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Welcome to the Abstracts and Bios section!

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The Eroticization of Bikutsi:
Media Politics and the Defining of Ethics in Cameroonian Music

By
Dennis M. Rathnaw

This paper examines the development of the Cameroonian music bikutsi from traditional song form to site of contestation between local media officials and an increasingly more internationally influenced and liberalized media.  Bikutsi is a style that belongs to the mendzan xylophone tradition, and is linked to the cultural traditions of the Beti people of central Cameroon.  However, from the time of its exposure on Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) in the early 1980s, it has developed into a highly eroticized, even pornographic music, sometimes referred to as the "songs of Sodom and Gomorrah."  This phenomenon instigated a crisis of cultural and media ethics, resulting in government media bans and television programs such as CRTV's "Deviance," hosted by communications director Mendo Ze from 2003 to 2005.

I analyze the experience of bikutsi as mediated by media, politics and external and internal views and consumption.  As the Cameroonian media undergoes a process of democratization highly influenced by foreign media streams, 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 that people attach themselves to in their daily imaginings.

 

Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo and Maishe Maponya’s Gangsters:
African Nation Building and Alternative Space

By
Dr. Anita Rosenblithe

In discussing the Black Consciousness Movement in the early 1970s, writers such as Zakes Mda correlate its emergence with a political shift in South Africa from protest to resistance. The distinguishing trait of the Theatre of Resistance has been its goal of attempting to motivate the oppressed to resist oppression, not to awaken the conscience of the oppressor.   Also in the 1970s, Aimé Césaire published his first version of A Season in the Congo and in an interview talked about the pressing need for a “black theatre.” He added that what he meant had a great deal to do with the valorization of black African culture. That Césaire had not yet been to any African country did not alter his belief in the authenticity of his writing in Congo.  Africa for him was part of his “interior geography.” Maponya’s Gangsters, written in 1984, like Césaire’s Congo, is also about resistance to internal as well as external colonialism and, though strongly local and historical, the play also follows a kind of “interior geography.”  Like Patrice Lumumba in Césaire’s play, Rasechaba, the protagonist of Gangsters, is a poet/activist who challenges colonized notions of blackness, intelligence, and artistic authenticity. Wole Soyinka has said that in Congo, Césaire’s Patrice Lumumba evokes “the rapture of the creative soul within the convulsions of nation building.” Soyinka’s words strongly suggest the need for what Raymond Williams has called “subjunctive” action, a cultural space where one can experience (imaginatively) social and artistic alternatives.

 

Devil Worship as a Moral Discourse on Youth in Kenya

By
David A Samper

Kenyan educators, clergy, parents, and even the youth themselves feel an uncertain anxiety about the moral and cultural direction of young people—a concern about the growing influence of western media and culture and worry about the loss of traditional values. Educators and some clergy connected the discourse on devil worship and the influence of Satanism with this concern regarding youth to construct a moral panic. Devil worship fears and accusations became pervasive in Kenya after 2000 due in part to the publication of a government sponsored commission but also due to newspaper reports of satanic rituals, kidnappings, and murders. In this paper, I will briefly discuss the rise and characteristics of devil worship rumors and accusations in Kenya. Then, I will discuss the current moral panic over youth culture and identity and how it is shaped by fears of western media such as movies, television, music, and American professional wrestling. My argument is that those concerned about young people in Kenya have claimed that those social and cultural practices that are most worrisome are “doorways” into devil worship. This allows Kenyans to claim “youth” in Kenya as a social problem.

 


 

The Role of Vernacular in The Game of Forgetting

By
Johanna Sellman

Though few North African novels have been written in local varieties of Arabic, it is not uncommon, in the name of realism, for authors to write dialogue in a register that more closely approximates spoken language. This paper looks at Mohamed Berrada’s novel Lu’bat al-nisyan [The Game of Forgetting] (1986), a text that is remarkable not only for an interesting story and set of characters coming of age in the wake of Morocco’s independence, but also for its mode of multiple narration and intermittent use of Moroccan vernacular. The mix of vernacular and standard Arabic play an integral role in the “game of forgetting” established by the author and the various narrators. Lu’bat al-nisyan, unlike some other Arabic novels that incorporate vernacular in dialogue, is not a realist novel and its author rejects the idea that literature can and should mimic reality. Some critics, however, argue that Berrada’s multiple and conflicting narration achieves an effect that is, in fact, closer to lived experience.  The juxtaposition of standard Arabic and vernacular draws attention to the act of recollection itself, thus adding to the complexity of the “game of forgetting” and emphasizing the role of the narrator in constructing history.

 

 

Religion Performance, Youth, and Cultural Identity:
Hizbut Tarqiyya (Senegal), 1975-1998

By
Ibra Sene

From the 1970s to the 1990s, various social movements have emerged in Africa and have strongly shaken the continent. Manifesting themselves in different ways, they have challenged, altered, even further, reinvented economic and political spaces as well as institutions in various ways. These movements were not merely wars, riots or rallies of all sorts. They have not only mobilized elderly people, but also the youth whose participation has been of a critical importance in many cases. My paper is about the role played by the Senegalese religious youth in these social movements. It looks at the ways in which the members of Hizbut Tarqiyya, a youth organization affiliated with the Murid brotherhood, have exercised their religion to create, mediate and resist social change, between 1975 and 1998.  In focusing on their ritual chanting of the Xasayiid, Ahmadu Bamba’s poetry, their language, and their clothing which Hizbut Tarqiyya’s members have long been identified with, I try to show how religion performance goes beyond its theological and philosophical aspects to have non-negligible political, social, and cultural implications. First, I provide the historical background within which these distinctive practices are rooted, to explain how they were influenced by the re-appropriation of, accommodation and/or resistance to, various elements of African, Arabo-Islamic, and Western origins. Finally, I stress the influence of Hizbut Tarqiyya’s way of life on large components of the Senegalese society, particularly the youth.

 

Other Monsters: Gender Complexities of (Femi/woma/stiwa)nism in
Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather

By
Simone Sessolo

 The indeterminacy of the sex portrayed on the cover of Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather in Heinemann’s “African Writers Series” communicates a sort of post human monstrosity in which the difference-from-others is not reduced to a difference-from-self, but rather interferes with it, creating a new gender that is always ‘in between.’ The difference, in its ‘otherness,’ annihilates and at the same time creates a ‘self,’ a new gender. This new gender, monstrous because impossible to be categorized, does not stand in a parallel relation to the two commonly established and perceived genders, male and female, but it is intertwined with them in a cross-categorical function. This new gender stands as the center of attention in Bessie Head’s novel, as cross-categorical relation between Western feminism and African feminism. The indeterminacy of the function of the sex as ‘either/or’ embodies a common scope in which male and/or female are parts of a single entity. This paper will try to show how such single entity comes into performance. Specifically, the center of the discourse will be how the novel unites into one single concept the Lacanian distinction between ‘other’ and ‘Other,’ and how this fusion is peculiar to African feminism.

The aim is not to shift the discourse on Western theories and terms, but to deal with the psychoanalysis of feminism, with the unconscious and political drives that group feminism, psychoanalysis and post-colonial studies together. I will propose, as a common point between African and Western feminism, the ‘other/Other’ as de-sexualized dominant gender in Head’s novel, presenting how this para-gender applies to all the main characters in the novel. The aim of this paper is to prove that the de-centralization of gender unifies Western and African feminism seen as political acts.




 The Re(Public) of Salsa: Afro-Cuban Music in Fin-de-Siecle Dakar

By
Richard M. Shain

While academic interest in African popular musics has been growing in recent years, few in-depth studies of specific African musics exist.  Even rarer still are ethnographies that document all the structures that enable the production, performance and dissemination of these musics.  My paper explores the “worlds” of Afro-Cuban music in Dakar, Senegal.  Latin music played a vital role in the creation of Senegalese modernity in the 1950s and 1960s.  Since the 1990s, it has symbolized the inclusiveness of a national culture that overrides parochial ethnic, regional and religious particularities.  Afro-Cuban music also has helped revitalize the frayed diasporic ties between Senegal and other regions of the Black Atlantic.   My paper provides a detailed look at the recording, broadcasting and performance of this music, tracing the intersecting networks that keep this music alive and vital.  I pay particular attention to the role of radio, the daily lives of Senegalese Latin musicians, and the varied spaces in which Senegalese Salsa is performed (clubs, hotels, private functions).   I also examine the role of the “taste makers” who ensure that Afro-Cuban music retains its cultural allure.   These “taste makers” use Senegalese salsa as a weapon in the incessant generational competition and battles over cultural prestige that typify contemporary Senegal.  Though its audience has diminished since its heyday in the 1970s, Afro-Cuban music continues to be a conspicuous feature of Senegal’s cultural topography.  By mapping this cultural terrain, it becomes possible to analyze the always important but ever changing roles that popular culture plays in Senegalese life.



The Influence of African Popular Culture on the Anglophone Caribbean:
Echoes of African Praise Songs in the Works of the Barbadian Poet Kamau Brathwaite

By
Michael Sharp, Ph.D

Between 1956 and 1962, Kamau Brathwaite worked in Ghana.  Of his years there, he has said: “I came to a sense of identification of myself with these people, my living diviners.  I came to connect my history with theirs, the bridge of my mind was linking Atlantic and ancestor, homeland and heartland.” Brathwaite has also specifically mentioned his indebtedness to the work of the ethnomusicologist, J.H. Nketia and the dramatist, Efua Sutherland. Exposure, also, to Ghanaian dancing, drumming, village festivals, and praise songs influenced The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (1973) in which the poet moves location (as his ancestors did) from Africa to Barbados.
 
Brathwaite’s poetry through the publication of Born to Slow Horses in 2005 shows that the poet can, in both moments of delight or sorrow, draw on the praise song as a source of strength.  Just as Judith Gleason has included examples of kinship, geography, totemic power, past experience, and initiation in Leaf and Bone: African Praise-Poems (1980, 1994)  so Brathwaite’s poetry has included echoes of similar elements in the contemporary Caribbean.

 

 

Najivunia kuwa Mkenya: Constructing nationalist identity the popular way

By
Florence Sipalla

This paper looks at the construction of identity in two popular texts How to be a Kenyan by Wahome Mutahi and How to be a Kenyan Lady by Uche Onyebadi. The paper seeks to examine how identity has been constructed using nationalistic and popular discourses in the texts under study. The instructive nature of the ‘how to’ texts is also of interest. My analysis will draw from scholarship on Onitsha market literature where the pamphlets circulated were geared towards edutainment. The creation of a target market for sample Kenyan ‘how to’ texts is also of interest as this is suggested by the texts.



Singing, Dancing and Acting as at Home:
The Takiboronse Effect in Burkina Fasoâ's Popular Culture

By
Batamaka Some

In the spring of 2005, an anonymous musical amateur was in the artistic spotlight of Burkina Faso with an original rhythm of his album that was viewed by commentators as being at the intersection of modernity and tradition. The topical themes of the album combined with its danceable beat soon positioned the artist and his music – called Takiboronse- at the top of the national hit parade. One of the merits of the Takiboronse Effect is its inspirational impact on creations of and by other musical groups which finally seemed to have found a federating tempo in the country’s modern music. It also fostered a mild and friendly competition between artistic groups which started using it as a medium to address or criticize social or political issues through a jocular tone. In short, Takiboronse transcended the parochial ethnic and cultural undertones that has characterized most modern music productions of Burkina since the 1970s and offered a stronger sense of a national cultural community while remaining on both sides of the modern and traditional artistic fence. In this paper, I propose to review the trajectory of Burkina Faso’s modern musical art with special focus on its evolution during the past decade, and the factors that contributed to its shaping. I also examine how musicians utilize their art, for instance, as a means for social critique and popular communion in a country where there is room for high youth unemployment and the precariousness of jobs. Finally, I throw a glance at how the population receives and perceives the art. 

 

The Lions in the Jungle: Representations of Africa and Africans in American Cinema

By
Sarah Steinbock-Pratt

During the twentieth century, over two hundred films about or dealing with Africa were made in America.  It is not immediately obvious why this should be so: the United States never had imperial ties to Africa (at least in the same way that Great Britain did), and most Americans have never experienced the continent firsthand.  Yet Africa exists as a fascinating and well-defined place in the American imagination.  “Africa,” for Americans, is a construct, an idea that encompasses the British imperial experience, ideas of race, America’s position in the world, and concepts about the Other (conceived as the developing world in general, and also specifically Africa).  The discourse on African included racialized and gendered tropes that defined Africans as either faithful servants or dangerous savages, and presented Africa as a place of beauty and danger, and most importantly, as a place for white people to act, fall in love, change, and dominate.

These tropes, reflected and reinforced by popular culture, the media, the government, and, for a long time, scholars and experts, created a discourse about Africa, a pervasive language, to use Edward Said’s definition, through which Africa was and is encountered.

In my analysis of the discourse about Africa and Africans presented in American cinema, I examine such films as King Solomon’s Mines, King Kong, Trader Horn, and several of the Tarzan films.  In addition, I look at more modern continuations of the discourse in films like Disney’s Tarzan, Sahara, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, and Pirates of the Caribbean.  Examining American films about Africa is a particularly effective way to analyze the discourse about Africa because, as Ruth Mayer points out, literature has passed on to film its status as the medium for “the changing manifestations of a cultural imagery.”1  Adventure films (which I use to encompass adventure, safari, and treasure hunting films in which a band of white characters, surrounded by doomed black Africans, go into the heart of Africa in search of something) about Africa, moreover, are good examples of some of the most persistent and common tropes about Africa, and demonstrate that the “Africa” depicted often revealed more about the American discourse about Africa than about any real Africa.  And yet, despite a tendency towards the fantastic (and ludicrous), these films still play a large role in reinforcing and shaping attitudes towards and ideas about Africa.

 

Performing Custom as Popular Culture in Ghana:
Questions of Authority, Politics and Participation

By
Beverly J. Stoeltje

In Ghana the popular and the social are almost synonymous.  Social life incorporates popular culture, and what may be considered popular culture involves the participation of social groups.  Also characteristic of Ghana, the categories of popular, classical, and folk (which appear to be separated in the West), converge and combine in multiple possibilities.  A visible example is the wearing of African style dress by professionals.  Moreover, fashions in dress as well as other popular forms change rapidly, reflecting a process that fuses the innovative with the indigenous and culture specific.
 
 
This paper considers the cultural practices associated with Akan custom and chieftaincy as popular culture.  Applying Stuart Hall’s concept of the popular as the “grounds on which transformations are worked” and considering his position that popular culture does not occupy an autonomous position outside of the relations of cultural power and domination, the paper identifies the rituals and customs of the Akan as a cultural resource which provides continuity with the past and participation in the present.  In contrast to the precolonial era, participation is by choice in contemporary Ghana. Moreover, these practices are adapted to social, political, and religious purposes, not only by the various Akan groups but by others as well.  Among the most creative applications of this resource is the ability it provides to recognize individuals and to incorporate outsiders through honorary titles, establishing links to prestigious persons and individuals from the African diaspora.  Exploring contemporary practices, the paper argues that this indigenous institution has shifted into the category of the popular  where it provides a space for transformations in social and political life outside of the state, contributing to both stability and creativity.   

 

Silence and helpless Whispers:
Popular Culture and the Lives and Experiences of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania

By
Elinami Veraeli Swai (D.Ed)

This paper examines HIV/AIDS discourse in Africa. It historicizes this discourse, which started at identifying African women’s sexual behavior and African cultural values and practices as the root for HIV infection. The current discourse raises the importance of individual behavior and cultural systems in shaping sexual practices, by advising the victims to ‘come out,’ through popular radio, TV and other mass media. This has been seen as alien and therefore, resisted by many aids victims in Africa. This resistance has been dismissed as ignorance and a way to shield sneaky behavior. This paper demonstrates that while popular culture has done a lot in the effort to educate people about HIV/AIDS, it has failed to deploy the experiences and voices of AID victims, especially women. Instead it uses Western perceptions and culture to create certain images of HIV/AIDS victims in Africa in order to draw donor attention for the purpose of maintaining and extending power and material in the expense of the victims. This paper examines broader social and cultural factors to the rampancy of HIV/AIDS in Africa, using Tanzania as a case study. I bring into view the experiences of victims of AIDS in Tanzania whose lives are in constant fear of been forced to ‘come out’ and be known as sick and in the process of dying. While the cure for AIDS is not in the near sight for many poor people in Africa, the concept of ‘coming out’ might not be the solution, but a way for discrimination and at best a certificate for rapid and violent death. To understand the reality of HIV/AIDS in Africa, we need to interrogate the historical and cultural dynamics within which the African women exist and negotiate their identities. This paper is therefore, not based the perceptions of key professionals who shape and regulate our social environments, law enforcement agents, or legislators, but on the experiences of three HIV/AIDS women in Tanzania. It brings up the experiences of these women and illustrate how they navigate their lives in constant fear of been ‘found out’ and ‘thrown out.’

 

 

The advent of entertainment
Dance and comedy in African cinemas

By
Alexie Tcheuyap

Since its inception, African cinema has generally tended to define itself, in a hopelessly Manichean way, against any sort of entertainment. That is clearly illustrated by Mwenze Ngangura’s essay “ African Cinema. Militancy or Entertainment?” as well as Teno’s “La liberté de dire non”. Most manifestos, especially the Algiers Charter of African cinema emphasized the need for a political cinema, one that would “educate” and not “entertain”.

However, it is possible today to state that even the films of the most militant Ousmane Sembene, although they claim to “educate”, constitute effective ways of entertainment because of the volume of well known aspects of popular cultures in films where laughter is contagious, as in any comedy. It is even more so with the post-1990 west and central African productions where the interrelation between dance and comedy have resulted in the construction of hybrid film genres that help construct not only a new film language but also an unusually revisionist social and political discourse. From films as early as Ousmane Sembene’s Xala (Senegal, 1974) to the most recent Karmen Gueï (Joseph Gaye Ramaka, Senegal, 2002), it is clear that African cinemas have developed a inner contradiction between its many manifestos and film practices that are becoming a new “tradition”: making cinema a clear form of entertainment, especially with the inclusion of popular dance and comedies.

This paper will examine African cinemas in a theoretical and historical perspective and see how, beyond the simple “oral” forms discussed by Manthia Diawara, productions have significantly reshaped their representation of popular cultures in films in order to integrate forms of popular/modern dance and comedy that result into the elaboration of a new film language. These new forms speak to a new political economy of desire, pleasure and leisure that takes into account the transformations of the market, the nature of the new audience and differences in the very perceptions of cinema among various filmmakers.

 Boughedir Ferid. “ Comment le cinéma peut oeuvrer à l’indépendance et

    l’autorité culturelle africaine . ” Présence Africaine 90 (1974): 123-139.

Castaldi, Francesca. Choreographies of African identities, Urban and

      Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2006.

Diawara, Manthia. “Popular Culture and Oral Traditions in African Films” in Imruh

    Bakari & Mbye Cham (eds), African Experiences of Cinema, London, BFI, 1996: 209-219

Morreal, John. Taking Laughter Seriously, Albany, SUNY Press, 1983.

Ngangura, Mweze, “African Cinema. Militancy or Entertainment?” in Imruh Bakari

    & Mbye Cham (eds), African Experiences of Cinema, London, BFI, 1996 : 60-64.

Ottenberg, Simon. “Introduction: Some Issues and Questions on African

Dance.” In Esther Dagan (ed), The Spirit’s Dance in Africa: Evolution, Transformation, and Continuity in Sub-Sahara. Westmount, QC, Galerie Amrat African Art Publications, 1997, pp.13-14.

Teno, Jean-Marie. “La liberté de dire non”, in FEPACI (ed), L’Afrique et le

      centenaire du cinéma, Paris, Présence Africaine, 1995 : 375-377 

 

Confessional popular songs and the quest for authenticity in postcolonial
Africa: Notes on Grand Kale’s “Independence Cha Cha”, Prince Nico Mbarga’s
“Sweet Mother” (1974) and Corneille’s “Je suis seul au monde” (2005).

By
Olivier Tchouaffe

This paper addresses the complex interactions between nation-building and family life through African music and musicians such as, Grand Kale, Prince Nico Mbarga and Corneille. I claim that their music reflect micro sociological processes through which abstract concept of families, tribes, nation-building  and panafricanism are build. Families are universal concept, self-governed entities of lives, however, in the complex context of Africa reflected by these musicians, it brings up particular difficult questions such as family, the ramifications of colonial history, nation-state and ideas of citizenship; allegiance to family versus civil society and nation-building; individualism versus family and social obligations; and ,particularly, how these concepts evolve in the fog of tribal tensions and war perpetually shaking the continent.
Within this context, what do the relationship between music and family, the worship or misery of absolute identities, tribal attachment and violence tells us about the complicated political maneuvering in achieving satisfying nation building? This author will answer these difficult questions with a textual analysis of Grand Kale’s “Independence Cha Cha”, Prince Nico Mbarga’s “Sweet Mother” (1974) and Corneille’s “Je suis seul au monde” (2005) and how these songs participate in a socio-linguistic project imposing their own reflections
over the relationships between family, identity, citizenship and nation-building in Africa. It brings forth the power and inscription of orality
in the everyday lives of Africans and refusing to be locked into the colonial and post-colonial tribulations and how within that context identity are perpetually deconstructed and reconstructed.

 

 

Popular Culture as a Metaphor for Resistance: The Kwagh-hir Theatre Experience

By
Dennis Teghtegh

Understanding relationships between the past and the present and projecting for the future continues to form very interesting proactive concerns. In Africa and indeed Nigeria popular culture over the years has been immersed in deep contradictions albeit its over arching intentions. Indeed several people have viewed popular cultures as merely evolving from entertainment and so popular with the general populace from the entertainment value it holds. However one fact resonates; that popular culture in Africa is quite efficacious, because it shapes the society’s standing on philosophical, religious, political and economic view points. Consequently this paper does an excursion into the history of Tiv people and situates Kwagh-hir theatre as a popular culture and as a metaphor for resistance from the colonial era to the contemporary times. The Kwagh-hir theatre is used to answer key questions on popular culture; whether it is sustainable and how it has impacted on the African experience.

 

From primitive to popular culture: why Kant never made it to Africa.

By
Hetty ter Haar

Whereas the study of popular cultures in Africa has become very popular indeed, it is by no means clear what the criteria are that make cultural manifestations deserving of the epithet ‘popular’. For Johannes Fabian popular culture is a theme he is unable to address “from the safe distance of some theoretical place above or some historical moment beyond”.  However, it is precisely this theoretical “place” I want to examine from an historical perspective, namely how there was a shift in concern from primitive to popular culture. It is the aim of this paper to show where western thought did not follow a particular trajectory through to its logical and necessary conclusion and the radical
implications of this train of thought, had it been put into practice. Instead, the trajectory that came to dominate culminated after various ‘turns’ in Cultural Studies. It appears to be of little concern that the actors in popular, as in other, cultures are not represented as coherent and autonomous, but as decentered subjects, their consciousness marginalized. Rather than extending the humanist concept of subjectivity after the rationalized, dehumanizing practices of slave trade, slavery and colonialism, an anti-humanist perspective emerged. There is, then, a gap in the shift in focus from primitive to popular culture—a gap this paper will address. It is not my intention to sing the praises of western paradigms, but to create awareness of theoretical “places”, that are too often assumed without explanation, which only serves to further the marginalization of consciousness

 

Queering Africa: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of African
Popular Narratives of Queerness

By
Lincoln Theo

The dialectics of Queerness and African-ness are a conversation in ethnographic identity which young South Africans, both queer and otherwise continue to contemplate.

Gender-identity and sexual orientation definitions in public discourse are arguably not as static in South Africa as in traditional Western conceptions of identity in public culture. Some South Africans, in post-apartheid democracy, are challenging what it means to be African, queer, male and female, in different ways to their Euro-American counterparts. Although African cultures are traditionally predominantly patriarchal in nature, with strongly homophobic frames of reference, there are certain frameworks inherent in Southern African which may yet serve to undermine the homophobia that results in many gay and lesbian people being raped and murdered in their communities because of their alternative sexual orientation.

One of these frames of reference is ‘Ubuntu’ (which refers to the idea that people are only people in relation to other people, ie a sense of communalism in contradistinction to Western individualism). This framework, together with the developing sense of human rights underscored by the South African constitution which guarantees equal treatment of gay and lesbian people in the law, may be argued to be shifting the narratives of sexual orientation in post-apartheid South Africa for both those of mainstream and alternative sexual orientations.

In this paper I propose to explore the relationships between an African sense of community, sexual orientation and popular media in South Africa, particularly terrestrial television channels broadcasting local content. This in order to explore whether and how public perception of gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual and intersexed people are being perceived by a wider South African context. The paper will seek to straddle the arenas of queer theory and media studies, as a commentary on the development of media directions as influencing public culture, and will draw from ethnographic approaches to queerness matched with literature reviews.


 

Rap, Cartoons and Rap Cartoon:
Representations of the Maasai in Tanzanian Popular Culture

By
Katrina Daly Thompson

One of Tanzania’s smallest ethnic groups, the Maasai are nevertheless ubiquitous in visual images, icons of an Africa unsullied by colonialism and undeveloped by modernity.  In Swahili cartoons, the Maasai are freqeuntly depicted stereotypically as backward.  The hip-hop group X Plastaz, however, has appropriated the image of the Maasai in more positive terms to set themselves apart from other Tanzanian rappers, calling their first album “Maasai Hip-Hop,” and forefronting the sole Maasai member of the group in their promotional materials.  In contrast, Mr. Ebbo, a Maasai rapper whose music has been labelled “rap cartoon” (rap katuni in Swahili), promotes pride in Maasai ethnicity but does so in a comical way that draws on popular stereotypes. Drawing on interviews with Mr. Ebbo and the members of X Plastaz conducted in summer 2006, the paper examines representations of the Maasai in their lyrics, promotional materials, and music videos, contrasting them to the more negative stereotypes of the Maasai so prominent in print cartoons, arguing that representations of the Maasai are becoming more nuanced but nevertheless continue to play into both Tanzanian and Western stereotypes.

 

Resistance Education: Activism in Popular Culture

By
Roberta K. Timothy

This paper will look at what an integrated, feminist, anti-colonial, art-based methodology (Resistance Education) is and how it can be used for research and praxis inside and outside of Academia to create critical methods and practices that support African based popular culture,  and “emancipatory” praxis, in particular African/Black women’s roles in various social movements. I will look at how my social location as an African woman born and raised outside of the Continent, activist, surviving academia and other colonial legacies has positioned me in the role of actively doing work in the African/Black Diaspora that challenges the barriers within a system both educational and community-based that render my knowledge production (sanctioned by African/Black Feminist Thought) to be ‘irrelevant’, ‘backwards’ and ‘non important’ for “progressive” movements. I will argue that this is done to further support systems that maintain oppressive epistemologies and practices. More specifically, I will be talking about “progressive” based educational programs and community movements such as, Adult Education, Community development, Women’ studies programs and the anti-violence movement in particular the woman abuse shelter community in Toronto.

I also argue that my African Identity is critical to purporting resistance against white supremacy and Anti-Black racism. Moreover, based on shared histories of  enslavement, collective loss and trauma and contemporary  conditions of African/Black peoples globally as well as  ‘mainstream” medias portrayals of  dysfunctional African/Black communities; Africans born in the Caribbean, the Americas, the Continent and other geographical regions need to reemerge and develop collective stances which are critical for activism and rebuilding the necessary connections needed for resistance against colonial past and for the rejuvenation of African Indigenous futures. 

The bulk of this paper will look at the concepts and praxis of resistance education and creative resistance, looking at how these practices are producing African/Black knowledges, critical popular culture and activism within and outside of Academia that challenge the above predicaments. This paper will end by connecting the concepts and praxis of resistance education to Transnational African/Black Social Movements to look at the importance of creative resistance, using the arts against all forms of violence to envision radical practices of African based popular culture. Examples using poetry and spoken word will be utilized.

 

Dak’Art, Biennale of Contemporary African art:
Conflicting and Unifying Forces of the “In” and “Off”

By
Hélène Tissières

The art biennale held in Dakar, Senegal, called Dak’Art is a unique opportunity to encounter works created throughout the continent as well as from the Diaspora. Held every two years for the duration of an entire month, it invites one to wonder the city, discovering unknown sites, engaging in new perspectives. Although it has faced many difficulties (financial constraints, Western investments and demands, inadequate infrastructure), it is a remarkable  event. It encompasses an “In” (curators chosen select works throughout Africa) and an “Off” which has taken on its own form (created by individual initiatives – store owners, cultural centers, associations, etc. who open their spaces to present local artists of their choice).

In this paper, I will be first looking at the importance of the biennale as offering the possibility to engage in visual works that interrogate norms and denounce present problems (ecological disasters, human rights transgressions, social injustices), while investing in new aesthetical approaches. Then I will be examining how the “In” and the “Off” fulfill two different purposes which at times present conflicting views on the role played by art. However even if such diverging perspectives appear, which could seem irreconcilable, I will be showing how this biennale brings together different facets of art, dismantling categories (High / Low; Academic / non academic; Abstract / Figurative; Traditional/Modern; etc), presenting to the viewer a wide set of problems that correspond not only to local issues, but also to the world at large, questioning fixed notions.  




 

Revisiting Country Music in Zimbabwe to Reflection
the History of the Study of African Popular Culture

By
Jonathan Zilberg, Ph.D

This proposed paper revisits the history of studies of popular culture in Zimbabwe, describes why there are so few such studies and considers what the consequences are for our understanding of modern African cultural history. It proposes that social scientists need to aggressively turn to recouping this history and studying contemporary popular culture so that in the future we can analyze the vital importance of the workings of popular culture as it unfolds instead of having to revisit it retrospectively. 

This paper begins by highlighting the few anthropological and historical studies which have been conducted on popular culture in Zimbabwe and what was known as the Federation after World War Two and before independence. The paper reflects upon the otherwise virtually complete absence of any attention to the issue of popular culture in the voluminous work conducted by the Rhodes Livingstone Institute and in fact, the resultant paucity of such data in the anthropology and history of the region to this day.

The paper focuses on country music from the 1950’s through 1960’s collected from the National Archives in Zimbabwe. It reflects upon these audio-tapes through the benefit of hindsight afforded us by the few intervening studies of popular culture which have been produced. It concludes that our understanding of African history and culture is very much the poorer for this paucity and that should we continue not to pay serious attention to popular culture we will continue to miss out on an enduringly important issue in African history.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Africa Conference 2007: Popular Cultures in Africa

Convened by Dr. Toyin Falola and Coordinated by Tyler Fleming for the Center for African and African American Studies

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