This blog is a result of my master’s thesis on the religious music of the Griqua community of South Africa. The group in question is all those that are part of the Griqua Independent Church in South Africa. There are other forms of Griqua music and different groups of people that identifies as Griqua. This study was just focused on the Le Fleur Griqua group.
The study is not only a study of the music itself, but rather the study of the phenomenon of “lof“. The word lof is used by the Griqua themselves to describe their singing of hymns. Lof is an Afrikaans word that can be translated as praise, although in this context it is something that is done by Griqua people as part of their everyday lives and forms an important part of who they are. Lof can be described as more than just singing hymns, but living hymns.
The origninal title is: Griqua hymnody: A Musical ethnography of identity through song. The full thesis can be accessed with the following link:https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Griqua-hymnody%3A-a-musical-ethnography-of-Griqua-Meyer
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