refiguring the Western elite concept of “late style” for the study of popular music; (2) an animated and narrated digital essay, accessible online; and (3) a version adapted here for print. Based on personal conversatio…
Music and landscape
In this contribution I juxtapose two tales of borehole drilling in the Karoo in order to reflect on the relationship between music, landscape, history and everyday life. The first narrative is based on British colonial hydraulic engineering in the Karoo, and the second is an ethnographic portrait of borehole driller and concertinist Theo Slabbert. When landscape is considered vertically, different categories emerge for delving into the unruly, om…
Subjunctive pleasure
This paper introduces the subjunctive as a modality of engaging in musical life, in this instance the contemporary white folk music scene of boeremusiek in South Africa. The genre has repeatedly been portrayed as forever vanishing - a discourse that still characterises contemporary events put up by the largest boeremusiek organisation in South Africa, the Boeremusiekgilde (Boeremusiek Guild). The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of disc…
The riches of embarrassment
Two newspaper articles caught my eye the last couple of months. In the first, leftie photo-journalist Paul Alberts tells of the unanticipated and disturbing rapport between him and Eugene Terre'Blanche (aka ET). After doing a week-in-the-life-of photo essay of ET, Alberts confesses: 'Ek verskil van die AWB's soos dag en nag--politiek, godsdiens, alles--maar dis my mense. Dit was 'n tuiskoms. Daar 't ek besef ek's oneerlik met myself om my 'n Afri…
Music and landscape
In this contribution I juxtapose two tales of borehole drilling in the Karoo in order to reflect on the relationship between music, landscape, history and everyday life. The first narrative is based on British colonial hydraulic engineering in the Karoo, and the second is an ethnographic portrait of borehole driller and concertinist Theo Slabbert. When landscape is considered vertically, different categories emerge for delving into the unruly, om…
After Fame
After Fame is an ethnographic account of aging and musical creativity in the everyday life of the then 90-year-old South African accordionist Nico Carstens. It consists of three parts: (1) a theoretical and methodological framing, refiguring the Western elite concept of “late style” for the study of popular music; (2) an animated and narrated digital essay, accessible online; and (3) a version adapted here for print. Based on personal conversatio…
The riches of embarrassment
Two newspaper articles caught my eye the last couple of months. In the first, leftie photo-journalist Paul Alberts tells of the unanticipated and disturbing rapport between him and Eugene Terre'Blanche (aka ET). After doing a week-in-the-life-of photo essay of ET, Alberts confesses: 'Ek verskil van die AWB's soos dag en nag--politiek, godsdiens, alles--maar dis my mense. Dit was 'n tuiskoms. Daar 't ek besef ek's oneerlik met myself om my 'n Afri…
Subjunctive pleasure
This paper introduces the subjunctive as a modality of engaging in musical life, in this instance the contemporary white folk music scene of boeremusiek in South Africa. The genre has repeatedly been portrayed as forever vanishing - a discourse that still characterises contemporary events put up by the largest boeremusiek organisation in South Africa, the Boeremusiekgilde (Boeremusiek Guild). The aim of the paper is to analyse the effects of disc…
Music and landscape
In this contribution I juxtapose two tales of borehole drilling in the Karoo in order to reflect on the relationship between music, landscape, history and everyday life. The first narrative is based on British colonial hydraulic engineering in the Karoo, and the second is an ethnographic portrait of borehole driller and concertinist Theo Slabbert. When landscape is considered vertically, different categories emerge for delving into the unruly, om…
After Fame
After Fame is an ethnographic account of aging and musical creativity in the everyday life of the then 90-year-old South African accordionist Nico Carstens. It consists of three parts: (1) a theoretical and methodological framing, refiguring the Western elite concept of “late style” for the study of popular music; (2) an animated and narrated digital essay, accessible online; and (3) a version adapted here for print. Based on personal conversatio…
‘Stockhausenesque’
This article weaves a story around the scant evidence that survives of the first university-based electroacoustic studio in Africa and the musical experimentalism that developed alongside it at the fledgling music department of what was then the University of Natal. The time is the early 1970s, the setting the eastern seaboard city of Durban, the local political context the ‘Durban moment’ of growing political unrest infused by Steve Biko's Black…
The ears of apartheid
This article considers white popular music of the 1950s and 1960s as a zone of what J.M. Coetzee has termed apartheid’s confessional “heart-speech” – a zone that explicates a sonospheric understanding of apartheid and its pathologies of racial disavowal. Drawing on the work of Peter Sloterdijk, I show how white popular music written for background entertainment cultivated in white ears a warped aesthetic sensibility for disavowing black sonic pre…
Is There a Sonic Climate of Zulu History
Failed comprehensiveness, successful minimalism
This article examines how the English Wikipedia community governed the emergence of large language model (LLM)-generated content between 2022 and 2025, tracing a protracted policy process that moved from early recognition of risk to repeated institutional failure and, ultimately, to narrow but enforceable rule formation. Drawing on process-tracing of publicly accessible revision histories, talk page deliberations, and Requests for Comment (RfCs),…
Art (6 works) · History (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Music History and Culture (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · History (3 works) · Musical (3 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (3 works) · Political science (3 works)