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David B. Coplan

US

A.k.a. David Bellin Coplan

Better known under the name of David Coplan, born in the US, Coplan arrived in South Africa in the early 1970s thinking that he would spend a little time there doing some research. Instead, he wound up making friends with black musicians, dodging the apartheid police, being interrogated and then deported. During this exile he lived for a period across the border in Lesotho and wrote about the music there. The first edition of In Township Tonight came out in 1985. After the dismantling of apartheid in the early 1990s, he was allowed to return to South Africa where today he chairs the Anthropology Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Here are some of his works: 1975. Results of an Anthropological SW1Jeyof Black Music in Johannesburg, May-June, 1975. Unpublished Field Report. Indiana University. 1978. Go to My Town, Cape Coast! The Social History of Ghanaian Highlife. In Eight Urban Musical Cultures: Tradition and Change, NETTL, B. (Ed.) 1978. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1979. The African Musician and the Development of the Johannesburg Entertainment Industry, 1900-1960. In Joumal of Southem African Studies, 1979, Vol. 5, No.2, pp. 135-164. 1981. (COPLAN, D. & RYCROFT, D.Marabi): The Emergence of Afiican Working-Class Music in Johannesburg. In Discourse in Ethnomusicology II: A Tribute to Alan P. Merriam, CARD. 1982A. The emergence of an Afiican working-class culture. In Industrialization and social change in South Africa, MARKS, S. & RATHBONE, R. (Eds.) 1982. London: Longman. 1982B. The urbanisation of Afiican music: some theoretical observations. In Popular Music, 1982, Vol. 2, pp. 113-129. 1985. In Township Tonight: South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

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