Whose jembe? A drum as a countercultural icon and a symbol of African authenticity in Zagreb

Abstract

ABSTRACT The ubiquity of the jembe in western and northern Europe, as well as in North America, was instigated during the 1970s by influential West African jembe players, later developing within world music, where this drum came to represent the essence of ‘African music’. In Croatia the popularity of the jembe did not arise until the late 1990s, motivated by local Croatian musicians who shaped an African music scene in Zagreb. More than a decade later, the first performers from West Africa—specifically from Senegal—settled in Croatia and claimed a space in the limited scene that had mainly crystallised around the jembe. Albeit within a climate of open collaboration, frictions emerged between these two groups of jembe performers surrounding issues of authenticity and labour. This article focuses on the initial phases and issues at stake in this encounter between Croatian and Senegalese jembe practitioners. Although these tensions resonate with exoticising discourses and notions of appropriation that have often characterised the world music industry, it is argued that generalising interpretations as well as the actors’ subjective readings must be deconstructed in order to grasp the complexities of this encounter and the processes shaping the African music scene in Zagreb.