Amongst the diverse music scenes that have emerged during the unfinished transition from apartheid, those that have formed within voluntary associations of jazz lovers remain a notable, if fractured and only partially audible feature of city culture around Johannesburg and elsewhere in South Africa. The ways in which things acquire social lives that in turn remake their purported owners has been a distinct subtheme within cultural anthropology and material culture studies for some decades now. I pursue this with regard to how jazz continues, after the official abolition of apartheid, to have purchase as a symbolically resonant resource for figuring the personal and collective self. This article also takes its cue from the invitation to offer a critical reading and an interrogation of the city in Africa via Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, and to sharing scholarship across disciplines. Departing from the premise that the ways in which cities have been designed often prioritise visual layout and physical fixity, I want to think about what it means to know a city through sound. With regard to Johannesburg, I ask how a concept at the heart of this iconically commercial African city — the commodity — can be socialised and sonified.

在种族隔离制度未完成过渡期间出现的各种音乐场景中，在爵士乐爱好者自愿协会内部形成的音乐场景，即使在约翰内斯堡及南非其他地方的城市文化中，即使是破裂且只有部分可听见的特征，也仍然是值得注意的。几十年来，事物获取社交生活的方式反过来重塑了所谓的所有者，这一直是文化人类学和物质文化研究中一个独特的子主题。在正式废除种族隔离制度之后，我将继续爵士音乐的发展，以此作为象征性的共鸣资源来确定个人和集体自我。本文还从邀请中获得启发，通过沃尔特·本杰明（Walter Benjamin）的著作对非洲城市进行了批判性的解读和审讯。街机项目，以及跨学科共享奖学金。不同于以城市的设计方式通常优先考虑视觉布局和固定性为前提的前提，我想考虑通过声音了解城市的意义。关于约翰内斯堡，我想问这个具有标志性的非洲商业城市的中心地带的商品概念如何可以社会化和流行。