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Politics and popular song: youth, authority, and popular music in East Africa
Get PDFIn 2003, the Tanzanian rapper AY released the song "Binadamu" (Human) [CD track1]. Recorded in Uganda, mixed in Tanzania, with a video filmed in Somalia and Uganda, the song reached top ten lists at radio stations in every country in east Africa. The song discussed the fate of someone who had become ostracized by his friends and family after falling on hard times. It was a socially significant song, demonstrating forms of marginalization that occur in contemporary cities where people are consumed
by cosmopolitan fantasies. Along with several other songs released in the early 2000s, "Binadamu" garnered AY the nickname "Mzee wa Commercial", which literally translated as the "Elder of Commercial [Music]". The word \u27mzee (elder), used by Tanzanian youth to signify their desire for social power within society, was a means of self-actualizing the status and prestige associated with elders in African societies. As a result of the connotation to AY\u27s nickname, he became a highly respected person in releasing socially and commercially successful songs that could be heard throughout eastern Africa. His music had the potential to influence others, thereby embodying the role of the elder, while also being popular and commercially successful. The elder status of his nickname should not, however, be confused with his actual age. Born on July 5, 1982, AY was 21 when "Binadamu" first became a hit
Talking balafons
Get PDFIt is evident that the relationship between natural language and balafon playing goes beyond mere imitation, or rather transposition, of tonemes and long and short syllables. Senufo balafonists not only reproduce linguistic statements: they produce them while also making music. Balafon tunes, with their underlying words, bring into play interactive communication, artistic creativity and aesthetic pleasure. THey bring joy to the musicians and to all those who take part in the event
Keeping it real: amaXhosa iimbongi making mimesis do its thing in the hip-hop and rap music of the Eastern Cape
Get PDFHip-hop and rap music are present in many cities in the Eastern Cape but this article is restricted to an analysis of the rap music and hip-hop scene in Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown.3 Although the intention of this article is musicological, it is necessary to look at rap music in its contexts, that is, the hip-hop movement locally and globally, and as but one aspect in relation to the other performance and ideological aspects of the hip-hop movement.4 For this reason I attempt to integrate the discursive attributes of the movement into a narrative where the aesthetics of hip-hop performance in the Eastern Cape and South Africa, and by extension, other parts of the globe, is the main concern
NEWS FROM ILAM
Get PDFCataloguing, conservation through digital conversion, and creation of on-line access to ILAM\u27s holdings have been the focus of ILAM\u27s projects for the past several years. As a result of these efforts the Hugh Tracey audio recordings and 1,000 images from his photo collection, and ILAM\u27s books are searchable on-line via ILAM\u27s website. And, back issues of our journal, African Music, are now available from the JSTOR database
Sounds of Muziki wa Injili: Temporal and Spatial Aesthetics of Contemporary- Church Music in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Imani Sanga. 2010. Saarbrucken, Germany: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing. 231 pp. photos, transcriptions, ISBN 978-3-8383-6325-7.
Get PDFThe eroticization of bikutsi: reclaiming female space through popular music and media.
Get PDFTHis work examines the development of bikutsi from traditional song form to media, moral and cultural issue - a site of contestation between local media officials and an increasingly more internationally influenced and liberalized media. I analyze the experience of bikutsi as mediated by politics and external and internal views and consumption. As the Cameroonian media undergoes a process of democratization highly influenced by foreign media, local musicians and video artists become actors in a conflicted and uncertain environment. On the one hand are issues of nation-building and cultural development in the face of dominant foreign media, and on the other, the multitude of images, sounds and forms of popular culture people attach themselves to in their daily imaginings
Crossing diaspora\u27s borders: musical roots experiences and the Euro-American presence in Afro-Cuban religious music.
Get PDFAs a potentially more useful heuristic, I discuss what I call a musical "roots experience.” In doing so, I argue that recent Euro-American interest in Afro-Cuban music is a logical result of a search for a historicized cultural self, quite similar to that of African-Americans. In this way, the framework of a "roots experience” highlights experiential similarities across an ethnically diverse community of practitioners, whereas relying on the concept of the African Diaspora could possibly reinforce racial barriers