Popular Music in Urban East Africa: From Historical Perspective to a Contemporary Hero

Abstract

The trend towards increased urbanization in modern Africa is fairly recent in the history of the continent, particularly in the sub-Saharan regions. Most of black Africa has traditionally been comprised of village-oriented societies with strong internal ethnic ties and identities. It was within such closely knit communal societies that music functioned as an important means of social intercourse. These autochthonous social institutions were further strengthened by the oral tradition that both perpetuated and transmitted them. Though musical influences outside these communities were constantly affecting the normal processes of change and continuity, the conservative nature of the oral tradition and the highly venerated role of ancestral practices helped to offset any but the most minute degrees of change and certainly precluded any changes that differed radically from traditional practices. Respect for elders and the political authority they wielded greatly moderated both the more innovative ideas of the youth and influences from outside the community. This internal control of traditional musical practices allowed for the development of highly diverse traditions-a diversity, as Nketia (1974, 4) states, arising from different applications of common procedures and usages. This fact is illustrated, for example, in the widespread use throughout the continent of many similar instruments that have different tunings, and performance techniques, associated with them (examples might be the lamellophone or mbira, various sizes of drums with similar shapes or constructions, or similarly constructed stringed instruments). The development of the African city has greatly changed the role of Fieldwork for this paper was conducted while the author was a Fulbright Scholar to