The Special Collections Book of the Week this week is:

The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa by Percival Kirby

First published in 1953, this book is an important early text in southern African music studies. Illustrated throughout, the book is concerned with African instruments, their physical and musical characteristics, their social use and their geographical distribution. This pioneering text has great historical value and constitutes a baseline for research into southern Africa’s music. The third edition, published in 2013, has reworked the title to ‘The Musical Instruments of the Indigenous People of South Africa’. This is an acknowledgment that the original text of the book, as a product of its time, might be uncomfortable for modern readers, but the fact of a third edition is recognition that the content of the book is of great importance to the field of African music studies.

Access: https://univofpretoria.on.worldcat.org/oclc/152807496

This book is available at Special Collections, housed on level 5 of the Merensky 2 Library, and is part of our FZ van der Merwe South African Music Collection.

The Special Collections unit of the Department of Library Services plays a stewardship role in the acquisition and preservation of the Library's rare and valuable information resources, making them accessible to students, staff and researchers, as well as safeguarding them for future generations.