THE BRANDED ARENA: UGANDAN ‘TRADITIONAL’ DANCE IN THE MARKETING ERA

Abstract

ABSTRACTBrand marketing in its latest global advances offers ideologies of public participation and the audience–‘provider’ relationship that many in the developing world are finding compelling, even when consumer capitalism fails to produce its promised rewards immediately. Strategies of ‘branding’ are being explored in combination with older performance strategies, with new syncretic branded arenas emerging as a result. In Africa, music and dance have always been important for establishing certain arenas and mediating transactions within them. In the era of post-independence nationalism, ‘traditional’ dances were itemized and made more disciplined and spectacular to give new states an aura of inclusiveness, rigour and historical depth. As the image of a powerful African state declines, these same dance traditions are being hitched to commercial brands, and to the globalized consumerist/entreprenurial dream. This article considers the Senator National Cultural Extravaganza, an annual traditional music-and-dance competition sponsored by East Africa Breweries Ltd, which requires participants to compose ‘local’ songs and dances in praise of Senator Extra Lager. It focuses on the spatial and temporal architectures of events and the way these channel, and are complicated by, the energies and significances of dance. The ‘textbook’ brand–consumer relationship does not, it is argued, survive wholly intact.