UNISA

Faculty Member, Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology

Professor of Musicology

College of Human Sciences: Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology

About

Marc Duby, PhD

Marc Duby was born in Cape Town, South Africa, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy from UCT in 1975. Having begun his professional career as bassist in that city in 1972, Duby returned from overseas to begin musical studies at UCT in 1980, culminating in the award of the first masters’ degree in jazz performance (cum laude) in Durban 1987.

Duby spent the next decade and a half teaching in South African technikons (Technikon Natal and Technikon Pretoria, now Durban Institute of Technology and Tshwane University of Technology respectively) where he was responsible for subjects such as Ensemble, Film Music, Music Technology, and Instrument. Among his most well known students are Victor Masondo, Concord Nkabinde, Lex Futshane, and Nibs van der Spuy, all household names in South African music.

Appointed in 2001 as the first director of the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Band, he completed his PhD thesis in 2006 on Soundpainting, the New York composer Walter Thompson’s sign language for live composition. Awarded established researcher status in 2010 by the National Research Foundation, Prof Duby has presented academic papers in Bologna, New Orleans, and at Cambridge University, as well as serving as visiting lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and Universidad Veracruzana (México). His research interests include improvisation, embodiment, critical theory, jazz studies, and philosophy of mind, as well as semiotics, phenomenology, music cognition and perception.

He has acted in the capacity of external examiner at undergraduate and postgraduate level for many South African higher education institutions including UCT, the University of Pretoria, UFS, UKZN, and Wits University.

Recent performances and collaborations as performer/composer include:

➢ In the clouds (Grahamstown 2009, 2010) (Winner of 2010 Ovation award for best Fringe performance)
➢ Tim Kliphuis (Netherlands) and Johannesburg Youth Orchestra (Johannesburg 2010, 2011)
➢ World Sounds of Jazz: with Vigleik Storaas (Norway), Efraïm Trujillo (USA) and Lloyd Martin (SA) (Grahamstown 2011)
➢ Official accompanist for SAMRO International Singers’ Competition (Johannesburg 2011).

Beginning his fifth decade as professional bassist, Marc Duby has worked with iconic figures of South African music including Barney Rachabane, Nelson Magwaza, Philip Tabane, Winston Mankunku Ngozi, John Fourie, Bruce Cassidy, Darius Brubeck, the Kalahari Surfers, Steve Newman and Tony Cox as well as international artists such as Ernest Khabeer Dawkins (USA), François Jeanneau (France), Pandit Sanjoy Bandophadyaye (India), and Roberto Bonati (Italy).

A founding contributor to the annual Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Festival in Grahamstown, Duby serves on the board of such music organisations as New Music SA and the South African Association of Jazz Educators. A prize-winning composer of film music, he is active as a performer, composer/arranger, and music educator, and in June 2011 joined the University of South Africa as Professor of Musicology in the Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology. He is married to the singer/ songwriter Lydia vom Hagen.

Contact Information