Playing with identities in contemporary music in Africa

Abstract

The musics of Africa play a particularly important role in expressing and forming identities. This book brings together African and Nordic scholars from both musicology and other disciplines in an attempt to analyse various aspects of the complex playing with volatile identities in music in Africa today. Taken together the papers put new light on the assumed or real dichotomies between countryside and city, collective and individual, tradition and modernity, authentic and alien. The papers are based on contributions for a conference organised by the research project "Cultural Images in and of Africa" of the Nordic Africa Institute together with the Sibelius Museum/Department of Musicology and the Centre for Continuing Education at Åbo Akademi University in Åbo (Turku), Finland in Oct. 2000. The book includes a keynote speech by Christopher Waterman (UCLA), and an introduction by Annemette Kirkegaard, Copenhagen University. Both Southern, West and East Africa are represented in the studies, which cover a great variety of musics.

<p>Contents: Foreword -- Introduction / Annemette Kirkegaard -- Big Man, Black President, Masked One : Models of the Celebrity Self in Yoruba Popular Music in Nigeria / Christopher Waterman -- "Modern Traditional" Music from Zimbabwe : Virginia Mukwesha’s Mbira Record "Matare" / Johannes Brusila -- "Tranzania" – A Cross-Over from Norwegian Techno to Tanzanian Taarab / Annemette Kirkegaard -- The Generational Factor in Ghanaian Music Concert Parties, Highlife, Simpa, Kpanlogo, Gospel and Local Techno-Pop / John Collins -- "The Air of the City Makes Free" : Urban Music from the 1950s to the 1990s in Senegal – Variété, Jazz, Mbalax, Rap / Ndiouga Adrien Benga -- Playing It "Loud and Straight" : Reggae, Zouglou, Mapouka and Youth Insubordination in Côte d'Ivoire / Simon Akindes -- Sounds of the "Third Way" : Zulu Maskanda, South African Popular Traditional Music / David B. Coplan -- Expressing Cape Verde : Morna, Funaná and National Identity / Mai Palmberg -- Gender, Ethnicity and Politics in Kadongo-Kamu Music of Uganda : Analysing the Song Kayanda / Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza -- From Mutant Voices to Rhythms of Resistance : Music and Minority Identity among the Idoma and Ogoni in Contemporary Nigeria / Jenks Z. Okwori -- Multipartyism, Rivalry and Taarab in Dar es Salaam / Siri Lange</p>

Cultural Images in and of Africa