Raga of the third space: recombining music, architecture & culture.

Abstract

Raga of the thirdspace is an approach to negotiating the interface of culture, music and architecture in Johannesburg, a city where all the ingredients for a positive and radical cultural change are present, but remain hidden and disconnected. The analogous structural frameworks of both Raga (the central concept of Indian classical music) and thirdspace (a post-colonial spatial concept which positively negotiates the way in which cultures may have meaningful contact) are powerful improvisational tools in suggesting an appropriate architectural approach that could realign both music and culture in Johannesburg. This approach has primarily to do with methods of translation; both cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary, where more often than not, the process seems to be of more interest than the product. In the case of this thesis, this is done by placing a school for Indian classical and cross-over music in Yeoville, an inner-city suburb, which is now, as it has always been, a melting pot for people of diffff erent cultural backgrounds and a place with a distinctive creative energy. Yeoville’s high street presents itself as a point where geography and history intersect in such a way that it begs the inclusion of a third element; the disparate musical fragments of what are the potential beginnings of a meaningful cultural recombination. Placing Indian classical music in Yeoville is a strategic move. It aims to establish and promote Indian classical music in a country where it goes chronically unrecognised, but more importantly it does so in a way that avoids embedding this music form in an Indian cultural context, thus perpetuating Apartheid spatial logic. It is out of this kind of spatial thinking, or architectural intervention, that new and rich musical forms may emerge; the arbiters of a new and rich culture.