Hip Hop, youth culture and globalisation

Mwenda Ntarangwi, associate professor of anthropology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, compiles this welcome ethnography of East African popular music. Backed by research conducted in the three East African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania over the past nine years, Ntarangwi makes his arguments regarding globalisation and cross-border cultural and musical flows using 143 song lyrics from a variety of artists in the region. This book is a welcome addition to the scanty but growing academic work on popular music and popular culture in East Africa. In six comprehensive chapters, Ntarangwi articulates the issues that popular culture – and Hiphop in particular – seeks to address, including agency, identity, gender, politico-economic issues, morality and the social roles of Hiphop. He mainly uses anthropological tools of analysis in this work, making reference to Clifford Geertz, Sherry Ortner and William Sewell.

The core stone upon which Ntarangwi builds his arguments in this book is the process of globalisation, which, he argues, has opened up cross-border cultural exchanges and local African markets to mostly Western cultural products like movies and music (p. 5). This means that Western influences have impacted on local musical cultures, which have themselves evolved and emerged, having incorporated traditional and modern forms. One of these emergent forms is Hiphop music, which, he argues, has become a site for negotiating identity and agency for youth, a demographic historically marginalised from power and participation.

His chapter on identity is a thorough analysis of the ways in which popular artists negotiate a personal and African identity in relation to a global meta-narrative. Ntarangwi begins by giving an excellent historical and political context of East Africa from the 1980s and 1990s, going further to give a refreshing Afro-historical background of Hiphop music that goes beyond the now-common associations with the Griot traditions of West Africa. He highlights specific eastern African musical traditions that have influenced modern popular and Hiphop music in the region. He also discusses the tensions and anxieties that popular and Hiphop artists face as they negotiate an identity that is both local and global all at once.

The chapter on gender and Hiphop is a welcome contribution to debates around the patriarchal hegemony in Hiphop culture, where a predominantly male voice has and continues to define femininity, womanhood and gender. Here again, the tensions between traditional and modern perceptions of femininity are negotiated and discussed, albeit with a male voice that, according to Ntarangwi, is beginning to be challenged by the rising number of female popular and hip-hop artists in East Africa. However, he is also quick to point out that female artists are overwhelmed by male narratives of gender and unwittingly continue to perpetuate stereotypical discourses steeped in phallocratic ideas of ‘woman’.

Perhaps among the most interesting chapters in this book is that on economic change and political deception, which pits Hiphop and popular artists with the nation-state and politicians. The relationship between artist and politician has, historically, been an interesting one. In this case, Hiphop and popular artists both heavily critique corrupt leaders and systems, while at the same time benefiting from them in a relationship that is uneasy and ambivalent at best. Ntarangwi highlights this relationship, pointing out the ways in which young people are manipulated and marginalised in a politico-economic system that does not empower them. In turn, popular musicians, he notes, gain agency and symbolic capital in the process, using this capital to critique systems and leaders that are corrupt and avaricious. Also of key interest is his discussion of HIV and the silences around sexuality and stigma, a discussion which is solidly and sensitively done, supported by lyrics by undisputed Hiphop artists like Tanzania’s Professa Jay and Wagosi wa Kaya. These chapters are wrapped up by a compelling treatise on hip-hop’s enduring social role, reiterating that artists are the mirrors of society and continue to critique and address issues of that society.

With such comprehensive research done, it is surprising that Ntarangwi overlooks certain issues, making the work slightly problematic.

First, and most fundamentally, is the use of the term ‘hip hop’. In talking about ‘Hiphop’ (which the artist KRS One insists is a proper noun in his scholarly writing), a background context to the origin of the word and the elements of a term that has evolved into a cultural phenomenon worldwide are a must. Among these elements is that of rap, the most visible and vocal elements among DJ-ing, street dance, graffiti and MC-ing – and increasingly, street entrepreneurship and theatre. The element of rap, together with its sister practices of the freestyle and ‘spitting of rhymes’ (the ability to compose relevant, poetic lyrics that match a beat on demand), remains the most important definers of a Hiphop artist, both globally and locally.

In this book Ntarangwi curiously stays away from any discussion on these fundamental signifiers of Hiphop culture, music and artists. Instead, he defines Hiphop music in his book as ‘the popular music in East Africa that emerged, in different phases and forms, at the end of the 1980s and broke ranks with erstwhile traditional or local styles associated with regions or ethnic groups such as benga, muziki wa dansi or cavacha’. This is a very problematic definition, as it in one fell swoop includes all emergent musical forms in the region post-1980s, and it ignores the universality of Hiphop cultural elements that give Hiphop its global appeal. Ntarangwi perhaps does this to give himself room to analyse music and artists that are not Hiphop at all, something he acknowledges by invoking the authenticity debate that, he says, classifies some music as not being ‘real’ Hiphop (p. ix). In many ways, this kitchen-sink approach to the artists and music that Ntarangwi generally calls ‘hip hop’ robs the book of its potential validity. Artists like Kenya’s Mercy Myra, Tattuu, Zanaziki, Wahu and Nameless, or Tanzania’s Lady Jay Dee or TID cannot be considered Hiphop artists, and neither can their music.

While the author says that his inclusion of these artists is to support his focus on ‘social issues and reconstitution of youth agency through their music’ (p. ix), his ensuing conclusions based on data collected from these artists becomes problematic. For instance, while his argument that gender is a performed entity challenging a hitherto male hegemony in Hiphop that defines femininity on behalf of women is valid and long overdue, his use of non-Hiphop female artists tends to rob that very argument of its potency. The extensive use of the non-Hiphop artist Wahu’s lyrics becomes invalid, meaning that that male hegemony in Hiphop still exists and continues to define femininity and gender.

One therefore questions whether this is an ethnography of Hiphop music and Hiphop culture, or simply (and perhaps broadly) of East African popular music.

Ntarangwi also speaks of the contextualising of lyrics, but then proceeds to write most of the song lyrics in his book in English, when the majority of them are written and performed in Swahili, urban slang and other local languages. This in itself robs the songs of their contextuality and also becomes suspect when some translations appear to be erroneous. For instance, Kalamashaka’s ‘Tafsiri Hii’ (p. 25) has been wrongly translated to mean that ‘life here in the city is tough’, while the original ‘maisha kule "D" ni mazii’ translates to ‘life here in Dandora is terrible’. This speaks directly of life in Dandora, a low-income housing area east of Nairobi that lacks many social amenities and serves as the main dumping site for the city’s waste. In that regard, Tafsiri Hii is a critique of a government that has neglected Dandora, but Ntarangwi’s translation tends to minimise that by broadly speaking of the ‘city’ instead of ‘Dandora’ as the song directly does.

Ntarangwi also falls casualty to over-used arguments that are losing relevance with current Hiphop scholarship and emerging evidence. For instance, he uncritically states that FM radio stations tend to play songs that have less socially conscious messages (p. 25; p. 34; p. 119). However, this statement does not take into account the rise of radio stations like Ghetto Radio and 89.5 FM, whose general manager is the Hiphop artist Mwafrika. Ghetto Radio broadly plays local Hiphop, has a wide audience and its presenters speak Sheng, a Kenyan urban slang language, the majority of the time. Other stations like Koch FM and Ghetto FM that broadcast in the slums and ghettos of Nairobi also broadcast local Hiphop songs of all kinds, and have in their employ local Hiphop artists, providing them opportunities to include many local songs considered ‘political’ on their playlists. Ntarangwi also unproblematically uses the classical 'underground/politically conscious v. mainstream/party-themed' dichotomy that classifies the former group of artists as being ‘more serious’ and by implication, more authentic, and the latter as banal and ‘gangsta’. This is also an over-used argument that is slowly losing credence as evidence emerges to suggest that this dichotomy is irrelevant in African Hiphop and is in fact erroneous.

Finally, Ntarangwi insists on cross-border exchanges and blurred boundaries, and while one appreciates his use of ‘East Africa’, one also notes that he ends up being boxed by the old boundaries that define ‘East Africa’ as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. One may have loved to see a further analysis of lyrics by Hiphop artists like Somalia’s K-Naan and South Sudan’s Immanuel Jal for instance. These artists have a huge following in East Africa and are a demonstration of the fluidity of boundaries and the embodiment of the ‘field’ as Ntarangwi defines it, that is, not as physical spaces per se, but as ‘fluid and flexible locations and productions of place’ (p. viii).

Overall, this is a solid piece of writing on popular music in East Africa. Its discussion of topics like sexuality, gender and identity, and the background political contexts in each of the three countries – especially in the chapters in ‘hip hop and African identity’ and ‘economic change and political deception’ – are very well done and offer insight that is rare in other, similar pieces of writing. As a groundbreaking book on popular culture, it gives very useful insights into the disciplinary approaches necessary in studying popular and Hiphop culture. As one may be aware, Hiphop scholarship is caught in a multi-disciplinary web that threatens to make it homeless and invalid in academia. Ntarangwi’s anthropological treatment offers a fantastic starting point for many scholars and readers of popular culture and Hiphop culture. With, perhaps, a second edition addressing some of these concerns, this book is certain to be the text to refer to when it comes to East African popular culture, and by extension, Hiphop culture.

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* Mwenda Ntarangwi, 'East African Hip Hop – Youth Culture and Globalization', University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2009, xi, 158 pp, paper, ISBN 978-0-252-07653-4.
* Caroline Mose is a PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.