Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X
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Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative - ISSN 1780-678X |
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This is not a haircut. Neoliberalism and revolt in Kiswahili rap |
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Author: Koen Stroeken Abstract (E): How to explain the growing success of Bongo Flava, as Tanzanian hip hop is called, and the beneficial effects many people expect from it? First, there has been increasing access in both urban and rural areas. Tanzanians who do not buy or copy the tapes, hear the songs on the radio or on the street, where verses of protest blast from the speakers of music shops and commuter vans. Because of the importance of vocal traditions – which even the socialist party's choir music did not overlook - the Tanzanian tendency is to take the lyrics seriously, the words at face value, rather than belittle these as products of youth or popular culture. Furthermore, there have been strategies to transform the market of popular music in favour of Bongo Flava, using former president Nyerere as a positive model and American gangsterism-annex-vigilantism as a negative model. Why do all media regularly broadcast and report on Bongo Flava? Ever more Tanzanians, of all ages, share with Kiswahili rappers the satisfaction of expressing themselves on social problems such as poverty and AIDS and exposing political corruption and indifference. An articulate form of pessimism is contagious and addictive, keeping up the belief in an uncompromised standpoint. Abstract (F): Comment peut-on expliquer le succès croissant du hip hop tanzanien, le Bongo Flava, et les effets bénéfiques que de nombreuses gens espèrent en tirer ? Premièrement, il faut mentionner la pénétration même de cette musique, que l'on peut maintenant écouter dans les villes comme à la campagne. Les Tanzaniens qui n'ont pas les moyens d'acheter ou de copier les cassettes peuvent les écouter maintenant partout, à la radio mais aussi dans la rue, où des chansons protestataires sont diffusées par toutes sortes de haut-parleurs. L'importance des traditions vocales font que les Tanzaniens tendent à prendre les textes très au sérieux et de les interpréter très littéralement plutôt que de n'y voir que des produits de la culture juvénile. A cela s'ajoutent les tentatives de transformer le marché de la musique populaire au profit du Bongo Flava, utilisant l'ancien président Nyerere comme modèle positif et la culture américaine des gangsters et des justiciers privés comme modèle négatif. Cela explique le succès de cette musique sur les ondes nationales : de plus en plus de Tanzaniens sont d'accord avec les rappers Kiswahili qui s'expriment sur les grands problèmes sociaux comme la pauvreté et le SIDA et qui dénoncent la corruption et l'indifférence des politiciens. Le pessimisme très concerté de cette musique est contagieux et permet de maintenir des opinions sans compromission. keywords: Bongo Flava, Nyerere, Tanzania, Kiswhali, protest song |
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In August 2003, radio station Live365 organised on the Internet a live broadcast of hip-hop duels opposing Senegalese and Tanzanian crews [1]. The purpose was to honour the originality and vibrancy of these two African scenes. Hip-hop has a tradition of duelling or "dissing" , in which rivalry eventually attests to the rivals' close affinity. Of course, using their mother tongue the Senegalese and Tanzanian crews could not understand each other. But surely , they "dug" the political undertones of the music, given their shared dissident attitude of confronting the government at the risk of reprisal. In their dissidence , these bands address the general population and not just the educated urban youth that make up most of their fans. Both scenes moreover have the opportunity - rare not only in Africa - of referring to a positive model of leadership. Nyerere and Senghor, founding presidents of Tanzania and Senegal respectively, belong to the grandparental past of socialist ideals, of struggles for independence and African identity. In rap music their names resurface as a source of criticism against corrupt pragmatics and as ancestral spirits meant to haunt the neoliberal generation presently in charge.
In his seminal diagnosis of postcolonial mentality Achille Mbembe (2001) describes how the ruling African elite has attained the sophistication of seeking power for itself. The backdrop is the cynicism-prone period of crushed hopes due to growing poverty and the AIDS epidemic in Africa since the 1980s. The elite's indifference to any form of normative project, especially that of visionary founding fathers, tallies remarkably well with the position US "gangsta rap" acts such as 50 Cent take in relation to the founding fathers of hip-hop such as Public Enemy. The pragmatic attitude, as magnified in 50 Cent's album "Get rich or die tryin'", has displaced the idealism of the first wave of rap bands (see also Boyd 2003, passim). That change of attitude has global relevance when related to the moderate version of pragmatics that set the trend in Western politics after the fall of communism (as in Anthony Gidden's by now household concept of a third way beyond left and right ideologies). If much of popular music today originates from this celebration of hybrid signification, we can equally expect pockets of cultural resistance that seek to disinter the ongoing social antagonisms. In this paper I argue that this alternative position is manifesting itself on the world's most troubled continent. Speaking of kizazi kipya Tanzanian rappers refer to themselves as the avant-garde of a "new generation" emerging. At first it looked like their critique of the political elite merely drew on the US imported hip-hop credo of "keeping it real", that is of keeping the songs' accounts close to real life(Gesthuizen 2000, passim ). But now it seems the "real" they call for is a sense of indignation globally jeopardised by excess signification. African "modernities" ( in the plural since Appadurai 2001) have been particularly apt at multiplying "utopias", idealist prospects of liberation, such as those deriving from town and village life, youth and elders, state and clan, North and South, Christianity and tradition, and for the many living with AIDS, the escapist celebrations of either life or death. Any utopia and its concomitant indignation is readily neutralised by yet another, thus suspending intervention in unfair situations (examples of inexplicable non-intervention abound in Western modernities too). The Swahili word for rapping is ku-kata , to cut, as in kukata shauri , to take a stance, literally "to cut the advice". Advice is meant in the plural. Tanzanian rappers do not take a stance by offering yet one more, so-called ultimate or new utopia. What their lyrics exhibit, on the contrary, is no hope, that is: the absence of a signifier that captures the speaker (which the audience identifies with). A radical pessimism that freezes the flood of signifiers, has the effect of placing the listener in the emancipatory position of making the first "cut" that matters (I paraphrase Lacan's formula of anything symbolic as a "cut in the real", Lacan 1973: 54) .
Following Bantu traditions of myth and ritual, the literal text of the lyrics (which bespeak the author's skill) is less important than the transformation effected by the words on the audience. This is not only a Bantu tradition but a property of hip-hop culture in general. A contrast can be made with academics who focus on the literal text for it to reflect the author's political correctness. Its equivalent we may find in the many NGO adverts in Africa on condom use. The necessity of stimulating condom use to prevent AIDS cannot be questioned, but I doubt whether urban youth will be convinced by a picture of the inescapable four-unit family or romantic couple smiling at what is, after all, a pandemic. The (imposed) optimism keeps the NGO immune to critique. But its show of correctness does not necessarily serve the cause. In the same vein, NGO and academic will give credit to a rapper summing up reasons to be hopeful amidst surrounding misery. Even if those reasons are valid, to hip-hop fans such a rap song will more probably sound pathetic, if not unintentionally cynical. Tanzanian rappers instead describe in graphic detail the fate of those who do not use condoms. In the local Bantu language of Kisukuma, Bob Haisa sings that condom-free sex is not like tea or porridge, from which he could easily abstain, but is desire mutually reinforced by a man and a woman finding themselves "at an intersection where both sides are salivating for it in their own liquid" ( alaho ha nzilamaka buli ng'wene akuswilaga lusona ). It's left to the listener to decide what to do next.
The sheer energy of negativism, always at the verge of announcing revolt, is also witnessed, I will argue, in bus slogans typically displayed on buses exiting a town like Mwanza. "Born 2 Suffer" groans a commuter van struggling its way through mud and potholes (see picture 1). Blinded by the writing, one is easily fooled by the apparent cynicism. Although the slogan gives no prospect of future improvement (to say the least), the bus-owner must be counting on the opposite effect, ranging from attracting commuters to averting disaster. I will discuss the meaning of the songs and slogans animating street life. And I will defend the implied assumption that it matters what those writings on the wall say, starting with the effect they have on the observer, and that their content is not secondary to the sheer pleasure of (sub)cultural expression. In the end African rappers deal with the paradox that was equally relevant for, say, the colonial parodies in East-African dance (see Ranger 1975), as it was for the contestation of Bob Dylan and other sixties icons, or the raw aggression in Punk music at the brink of the 1980s, namely the question of how much revolutionary potential an appeal retains if it is too entertaining.
"Realistic dissidence is the trademark of anyone who has a new idea in business," Horkheimer and Adorno (1987 [1947]: 147) already noted in their classic piece on the culture industry. Unless submitted to a considerable dose of compromise, that idea, be it in writing or music, will be economically marginalised (149). Is the political protest of socially engaged hip-hop not such an idea, rebellious yet conforming enough to the market to be profitable? The question rebounds on Horkheimer and Adorno themselves, given the undeniable success of their stab at the establishment. Variants on their social critique, such as Baudrillard's (1999), today feed the culture industry to which art and science belong. It is tempting to conclude that both hip-hop artists and neo-Marxists have been instrumental in realising the very spectre of their ideals, marketing the kind of dissidence that sustains the status quo. However, such conclusion is an act of self-bewitchment, as it turns the market - our only means of exchange - into a threat whose principles cannot be changed over time. A dissidence that eventually pays off and changes the market (the norms to conform to) for the better does not need to be realistic as in "compromised". The goal of dissidence is precisely to make realistic what previously seemed absurd.
Over the last years, Tanzanian hip-hop has done precisely that. A clear sense exists, first of all, of a transformation, a before and after, with hip-hop stars embodying a new generation. Secondly, the opponent of Kiswahili rap is not a class, age-group or vague concept like the market, but an attitude of corruption that can be found across different layers of society, not in the least among one's neighbours and peers. Hit songs have introduced and influenced street slang to combat that attitude. "Heat up your brains" ( chemsha bongo ) they rap to stop compatriots from going with the flow. Bongo means "brains." Referring to the intelligence needed to survive in harsh circumstances, it also denotes the country of Tanzania (sometimes black Africa). The hip-hop scene also derives its name from that term of survival: Bongo Flava or "flavour of the brains".Stars such as II Proud and Professor Jay get the elder generations involved. They are addressed in intros to the songs or in staged interviews on tape. One of the early concerns, since the late 1990s, was to cast off the label of uhuni , lawlessness, attributed by some politicians and commentators who noted the obscene language and pointed in the general direction of US "gangsta" rap. That label threatened to prevent Tanzanian rappers from making their concrete descriptions of corruption seem realistic to public opinion, rather than absurd, and thus confront the government . That is however where their reference to the spirit of Nyerere came in cunningly. Striking the country's main political chord, Professor Jay likens the "heart and calling" ( moyo na mwito ) of the country's legendary teacher to that of the rap artist. That spirit would offer a better guarantee to "keep it real" in the world of AIDS and poverty Africans are dealing with, than neoliberal pragmatics. Tanzanian rappers are aware that in this they stand opposed to the dominant current of US Gangsta rap, which idolises the "unreal" of unlimited consumption, sex and violence. The G angsta star has the luxury of asking what the point may be of getting real if everyone is fake anyway. By building an establishment in its own right next to other politico-economic conglomerates, the Gangsta avoids confrontation and eventually incarnates the spectre of conformist revolt. The genre-splitting tension is spelled out in interviews and lyrics. Abbas Maunda of Kwanza Unit contrasts the escapist discourse of contemporary rap with what he calls the Tanzanian way, which seeks to transform society. [2] Professor Jay warns in "Clap your hands" ( Piga makofi ) about the growing number of bands merely entertaining and the danger of Tanzania sliding back to the choir times of one-party rule.
Blood, sweat and tears
In 2002 Professor Jay - notice the superlative in relation to mwalimu "teacher" Nyerere- completed the album Machozi, jasho na damu : Tears, sweat and blood. These bodily fluids are of particular significance in pandemic times. In the spoken intro of the title song, he explains that "sweat" stands for our mothers and for the street vendors and porters doing much effort for little gain, converse to the town's wealthy. "Tears" are the extorted and oppressed, the growing contingent of losers in society roaming the streets, from alcoholics to orphans. "Blood" are the victims of war, conflict and epidemic. The rap warns that there is no stopping in either of these bodily fluids flowing as long as "we" - besides those in power - tolerate corruption and continue to "live like eating [our] tomorrow", that is ruining our future by only thinking of gratification in the present.. That same attitude in the AIDS era, the song suggests, leads to silently killing one another.
Traditionally (for example in the ancient cosmology of the Sukuma, the largest population group in the country) the creator of the universe represents a distant force. The modern image of a directly intervening God here expresses utter despair. In this song the concept of god constitutes mainly rhetorical presence, pushing pessimism about humanity to the limit so that the listener feels that the time has come to act. Concrete portrayals are given of the dubious role of the government, for example in the bloody clash between cattle-herders in Kilosa. The latest album of another band, Wagosi wa Kaya, describes the corrupt mentality of police, doctors, nurses and other personnel in government institutions alienated from village life. The compelling experience of indignation - a strong sense of one's emotions being in sync(hrony) with and directly affected by the horrors of reality - is what dictates hip-hop lyrics, signifying a new phase in the relationship between Tanzanians and the State.
To retrieve a sense of reality (versus fiction) amidst the occult uncertainties of complex modern times, rappers turn to their raw, unstructured experience of the streets. Urban sex and traffic tell how modernity in the postcolony means risk-taking to the point of self-destruction . A recurring example of criticism of neoliberalism in lyrics is the reference to merciless competition between bus-touts. These young boys have no choice but to defy police and in-coming traffic to pick up commuters along the road and squeeze them into the overcrowded bus. Many parts in Africa, Asia and Latin America have spontaneously developed a similarly mad transportation system where these mediators between town and village with torn outfits and defiant looks can freely stage the hunt for cash, wave their bills and shake their coins, while sneering at the elderly, the poor and the weak. They are today's exorcists, fully embracing the violence of modern capitalism and thus keeping it on the street, that is outside the homes in the village. In the same way, the rapper's contestation resembles, at least verbally, violent action in uncompromising, often obscene language that seeks among its audience the almost bodily effect of disgust. Hence, I deem the term "revolt" appropriate.
Dance to the noise
Last year a video entitled "Zimekubalika" was produced to introduce Bongo Flava to the screen. To make the compilation appealing for bar clientele, danceable raps with images of seductive ladies were chosen to alternate with acts such as Professor Jay and Afande Sele that are renowned for their confronting lyrics. There is obviously little fun in dancing to bloodshed or disease. Sele's video showed the rapper sitting around at a village construction site and vaguely miming the words in the most disinterested fashion. As for Jay, the producers had selected an unpolitical song, about impossible love, where the singer did an effort to act out the lyrics. It is striking how, over the last three years, Kiswahili tabloids have been propagating the more readily entertaining and photogenic side of hip-hop, thus trying to downplay the still dominant political engagement of the songs that hit the charts. They write how Western songs would be commercially rewarded for their outspoken sexuality. [3] However, the Bongo artists that win the polls organised by those same tabloids are still those priding themselves on not conforming to the international hip-hop market, where the money is.
Since rap is now the main genre of music produced in Tanzania, radio stations cannot avoid playing the hits at prime time and to an undifferentiated audience. However, despite this seeming acceptance of the form, national TV, radio and newspapers remain divided about hip-hop. They prefer realistic dissidence (the spectre of Horkheimer and Adorno) instead of its radical brother or what Foucault called parrhesia: "a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself)" ( 2001: 19). Rap lyrics have always sought to upset the establishment, to escape mainstream and ideally disturb even an audience that considers itself open-minded. The pornographic turn taken by some US Gangsta bands today, blatantly selling X-rated movies that match their latest album, may be a continuation of that parrhesitic tradition, in this case for want of better taboos. Bongo Flava touches on subjects tabooed in Tanzania such as religion-induced sexual frustration, masturbation, homosexuality and the social benefits of prostitution. Or, as in Mwanafalsafa's case, it lashes out at Americans who act as vigilantes ( Sungusungu ) terrorising the globe. The sympathy they would thus gain from a progressive public in the West, may diminish with other hit lyrics. Take Gangwe Mobb's recent album "Outside inside" ( Nje ndani ) which ridicules African youth's mimicry of the West and questions their motives of emigrating to Europe. When leaving behind their families, fertile lands and fishing grounds , they are said to keep up the lie "there above" of an Africa without opportunities or prospect. Another recurring theme in the works of Wagosi wa Kaya, Professor Jay and Mwanafalsafa is the racism of Indian compatriots and the pederast aggression of Arabs at the Swahili coast. Rather than labelling ethnic groups, these coarse descriptions are meant to enrich the picture of "the real situation" ( hali halisi ) in Tanzanian towns. A style of thought that is cautiously progressive rather than parrhesitic will apply a reductive dual classification whereby these Bongo classics wind up on the other, reactionary pole.
There are more reasons to state that Tanzanian hip-hop refuses to conform to the global genre and therefore remains to the West what Attali (1985) calls "noise." For one thing, the lyrics are in Swahili. More importantly, and explaining the lack of academic recognition, [4] much of Bongo Flava does not address the tangible category of "youth," with corresponding subculture, but the whole of society, as a political leader would. It does not present itself as a musical genre next to many others, as hip-hop does in the US and Europe. Its discursive arena is on a par with national newspapers, political speeches and written social critiques. Here we touch upon the main subject of this paper. The plurality of cultures, their hybridity and internal diversity, has been a popular theme in post-modern literature and cutting-edge journals of the social sciences. When Tanzanian hip-hop ignores the diversity and hybridity in popular culture and instead traces a division between critical and conformist currents, it combats that multiplist approach to society, which was useful once to question modernity in the singular (in the days of Deleuze and Guattari). The continuing academic preference for the "many" as opposed to "one versus the other" has the good intention of not "Othering" others (Spivak 1987), but paradoxically has a unifying effect. The wisdom of perspectivism mitigates the conflict between contradictory views on society. When everyone is right in his own right, the pragmatic, corrupt politician becomes untouchable. Culture as a supply of the multiple is a pacifying paradigm that perfectly suits the market. It covers up every sense of opposition that could hamper transaction. It blurs the vertical opposition by which music can be noise to outsiders, and belittles the horizontal opposition of rivalling expressions, which I will discuss below .
As Baudrillard's theory of simulacra reminds us, the late-capitalist market thrives on make-believe, on the conviction of consumers that their choice between products matters. However, at the same time those consumers trust that their choice will not matter for the market itself; that its working principles will not be jeopardised. That is the other side of the make-believe, the ultimate victory of neoliberal pragmatics, which Baudrillard's theory does not deny. Another approach is not to equate society with the market, but to distinguish the (truly) dividing forces of the former from the (falsely) harmonising ones of the latter. That at least seems the perspective painted by those at the bottom of African society, rapping about urban life reaching a point of social violence and thus suggesting that its underlying principles should change. Besides song lyrics, other helpful indications are the slogans on taxi bikes and commuter vans. Popular culture moves the masses. It cannot afford, like academics, to speak when it has nothing to say. It exists by virtue of something unstructured in its revolt, driving it beyond all reason.
The writing on the bus
Rap music foregrounds seminal distinctions; does not approach youth cultures as "many" and exchangeable, but presents different currents as dialectically related in terms that go beyond the genre, beyond popular culture. The music does not stop at the unlimited hybridity African towns like Mwanza breathe on the surface. Littered with signs and advertisements of varying age, superimposed and fading, towns tend to obscure the dialectics of recent history; what responded to what. The commuter van, known as Daladala, is the ideal vehicle to sport the latest in street culture. The Daladala slogans affirm the driver's mastery of the pitiless, anonymous battle on the road. Few are the truck drivers who will dim their headlights when crossing traffic at night. The informal rules of priority are determined by a straightforward hierarchy in terms of size, from truck over bus and car down to pedestrian. The power logic is so simplified in relation to the status and authority balance in the village that the road reminds Tanzanians of a game or dance, be it with lethal consequences. The rules of community solidarity, greeting and respect are inverted on the road. The reversal befits the passage of unknown goods, staring looks and unattainable desires, this lifeline of global capitalism.
The faded pleas to Jah for safe homecoming on older buses stand next to the brightly shining slogans expressing revolt in globally recognizable terms. "Bin Laden" says one windshield in scary letters. The splashboards of another bus combine mockery of US power with resignation to sexual drives: "I love Lewinski". The windshield saying "Born 2 Suffer" is emblematic of the cruel race for profit, of haunting traffic and the ceaseless coping with ill repairs.
picture 1: Born 2 Suffer: Daladala buses brave conditions that make scruples obsolete.
However, its sophisticated resignation under protest stands next to the defiance of that attitude by the bicycle-taxi's splashboard in the village: "If a hyena sells the meat, what will we, customers, get?".
Picture 2: "Fisi akiuza nyama wateja tutapata nini?," the taxi-biker asks the bus-tout.
This lash at the ruthless tactics of bus-touts tells potential customers to think twice about stepping into the town's Daladala driving by. The splashboard expresses revolt against an increasingly neoliberal environment associated with the world of the occult. The hyena is usually presented as the witches' means of transport. The critique works at the same time as an advertisement, partaking of the market's game to raise the bicycle's stake in the competition for passengers. Underneath the diversity, we find moral antagonisms and dialectics. Commuters understand the rivalry, benefit from it, but also are invited to either or not emotionally associate themselves with these opposed views on society.
What could be an appropriate caption for the picture of the little barbershop located at a desolate road in Sukumaland?
Picture 3: This is not a haircut
The painted portraits of rap star Tupac Shakur (on the left) and Congolese N'Dombolo artist J.B. M'Piana are copied from album covers. They respectively advertise a cleanly shaven head and a hat covering the hair. For those expecting the typical African haircut menu, the first thing that springs to mind (the spelling of the shop's name gives a hint): This is not a haircut. But notice the stylized eyebrows and beard. This is not a haircut, it is more. It is a style, a dream, which should carry the exclusively male, young clients beyond the confines of their everyday life.
Think of Magritte's vulgarised grasp of the then new episteme. This is not a pipe distinguished between reality and representation, our imagination in-between blurring the distinction (see Foucault 1989). To keep up with modernity's pace and to not be left behind - the threat revived by path-breaking art and science - one should give up on reality and distrust one's instincts or anything else that limits imagination. Bongo Flava defends the opposite position, leaving little room for dreams or the mimicry of lifestyles sought by clients at the barbershop. In his piece on barbershops attracting unemployed youth, Brad Weiss demonstrates "[h]ow we inhabit an imagined world, and how the process of inhabiting a world is facilitated by imagining it" (2002: 94). He goes on to illustrate an exemplary setting: "The staff and clientele at Classic are interested in much more than haircuts. They spend most of their time in the shop reading an assortment of daily and weekly papers, listening to music performed in French, Lingala, English, and occasionally Swahili" (95). From the above analysis we can understand why these sites of imagination do not harbour the predominant current of Kiswahili rap. They blur precisely what the latter intends to retrieve.
In short, as the crossover of genres enriches the making of contemporary music, a political layer resists fusion. So easily the anthropologist could assemble under the heading of urban culture the slogans on buses and taxi-bikes, or the hard-core protest of hip hop and the danceable, escapist import played in barber shops. In contrast, distinguishing between real and imaginary, parody and blatant mimicry, the Bongo Flava rapper lifts the seminal distinctions out of their uniformly hybrid appearance, and toils to magnify them again, speaking where anthropological debate becomes silent.
References
Afande Sele. 2002. Mkuki Moyoni . Dar es Salaam: GMC Wasanii (cassette). Appadurai, A. (ed.) 2001. Globalization . Durham : Duke University Press. Attali, J. 1985. Noise: The political economy of music . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baudrillard, J. 1999. The Transparency of Evil: Essays on extreme phenomena . London: Verso. Bob Haisa & Sweet K. 2000. Kombora . Dar es Salaam: FM Productions (cassette).Bongo Flavas Videos. 2003. Zimekubalika . Dar es Salaam: U & I Entertainment (video). Boyd, T. 2003. The New H.N.I.C: The death of civil rights and the reign of hip hop . New York: New York University Press. Fenn, J. and Perullo, A. 2000. 'Language Choice and Hip Hop in Tanzania and Malawi'. Popular Music and Society 24 (3), 73-94. Foucault, M. 2001. Fearless Speech , ed. Joseph Pearson. New York : Semiotext(e) Foucault, M. 1989. This Is Not A Pipe . Berkeley: University of California Press. Gangwe Mobb. 2002. Nje Ndani . Dar es Salaam: GMC Wasanii (cassette). Gesthuizen, T., and Haas, P.-J. 2000. ' Ndani ya Bongo. Kiswahili rap keeping it real' in F. Gunderson and G. Barz (eds), Mashindano! Competitive Music Performance in East Africa . Dar Es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota. Hard Blasters. 2000. Funga Kazi . Dar es Salaam: FKW (cassette). Horkheimer, M., and Adorno, Th. 1987 [1947]. Dialectiek van de Verlichting , translated by M. van Nieuwstadt. Nijmegen: SUN. Juma Nature. 2001. Nini Chanzo? Dar es Salaam: Bongo Records (cassette). Lacan, J. 1973. Le Séminaire. Livre XI: les Quatre Concepts Fondamentaux de la Psychanalyse, 1964. Paris: Seuil. Mbembe, A. 2001. On the Postcolony . Berkeley: University of California Press. Mwanafalsafa. 2002. Mwanafalsafani . Dar es Salaam: GMC Wasanii (cassette). Professor Jay. 2001. Machozi, Jasho na Damu . Dar es Salaam: FKW (cassette). Professor Jay. 2003. Mapinduzi Halisi . Dar es Salaam: GMC Wasanii (CD). Ranger, T. 1975. Dance and Society in Eastern Africa, 1890-1970 . London: Heinemann. Remes, P. 1999. 'Global popular musics and changing awareness of urban Tanzanian youth'. Yearbook for Traditional Music 31,1-26. Spivak, G. 1987. In Other Worlds: essays in cultural politics . New York: Methuen. II Proud. 1997. Ndani ya Bongo . Dar es Salaam: FM Productions (cassette). Wachuja Nafaka. 2002. Mzee wa Busara . Dar es Salaam: GMC & Bongo Recordz (cassette). Wagosi Wa Kaya. 2001. Ukweli Mtupu . Dar es Salaam: MJ Records (cassette). Weiss, B. 2002. 'Thug Realism: Inhabiting fantasy in urban Tanzania'. Cultural Anthropology 17, 93-124.
Notes
[1] The author has done ethnographic research on spirit possession and divination in Mwanza region, Tanzania, from 1995 until 1997. Additional fieldtrips in 2000 and 2003 shed light on the strong rural dimension in Tanzania's urban popular culture. [2] The interview with Maunda dates from the late 1990s and was checked on 20.08.2004 at <http://stockholm.music.museum/mmm/africa/highclas.html>. [3] Titling in Swahili "Tanzanian stars do it Western ( kimtoni ) style" the tabloid Amani used its obituary of Cool James to praise his songs for their sexual undertones stripped of political content (12 September 2002). [4] The few publications on Bongo Flava (Remes 1999, Fenn and Perullo 2000, Gesthuizen and Haas 2000) suffer, probably no less than this paper, from the lack of academic vocabulary to treat hip hop beyond the confines of a genre or a social category such as youth. |
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Koen Stroeken [°1967] is postdoctoral researcher at the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders and part-time lecturer in anthropology at the University of Leuven. His Ph.D of 2000 was based on ethnography of Sukuma village life (Tanzania) from 1995 to 1997. Further research on local modernities was done in spring 2000 and winter 2002-3. His publications include the opening chapter of Divination and Healing [Arizona UP, 2004], articles on witchcraft and dance [Dialectical Anthropology, 2001] and the football ritual [Anthropology Today, 2002]. He co-edited a book on Ageing in Africa [Ashgate, 2002]. |
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