The young Gabriel had no calling to blow his horn in a church and defied his mother who insisted he become a priest. Her tendency to break up his makeshift drum kits led him to hang about the tanneries and artisanal workshops, collecting materials he fashioned into high-quality hand and mallet drums for which he later became so famous. From early on, Mabi pursued whatever “arrested” (bopha!) him full force without equivocation or compromise. And he was to serve a life sentence in the total reinvention of the highveld’s African percussion.
AuthorDavid Coplan
Professor Emeritus, Social Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand.
He has also held visiting appointments at institutions as diverse as University of Basel, École des Hautes Études Sciences Sociales (Paris), Rice University, NYU, DePauw University, and the University of Cape Town. He acted as the Chief Researcher for the “Mobilising Culture and Heritage for Nation Building” in South Africa’s Arts and Culture Department and worked as an ethnographic research consultant for University of Pennsylvania Museum and International Library of African Music.Professor Coplan has received awards and grants from Fulbright-Hayes, SSRC, NEH, ACLS, Human Sciences Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Arts Council of South Africa, and the Ernst Oppenheimer Memorial Trust.
His research interests include African ethnology, history and theory of anthropology, performing arts, urban anthropology, culture change, social organization and border studies.