Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T20:37:09.342Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From rage to riches: swag and capital in the Tanzanian hip hop industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2021

Abstract

This article traces how Tanzanian Bongo Flava hip hop has shifted from a politically conscious genre at the dawn of democratization and liberalization to its contemporary articulations, more commonly aligned with glamorous, geographically abstracted Western pop sensibilities. It argues that ‘swag’, as an intimately embodied and musically performed charisma, has served as a connective thread across political and economic transformations because of its capacity to generate phantasmatic deferrals to common experiences of dispossession. These fetishistic qualities mediate the attachments of artists and consumers within the splintering musical genre, holding open space to reach for a diversity of desired futures.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press)Google Scholar
Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture (New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Brennan, J. 2013. Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania (Athens: Ohio University Press)Google Scholar
Clark, M.K., and Koster, M. M. (eds) 2014. Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati (Lanham, MD, Lexington Press)Google Scholar
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J. 1992. Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder, CO, Westview Press)Google Scholar
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J. 2001. Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC, Duke University Press)10.1215/9780822380184CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coombe, R.J., and Stoler, P. 1994. ‘X marks the spot: the ambiguities of African trading in the commerce of the Black public sphere’, Public Culture, 7, pp. 251–7810.1215/08992363-7-1-249CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, F. 2001. ‘What is the concept of globalization good for? An African historian's perspective’, African Affairs, 100/399, pp. 18921310.1093/afraf/100.399.189CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crenshaw, M. 1998. ‘The logic of terrorism: terrorist behavior as a product of choice’, in The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice, ed. Reich, W. (Baltimore, MD, Woodrow Wilson Center Press), pp. 724Google Scholar
Escher, E. 2006. Rapper's Handbook: A Guide to Freestyling, Writing Rhymes, and Battling (New York, Flocabulary Press)Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham, NC, Duke University Press)Google Scholar
Gabriel, B. 2011. ‘Toward a reading of post-Kanye hip-hop’, The New Inquiry, 29 September. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/toward-a-reading-of-post-kanye-hip-hop/.Google Scholar
Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-consciousness (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press)Google Scholar
Gordon, E., and Anderson, M. 1999. ‘The African Diaspora: toward an ethnography of diasporic identification’, The Journal of American Folklore, 112/445, pp. 282–9610.2307/541363CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivaska, A. 2011. Cultured States: Youth, Gender, and Modern Style in 1960s Dar es Salaam (Durham, NC, Duke University Press)Google Scholar
Jespersen, E. 1990. Household Responses to the Impact of the Economic Crisis of the 1980s on Social Services: Background Documentation to the Study on the Effects of Structural Adjustment Policies on Human Welfare in Africa South of the Sahara (Zomba, University of Malawi Centre for Social Research)Google Scholar
Kodwo, E. 2003. ‘Further considerations on Afrofuturism’, The New Centennial Review, 3/2, pp. 287302Google Scholar
Mbembe, A.e 2001. On the Postcolony (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press)Google Scholar
Mwanjoka, G. 2011. Harakati Za Bongo Fleva Na Mapinduzi (Dar es Salaam: Independently Published)Google Scholar
Ntarangwi, Mwenda 2009. East African Hip Hop: Youth Culture and Globalization (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press)Google Scholar
Perullo, A. 2005. ‘Hooligans and heroes: youth identity and hip-hop in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’, Africa Today, 51/4, pp. 7510110.1353/at.2005.0045CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perullo, A. 2011. Live from Dar Es Salaam: Popular Music and Tanzania's Music Economy (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press)Google Scholar
Pietz, W. 1985. ‘The problem of the fetish, I’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 9 (spring), pp. 517Google Scholar
Reuster-Jahn, U., and Hacke, G. 2011. ‘The Bongo Flava industry in Tanzania and artists’ strategies for success’, Arbeitspapiere/Working Papers (Nstitut Für Ethnologie Und Afrikastudien), 127, pp. 121Google Scholar
Stroeken, K. 2005. ‘Immunizing strategies: hip-hop and critique in Tanzania’, Africa, 75/4, pp. 48850910.3366/afr.2005.75.4.488CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunder, R.K. 2006. Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life (Durham, NC, Duke University Press)Google Scholar
Sylvanus, N. 2007. ‘The fabric of Africanity: tracing the global threads of authenticity’, Anthropological Theory, 7/2, pp. 201–1610.1177/1463499607077298CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, B. 2009. Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barbershops: Global Fantasy in Urban Tanzania (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press)Google Scholar
Williams, E.C. (2011) ‘On rage and swagger’, The New Inquiry, 12 December. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/on-rage-and-swagger/.Google Scholar
Youngquist, P. 2005. ‘The Afro-Futurism of DJ Vassa’, European Romantic Review, 16/2, pp. 181–9210.1080/10509580500130758CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeleza, P.T. 2005. ‘Rewriting the African Diaspora: beyond the Black Atlantic’, African Affairs, 104/414, pp. 356810.1093/afraf/adi001CrossRefGoogle Scholar