Musical Labor Performed in Northwest Tanzania (original) (raw)
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Africa Today, Special Issue on Musical Performance in Africa: "Old Music and Dance for New Needs: Local Performative Responses to New African Realities.” 48:4, pp 1-29., 2001
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African Music Journal, 2012
I am deeply indebted to the performers of the following artistic groups, KAKAU Band, Abaragomora Dance Group, AMWAVU Poets, and CARITAS Choir, based in the Bukoba Urban and Bukoba Rural Districts, for allowing me to watch their musical performances and share with me their lives, knowledge and experience about the music traditions of the Haya people, and the use of music in combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the Kagera Region. I am particularly grateful to Mzee Festos Kaiza, Andrew Kagya, Sarah Ibrahim, Bi Getruda Kokushobera, Evarista Rugeiyamu, and Father Cornelius Mushumbushi for patiently taking time to work with me and to Mulokozi Mugyabuso for his valuable inputs about the gender-based division of work among the Haya and their music traditions. Th e reviewers for African Music have given me very constructive criticism upon which this article has relied hugely. My thanks go to those whose commentaries on this and related research have assisted in writing this article, especially
STUDIA INSTRUMENTORUM MUSICAE POPULARIS I (New Series), Gisa Jähnichen (editor), Verlagshaus Monsenstein und Vannerdat OHG Münster, pp. 205-318
"In many regions of Africa south of the Sahara the term ngoma or engoma, goma, gomo, ingoma, lagoma, ng'oma, ngomba, nomm, ngomo etc. may in the broadest sense be related with the aspect of all kinds of commonly performed music and dance. Kubik (1988: 61-62) for instance describes the word ngoma as „dance“, but also „dance performance“, „dance feast“, „music“, „music performance“ etc. In all these music performances that are usually associated with certain feasts, drums are used as accompanying instruments. The term ngoma may however, be related with various contexts according to the respective language and music culture. Among the numerous Bantu speaking people of central, east-central and southern Africa the word ngoma generally refer to drums of many types and shapes (Cooke ebd und Bartz 2004: 4-5). Making clarifications of this very common and widely used term, my article will discuss ngoma drums that are particularly used in the music culture of the Wasamba (also a Bantu speaking community) residing in the Usambara Mountains of North Tanzania. Here the ngoma drums play a pivotal role in accompanying traditional songs and dances being played by both male and female community members. However, there are female and male drums used in corresponding music performance (male/female). Thus the drums types made for the male groups differ from those of the female groups. Apart from organological and musical analysis the clearly defined gender roles in the ngoma performances, observed during my field research in Tanzania, will be thoroughly examined by taking various aspects into closer consideration "
History and Anthropology Vol 19:4. , 2008
In the Sukuma region of Western Tanzania, rural life relies upon cooperative social networks which allocate labor in ways which include hunting, farming, and healing. An important nineteenth-century Sukuma association was the bayege (elephant hunters). Bayege songs were humorous and celebratory songs which commended hunters for work well done, boasted of the bravery required for the hunt, encouraged initiates to follow in their footsteps after they have left the world, or poked fun at rival hunting groups with whom they had contact. This article examines the music-related practices of this association, unpacks the inter-textual musical influence of this association on subsequent and current labor associations active in this region, and considers the inter-temporal interpretation of bayege song by contemporary practitioners.
Soundings: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Humanities. Vol. 96, No. 2., 2013
This article will demonstrate, via a series of seven music-related vignettes gathered from archival research and oral history, aspects of the historical relationship between resistance expressed via "musicking," and "official culture" expressed via the use of force, spectacle, policy, and the rule of law. The relationship between power and musical resistance is treated as a dance: one partner in this dance is the "controlling mechanism" inherent and always implied in the expression of power and the entire spectrum of behavior that power encompasses. The other partner is the spectrum of resistive musical responses that includes everything from blatant protest via public performative "spectacle," "hidden resistance," accommodative resistance, and subtle and blatant complicity. The majority of the historical vignettes come from the Sukuma region of western Tanzania, taking place during the German and British colonial periods (from the late 1900s up to the early 1960s).
Musical Ecologies: community music ensembles in action , 2022
This chapter focuses on the Venda tshikona reed-pipe dance-a traditional music practice in South Africa-and provides a glimpse of how 'music of a community' links in complex ways to traditional cultural practices, education and the politics of knowledge. Located in the rural chiefdom of HaMakuya, the chapter maps tshikona's multiple meanings as a nexus within a rich musical community and connected to the wider social ecology. Using the lens of the