Music, Performance and African Identities

Toyin Falola is the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.Tyler Fleming is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History & Geography at the University of Texas at Austin.

"Fleming and Falola must be commended for bringing together in one volume a wide range of topics and methods that probe the social dynamics of modern performance traditions in Africa." -- Bode Omojola, African Studies Review

• Introduction Tyler Fleming and Toyin Falola Part One: Contemporary Music and Its Wider Social Impacts 1. Inventing East African Hip-Hop: Youth and Musical Convergence in East Africa George Gathigi 2. Rap, Cartoon and Rap Cartoon: Representations of the Maasai in Contemporary Tanzanian Popular Culture Katrina Daly Thompson 3. An Emulating Beat: The Takiboronse Effect in Burkina Faso Popular Culture Batamaka Somé 4. Infectious Beats: Urban Grooves Music’s Collusion with the Zimbabwean State Farai Wonderful Bere Part Two: Transnational Projections and Performances 5. Popular Culture in Senegal: Blending the Secular and the Religious Fallou Ngom 6. Blackface in America and Africa: Popular Arts and Diaspora Consciousness in Cape Town and the Gold Coast Benjamin Brühwiler 7. The South Africanization of Tanzanian Christian Popular Music Mathayo B. Ndomondo Part Three: Historical Reflections on Music 8. Representations of Sophiatown in Kwaito Music: Mafikizolo and Musical Memory Xavier Livermon 9. Stars of Song and Cinema: The Impact of Film on 1950s Johannesburg’s Black Music Scene Tyler Fleming 10. Performing and Contesting Modernity: Zimbabwean Urban Musicians and Cultural Self-Constructions, 1930s-70s Moses Chikowero 11. Revisiting Country Music in Zimbabwe to Reflect Upon the History of the Study of African Popular Culture Jonathan Zilberg Part Four: Cultural and Political Meanings in African Music 12. Things Fall Apart: What Troubles Hath Hip Hop In Kenya? George Nyabuga 13. Speaking the Unspeakable Through Hiplife: A Discursive Construction of Ghanaian Political Discourse Samuel Gyasi Obeng 14. Popular Music in Cape Verde: Resistance or Conciliation? Juliana Braz Dias