The Legacy of Tanzanian Musicians Muhidin Gurumo and Hassan Bitchuka

The Legacy of Tanzanian Musicians Muhidin Gurumo and Hassan Bitchuka
Author: Frank Gunderson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2018-08-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1498564402

Muhidin Maalim Gurumo and Hassan Rehani Bitchuka are two of Tanzania’s most well-known singers in the popular music genre known as muziki wa dansi (literally, 'music for dancing'), a variation of the Cuban-based rhumba idiom that has been enormously impactful throughout central, eastern, and western Africa in the contemporary era. This interview-based dual biography investigates the lives and careers of these two men from an ethnomusicological and historical perspective. Gurumo had a career spanning fifty years before his death in 2014. Bitchuka has been singing professionally for forty-five years. The two singers, affectionately called mapacha (“the twins”) by their colleagues, worked together as partners for thirty years from 1973-2003. This study situates these exemplary individuals as creative agents in a local cultural context, showcasing interviews, narratives, and nostalgic reminiscences about musical life lived under Colonialism, state Socialism, and current politics in the global neoliberal democratic milieu. The book adds to a growing body of work about popular music in Dar es Salaam and shines a light on these artists’ creative processes, the choices they have made regarding rare resources, their styles and efficacy in conflict resolution, and their own memories regarding the musical art they have created.

The Legacy of Tanzanian Musicians Muhidin Gurumo and Hassan Bitchuka

The Legacy of Tanzanian Musicians Muhidin Gurumo and Hassan Bitchuka
Author: Frank D. Gunderson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Popular music
ISBN: 9781498564397

This work examines the creative lives and careers of Muhidin Maalim Gurumo and Hassan Rehani Bitchuka, two of Tanzania's most well-known singers in the popular music genre known as muziki wa dansi (literally, music for dancing), through an ethnomusicological lens.

The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation

The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation
Author: Frank Gunderson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 833
Release: 2019-09-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0190859768

The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation is a significant edited volume that critically explores issues surrounding musical repatriation, chiefly of recordings from audiovisual archives. The Handbook provides a dynamic and richly layered collection of stories and critical questions for anyone engaged or interested in repatriation or archival work. Repatriation often is overtly guided by an ethical mandate to "return" something to where it belongs, by such means as working to provide reconnection and Indigenous control and access to cultural materials. Essential as these mandates can be, this remarkable volume reveals dimensions to repatriation beyond those which can be understood as simple acts of "giving back" or returning an archive to its "homeland." Musical repatriation can entail subjective negotiations involving living subjects, intangible elements of cultural heritage, and complex histories, situated in intersecting webs of power relations and manifold other contexts. The forty-eight expert authors of this book's thirty-eight chapters engage with multifaceted aspects of musical repatriation, situating it as a concept encompassing widely ranging modes of cultural work that can be both profoundly interdisciplinary and embedded at the core of ethnographic and historical scholarship. These authors explore a rich variety of these processes' many streams, making the volume a compelling space for critical analysis of musical repatriation and its wider significance. The Handbook presents these chapters in a way that offers numerous emergent perspectives, depending on one's chosen trajectory through the volume. From retracing the paths of archived collections to exploring memory, performance, research goals, institutional power, curation, preservation, pedagogy and method, media and transmission, digital rights and access, policy and privilege, intellectual property, ideology, and the evolving institutional norms that have marked the preservation and ownership of musical archives-The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation addresses these key topics and more in a deep, richly detailed, and diverse exploration.

Music and Messaging in the African Political Arena

Music and Messaging in the African Political Arena
Author: Onyebadi, Uche T.
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1522572961

Political campaigning affects numerous realms under the communication umbrella with each channel seeking to influence as many individuals as possible. In higher education, there is a growing scholarly interest in communication issues and subjects, especially on the role of music, in the political arena. Music and Messaging in the African Political Arena provides innovative insights into providing music and songs as an integral part of sending political messages to a broader spectrum of audiences, especially during political campaigns. The content within this publication covers such topics as framing theory, national identity, and ethnic politics, and is designed for politicians, campaign managers, political communication scholars, researchers, and students.

On African Music

On African Music
Author: Kofi Agawu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2023-05-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0197664091

Written by one of the best-known academic writers on African music, On African Music is a collection of seven essays addressing various techniques, influences, and scholarly approaches to African music. After a concise introduction spelling out the rationale for the book, successive chapters develop answers to questions such as: How does a "minimalist impulse" animate creativity in Africa, and does "Western minimalism" differ from "African minimalism"? How do we explain the prevalence of iconic effects in African expressive forms? How has (European) tonality functioned as a "colonizing force" in African music? Why is the (written) art music of the continent talked about so little when it has been in existence since the middle of the nineteenth century? How might the discipline of music theory be rejuvenated by "aid" from Africa? What are the strengths and limitations of ethnotheory as a methodology? Who is who in theorizations of African rhythm, and how might we explain the shape of the existing archive? This book thus deals with analytical and interpretive issues, the politics of scholarship, and salient features of African music. Laced with provocative viewpoints on each page, On African Music should appeal not only to readers curious about the structural underpinnings of African music but also to those who wish to reflect critically and philosophically on how we study and write about the music of the continent, how we might approach its global status with a firm understanding from the inside, and what our priorities might be in promoting an empowering cosmopolitan discourse.

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture
Author: Janet Sturman
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 5212
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1506353371

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture presents key concepts in the study of music in its cultural context and provides an introduction to the discipline of ethnomusicology, its methods, concerns, and its contributions to knowledge and understanding of the world′s musical cultures, styles, and practices. The diverse voices of contributors to this encyclopedia confirm ethnomusicology′s fundamental ethos of inclusion and respect for diversity. Combined, the multiplicity of topics and approaches are presented in an easy-to-search A-Z format and offer a fresh perspective on the field and the subject of music in culture. Key features include: Approximately 730 signed articles, authored by prominent scholars, are arranged A-to-Z and published in a choice of print or electronic editions Pedagogical elements include Further Readings and Cross References to conclude each article and a Reader’s Guide in the front matter organizing entries by broad topical or thematic areas Back matter includes an annotated Resource Guide to further research (journals, books, and associations), an appendix listing notable archives, libraries, and museums, and a detailed Index The Index, Reader’s Guide themes, and Cross References combine for thorough search-and-browse capabilities in the electronic edition

Songs for Cabo Verde

Songs for Cabo Verde
Author: Susan Hurley-Glowa
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 1648250211

Chronicles the work of Norberto Tavares, a Cabo Verdean musician and humanitarian who served as the conscience of his island nation during the transition from Portuguese colony to democratic republic.

The Pop Palimpsest

The Pop Palimpsest
Author: Lori Burns
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2018-01-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0472130676

A fascinating interdisciplinary collection of essays on intertextual relationships in popular music

Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania

Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania
Author: Frank D. Gunderson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004184686

This volume is an interpretive analysis of a collection of 335 song texts treated as primary historical sources. The collection highlights the cultural practices that link music with labor in Sukuma communities in northwestern Tanzania. These linkages are evident in the music of the elephant, snake, and porcupine hunting associations that flourished in the precolonial epoch, in the nineteenth-century regional and long-distance porter associations, and in the farmer associations that have proliferated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Acting primarily as an interpretive editor, the author collaborated with several Tanzanian scholars and translators towards fine-tuning the translation of these texts into English, and gathered testimonies in order to create succinct interpretive statements about the songs.

Ritual Soundings

Ritual Soundings
Author: Sarah Weiss
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2019-03-16
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0252051130

The women of communities in Hindu India and Christian Orthodox Finland alike offer lamentations and mockery during wedding rituals. Catholic women of southern Italy perform tarantella on pilgrimages while Muslim Berger girls recite poetry at Moroccan weddings. Around the world, women actively claim agency through performance during such ritual events. These moments, though brief, allow them a rare freedom to move beyond culturally determined boundaries. In Ritual Soundings, Sarah Weiss reads deeply into and across the ethnographic details of multiple studies while offering a robust framework for studying music and world religion. Her meta-ethnography reveals surprising patterns of similarity between unrelated cultures. Deftly blending ethnomusicology, the study of gender in religion, and sacred music studies, she invites ethnomusicologists back into comparative work, offering them encouragement to think across disciplinary boundaries. As Weiss delves into a number of less-studied rituals, she offers a forceful narrative of how women assert agency within institutional religious structures while remaining faithful to the local cultural practices the rituals represent.