ABSTRACT
Before 1994, the apartheid state exercised strict control over the media, banning ‘subversive’ music and album covers (see Hamm 1991; Devroop and Walton 2007). This was blatant censorship by authorities who were threatened by music’s potential to unite and mobilise resistance. Less visible (or audible perhaps) is the role of local music education in mediating jazz, so that the question arises: how did apartheid’s repressive ethos influence the implementation of academic jazz education initiatives in the mid-1980s and beyond?
