2008/02/21 by Fibian Kavulani Lukalo, Fibian Lukalo
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #African history and culture studies #Global Maritime and Colonial Histories #Music History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/09502380701789158
openalex publication_date 2008/02/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This essay aims to contextualize the debate of urban spaces experiencing cultural, social, political and economic changes in the East African region. With different population groups utilizing these spaces they become contested sites in the continued production of cultural knowledge, regional mutuality, and representation. In order to substantiate this argument, urban centres as nodal points for global networks promoting cosmopolitan lifestyles are seen to attract a growing number of youth musicians. In the fluid urban atmosphere, these youth musicians purposely beam their compositions beyond local geographies to avoid being muted or muffled since musical identity creates for them a subculture and creative space within which they thrive. Central to this drive given the historical musical past is the Kiswahili language. Contemporary modified Kiswahili sung music from Dar-es Salaam or Bongo Flava, distinctly articulates ensembles of class and power, while being embraced across all ethnic, religious, gender, socio-economic, age and political divides in the East African region. It is argued that shifting, any musical brand within the region, demands selected acclaimed musicians acquiring broadened felicity in music. Consequently, differences exist, in these translocational movements that reflect individual artists’ styles, but which find space and meaning in borrowing and modification. By focussing on the emergence of youth musicians as agent involved in the construction of glocalized spaces the discussion situates the collective ability of youth as artists in taking advantage of opportunities in urban settings and appropriating spaces by the creation of a transversal urban cultural identity. The overriding quest for self-identity through labels and language by youth artists provides continual analysis into their metaphorically, African ‘brewed’ music as a partial solution in the deconstruction of obsessive-ness with Western domination and idols in music thus mapping out a future for regional musical artists.