Composing Civil Society: Ethnographic Contingency, Ngo Culture
Transcription
Composing Civil Society: Ethnographic Contingency, Ngo Culture
Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 Composing Civil Society: Ethnographic Contingency, NGO Culture, and Music Production in Nairobi, Kenya Matthew McNamara Morin Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC COMPOSING CIVIL SOCIETY: ETHNOGRAPHIC CONTINGENCY, NGO CULTURE, AND MUSIC PRODUCTION IN NAIROBI, KENYA By MATTHEW MCNAMARA MORIN A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2012 Copyright © 2012 Matthew McNamara Morin All Rights Reserved Matthew McNamara Morin defended this dissertation on November 6, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Frank Gunderson Professor Directing Dissertation Ralph Brower University Representative Michael B. Bakan Committee Member Douglass Seaton Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii To my father, Charles Leon Morin. I miss our conversations more than ever these days. Through teaching, you made a positive difference in so many lives. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I thank my wife and soul mate, Shino Saito. From coursework to prospectus, to a working fieldwork honeymoon in Nairobi, through the seemingly endless writing process to which you contributed countless proofreads and edits, you were an integral contributor to anything good within this text. I am looking forward to the wonderful years ahead with our new family member, and I hope to show the same support for you that you have shown me. I could never have imagined that I would be lucky enough to to have someone like you in my life. I owe a very large debt of gratitude to all the friends, professional acquaintances, and advisers who assisted me during my fieldwork in Kenya. Thank you to Dr. Leonard Mjomba, his wife Maria, and his whole family who provided a crash course in the logistics of life in Kenya. From matatus to manners, Professor Mjomba was a sage and mentor. To Humphrey Ojwang, my esteemed in-country academic advisor at Nairobi University, with your insight, guidance, and connections to so many of the individuals featured in this dissertation, every day of fieldwork was filled with new adventures and amazing developments. To Tabu Osusa and the whole Ketebul team, you inspired us every day we spent with you. I hope this document will stand as a testament to the legacy that is Tabu Osusa. A special thanks to Steve Kivutia for graciously providing the sort of cultural consultancies that only someone of your insight, experience, and position could provide. I don't know what we would have done without you. Thank you to all the Ketebul musicians and staff for answering my endless questions and allowing us to loiter and video record all those days at the studio. Patrick Ondiek, Jesse Bukindu, Willie Gachuche, Makadem, Olith Ratego, Priscah Wairimu Nyambura, were immensely helpful in this regard. An especially big debt of gratitude is also owed to Samba Mapangala and his manager, CC Smith. Samba, you are an indomitable musical force and legacy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for spending time with us and answering our questions. CC Smith, thank you for all of your input, expertise, and logistical support arranging for us to interview Samba. We hope to honor your hard work here and throughout the years to come. To my ingenious advisors at Florida State University, how can I ever repay you? Dr. Michael B. Bakan, your boundless energy and brilliance keeps me striving for new directions in ethnomusicological research. You are always growing and changing. Dr. Douglass Seaton, you iv have become a role model educator and scholar to me. The selfless efficiency with which you operate is a blueprint for participation in academia that I will forever aim to manifest. Dr. Benjamin Koen, you have taught me to always seek the essence of life and remain in a state of play with the rules and norms of this world, regardless of profession or rank. To Dr. Denise Von Glahn, thank you for inspiring me to reach across disciplinary divides and remain emotionally connected to the process of research and scholarship. To my primary advisor, Dr. Frank Gunderson: what a privilege it has to study under such a giant mind in this field. There are no words to express my gratitude. Someday I hope to repay you by producing work that honors the rigor and dedication that you yourself have dedicated. To my brilliant graduate colleagues at Florida State University, thank you for making the Florida State University Musicology program a community to which I will always remain proud of. Of particular relevance to the completion of this dissertation, a big thank you to Lisa Beckley-Roberts, Damascus Kafumbe, Plamena Kourtova, Todd Rosendahl, Pete Hoesing, and Jennifer Talley. Finally, an enormous thanks to my fearless copy-editors Twyla Wolfe, Plamena Kourtova, Matt Henson, and Kayleen Justus-Kerg. Finally, last but certainly not least, thank you to my mother, Anne McNamara, I never ever could have come to this point without your help, guidance, and encouragement to always follow my dreams. Any success and joy I will have as a result of completing this degree, I owe mostly to you. To my sister, Alexis Hopkins, one of the best people I’ve ever known, your friendship throughout the years has grounded me like no other. Because of you I truly have come to respect the value of family. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. xiii List of Musical Examples ........................................................................................................... xvii Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................xx 1. INTRODUCTION: COMPOSING CIVIL SOCIETY ............................................................1 1.1 Purpose and Argument ...................................................................................................1 1.1.1 A Contingent Excerpt of NGO Music Culture in Nairobi ....................................3 1.2 Theory: Positioning a Theory of Ethnographic Contingency ........................................7 1.2.1 Contingency in Historiographical Perspective: Rhetorical, Variable, Reflexive, and Interdisciplinary ......................................................................................................8 1.2.1.1 Rhetorical Properties of Contingency ....................................................8 1.2.1.2 Variable Properties of Contingency .......................................................9 1.2.1.3 Contingency as Pragmatically Reflexive .............................................10 1.2.1.4 Contingency as Interdisciplinary .........................................................13 1.3 Research Methodology: A Contingent Ethnographic Method.....................................13 1.3.1 Research Development Timeline ........................................................................14 1.3.1.1 Phase One: Secondary Sources and Internet Resources at Florida State University, September 2008-June 2010 ...........................................................14 1.3.1.2 Phase Two: Cultural Immersion, Observation, and Interview-Based Research in Kenya, September 2010-December 2010 ....................................16 1.3.1.3 Phase Three: Participant Observation with Ketebul Music, December 2010-May 2011 ..............................................................................18 1.3.2 From Fieldwork to Text: Themes Drawn from the Research Process ................20 1.4 Literature Review.........................................................................................................21 1.4.1 Contingency in Ethnomusicology .......................................................................22 1.4.2 Contingency in Anthropology.............................................................................22 1.4.3 Contingency in Historical Studies ......................................................................23 1.4.4 Contingency in Behavioral Psychology ..............................................................23 1.4.5 Contingency in Organizational Theory ...............................................................25 1.4.6 African Music Sources ........................................................................................25 1.4.7 Globalization and World Music Sources ............................................................28 1.4.8 African NGO Sources .........................................................................................30 1.4.9 Organizational Studies Sources ..........................................................................31 1.5 Background ..................................................................................................................33 1.5.1 Nairobi as a Location of Contingent Cultural Intersection .................................33 1.5.2 Precolonial Cultural Intersections .......................................................................34 1.5.2.1 Early Settlers and Migrations...............................................................34 1.5.2.2 Transcontinental Trade Routes ............................................................35 1.5.2.3 Religious Missionaries .........................................................................35 1.5.2.4 Kiswahili: Language for Cross-Cultural Communication ...................35 1.5.3 The Colonial Period and the Early Urbanization of Nairobi ..............................36 vi 1.6 1.5.4 Post-Independence and Construction of the Nation State...................................37 1.5.5 Recent Struggles of National Politics and Ethnicity ...........................................38 1.5.6 Nairobi as a Site of Global Intersections of Music Culture ................................39 1.5.6.1 Precolonial Music-Scapes and Diverse Ethnic Heritages ....................39 1.5.6.2 Postcolonial “Folk” Music Preservation and Presentation .................40 1.5.6.3 Nairobi as a Hub for Global Intersections of Popular Music...............40 Chapter Outline: A Contingently Structured Text .......................................................43 1.6.1 Part 1 ...................................................................................................................43 1.6.2 Part 2 ...................................................................................................................44 PART 1 2. 3. NGO DEVELOPMENT, KENYAN MUSIC CULTURE, AND GLOBAL NGO MUSIC INDUSTRY INITIATIVES ..................................................................................................47 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................47 2.2 NGO Culture Development .........................................................................................49 2.2.1 Marx, Das Kapital (1867), and the Paradox of Global Civil Society .................49 2.2.2 The Rise of the NGO ..........................................................................................50 2.2.3 International NGOs in Africa..............................................................................51 2.2.4 Kenyan NGO Development and Policy ..............................................................54 2.3 NGO Music Culture Contexts......................................................................................57 2.3.1 The International Popular Music Industry and the Spread of NGOs into Africa ....................................................................................................................57 2.3.2 Historical Contexts of NGO-Oriented Music Culture in East Africa .................59 2.3.3 Civil Society-Oriented Music Organizing in East Africa ...................................60 2.3.3.1 Harambees ...........................................................................................60 2.3.3.2 Tanzanian Labor Associations .............................................................60 2.3.3.3 Ngoma Healing Associations ...............................................................61 2.3.3.4 Beni Ngoma Dance Associations .........................................................62 2.3.4 Civil Society Ethos in East African Music Performance ....................................62 2.3.4.1 Indigenous Music Practices for Civic Benefit Purposes ......................62 2.3.4.2 Locating “Folk” Music ........................................................................63 2.3.4.3 Examples of Public Benefit-Oriented Musical Heritage of Luhya, Gikuyu, Kipsigi, Luo, and Maasai Culture Groups .........................................64 2.3.5 Music as Protest ..................................................................................................66 2.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................67 CIVIL SOCIETY DISCOURSE FORMATIONS: MAPPING NAIROBI’S NGO MUSIC CULTURE-SCAPE ...............................................................................................................69 3.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................69 3.2 Locating NGO Music Culture ......................................................................................70 3.2.1 Mapping Global Civil Society ............................................................................71 3.2.2 NGOs as Representatives of Global Civil Society .............................................72 3.3 Classificatory Criteria ..................................................................................................73 3.3.1 General Criteria ...................................................................................................74 3.3.1.1 Identifying a Network ..........................................................................74 vii 3.4 3.5 3.6 4. 3.3.1.2 NGOs as Global Civil Society Revenue Gatekeepers .........................75 3.3.2 Specific Criteria ..................................................................................................77 3.3.3 Contentious Criteria ............................................................................................77 3.3.3.1 For-Profit Organizations as Civil Society Organizations?...................77 3.3.3.2 No Board of Directors? ........................................................................78 3.3.4 Descriptive Approach .........................................................................................78 International Organizations ..........................................................................................79 3.4.1 Ford Foundation, Eastern Africa Region ............................................................79 3.4.2 Goethe Institut Kenia .........................................................................................80 3.4.3 Gatwitch Records ................................................................................................82 3.4.4 Alliance Française de Nairobi.............................................................................83 3.4.5 Abubilla Foundation ...........................................................................................85 3.4.6 Jeunesses Musicales International (JMI) ............................................................86 3.4.7 WOMEX .............................................................................................................88 Kenyan-Based Organizations ......................................................................................89 3.5.1 GoDown Arts Centre ..........................................................................................89 3.5.2 Sarakasi Trust......................................................................................................91 3.5.3 Purple Images Productions .................................................................................93 3.5.4 Kenya Music Week .............................................................................................95 3.5.5 Blankets and Wine ..............................................................................................97 3.5.6 The Kenya Conservatoire of Music ....................................................................98 3.5.7 Mayeli ...............................................................................................................100 3.5.8 Kijani Kenya Trust............................................................................................101 3.5.9 Drum Café .........................................................................................................102 3.5.10 Art of Music Foundation.................................................................................104 Conclusion .................................................................................................................105 ECONOMIES OF REMEMBERANCE: NGO INITIATIVES FOR THE RELOCALIZATION OF EAST AFRICAN POPULAR MUSIC ......................................106 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................107 4.2 Decline: Destabilization of the Mainstream Kenyan Popular Music Industry ..........108 4.3 Adapt: Strategies of Music Production and NGO Economy .....................................110 4.4 Rise: NGO Music Culture Networks .........................................................................116 4.5 Remembrance: Advocacy for Past and Present Local Music Culture .......................118 4.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................121 PART 2 5. INTERLUDE: SITUATING PART 2, A MONOGRAPH OF KETEBUL MUSIC ..........124 5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................124 5.2 Introducing a Fieldwork-Based Study of Ketebul Music .........................................125 5.2.1 Contingencies of Contact in the “Field” ..........................................................125 5.2.2 Reaching for Applied Dimensions of Participant Observation ........................126 5.3 Ketebul Music, A Brief Overview ............................................................................127 5.3.1 Mapping Space and Place ................................................................................127 5.3.2 The Staff ...........................................................................................................129 viii 5.4 5.5 5.3.3 The Artists ........................................................................................................129 5.3.4 The Board of Directors .....................................................................................130 5.3.5 A Brief Organizational History.........................................................................131 Ketebul Music, Afro-Fusion, World Music Discourses, and Musicological Critique ......................................................................................................................135 5.4.1 World Music Discourse and Musicological Critique........................................135 5.4.2 World Music Industry Recast as Subversion to Global Capitalism..................137 Conclusion ................................................................................................................138 6. CONTINGENCIES OF LIFE EXPERIENCE IN MEMORY: REFLECTIONS OF FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TABU OSUSA .........................................139 6.0 Conceptual Signpost ..................................................................................................139 6.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................139 6.2 Individual as Agent of Cultural Change ...................................................................141 6.2.1 Childhood and Polycultural Influence .............................................................142 6.2.2 Early Migrations: Preparing a Life of Continual Reinvention and Relocation 143 6.2.3 Individualism and Agency: Musical Protests at the Seminary .........................145 6.2.4 Resilience and Resolution .................................................................................146 6.2.5 Musical Apprenticeship: Journey to Kinshasa ..................................................149 6.2.6 The Virunga Years: Recollections of Tabu Osusa and Samba Mapangala ......151 6.2.6.1 Apprenticeship to Practice: Forming Kenya’s Top Band………….. 151 6.2.6.2 Innovation to Survive: Reincarnations of Virunga through War and Displacement………………………………………………………………..155 6.2.6.3 Quality Control: Setting Standards for Musical Performance ...........159 6.2.7 Music and Politics .............................................................................................160 6.2.8 The Immigrant Experience: Life in the United Kingdom and Returning to Kenya ....................................................................................................161 6.2.9 Seeds of the Afro-Fusion Movement: Formation of Nairobi City Ensemble ...162 6.2.10 HIV/AIDS and A Lost Generation .................................................................164 6.2.11 Music Studio as Culture Weapon: The Formation of Ketebul Productions ...166 6.2.12 Commercial to Nonprofit: Ketebul Music Turns NGO ..................................168 6.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................169 7. SOCIAL CONTINGENCIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY: THE MUSIC OF MAKADEM AND OLITH RATEGO ................................................................................170 7.0 Conceptual Signpost ..................................................................................................170 7.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................171 7.2 Constructing Afro-Fusion: The First Ketebul Music Artists ....................................172 7.2.1 Afro-Fusion as a World Music Industry Gateway Genre ................................173 7.3 Makadem ...................................................................................................................174 7.3.1 “Nyaktiti:” Fusions of Instrumental Style.........................................................177 7.3.2 “Nyaktiti:” Linguistic Fusions ..........................................................................182 7.3.3 “Ohangla Man:” Narrative Fusions ..................................................................184 7.3.4 “Ohangla Man:” Memories of Global Encounter .............................................187 7.3.5 Lessons in “Ohangla Man” ..............................................................................187 7.3.6 Commercial Liminality and “Vernacular” Genre Breaking .............................188 ix 7.4 7.5 7.3.7 World Music Industry Marginalization ............................................................191 Olith Ratego ...............................................................................................................193 7.4.1 Social Contingencies of Contact: Olith Ratego Joins Ketebul Music .............196 7.4.2 (Re)Invention of Tradition ...............................................................................198 7.4.3 Narratives of Female Empowerment in Dodo and Osuga ...............................199 7.4.4 False Promises of Financial Opportunity .........................................................202 7.4.5 The Persistent Presence of False Promises in Ratego’s Life ...........................204 Conclusion ................................................................................................................205 8. SOCIAL POLITICS OF INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERING: THE SPOTLIGHT ON KENYAN MUSIC INITIATIVE ..........................................................................................207 8.0 Conceptual Signpost ..................................................................................................207 8.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................207 8.2 The Development of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music Initiative .................................208 8.3 Socio-Institutional Convergences of Genre Construction .........................................209 8.4 Marketing Cross-Cultural: Volumes One and Two ...................................................211 8.5 Bridging Divides and Reconciliation: Volumes Three, Four, and Five ....................213 8.6 Social Politics and Institutional Partnerships ............................................................216 8.6.1 Alliance Française .............................................................................................216 8.6.2 Alliance Française, Kenya ...............................................................................217 8.6.2.1 Why Kenyan Culture? Why Afro-Fusion? .......................................218 8.6.2.2 “The Institution and Not the Individual” ..........................................220 8.6.3 Ketebul Music ..................................................................................................221 8.6.3.1 The Politics of Studio Aesthetics ......................................................224 8.6.4 Kenyan Department of Culture ........................................................................226 8.6.5 Sponsors and Marketing: The French Embassy and Total Oil ........................228 8.6.5.1 French Embassy ................................................................................228 8.6.5.2 Total Oil ............................................................................................228 8.6.5.3 Sponsorship as Marketing .................................................................229 8.6.6 The 9th European Development Fund Grant ...................................................232 8.6.6.1 Vital Voices and Culture ...................................................................232 8.6.6.2 Lake Turkana Region and the Lake Turkana Festival ......................235 8.6.6.3 Call for Proposals (CFP) ...................................................................237 8.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................238 9. STUDIO ETHNOGRAPHY: THE “SOUND” OF KETEBUL PRODUCER, JESSE BUKINDU ...........................................................................................................................240 9.0 Conceptual Signpost ..................................................................................................240 9.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................240 9.1.1 Studio Ethnography ..........................................................................................241 9.2 The Creation of Gargar and Somali Identity in Kenya ..............................................243 9.3 The Production of Garissa Express (2011) ..............................................................246 9.4 Digital Production and (Ethno)Musicological Representation ..................................248 9.4.1 Vocal Segmentation .........................................................................................250 9.4.2 Instrumental Infusion .......................................................................................252 9.4.3 Signifying Foreign Locals and Parallel Otherness............................................257 x 9.4.4 Fusing “Traditional” and “Modern” ................................................................258 9.4.5 Post-Production ................................................................................................259 9.5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................261 10. DOCUMENTARY FILM PRODUCTION AT KETEBUL MUSIC: MOLDING POSTCOLONIAL HISTORICAL DISCOURSE ...............................................................262 10.0 Conceptual Signpost ..................................................................................................262 10.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................262 10.1.1 Synopsis of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) ...........................................264 10.1.2 Synopsis of Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) ....................................265 10.2 Social Processes of Historical Documentary Production...........................................266 10.2.1 Funding ..........................................................................................................266 10.2.2 Forging Lineages of African Discourse .........................................................267 10.2.3 Media Production and Self-Directed Mentorship ..........................................270 10.2.4 Research and Information Gathering .............................................................271 10.2.5 Post-Research .................................................................................................275 10.3 From Process to Product: Textual Analyses of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) ......................................................................278 10.3.1 Subversion of Popular Discourse in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) .....279 10.3.1.1 The King of Benga ..........................................................................279 10.3.1.2 Historical Narratives of Ethnic Exchange .......................................279 10.3.1.3 Kenyan Influences in East African Rumba .....................................280 10.3.2 Polyvocality in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) ....................................281 10.3.2.1 The Origins of the Word Benga ......................................................281 10.3.2.2 Competing Early Influences ...........................................................282 10.3.2.3 Varied Perspectives on Style ..........................................................283 10.3.3 Reconciliation and Cultural Hybridization in Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) ....................................................................................284 10.3.3.1 Fluid Culture in Joyce Nyairo’s Preface to Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) ..................................................................................................284 10.3.3.2 Colonial Suppression .......................................................................285 10.3.3.3 Post-World War II Influences ..........................................................285 10.3.3.4 Rise to Popularity on the National Stage ........................................286 10.3.3.5 The Emergence of Mugithi ..............................................................286 10.3.3.6 “One-Man Guitarist” Controversies ................................................287 10.3.3.7 Kikuyu Popular Music in Cyberspace .............................................287 10.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................287 11. CONCLUSION: LOCATING MEANING IN CONTINGENT REALMS OF GLOBAL CULTURE ...........................................................................................................................289 11.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................289 11.2 Balancing Broad and Specific, Macro and Micro, Global and Local ........................290 11.2.1 Macro and Micro Contingencies: Making the Case for an Oppressive and Hopeful World ....................................................................................................290 11.3 Deconstructing Representation ..................................................................................291 11.3.1 Locating Meaning in the Contingent Realm of Global Culture ......................292 xi 11.4 A Contingency-Induced Pragmatically Reflexive Statement ....................................292 11.4.1 Locating True North: Humility and the Ethics of Contingency .....................293 APPENDICES .............................................................................................................................296 A. EXTENDED TRANSCRIPTIONS OF ANALYZED RECORDINGS .................................296 B. HUMAN SUBJECTS APPROVAL ......................................................................................303 C. 9TH EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT FUND 2010 VITAL VOICES AND CULTURE: INCREASING PEOPLE’S PARTICIPATION IN GOOD GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT CALL FOR PROPOSALS (CFP) .................................................................304 D. ORAL SOURCES ...................................................................................................................309 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................312 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................330 xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: The Kenyan Afro-Fusion artist Makadem, performing at the Blankets and Wine concert series in Nairobi on 05.03.11 ..............................................................................................3 Figure 1.2: Founder and Executive Director of Ketebul Music, Tabu Osusa..................................5 Figure 1.3: Map locating Nairobi (marked by the green pin) within the East Africa Community (shaded yellow). Map created using Google Maps....................................................33 Figure 2.1: Dr. Leonard Mjomba, Kenyatta University Professor of Communications ................48 Figure 2.2: Kiswahili and Akamba language instructor and NGO cultural consultant Mary Nzokia ............................................................................................................................................52 Figure 3.1: Brian Owango performing Brazilian capoeira (left) and Indian dance (right) ...........69 Figure 3.2: Map and corresponding key indicating the locations of Nairobi NGO music culture organizations and initiatives documented in this chapter. Map created using Google Maps ........74 Figure 3.3: Chief Financial Officer of Sarakasi Trust James Munga discussing funding and partnerships at Sarakasi Trust ........................................................................................................76 Figure 3.4: Ford Foundation-funded Ketebul Music documentaries Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right)........................................................................79 Figure 3.5: Kenya - Germany collaborative dance performance at Goethe Institut’s Inboda Dance Work Shop at GoDown Arts Centre on 02.26.11 ..........................................................................80 Figure 3.6: A performance at the Gatwitch Peace Festival on 12.04.10 by Nairobi’s Pamoja Dance Troupe, a nonprofit performing arts group comprised of individuals with physical disabilities ......................................................................................................................................82 Figure 3.7: Koko Band performance raising awareness to fight deforestation at the Alliance Française de Nairobi’s Garden Stage on 11.26.10 .........................................................................83 Figure 3.8: Ayub Ogada performing at an Abubilla Music-Ketebul Music partnership concert at Sippers Restaurant on 03.27.11 .....................................................................................................85 Figure 3.9: Flier for JMI’s World Bank-funded Fair Play: Live and Direct Concert held at the Sarakasi Dome 04.29.11 ................................................................................................................86 Figure 3.10: Screen capture of the VirtualWOMEX online networking platform main page .......88 xiii Figure 3.11: The GoDown Arts Centre’s promotional booklet picturing the main performance space...............................................................................................................................................89 Figure 3.12: Sarakasi Dome performance space............................................................................91 Figure 3.13: The Zimbabwean theatre troupe Rooftop Promotions performing “Rituals” for Purple Images Production’s All Africa Peace Festival on 12.05.10 ..............................................93 Figure 3.14: Makadem of Ketebul Music performing at the 2010 Kenya Music Week on 12.12.10..........................................................................................................................................95 Figure 3.15: Blankets and Wine director, Muthoni the Drummer Queen, and Dela performing at Blankets and Wine XXI on 11.28.10 .............................................................................................97 Figure 3.16: Program for the Kenya Conservatoire of Music’s Christmas performance of One King on 12.12.10 ............................................................................................................................98 Figure 3.17: Youth acrobats from Nairobi’s Huruma and Ongoza urban settlements performing at the Tandawazi Festival 12.29.10-01.04.11 ..............................................................................100 Figure 3.18: Photo of Kijani Kenya Trust’s Nairobi Orchestra performing at the 2008 Kijani Festival .........................................................................................................................................101 Figure 3.19: Call for Papers for Drum Café’s 2010 Peace Arts Festival/Conference on 09.2021.10.............................................................................................................................................102 Figure 3.20: Art of Music Foundation’s Kenyan National Youth Orchestra ..............................104 Figure 4.1: Busara Promotions board members, staff, and Executive Director dance to Samba Mapangala’s “Zanzibar” at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Sauti za Busara Festival ...........106 Figure 4.2: Tabu Osusa (left) and Samba Mapangala (right) at Alliance Française, Nairobi on 03.03.11 ........................................................................................................................................118 Figure 4.3: Song text and translation to Mapangala’s “Zanzibar” (2011) ...................................118 Figure 5.1: The entrance to Ketebul Studios ...............................................................................127 Figure 5.2: Ketebul Music facility ...............................................................................................128 Figure 7.1: Makadem discussing the aesthetics of his music ......................................................176 Figure 7.2: Nyatiti accompanied by ohangla. Still image from the Ketebul Music documentary Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) featured in Chapter 10 .......................................................178 Figure 7.3: Lyrics to the chorus and first verse of “Nyaktiti” .....................................................183 xiv Figure 7.4: Opening spoken word introduction to “Ohangla Man”.............................................184 Figure 7.5: Spoken word interlude to “Ohangla Man” ................................................................185 Figure 7.6: Chorus to “Ohangla Man” .........................................................................................185 Figure 7.7: Call-and-response refrain A of “Ohangla Man”........................................................186 Figure 7.8: Call-and-response refrain B in “Ohangla Man” ........................................................186 Figure 7.9: Olith Ratego discussing his personal history and musical composition ...................194 Figure 7.10: Chorus and first three verses to “Wa Mama” ..........................................................200 Figure 7.11: Untitled dodo song text transcription (Opondo 1996: 213) ...................................201 Figure 7.12: Chorus and verses one and two of “Awuoro”(translation by Olith Ratego and Steve Kivutia) ........................................................................................................................................203 Figure 7.13: The flier listing Olith Ratego and Ogoya Nengo as featured performers to appear with Sven Kacirek at the 2010 Ese Festival in New York City ...................................................205 Figure 8.1: Album cover to Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Two (2006). ...........................212 Figure 8.2: Album cover of Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Three (2007) .........................214 Figure 8.3: Album cover of Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Four: Unity in Diversity (2008) .............................................................................................................214 Figure 8.4: Tabu Osusa and Helene Bekker, Executive Director of Alliance Française, accepting a Total Oil donation to the 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music ......................................................230 Figure 8.5: Total Oil logo at the 12.10.10 Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert performance of Ben Kisinja and Chebin Band ......................................................................................................231 Figure 8.6: Logos for French Embassy and Total Oil on a flyer for the 12.10.10 Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert ..................................................................................................................231 Figure 8.7: Flyer for the Spotlight on Kenyan Music “Art Synergies for the Empowerment of Communities” Program (2011) ....................................................................................................236 Figure 9.1: Jesse Bukindu discussing his approach to music production in the Ketebul Music Studio ...........................................................................................................................................241 Figure 9.2: Album cover of Garissa Express (2011)...................................................................243 xv Figure 9.3: Jesse Bukindu operating the Logic pro software.......................................................248 Figure 9.4: Photo of iron leg rattles used by Akamba ethnic group ............................................256 Figure 9.5: Gargar performing at the 2011 Sauti za Busara Festival...........................................259 Figure 10.1: Cover art for Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right).................................................................................................................................263 Figure 10.2: Steve Kivutia (left) and Patrick Ondiek (right) .......................................................271 Figure 10.3: Patrick Ondiek in the Ketebul Music editing room.................................................275 Figure 10.4: Photos of the CD/DVD packages of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right) .....................................................................................276 Figure 10.5: Photos of the informational booklets of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right) .....................................................................................277 Figure 10.6: Steve Kivutia in the Ketebul project management room ........................................277 xvi LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES This PDF includes audio and video excerpts of musical material discussed in the dissertation. These are either recordings by the author or brief clips that fall under fair use copyright law. Listening to the audio and video excerpts requires Adobe Reader 9 or greater. The latest Adobe Reader is available to download for free at http//:getadobe.com/reader/. Musical Example 7.1: Audio excerpt of D.O. Misiani’s “Lala Salama” (1973) .........................176 Musical Example 7.2: Notated excerpt of the repeated side stick pattern from D.O. Misiani’s “Lala Salama” from the album Great Hits from Nairobi Vol. 2 (1973) ......................................177 Musical Example 7.3: Notated excerpt of the repeated closed hi-hat pattern from Makadem’s “Nyaktiti” on the album Ohanglaman (2005) .............................................................................177 Musical Example 7.4: Audio excerpt from introduction to Makadem’s “Nyaktiti”....................179 Musical Example 7.5: Notated excerpt of mm. 1-4 of “Nyaktiti” ...............................................180 Musical Example 7.6: Audio excerpt of a nyatiti performance by Okuro Geti on the album Luo Traditional Nyatiti (2002) ............................................................................................................180 Musical Example 7.7: Notated excerpt of the conga tone (Cnga.) and slap (T.s.) that begins on mm. 5 of “Nyaktiti” and repeats throughout ................................................................................180 Musical Example 7.8: Audio excerpt of the Ohangla and Nyatiti performers featured in Ketebul Music’s documentary Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and pictured in Figure 7.2 above ...181 Musical Example 7.9: The looped drum kit part begins on measure nine in “Nyaktiti” and repeats throughout. Yellow highlights mark the makossa-style syncopation of the snare drum .............181 Musical Example 7.10: Audio excerpt of Toto Guillaume’s “Mba Na Na Ne” (1981) ..............182 Musical Example 7.11: Audio excerpt of Hoigen Ekwala’s “Longue Di Titi Nika” (1991).......182 Musical Example 7.12: Audio excerpt of a nyatiti performance introduction by Oyana Obiero from the album Luo Traditional Nyatiti (2002) ...........................................................................184 Musical Example 7.13: Audio excerpt of the spoken word introduction to “Ohangla Man” ......184 Musical Example 7.14: Audio excerpt of the chorus to “Ohangla Man” ....................................185 Musical Example 7.15: Video excerpt of Makadem performing A + B refrains. The B refrain documents the audience response ................................................................................................187 xvii Musical Example 7.16: Audio excerpt of the song “Night Oberana” by Onyango Alemo off the album Onyango Alemo Vol: 02 (2010) ........................................................................................190 Musical Example 7.17: Audio excerpt of the section of “Ohangla Man” that Makadem identified as Giriama and Teso influenced ...................................................................................................190 Musical Example 7.18: Audio excerpt of the Giriama style mungao performed by the Gonda La Mjaikenda Cultural Toupe (Ngoma za Kenya: Volume 4 2008)..................................................190 Musical Example 7.19: Audio excerpt of the Teso style akisuku dance performed by the Iteso Traditional Dancers (Ngoma za Kenya: Volume 3 2008) ............................................................190 Musical Example 7.20: Notated excerpt of the bird call in “Awuoro” ........................................195 Musical Example 7.21: Audio excerpt of the bird call in “Awuoro” ..........................................195 Musical Example 7.22: Audio excerpt of the first verse of “Wa Mama” ....................................201 Musical Example 9.1: Video of Gargar’s Spotlight on Kenyan Music audition ..........................245 Musical Example 9.2: Screen capture of the midi instruments from Bukindu’s Logic Pro file of the song “Halele” .........................................................................................................................249 Musical Example 9.3: Screen capture of microphone recorded instruments from Bukindu’s Logic Pro file of the song “Halele” ........................................................................................................249 Musical Example 9.4: Screen capture of vocal parts from Bukindu’s Logic Pro file of the song “Halele”........................................................................................................................................250 Musical Example 9.5: Audio excerpt of the call-and-response vocals featured on “Halele” ......251 Musical Example 9.6: Logic Pro screen capture of the call-and-response vocals featured on “Halele”........................................................................................................................................251 Musical Example 9.7 Unedited “response line” before segmentation .........................................252 Musical Example 9.8: Audio excerpt of the “String Ensemble” and “Chinese Erhu” (mm. 1-12 of “Halele”) ......................................................................................................................................253 Musical Example 9.9: Notated excerpt of the “Erhu” and “String Ensemble” in “Halele” (mm. 112 of “Halele”) .............................................................................................................................253 Musical Example 9.10: Notated excerpt of the “Erhu” and “Western String” interludes in “Halele”(mm. 1-7 of the full transcription presented in Appendix A) ........................................254 xviii Musical Example 9.11: Notated excerpt of the call-and-response vocals to “Halele” (these begin on mm. 19 of the full transcription presented in Appendix A) ....................................................255 Musical Example 9.12: Notated excerpt of four measures of the repeated African Lion Atsimevu (top) and African Lion Axatse (bottom) ......................................................................................255 Musical Example 9.13: Audio excerpt of the repeated pattern of the sampled iron leg rattle in “Halele”........................................................................................................................................256 Musical Example 9.14: Noted excerpt of twelve measures of the repeated Leg Rattles part......256 xix ABSTRACT A growing number of global civil society organizations commonly referred to as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, have proliferated throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, and especially Kenya, since the mid-1980s. Drawing from interviews with NGOaffiliated directors, staff and musicians, observational research conducted at NGO-affiliated music performances, and participant observation with Ketebul Music, a Nairobi-based NGO music studio, this dissertation assesses the impact of NGO culture on music production in Nairobi. The resources, signs, and social networks that operate within NGO music culture reveal a range of global to local influences and demonstrate the significance of contingency in depictions of global culture. At one end of this contingent spectrum are the neoliberal, capitalist, and primarily Western historical contexts from which NGOs arose; at the other are NGO music initiatives that draw especially from locally embedded circumstances and emphasize ties to the cultural histories of Nairobi, Kenya, and East Africa. These diametric manifestations of local and global become entangled, act in concert with one another, conflict, and converge at sites of NGO music production where Kenyan and transnational organizations organize music festivals, provide performance and marketing opportunities for Kenyan artists, and create music initiatives that advocate for a variety of social issues, including peace, women's rights, poverty reduction, and preservation of local culture. An ethnographic account of the Nairobi-based NGO music studio Ketebul Music illustrates these contingent dynamics. Ketebul Music partners with and receives funding from several international NGOs, including the Ford Foundation and Alliance Française, to construct initiatives reflecting the mission “to identify, preserve, conserve and to promote the diverse music traditions of East Africa.” The geopolitics of Ketebul Music’s foreign funding sources suggests that European and North American cultural influence ranks highly among the factors that shape the organization’s initiatives. The sentiments expressed by those that construct these programs, however, articulate a desire to push back against foreign influence in the interest of promoting “Kenyan” culture. Presenting a contingently situated contradiction of NGO music culture, Ketebul Music receives funding from global European and North American sources to create music initiatives that promote local cultural consciousness. xx To address these converging influences, I offer a theory of ethnographic contingency that approaches cultural representation as an exercise in relational perspective and draws connections between the numerous industries, technologies, social spheres, and symbolic expressions that music performance in Kenya's NGO sector engages. Tracing the interactions and influences of these variables, contingency emphasizes connections between two or more processes. I examine the historical development of NGO culture in Nairobi from a temporal perspective that assesses the causes and effects of circumstances that occur at regional and global scales. Finally, drawing from Richard Rorty’s use of contingency to develop a pragmatic response to postructuralist challenges to representation (1979; 1986; 1989; 1995), I argue that contingency provides a pragmatically reflexive approach to ethnographic representation by privileging perspective over reality while engaging interdisciplinary dialogue through the common use of contingency theories across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and formal sciences. xxi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: COMPOSING CIVIL SOCIETY 1.1 Purpose and Argument A growing number of global civil society organizations,1 commonly referred to as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs,2 have proliferated throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, and especially in Kenya, since the mid-1980s.3 Drawing from interviews with NGOaffiliated directors, staff, and musicians, observational research conducted at NGO-affiliated music performances, and participant observation with Ketebul Music, a Nairobi-based NGO music studio, this dissertation assesses the impact of NGO culture on music production in Nairobi. The resources, signs, and social networks that operate within “NGO music culture” reveal a range of global to local influences that demonstrate the significance of contingency in depictions of global culture. At one end of this contingent spectrum are the neoliberal, capitalist, and primarily Western historical contexts from which NGOs arose. At the other end of the continuum are NGO music initiatives that draw especially from locally embedded circumstances and emphasize ties to the cultural histories of Nairobi, Kenya, and East Africa. These diametric manifestations of local and global become entangled, act in concert with one another, conflict, and converge at sites of NGO music production where Kenyan and transnational organizations in Nairobi organize music festivals, provide performance and marketing opportunities for Kenyan artists, and create music initiatives that advocate for a variety of social issues, including peace, women's rights, poverty reduction, and preservation of local culture. 1 Although subject to widely differing interpretations, global civil society refers to a global milieu of organizations, individuals, and networks that mobilize under shared values and interests to serve their respective members or a broader public. Organization scholarship also typifies global civil society as “non-governmental” and “not-for profit.” This working definition of global or transnational civil society is a synthesis of overlapping characterizations forwarded by numerous organizations and scholars, including Jan Scholte’s Global Civil Society: Changing the World? (1999: 2-3), the World Bank’s “Defining Civil Society” Webpage (http://web.worldbank.org/, accessed 05.01.12), and Civil Society International’s “What is Civil Society?” Webpage (http://www.civilsoc.org/, accessed 05.01.12). 2 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are organizations most frequently cited in conjunction with global civil society (Kaldor, Anheier, and Albrow 2006: 3). I also use the acronym NGO as part of an inductive labeling process drawn from interviews and conversations with Kenyans and other Africans who use the term to describe forms of civil society activities that incorporate global administrative structures, funding, and marketing practices. 3 Between 1993 and 2005, the number of NGOs officially registered with the Kenyan National Council of NGOs rose from 250 to 2,232 (Kenyan National Council of NGOs 2005 in Kanyinga and Mitullah 2007). The World Wide Association of Non-Governmental Organizations reports that Kenya comprises 36% of NGOs registered in East Africa and 8% of those registered in Africa (http://www.wango.org/, accessed 05.04.12). 1 To frame these disparate flows of NGO music culture, I offer a theory of ethnographic contingency that casts cultural representation as an exercise in relational perspective.4 The relational variables I will examine are the symbols and signs,5 behaviors, and materials of music activities carried out in Kenya’s NGO sector.6 Functioning as “transposable dispositions” (Bourdieu 1990: 53), these elements transmit from mission statements or grant applications to song texts and performance practices, from organization to organization, and artist to artist.7 The capacity for certain symbols, artifacts, and behaviors to proliferate and transfer to and from various contexts with lesser or greater success ultimately determines the characterizing dimensions of NGO music culture. The following chapters illustrate contingently situated politics of influence determined by circumstantial positions and relations. Rather than grouping attributes that project consonant themes or present a singular theoretical frame that best captures Kenya’s NGO music networks, divergent influences cast contested and fluid references to postcolonial disjunctures of history, culture, and economy as well as disparities between the Global North and South. Ethnographic contingency acts as a metatheory latently operating in the background of the text, enabling play with various theoretical approaches to demonstrate the infinite frames that can be drawn around human experience and behavior. I affix a number of theoretical apparatuses common to culture studies to collections of ethnographic data mined throughout the research process. These include semiotics (Buchler 1955; Turino 2008), genre (Bakhtin 1982; 1986; Woods 2011), power and discourse (Foucault 1966; 1969; Bourdieu 1990), orality, literacy, textuality, and intertextuality (Ong 1982; Vansina 1985; Barber 1993; 2000; Nyairo 2004), and ethnographic plurality (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Tyler 1986; Appadurai 1996; Tsing 2005; Gunderson 2010; Kafumbe 2011) among others. To introduce this multi-vocal, contingency-based approach to 4 This dissertation’s presentation of plurality as a core feature of ethnographic description is inspired in large part by conversations with Frank Gunderson, Damascus Kafumbe, and Lisa Beckley-Roberts. 5 Here, I employ Charles Sanders Peirce’s broad definition of sign as “something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity” (Pierce 1955: 99). 6 A significant body of scholarship in organizational culture studies has examined organizations as symbolic mechanisms. Some of the most influential and frequently cited works to utilize this perspective include Thomas Peters’s “Symbols, Patterns, and Settings: An Optimistic Case for Getting Things Done” (1978), Louis Pondy et al.’s Organizational Symbolism (1983), and Pasquale Gagliardi’s Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape (1990). 7 Conversations with Kayleen Justus-Kerg and Frank Gunderson inspired notions of transposable dispositions used in this dissertation. 2 ethnography, I now turn to introduce some individuals and organizations that play a central role in music production in Nairobi’s NGO sector. 1.1.1 A Contingent Excerpt of NGO Music Culture in Nairobi Makadem is a Kenyan musician with extensive experience performing in NGO-affiliated contexts, both in Kenya and internationally. He is closely affiliated with Ketebul Music, a Nairobi-based NGO music studio founded and directed by long-time Kenyan music industry mogul Tabu Osusa. Ketebul Music partners with and receives funding from several European and North American institutions, including the Ford Foundation, the French NGO Alliance Française, and the British music organization Abubilla Music. When I asked Makadem if NGOs had influenced music in Kenya, he stated, They have. We have what I call “elite” musicians who do not sing for the normal Kenyan. They write on issues like “let’s make peace,” “children,” “women’s empowerment,” “cancer,” “breast cancer.” Those are things that don’t get to the masses. They just end up in a boardroom somewhere like the U.N.D.P. But musicians are heavily funded to do those things. They don’t perform much but they live large. Why? They know how to write proposals NGO style… So they’re heavily funded to do music that goes nowhere. And with all these big, big organizations like the U.N. or the Ford Foundation. They always perform at the embassies and when there is a chance to take a Kenyan musician abroad they will be the ones to go there. But their music is boring. It’s like reading a page in the newspaper. So when they go abroad it does not make any impact and it does not come back to the local Kenyan artists, which means that Kenya will never be viewed as a land of musicians (Makadem 2011b, Interview). Figure 1.1: The Kenyan Afro-Fusion artist Makadem, performing at the Blankets and Wine concert series in Nairobi on 05.03.11 (photo by author). 3 Makadem’s response suggested that NGOs import revenue streams and values from outside of Kenya. These imports have created a class of “elite” musicians who compose and perform music that expresses and reinforces the foreign cultural values promoted by NGOs. Furthermore, musicians receive disproportionate financial and marketing opportunities as a result of associating with these transnational networks. From this perspective, the impact of NGOs on music in Kenya has imported a non-localized and global locus of control over cultural expression. Makadem’s critical view was consistent with that of many Kenyans I interviewed and conversed with during the fieldwork process in Nairobi. Most Kenyans had experienced some form of direct contact with the NGO industry and had opinions about the intensive saturation of internationally funded aid projects in their country. Makadem’s active participation in NGO music festivals and affiliation with the NGO Ketebul Music clashes with his critical view of an industry from which he has benefited and to which he is intimately tied. Considering this contradiction, I asked him about his assessment of Ketebul Music. Makadem articulated a more positive picture of NGO initiatives when considering Ketebul Music: Author: But what about Ketebul? Isn’t Ketebul an NGO that works with other NGOs and international organizations? Makadem: Ketebul is an NGO, but I don't think Ketebul is doing the “elite” artist thing. Because what Ketebul has decided to do is what the “elite” artists would have done if they knew what they wanted to do, the right thing. That’s why I’m saying NGOs are not bad. There are always two sides of a coin. The ones that are doing wrong are just doing things to benefit themselves (Makadem 2011b, Interview). Makadem’s response expressed the sorts of positive and negative binaries that enter into a social interpretation of the impacts of NGO culture on music production in Kenya. Tracing this contingent thread further, we turn now to Ketebul Music, the NGO with which Makadem most commonly partners. Ketebul Music is a music studio and production house that registered with the Kenyan government as an NGO in 2007. Taking into consideration the geopolitics of Ketebul Music’s foreign funding sources alone might suggest that European and North American cultural influences rank highly among the factors that shape the organization’s initiatives. The sentiments expressed by those who construct these programs, however, articulate a desire to push back against foreign influence and promote “Kenyan” culture. Central to the construction of Ketebul Music’s underlying values is the vision of the organization’s founder and Executive Director, Tabu Osusa. Osusa is a prominent music 4 producer and manager in East Africa’s music industry. Journalist Tim Kamuzu Banda noted Osusa’s significant impact on the Kenyan music industry in a 2008 Daily Nation article when he wrote, Tabu Osusa is synonymous with Kenyan music and this has been the case for a very long time. For the past 30 years Tabu has contributed immensely to the local music scene as a leading producer, composer, and band manager. In his career, he has shaped and run some of the top recording and performing groups in the country (Banda 2008). Figure 1.2: Founder and Executive Director of Ketebul Music, Tabu Osusa (photo by author). On many occasions during interviews and conversions with the producer, he passionately voiced unequivocal advocacy for what he described as African and East African forms of expression that break from imported and specifically Western trends prevalent in Kenya’s music industry. Osusa has promoted what he views as locally rooted music prior to participating in the NGO sector. Exemplifying his dedication to this cause, long before registering Ketebul Music as an NGO, Osusa published the following statement in the liner notes to the 2003 Nairobi City Ensemble album titled Kalapapla for which he served as executive producer: This album is dedicated to creative minds on our beloved African continent. Those men and women of determination who have resisted the temptation of prerecorded music loops and have doggedly stayed with the more challenging live 5 instrumentations thereby keeping our endangered culture afloat despite the influence of strong foreign waves that are trying to sweep it under (Osusa 2003). From Osusa’s drive to advocate for local forms of cultural empowerment, Ketebul Music derives its mission statement, “To identify, preserve, conserve and to promote the diverse music traditions of East Africa.” That Ketebul Music receives funding from European and North American sources to create music initiatives that promote local cultural consciousness presents one of the many contingently situated ironies that this dissertation evaluates as commonplace in the global milieu of NGO music culture. In Part 2, I will further nuance this contingent picture of Ketebul Music, its music initiatives, staff members, and funders. I will demonstrate that even seemingly foreign organizations such as the Ford Foundation have local constituencies working within them. Conversely, locally rooted music expressions produced by Ketebul Music are consciously shaped and marketed to industries outside of Kenya as well as within. Rather than exceptions to the norm, I argue that such ironies are commonplace in socio-cultural dynamics. Mapping the politics and influential variables that give way to such contrasting evaluations will be the central aim of this dissertation. In a reflexive turn, I find myself also entangled in these contingent dynamics as I choose which voices to include in this document, which influences to emphasize, and how to arrange them within the text.8 Echoing the much deliberated postmodern/poststructuralist crisis of representation (Clifford and Marcus 1986), my contingently situated perspective implicates me in the politics of influence that define NGO music culture as it is I who control its representation herein. Jeff Todd Titon’s statement, “the poststructuralist challenge to fieldwork must be answered if the discipline is to continue” (1997: 99), highlights the vital significance of this issue that remains largely unresolved in culture studies. Considering the contextual circumstances that situate my perspective, I am a non-Kenyan writing as an outsider about communities in Kenya; yet, my experience as a musician with a background in North America’s nonprofit sector (from where much of the cultural history of NGOs derives) positions me within the socio-cultural sphere of NGOs and their music activities. My research process also inevitably shapes this depiction in that initial hypotheses I formed before conducting fieldwork in Kenya set forth 8 My use of reflexivity in this documents attempts to build upon the work of Paul Berliner (1978), John Miller Chernoff (1981), Timothy Rice (1994), Michael B. Bakan (1999), Anthony Seeger (2004), and others. Drawing particularly from Richard Rorty (1979), I propose that the pragmatically reflexive applications of contingency offer an alternative to prior uses of reflexivity in postmodern/poststructuralist ethnographies. 6 innumerable contingencies of social encounter that determined which individuals I met, the extent of their interactions with me, and the sorts of events I attended. All these circumstances necessarily gave way to a particular and selective perspective. In the section that follows, I will outline how the notion of contingency provides an ideal conceptual frame to capture these plural dynamics of research. 1.2 Theory: Positioning a Theory of Ethnographic Contingency Despite the extensive use of contingency in numerous theories across disciplines (Woodward 1958; Burns and Stalker 1961; Fiedler 1964; Skinner 1969; Glenn 1988; Rorty 1989; Butler, Laclau, and Žižek 2000; Massie 2010), ethnographic scholarship has yet to thoroughly interrogate the concept or posit an ethnographic theory of contingency. Furthermore, scholars in fields where theories of contingency exist have not identified the full interdisciplinary scope of the concept. Rather than drawing influence from one central theorist or existing theory, I forward an interdisciplinary perspective that forges new pathways of communication between disparate academic fields while also demonstrating relevance to theoretical interests of ethnomusicology.9 To begin, I first draw upon four definitions of contingency: Contingency, n. 2. Close connection or affinity of nature; close relationship. In Sc. Law., Connection between two or more processes, such that the circumstances of one are likely to throw light on the others, in which case that first enrolled is considered as the leading process, to which the other may be remitted ob contingentiam. 3.c. The condition of being free from predetermining necessity in regard to existence or action; hence, the being open to the play of chance, or of free will. 5.b. A possible or uncertain event on which other things depend or are conditional; a condition that may be present or absent.10 Contingency as a “close connection or affinity of nature; close relationship” provides a wide theoretical frame with which to draw connections between disparate realms. This open relational space enables connections to be drawn between the numerous industries, technologies, social spheres, and symbolic expressions that music in Kenya’s NGO sector encompasses. In addition to the broad relational capacity of contingency, the concept also emphasizes connections “between two or more processes, such that the circumstances of one are likely to throw light on 9 The construction of ethnographic contingency as a holistic approach to ethnography is partly inspired by Benjamin Koen’s presentation at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology titled the “Ontology of Oneness and Possibilities in Ethnomusicology” (2007). 10 The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed., s.v. “Contingency” http://dictionary.oed.com/, accessed 11.23.11. 7 the others.” This definition injects movement into relational variables. Throughout the text I will examine the historical development of NGO culture in Nairobi from a temporal perspective that suggests the causes and effects of circumstances. Finally, drawing from definitions “3.c.” and “5.b.” above, the relationships between contingent variables are never “necessary” and instead operate within the realm of “possibility.” This dissertation’s assessment therefore does not reach for a totalizing and absolute depiction of NGO music culture in Nairobi. Embedded within contingent delineations is the reflexive acknowledgement that all variables and possible relationships are impossible to account for. Contingent ethnographies invite additional viewpoints, even those that seemingly contradict initial assumptions. Contradictions only enhance and nuance a relational interpretation. 1.2.1 Contingency in Historiographical Perspective: Rhetorical, Variable, Reflexive, and Interdisciplinary Evoking Wittgenstein’s notion that context and usage determine linguistic meaning (Wittgenstein and Anscombe 2001), while acknowledging the impossibility of unpacking the entire field of meanings that any word signifies (Derrida 2001), this dissertation draws its use of contingency primarily from historiographic usage.11 These applications give way to four vital characteristics of the concept: contingency is (1) rhetorical; (2) variable; (3) pragmatically reflexive; and (4) interdisciplinary. This historiographic journey begins by locating early philosophical usages of the concept that spurred later disciplinary trajectories, particularly with translations of third- and second-century B.C. writings of Aristotle and Euclid. 1.2.1.1 Rhetorical Properties of Contingency In contrast to necessary logic, contingency draws connections based on perceptions and assumptions, therefore making social reception a key determinant of any contingent argument. In Rhetoric (Aristotle, Ross, and Roberts 2010), Aristotle utilized these qualities of contingency to argue against Plato’s claim that rhetoric primarily served opportunistic ends and acted essentially as a political tool. Aristotle countered Plato by situating rhetoric in the realm of the contingent as opposed to the epistemologically deficient (Jost and Olmsted 2004: 6–14). Aristotle suggested that rhetoric served as a way of establishing knowledge about the possible and the probable as opposed to the necessary. To this effect he indicated, The duty of Rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without 11 Derrida also emphasizes the contextual situatedness of language-signs in Writing and Difference (2001). I do not mention him here because, unlike Wittgenstein, Derrida asserts that such a postulate renders language ineffective. 8 arts or systems to guide us… The subjects of our deliberation are such as seem to present us with alternative possibilities: about things that could not have been, and cannot now or in the future be, other than they are, nobody who takes them to be of this nature wastes his time in deliberation (Aristotle, Ross, and Roberts 2010: 9). The key factor in establishing Aristotle’s view of rhetoric was the dynamic nature of contingency to legitimize indeterminate but socially acknowledged truths. That is, public reception determined the legitimacy of contingent arguments based on their ability to demonstrate probable relations and conclusions. Deliberations about the nature of human behavior were key among these. As a result of the probable but indeterminate associations of contingency, Aristotle associated the concept with the realm of human action, particularly choice and agency. To this effect he wrote, “Most of the things about which we make decisions, and into which therefore we inquire, present us with alternative possibilities. For it is about our actions that we deliberate and inquire, and all our actions have contingent character; hardly any of them are determined by necessity” (Aristotle, Ross, and Roberts 2010: 10). Given indeterminate but perceivable patterns in human behavior, inferring from Aristotle and those who followed, ordering it coherently relied upon contingency. The audience, and not indisputable logic of necessity, determined the success of such deliberations. Because of the requirement of an audience component to rhetorical arguments, Aristotle’s rhetoric was later said to occupy the realm of “common knowledge” or “social knowledge” (Farrell 1976). From the foundational employment of rhetorical contingency by Aristotle, I have employed contingency in this dissertation as a tool for ethnographic illustration. Ethnography, a deliberation on continuities of human behavior and cultural formation, is entirely rhetorical due to its dependence on socially-interpreted conceptual relationships. Distilling human behavior in ethnography is an inexact science based on data that intimates meaning as opposed to irrefutable proofs or conclusions. Ethnography, like rhetoric, argues perspectives validated by its audience of readers, not the logic of necessity. Therefore, any success in giving shape to culture through ethnographic discourse depends on the ability of the ethnographer to make a compelling argument to its audience of readers. 1.2.1.2 Variable Properties of Contingency Euclid utilized these expansively variable properties of contingency to identify the infinitesimal angle that exists between the circumference of a circle and its tangent as the “angle 9 of contingence” (Euclid 1570). He required the notion of contingency because although he could not deduce the angle’s exact degree, the existence of an angle between a circle or arc and its tangent could easily be perceived. Euclid drew upon the resource of social consensus and therefore labeled the angle “contingent” based on the perceived contingent relationship between the curve and its tangential line despite the lack of a theorem with which to identify the angle’s properties. Considering the contrasting examples of Aristotle’s and Euclid’s usage of contingency to demonstrate properties of rhetoric and geometry demonstrates the historiographic versatility of the concept to stand for a range of variables. This versatility is ideal for ethnographic discourse given the diverse realms the study of culture engages.12 Euclid’s and Aristotle’s employment of contingency also marks early historiographic instances of the notion as a dynamic agent for ordering socially-mediated knowledge and perception. As a result of these valuable conceptual properties, notions of contingency proliferated in disparate realms of thought from the third century B.C. onward throughout Europe and the United States. As I will demonstrate in the following section, contingency continues to remain at the center of contemporary philosophical discourse and provides a crucial attribute for ethnographic application. 1.2.1.3 Contingency as Pragmatically Reflexive In 1997, Deborah Wong wrote the following statement in a College Music Symposium article in which she reiterated a statement made by Jeff Todd Titon in 1997: Jeff Todd Titon (1997: 99) recently described poststructuralist approaches as follows: “Poststructuralist thought denies the existence of autonomous selves. The notion of fieldwork as an encounter between self and other is thought to be a delusion, just as the notion of the autonomous self is a delusion, whereas the notion of the other is a fictionalized objectification.” Titon worries that the challenge posed by poststructuralism “must be answered if the discipline is to continue” (Ibid., 98), regarding poststructuralism as a threat to ethnomusicology (since fieldwork is central to the discipline’s methods)… (Wong 1998: 84) Below, I offer contingency as a pragmatic concept for the poststructuralist problem of situational relativism and deconstructed language in ethnography. Drawing from Richard Rorty’s Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980 (1986), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979; 2009),13 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), and Rorty and Pragmatism: The 12 13 This range includes all that is manifested through human behavior. In this chapter I refer to the 2009 edition of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. 10 Philosopher Responds to His Critics (1995), I situate contingency as an inherently reflexive concept to circumvent the persistent problems of representation in ethnography. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979; 2009) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) Rorty asserts that, in the latter half of the twentieth century, the Continental schools of phenomenology and structuralism as well as the Analytic school of positivism had fallen victim to parallel faults imbedded in their own internal logic, a logic that began with the Sophists and carried over to the Cartesian, Lockean, and Kantian projects of foundationalism (Rorty 2009: 33). Rorty referred to this faulty agent present throughout these historiographies as “representationalism” (Rorty 2009: xx–xxvi). Representationalism implied the widespread long enduring philosophical discursive project of locating the subject or self, reality, and truth. Among the continental philosophers, Derrida and Heidegger deconstructed structuralist and phenomenological suppositions by exhibiting the inescapable conditionality and relativity of language and experience (Rorty 2009: 365). In the analytic school of philosophy practiced primarily in the English-speaking United Kingdom and United States, Quine and Sellars unwound the positivist project by demonstrating similar relativity within analytical formulas for assessing the world based on data (Rorty 2009: 171). Rorty identified a faulty logic that caused the continental and analytic schools of philosophical thought to fail. This error in reasoning was the underlying project of seeking a means to assess reality outside the realm of perception. He asserted that any attempt at representing reality or truth, the essential preoccupation of the Sophists and their successors, was condemned from the start. Doing away with the preoccupation of representation, Rorty positioned a perspective entirely in the realm of contingency, with no regard for truth or reality. Lacking a means to step outside of perspective, Rorty asserted, any discussion of reality outside the self was pointless (Rorty 1989: 3–44). To avoid slipping into an abyss of relativism, Rorty grounded his perspective by drawing influence from pragmatists, who had never accepted realism as a tenet of their discourse. For this, Rorty turned to the pragmatists Peirce, Dewey, and especially James (Rorty 1979; 1986; 1989; 1995). From pragmatism, Rorty employed a line of reasoning that the primary concern of philosophy should be the doing of language, not the continuing preoccupation with the relation of language to reality or truth (2009: 389-423). Contingency opened the door to this approach by employing social mediation as the primary means of construct meaning. 11 Viewing reality as contingently situated suggested, for Rorty, a state of consciousness trapped in irony. The irony arose from the continued pursuit of meaning despite the knowledge that any attempt to address a reality outside the self is futile (Rorty 1989: 73–122). Humans would keep seeking to understand their reality despite the awareness that they would never find it. Rorty’s pragmatic answer to the ironic and deconstructed postmodern condition was to use language to create social impact, whether to influence politics, social movements, or any other form of organizing, for the only meaning to be found is through communication and connection (1989: 189-200). A social construction of meaning occurred through shared experience. In this way, I propose the depictions and stories of NGO music culture and global culture more generally as an attempt at creating dialogue with readers as well as the informants whose insights I have presented herein. I seek solidarity of perspective with those connected to the text more than a representation of reality. I cannot prove definite cause and effect relations between the proliferation of NGO discourses and its manifestations in musical expression. I make these connections perceivable, however, through depicting them as contingently connected. Rorty’s application of contingency to resituate the philosophical deconstruction of language in the realm of solidarity paralleled Aristotle’s application of contingency to position rhetoric in the realm of common knowledge. Rorty used contingency to respond to Derrida’s charge that all language construction is a lie (Derrida and Kamuf 2002) in the same manner that Aristotle responded to Plato’s charge that rhetoric, as a result of its indeterminate subject, only served to deceive as a political device. In a sense, the poststructuralist deconstruction of philosophical discourse by Derrida was nearly identical to Plato’s critique of rhetoric as any attempt to represent reality. Simply put, Derrida postulated that all language is rhetorical, given the requirement of the speaker to suppress unintended meanings of words. Language, therefore, is manipulative in the same sense that Plato views rhetoric. Rorty’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of contingently situated rhetoric and language, however, replaced the charge of manipulation in both cases with directed socially-mediated knowledge. Within this dissertation, contingency can serve a similar function to rectify crises of representation through pragmatic reflexivity. Rorty’s pragmatist solution to the problem of representation applies to this dissertation in two ways, both of which reinforce my proposed ethnographic contingency theory: (1) In depicting NGO music culture, I foreground perspective over reality. I examine the ethnographic subject of NGO music culture from numerous vantage points as opposed to attempting to depict 12 the essence of the thing itself. The poly-vocal expressions of these vantage points yield illustrate ethnographic meaning. (2) As opposed to rendering the entire ethnographic project an exercise in relativity, however, I embrace Rorty’s pragmatic notion that writing does by creating dialogue. Perhaps most importantly to the ethics of ethnomusicology, this document is reaching out to dialogue with those with whom I conducted research in Kenya in order to build solidarity beyond academic boundaries. Academically, I employ the interdisciplinary concept of contingency as an instrument with which to dialogue across disciplines as well as situate the research firmly in an anthropological and ethnomusicological tradition. I thus conclude this theoretical blueprint of ethnographic contingency with the application of contingency as a dialogic agent for interdisciplinary communication. 1.2.1.4 Contingency as Interdisciplinary Theorists across disciplines have used the combined versatility and potential specificity of contingency as a conceptual tool to investigate relation and connection. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, contingency has formed the basis of some of the most significant texts to emerge from statistics (Pearson 1904), behavioral psychology (Skinner 1969; Glenn 1988), philosophy (Rorty 1989; Butler, Laclau, and Žižek 2000; Massie 2010), and organizational behavior and management studies (Woodward 1958; Burns and Stalker 1961; Fiedler 1964). Despite the wide use of contingency across disciplines, as well as its capacity to interface with infinite additional theories, none of the available literature directly interrogates the interdisciplinary historiographical significance of the concept. Instead, contingency has operated latently as a conceptual asset without explicit scholarly assessment of its immense value to so many disparate realms of thought. Furthermore, it has remained a peripheral notion in ethnographic studies despite its potential value to cultural analysis. In the Literature Review below, I reconcile these gaps by illustrating several uses of contingency in ethnographic and nonethnographic scholarship in relation to the content of this dissertation. First, though, we return to “the field” to explore how the contingent mode of ethnography fuses process to product. 1.3 Research Methodology: A Contingent Ethnographic Method Throughout the course of my research, the themes that I viewed as most prominently defining NGO music culture in Kenya shifted along with the situatedness of my perspective. Thus began a process of layering contrasting depictions of NGO music culture. I therefore present the ethnographic material in this dissertation relative to the chronological shifts in 13 methodology which occurred throughout the research process. Below, I will document the ethnographic methodologies and fieldwork experiences that came to define various durations of the study so as to properly contextualize the chapters that follow, the data present within them, and the themes and opinions they project. 1.3.1 Research Development Timeline From 2004 until 2008, I conducted research on a nonprofit youth music center in Boston, Massachusetts. I first became interested in the topic of NGOs and music after a 4 week trip to Ghana to study dogomba drumming in Tamale with David Locke’s Tufts University’s African Ensemble. During this trip I encountered several NGO music initiatives and also witnessed the massive cultural impact of NGOs on Kenya’s culture-scape. I began course work at Florida State University in September 2008 and set a course for conducting research on the topic of the impact of NGOs on music culture in Kenya. By the time I finished coursework in May 2010, I had researched the topic and decided on Kenya as an ideal research location to explore this topic given the country’s rapidly increasing NGO funded arts sector. Upon arriving in Kenya with my wife/research accomplice, Shino Saito, in September 2010, I adopted a primarily observational research methodology for a three-month period that included language study, attending events, and conducting a minimal number of formal recorded interviews. In December 2010, I embraced an intensive participant observational approach with one organization, Ketebul Music, for a period of five months during which I conducted recorded and non-recorded interviews and spent a significant amount of time on site at Ketebul Music’s facility. I also attended Ketebul Musicaffiliated organizational events and utilized an applied approach by contributing to the organization in small ways such as assisting with videotaping concerts, uploading videos of the performances to YouTube, and purchasing CDs and DVDs produced by Ketebul Music. Finally, and perhaps most relevant to the ethics of participatory observation research, I was able to forge social ties that I aim to honor through continued professional collaboration and correspondence. 1.3.1.1 Phase One: Secondary Sources and Internet Resources at Florida State University, September 2008-June 2010 The most distanced lens, employed in Chapter 2’s historical background, resulted primarily from secondary source library research conducted before I arrived in Kenya. The emphasis on how specific historical events and musical forms mapped onto the zeitgeist of NGO music culture suggested geo-politics and economics as driving forces in the construction of NGO 14 culture. This perspective echoes much of the critical discourse on NGOs in Africa that has tended to order the NGO-scape using macro analytic frames (Ndegwa, 1996; de Waal 2002; Terry 2002; Sogge 2002; Bornstein 2005; Jennings 2008; Mutua 2009; Moyo 2010). What is missing from most of these accounts, however, are the voices of those who run and work within NGOs in Africa. Consequently, the prospectus that I defended before my dissertation committee in 2010 employed a sharp critical hypothesis that Western capitalism and “development” ideology had colonized the music-oriented civil society activities in Kenya. This perspective did not account for the nuanced outlook I gained from conducting interviews and participating in NGO-culture during the fieldwork process in Kenya. Nonetheless, the influence of Western European and United States economies on NGOs in Africa plays a significant role, and most Kenyans with whom I spoke acknowledged the inherent geopolitical imbalances of global capital. The chance circumstances that determined whom I met or who agreed to participate in the research process with me in Kenya limits my ethnographic view to a small sampling of perspectives. All ethnographic is limited by these contingent factors to some degree. I cannot, in all fairness, generalize the perspectives of these groups and individuals to all NGOs in Kenya. I retain a depiction of NGO cultural history characterized largely by forces of global capitalism and Western control because it was these forces that I found relevant, to a certain extent, to all of the organizations I engaged within Kenya. United States-side, I also conducted substantial Internet research and networked through contacts to locate several NGOs in Kenya involved in music activities. From these sources I mapped a portion of the organizational landscape from the United States and determine some of the trends that characterized the nature of civil society organizing around music in Kenya. Because of my reliance on Internet sources, however, I was unable to obtain information on the perspectives of those working within the organizations or an in-depth view of processes of music production. I corresponded through email with several of these organizations and some, such as Kenya Performing Arts Group and Sarakasi Trust, expressed openness to meeting with me when I arrived in Kenya. Ironically, only a few of the organizations that I had contacted before I left the United States responded to my initial emails. Of the five that did respond to my initial contact attempts, I was only able to attend the events of and meet with members of the GoDown Arts Centre, Sarakasi Trust, and Purple Images Productions. Throughout the research process I 15 discovered dozens more organizations after arriving in Nairobi and document these organizations in the overview of Kenya’s NGO-music-scape presented in Chapter 3. 1.3.1.2 Phase Two: Cultural Immersion, Observation, and Interview-Based Research in Kenya, September 2010-December 2010 I adopted an observational approach during the first three months of fieldwork in Kenya. My methodology during this time consisted of a broad cultural study. I became accustomed to norms of everyday life in Kenya, undertook intensive language study, attended NGO music festivals and events, and conducted interviews with staff members of organizations. This time period lasted from September 18 to December 15, 2010 after which I returned to the United States for two weeks and then returned again to Kenya on January 2, 2011. Several guides accompanied us through the initial process of acculturation in Kenya. Leonard Mjomba, a professor of communications at Kenyatta University and University of Dar Es Salaam, and one of Mjomba’s graduate student advisees, Melvin Mahulo, ushered us through the first stages of this process. This initial phase consisted of three weeks of experiential learning in Kenyan living in which Professor Mjomba acquainted us with Nairobi, his home in the coastal city of Mombasa, and his ancestral home, Taita. In Taita, we attended a two- day funeral in the rural Taita Mountains and spent several days living at Professor Mjomba’s and his wife, Maria’s, Taita International Elementary and Secondary School. At Taita International School we became acquainted with students and the teachers who performed music and poetry that they had presented for the Kenyan Music Festival, a countrywide music competition featuring performances from schools throughout Kenya. This three-week period provided my wife and me some important lessons and survival skills that would serve us throughout our time in Kenya, and therefore constituted an important phase of the research process. Upon arriving back in Nairobi three weeks after landing in Kenya, my wife and I moved into a small two-room first-floor flat in the middle-class neighborhood of Madaraka. Madaraka served as an ideal location from which to operate, given that its proximity to the city center (about twenty minutes without traffic) via matatu (public transport van) and the many shops, restaurants, and stores located in the area provided easy access to food and necessities. The mostly middle-class Kenyan demographics of Madaraka made this a relatively safe neighborhood in which we also were able to experience a degree of cultural immersion that may not have been possible in more up-market areas where many expatriates and upperclass Kenyans live (such as Karen or the Westlands). 16 For three months from late September to mid-December, we attended Kiswahili language lessons at The Language Center LTD. for an average of three hours every weekday. Our teachers, Mary Nzioka and Asunta Njeru also educated us on many dimensions of Kenyan culture and daily living in Nairobi. They assisted us in how to pay our electricity bills, stock piling mitungi (water containers) for our apartment, bargaining at markets (including the particular sheng and Kiswahili language these conversations would require), tipping, matatu routes, and interpretations of the numerous political, social, ethnic, economic etc. issues that were prominent in daily popular consciousness in Kenya. This basic education in everyday Kenyan life served as an important foundation to contextualize the environment of my study and therefore was invaluable to the logistics of data collection as well as the interpretation of information collected. Our language teachers also assisted us in the translation of some of the song texts found in this dissertation. In the months of November and December 2010, I attended twelve NGO-oriented music festivals and concerts, many of which are featured in the comparative overview presented in Chapter 4. At concerts I took extensive “thick description” (Geertz 1973) oriented field notes and obtained the contact information of festival organizers and performance groups. Shino assisted the research process at these events as a videographer and photographer. Although I engaged with festivalgoers and organizers on an informal level I intentionally did not become closely affiliated with any one group during this time. I took this approach to attain a comparative perspective from a distance that would enable me to later strategize appropriately about which groups I would dedicate significant time to researching and documenting. In November and December, I also became affiliated with the University of Nairobi’s Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies. Through this affiliation I came to know my in-country mentor and advisor Professor Ojwang, whose expertise in Kenyan linguistics and popular music greatly benefited the content of this dissertation, helped shape my perspectives on the ground in Kenya, and provided numerous contacts, including Tabu Osusa, whom I have prominently featured throughout the second half of this dissertation. Meeting Osusa, conducting some interviews at Ketebul Music, and attending some of the concerts involving Ketebul Music musicians and initiatives confronted me with the dilemma of diverting from the initial research plan that I had proposed in my prospectus. Osusa’s long legacy as a central figure in Kenya’s music industry, his organization’s mission, and the character of the individuals working within it, 17 grabbed my interest as particularly compelling. Additionally, Ketebul Music appeared to be at the center of a number of NGO music initiatives making the organization a hub for NGOoriented music activity in Kenya. Given these factors, I shifted my methodology to a more intensive participant observation-oriented approach with one group as opposed to the previously planned approach of examining the activities of many organizations and attempting to locate the continuities between them as the focus of the dissertation. 1.3.1.3 Phase Three: Participant Observation with Ketebul Music, December 2010May 2011 From December, 2010 to May, 2011, I engaged in intensive participant observation field work with the Kenyan NGO Ketebul Music while conducting intermittent formal recorded interviews with various other organizations. During this time, I also conducted fieldwork at the Sauti za Busara Festival in Zanzibar from February 9 to 13, 2011. The Sauti za Busara festival is one of Africa’s largest music festivals and a registered Tanzanian NGO that operates under the organizational title, Busara Promotions. Additionally, Busara Promotions maintains a close partnership with Ketebul Music in Kenya and featured a performance by Ketebul Music’s vocal group, Gargar, in 2011 and employed Ketebul Music’s program manager, Steve Kivutia, as a sound engineer. The 2011 Sauti za Busara Festival also featured the premiere of “Zanzibar,” a song written and performed by Samba Mapangala, Osusa’s long time musical colleague and the lead singer of the group Orchestra Virunga, the premier East African dance band that Osusa managed from 1982 to 1992. These numerous intersections with Ketebul Music and NGO culture in East Africa made conducting research at Sauti za Busara especially relevant. I present the material from this research in Chapter 5 so as to demonstrate the geographically decentralized yet networked quality of NGO music production in East Africa as well as to begin the process of introducing Tabu Osusa and Ketebul Music as central foci of the dissertation. During the five-month period before departing from Kenya, I recorded and transcribed thirty interviews. I conducted these interviews with Osusa and Ketebul Music staff, staff members and directors of other organizations, and Kenyans with specialized knowledge in the areas of Kenyan politics, culture, and language. In addition to conducting participant observation field work with Ketebul Music by spending time at the organization’s music studio, interviewing Ketebul Music musicians, and attending Ketebul Music events and performances, I adopted a historical ethnographic approach with the aim of documenting Osusa’s life history. Osusa’s life history was an especially relevant informational resource in that not only did it provide a 18 grounded theory perspective on the identity of Ketebul Music as an organization, but it also referenced a recent history of East African music culture essential to contextualizing the emergent culture of NGOs in the region. These include: (1) Osusa’s family heritage as the son of a Luo chief in Western Kenya that exposed him to dimensions of Kenya’s indigenous musical culture at a young age. (2) His education in various Catholic missions in Kenya and Uganda where he was exposed to the cultural influence of Western missionaries and the hymnal music they brought with them to Africa. (3) Osusa’s participation in Kinshasa’s vibrant rumba scene in the 1970s that provided firsthand insights into one of Africa’s most influential music industries. (4) His management of one of East Africa’s most successful 1980s dance bands, Orchestra Virunga, and his subsequent ongoing relationship with the group’s beat singer and musical icon, Samba Mapangala. (5) Osusa’s immigration to the United Kingdom that reflected the experiences of so many in the Global South who had left in search of greater opportunity in the Global North. (6) His return to Kenya and involvement with musical activities aimed at re-localizing a largely westernized popular music industry. These activities included writing numerous editorial commentaries in Kenya’s magazines and newspapers, creating and managing the Nairobi City Ensemble (one of Kenya’s first Afro-fusion groups), and finally creating a music studio in 2004 that would later become an NGO in 2007. My fieldwork methodology with Ketebul Music also included interviewing artists, sound engineers, and videographers about the production of their music albums and documentary videos. Ketebul Music’s organizational identity is reflected, at least in part, in the music created at the organization. With this in mind, I conducted extensive interviews with the first two artists produced at the organization, Makadem and Olith Ratego. I interviewed Makadem and Ratego on issues relating to stylistic choices, inspiration and meanings embedded in song texts, and personal histories that led to their particular take on the Afro-fusion genre, which serves as a core element of Ketebul Music’s mission. Chapter 7 features the content from these interviews. I also conducted interviews with Jesse Bukindu, Ketebul Music’s chief studio engineer, to determine his methodological process of music production. Interviews with Bukindu were especially relevant to documenting the role of the music studio and studio engineer/producer as central to 19 the production of contemporary African popular music. Chapter 9 explores these analyses. Finally, I conducted interviews with Ketebul Music’s videographer, Patrick Ondiek, and project manager, Steve Kivutia, in order to depict the process of documentary production that Ketebul Music undertakes in the creation of their Ford Foundation-funded historical documentaries titled the Retracing Series. I feature these interviews in Chapter 10. 1.3.2 From Fieldwork to Text: Themes Drawn from the Research Process Within my research timeline, I left the United States in 2010 having formulated a hypothesis in my dissertation prospectus that the influence of NGOs in Kenya had inscribed music production with the symbols and revenue flows of Western transnational civil society culture. I hypothesized that small acts of subversion to these hegemonic global capitalist influences may also play a role within the NGO music culture-scape of Kenya but the general trend of neocolonial geo-politics would most significantly characterize the production of music in Kenya’s NGO sector. Although I came to find, throughout the fieldwork process in Nairobi, evidence that supported my initial hypothesis, I also became aware of an infinite diversity of additional activities, trends, and perspectives that constituted Kenyan NGO music culture. As I became involved in participant observation with Ketebul Music, I found myself especially influenced by their unique organizational mission and philosophies, particularly those of the organization’s director, Tabu Osusa. Ketebul Music’s organizational mission and history emphasized the promotion and preservation of local, indigenous, and Kenyan culture while utilizing international revenue streams to fund initiatives and engaged global music industry genres such as World Music. These new fieldwork encounters did not suggest that the heavy arm of capitalist “development” ideology was controlling music production in Kenya. To the contrary, they highlighted the agency of Kenyan musicians and producers utilizing the NGO economy to forward a mission they had developed in response to particular needs in their communities and nation. This shifting emphasis brought me face-to-face with the poststructuralist assertion that perspective is paramount in any writing about culture. Despite the emergence of new data and perspectives throughout the research process, I do not discount previously held hypotheses, as they continue to hold relevance to certain dimensions of the subject. Rather than adopting a relativist stance, I propose that each perspective holds particular inherent values in relation to particular components of the social reality in which we live. 20 1.4 Literature Review A diverse array of disciplines, including ethnomusicology, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, political science, psychology, economics, history, and organizational studies inform this dissertation. Continually shifting global politics and economics have resulted in numerous reassessments of the role of NGOs in the transnational arena. In order to capture these intersecting streams of perspective, I have adopted the versatile theoretical frame of ethnographic contingency. In this literature review, I first examine the use of contingency across disciplines in order to identify its utility as a pragmatic theoretical device to facilitate interdisciplinary communication and collaboration.14 I then will examine an array of sources particularly relevant to NGO music culture in Kenya, the primary subject matter of this dissertation. Despite the large body of research on NGOs across many disciplines, few studies examine music-based NGO activities as an explicit territory of inquiry. For this reason, musicological resources utilized in this dissertation primarily provide background on East African music practices outside of the NGO sector in order to inform music practices within organizations. I refer to this body of music-focused research below as African Music Sources. Central to any study of transnational networks of music activities, such as NGOs, are perspectives on globalization within music and anthropological scholarship. I refer to these sources as Globalization and World Music Sources. I categorize those sources that deal specifically with African NGOs, but not music, as African NGO Sources. Organizational studies that traverse a range of social science disciplines, including public administration, management, and business do not often deal specifically with the politics or history of NGOs in Africa yet provide substantial insight into the administrative dimensions of how NGOs function and receive funding. I refer to these sources below as Organizational Studies Sources. Finally, this dissertation adopts a variety of theoretical frames with which to examine sub-sets of ethnographic data operating under the umbrella of ethnographic contingency. I list these sources below in Sub-Theoretical Sources. 14 In the previous section I attributed the foundational concepts behind my construction of ethnographic contingency primarily to Aristotle's Rhetoric (Aristotle, Ross, and Roberts 2010) and Richard Rorty’s writings, specifically Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979; 2009), Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980 (Rorty 1986), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), and Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to His Critics (1995). Having reviewed these texts thoroughly in the previous theory section, I will not reiterate my analyses of these texts. 21 1.4.1 Contingency in Ethnomusicology Ethnomusicological scholarship has not employed a formal theory of contingency or attempted to define its dimensions. Nonetheless, the term does arise in some texts and in these cases it often functions to address broad questions that relate directly to the use of contingency in this dissertation. The sources that I find to be significant in this regard are Laurent Aubert’s The Music of the Other: New Challenges for Ethnomusicology in a Global Age (2007), Martin Clayton’s “Introduction: Towards a Theory of Musical Meaning (in India and Elsewhere)” (2001), Adelaida Reyes’s “What do Ethnomusicologists Do? An Old Question for a New Century” (2009), and Deborah Wong’s “Ethnomusicology and Critical Pedagogy as Cultural Work: Reflections on Teaching and Fieldwork (1998). Suggesting the potential for contingency as a theoretical benchmark concept, all of these sources attempt to locate a renewed identity for ethnomusicology with regard to the discipline’s approach to globalization (Aubert 2007: 3, 40) and poststructuralist crises of representation (Wong 1998; Clayton 2001; Reyes 2009). The authors specifically employ contingency to bring fluidity to structuralist notions of static contexts (Clayton 2001: 6), ground subjectivity in circumstance (Aubert 2007: 3, 40), construct identity in historical perspective (Reyes 2009: 3, 5, 10), and position meaning as relational as opposed to being tied to self-other dichotomies (Wong 1998: 84). None of these scholars uses contingency as a central theoretical feature. They instead utilize the term as a latent discursive tool to address some of the most significant looming problems in ethnomusicological theory. 1.4.2 Contingency in Anthropology In cultural anthropology, the field from which ethnomusicology derives the majority of its methodological and theoretical foundation, contingency is an equally peripheral and under examined concept when compared to other disciplines. The social and hard science-oriented fields of biological anthropology and archaeology, on the other hand, have given significant attention to the term. In particular, the role of contingency in biological evolutionary development has been a central point of debate. These debates ensued largely as a result of Stephen Jay Gould's influential Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (1990). Gould’s work set forth a contingency theory of evolution arguing that chance happenings occurring in uniquely positioned sea bed (the Burgess Shale) caused a contingent chain of biological reactions that had enormous repercussions for the evolution of life on earth. John Bintliff’s follow up to Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, titled Structure and Contingency: 22 Evolutionary Processes in Life and Human Society (1999), correlates closely with my use of contingency as a narrative tool. Bintliff proposed a narrative historical approach to biological history (as opposed to the classical scientific determinism approach) that accounted for the contingent nature of biological evolutionary development (1999: vi-xiv). Likewise, I propose ethnography is an ideal tool to illustrate contingent dimensions of human behavior and culture because of its flexible narrative centered orientation. 1.4.3 Contingency in Historical Studies Theories of contingency in historiography significantly intersect with this dissertation’s theoretical approach. Of these, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s landmark Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977) positions contingency as the only universal principal of history (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 154). Anti-Oedipus recasts Marx’s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1906) as a contingent history by examining Marx’s assessment of protocapitalist development. Anti-Oedipus reads Marx’s Capital as setting forth a narrative in which unknowing actors and circumstances of chance gave rise to the emergence of the current global capitalist system. This view is contrasted with classical interpretations, or ideologies, in which people of intelligence, diligence, and frugality intentionally and consciously forged divisions of class structure that would eventually become the present capitalist condition.15 Drawing influence from Delueze’s and Guattari’s interpretation of a Marxist-contingent origins theory of capitalism, Chapter 2 of this dissertation grounds the emergence of NGO music culture in Kenya as dependent upon contingent historical circumstances of chance rather than planned actions brought about by explicit human intention. 1.4.4 Contingency in Behavioral Psychology The use of contingency in the social sciences contains a dialogic historiographic lineage that extends from psychology through organizational and management studies. I invoke several uses of contingency from these publications. Burrhus Frederic Skinner’s Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969) re-articulated notions posited in Skinner’s earlier writings (Skinner 1966), which subsequently laid the groundwork for the behavioral analytical psychological approach of radical behavioralism. Skinner’s radical behavioralism extended the realm of stimuli affecting behavior to a wide range of contingencies. These included genetics, 15 My interpretation of Anti-Oedipus here has also been influenced by Jason Read’s article “Universal History of Contingency: Deleuze and Guattari on the History of Capitalism” (2003). 23 thought, feelings, and external stimuli, among other variables. Casting variables shaping human behavior as contingencies, Skinner could address the problem of suggesting necessary relationships in his experiments that would be reproducible in every circumstance. He could, through these means, account for the presence of unknown contingent influences that could not be controlled for. My use of contingency reflects this application in behavioral analytic approaches in that I depict numerous cause and effect circumstances. The influencing factors in these portrayals, such as the influence of Tabu Osusa in shaping Makadem’s musical identity, are contingencies in Skinner’s sense of the word in that circumstances of contact between individuals, groups, histories, or technologies suggest cause and effect relationships shaping human behavior. This adoption of contingency as an influencing variable frees the realm of influencing factors shaping NGO culture to all any perceivable influencing factors, rational or not, while remaining open to additional unseen forces at work. My application of contingency departs sharply from a behavioral analytic approach in that I am not concerned with the reproducible and experimental dimensions of these contingent relations. Sigrid Glenn, a behavioral analytic psychologist influenced by and former student of Skinner, extended Skinner’s notions of contingency to cultural formation through her presentation of “meta-contingencies” in “Contingencies and Meta-Contingencies: Towards a Synthesis of Behavior Analysis and Cultural Materialism" (1988).16 Glenn theorized metacontingencies as the repeated and consistent “operants” (behaviors) shared among multiple individuals in a group (1988: 167-168). In short, particular operant behaviors persist despite variable membership (new members arriving and others leaving). These meta-contingencies come to constitute a culture. Although a behavioral analyst, for her construction of metacontingencies, Glenn also drew influence from anthropologist Melvin Harris’s notion of “cultural materialism” (1979), and the two collaborated briefly before Harris’ death. Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 of this dissertation reflect the expansion of contingencies into the formation of culture by illustrating the development of Afro-fusion as a genre constituted through social contact between Osusa, the artists at Ketebul Music, and Alliance Française’s Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative. Although my use of contingency relates to Glenn’s expansion of Skinner’s notion of contingencies to meta-contingencies as a behavior analytic approach. I employ a 16 Skinner’s fictional account of an experimental living community, titled Walden Two (1948) provided the primary influence for Glenn’s notions of meta-contingencies. 24 participant-observation ethnographic approach as opposed to an experimental one. That is, I make use of an anthropological ethnographic style that privileges narrative and inductive associations based on fieldwork observations/experiences and organically structured interviews with the individuals featured. 1.4.5 Contingency in Organizational Theory Organizational and management psychology and related fields of organizational and business studies have drawn substantially from the applications of contingency set forth by Skinner. They continue to dialogue with Skinner’s contemporaries (i.e. Sigrid Glenn) and have constructed hundreds of studies approaching the workplace as a site for psychological examination in order to achieve a better understanding of organizational and management capacities. Some of the earliest contingency theories in organizational psychology are Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker’s The Management of Innovation (1961), Joan Woodward’s Management and Technology (1958) and Fred Fiedler’s “A Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness” (1964). Contingency theories within organizational studies approach the organization as a system containing subsystems and operating within an external environment. The goal of contingency theories in organizational behavior studies is to ascertain patterns of external and internal contingencies and order them to provide best practices for management and operational effectiveness.17 Ethnographic contingency intersects with contingency-focused management scholarship in its topical focus on organizations as socio-cultural entities characterized by behavior influenced by internal and external contingencies, but diverges in its reliance on qualitative as opposed to quantitative research methodologies. 1.4.6 African Music Sources I begin this section by referencing those texts that do not receive popular mention within ethnomusicology but to which, outside of the fieldwork process, I owe the lion’s share of my contextual knowledge about Kenyan music. For all of the reasonably positioned arguments against discrete dualities of insiders/outsiders and emic/etic perspectives, I argue that there remains a common sense notion that those researchers with a lifetime of experience in a region and who maintain embedded social ties there possess a more nuanced understanding of the area’s culture dynamics than those researchers, such as myself, who have lived most of their lives 17 For an overview of early contingency theories in organizational psychology see “An Alternative to Macro and Micro Contingency Theories: An Integrative Model” (Mealiea and Lee 1979). I do not explore this body of literature in depth here so as to not stray afield from the ethnographic approach taken in this dissertation. 25 outside of that geographical social space. I therefore found texts by authors who have strong familial and experiential ties to Kenya and East Africa to provide the most in-depth documentation of Kenyan music culture. The work I found most helpful in illustrating the complex nuances of contemporary Kenyan popular music-scapes was Joyce Nyairo’s dissertation “‘Reading the Referents’: (Inter)Texuality in Contemporary Kenyan Popular Music” (2004) as well as her subsequent writings derived from material within her dissertation (2003a; 2003b; 2004a; 2004b; 2005; 2008; 2009; Nyairo and Ogude 2003; Nyairo and Ogude 2005). I reference this work throughout the dissertation in relation to the Kenyan popular music industry (in particular its focus on the Nairobi City Ensemble and Tabu Osusa, who “Part 2” will feature prominently). I also draw influence from Nyairo’s theoretical approach to intertextuality that maps the interplay between social life, industry, individuals, and lyrical texts of Kenyan popular music. My hope with this dissertation is to build, in some small way, upon the work of Nyairo and Ogude in this area. Given the lack of globally distributed primary research on what George Senoga-Zake and others have referred to as Kenyan “folk music” (1986), I found the following dissertations and publications immensely valuable, especially in linking popular music practices in Afro-fusion to styles of music performance, often referred to as “traditional,” signifying Kenyan cultural heritage. For these dimensions of Kenyan music I credit Patricia Achieng Opondo’s dissertation, “Dodo Performance in the Context of Women’s Associations Amongst the Luo of Kenya” (1996), Everret Igobwa’s dissertation titled, “Thum Nyatiti: A Study on the Transformation of the Bowl Lyre of the Luo People of Kenya” (2004), and Jean Kidula’s “‘Sing and Shine’: Religious Popular Music in Kenya” (1998), George Senoga-Zake’s Folk Music of Kenya: For Teachers and Students of Music and for the Music-Loving Public (1986), Okumba Miruka’s Oral Literature of the Luo (2001), and Naomi Kipury’s Oral Literature of the Maasai (1983). An examination of music performance historically common to the regions of Kenya and East Africa more generally has provided contexts for understanding the ways in which music functions presently in the NGO sector. These scholarly sources on East African music from a historical perspective include Terence Ranger’s Dance and Society in Eastern Africa, 18901970: The Beni Ngoma (1975), John Janzen’s Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (1992), as well as Frank Gunderson’s Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania: “We Never Sleep, We Dream of Farming” (2010). Frank Gunderson and Gregory 26 Barz’s edited compendium, Mashindano! Competitive Music Performance in East Africa (2000) provides a broad spectrum of articles featuring various examples of socially organized music competition. Damascus Kafumbe’s “The Kawuugulu Royal Drums: Musical Regalia, History, and Social Organization Among the Baganda People of Uganda” (2011) provided an exhaustive catalog of music sources, primary interviews, and historical information about the development of Kawuugulu Royal Drum repertories and their development. All of the scholarship listed above provided useful documentation of social organization facilitated by music performance in East Africa. A number of East African music studies intersect with the organizational music culture of NGOs in Africa and have thus been valuable to the contextualization of my fieldwork. Kathleen Noss Van Buren’s “Stealing Elephants, Creating Futures: Exploring Uses of Music and Other Arts for Community Education in Nairobi, Kenya” (2006) is a recent dissertation that investigates individuals, schools, NGOs, and grassroots organizations (GROs) constructing forms of community education through music performance in Kenya. She offers further depictions and perspectives on these groups and her applied ethnomusicological engagement with them in several subsequent articles: “Partnering for Social Change: Exploring Relationships Between Musicians and Organizations in Nairobi, Kenya” (2007), “Locating Hope in Performance: Lessons from Edward Kabuye” (2009), “Applied Ethnomusicology and HIV and AIDS: Responsibility, Ability, and Action” (2010), and the book chapter, “Music, HIV/AIDS, and Social Change in Nairobi, Kenya” (2011). I have attempted to build on Van Buren’s research by mapping music initiatives of a contrasting segment of Nairobi’s civil society. The internationally networked and funded organizations documented here (such as Alliance Française, Ketebul Music, and Ford Foundation) operate within a cultural sphere that intersects in many ways with the locally constituted grass-roots initiatives portrayed in her dissertation. Additionally, Leonard Mjomba’s Empowering Kenyan Youth to Combat HIV/AIDS Using Ngoma Dialogue Circles: A Grounded Theory Approach (2005) utilized an applied approach to incorporating health education into hybridized traditional music practices, which he refers to as ngoma circles. Both Van Buren and Mjomba’s studies provided valuable stepping off points for the local context of this dissertation. Although focused outside of Kenya, Gregory Barz, in Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda (2006), illustrated how community-based organizations (CBOs) in Uganda, 27 such as Meeting Point and TASO Drama Group, have embraced performance art (theater, dance, and song) to raise awareness and increase dialogue about effective HIV prevention (2006: 5367). More recently, Peter Hoesing’s dissertation titled, “Kusamira Ritual Music and the Social Reproduction of Wellness in Uganda” (2011) examines how indigenous healers and healing associations in Uganda adapt, negotiate, and compete with global “development” culture associated organizations such as NGOs. This dissertation attempts to contribute to this small but growing body of research that traverses music and organizational development in East Africa. A recent wave of publications in Africanist ethnomusicology and performance studies has examined musical expression as a reflection of the postcolonial African nation state, a political perspective from which this dissertation aims to draw. Njogu and Maupeu’s edited volume Songs and Politics in Eastern Africa (2007) features articles that utilize global historical lenses to examine streams of transnational contact on music expression and resistance during the colonial and postcolonial periods in Kenya. Drawing from this collection’s illustrations of politically inscribed music in East Africa, my dissertation continues to trace histories of global politics and the call and response of music in Kenya. Francesca Castaldi’s Choreographies of African Identities: Negritude, Dance, and the National Ballet of Senegal (2006), Laura Edmondson’s The Nation on Stage: Performance and Politics in Tanzania (2007), Kelly Askew’s Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (2002), and Bob White’s Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaire (2008), have researched how national ballets, theatre troupes, and popular music groups use music to simultaneously reflect, reinforce, and resist nationalist ideology. 1.4.7 Globalization and World Music Sources The contemporary globalized cultural landscape that Anthony Giddens described as consisting of “larger and larger numbers of people living in circumstances in which disembedded institutions, linking local practices with globalized social relations, organize major aspects of day-to-day life” (1990: 79) complicates locally and nationally bound readings of contemporary sociocultural contexts. Given the highly global identities of NGOs, researching music within the NGO sector contributes to recent discussions of expressed nationalism in artistic performance to include the ways in which global politics, nationalism, and local cultural manifestations intermingle and influence one another. 28 Arjun Appadurai’s and Anna Tsing’s landmark works on globalization have impacted discourse on the phenomenon across disciplines. Appadurai’s work Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996) significantly influenced this dissertation’s perspectives on globalization as social processes embedded in plurality, and ones in which imagination, economy, politics, media, and culture hold significant sway. Tsing’s ethnography Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2005) theorized global encounters in the Indonesian rain forests. In Tsing’s global ethnography, environmentalists, scientists, private corporations, rural settlers, and politicians occupy intersecting global streams of economy, culture, and history. This text provided an immensely valuable approach to my ethnographic perspective on globalization by documenting perspectives of participants that were varied, sometimes conflicted, and often separated by geography, but ironically tied to each other at global centers of intersection. My dissertation invokes Tsing’s analysis by attempting, also through fieldwork, to highlight perspectives and interests of musicians, funders, clients, and administrators operating within the global streams of contact in Kenya’s NGO sector. In a similar vein, but from a musicological perspective, Louise Meintjes’ Sound of Africa!: Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio (2003), an ethnography of South African recording studios, embraces a global perspective of music production that particularly influences this dissertation’s portrayal of an NGO music studio, Ketebul Music (see “Part 2”), as a locale of global intersection. Meintjes writes, “The studio represents a microcosm of the society within which it exists. It offers a prism into late capitalist, late apartheid experience and into how global popular culture flows are activated within the context of local politics” (2003: 9). Drawing from Meintjes’ conceptual positioning of the South African music studio, this dissertation examines the NGO music studio Ketebul Music at the center of international, national, and local streams of cultural contact. Ethnomusicologists have made significant attempts in recent years to confront the musical manifestations of globalization and I have drawn extensively from this body of work for this dissertation. Mark Slobin’s Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West (1993a) and Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music (2008), as well as Veit Erlmann’s Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination: South Africa and the West (1993) both make substantial strides in the direction of theorizing global interconnections of music production. Much of this work has intersected with and influenced the extensive musicological writings on the World Music 29 industry, which musicologists have utilized as a frame to examine processes of globalization. Of these authors, Steven Feld (1988; 1996; 2000; Feld and Kirkegaard 2011), Hugo Zemp (1996), Veit Erlmann (1992; 1996a; 1996b; 1998; 1999), Laurent Aubert (2007), and Martin Stokes (2003; 2004) have been most influential. I review this body of scholarship extensively in Chapter 6’s introduction to Ketebul Music, an organization on the front lines of marketing their music within the international World Music industry. 1.4.8 African NGO Sources A range of studies on humanitarian aid, human rights, development, economics, and African history have forwarded critical examinations of the sustainability, successes, and failures of NGOs working in Africa. This scholarly discourse contributes to the contextualization of NGO musical activities. The recently published volumes by the Kenyan human rights advocate, Makau Mutua, titled Kenya’s Quest for Democracy: Taming Leviathan (2008) and Human Rights NGOs in East Africa (2009) provide a historical view of challenges faced by human rights NGOs in the particular region of this project, thereby also informing the organizational climate of NGO music production. Stephen Ndegwa’s The Two Faces of Civil Society: NGOs and Politics in Africa (1996), has also provided an invaluable specific focus on the political development and history of NGOs in Kenya and a comparative study of two Kenyan NGOs. Other resources focusing on NGO history and politics in Africa include Erica Bornstein’s The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe (2005), Michael Jennings’ Surrogates of the State: NGOs, Development, and Ujamaa in Tanzania (2008), and Sam Moyo’s NGO Advocacy in Zimbabwe: Systematizing an Old Function or Inventing a New Role? (1991). Paul Nugent’s Africa Since Independence: A Comparative History (2004) provides a comparative history of African nationstates from the mid-twentieth century onward. Nugent’s narrative provides the historical framework for the emergence of NGO development discussed in Chapter 2. Turning to a body of critical perspectives on NGO culture, Alexander de Waal’s Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (1997), David Sogge’s Give and Take: What’s the Matter with Foreign Aid? (2002), Fiona Terry’s Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (2002), and Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (2010) have provided one competing 30 perspective addressed in this dissertation. None of these works, however, privilege the voices of those in Africa most severely affected by such aid initiatives through interviews or participant observer-based fieldwork, nor does music or expressive culture generally play a role in their discussions. This dissertation aims to build upon this body of scholarship by providing an ethnographic approach to NGO culture. 1.4.9 Organizational Studies Sources Organizational studies conducted in the social sciences also inform this dissertation. Civil society and public administration scholarship in particular have made some recent attempts to identify the scope and characteristics of the international nonprofit sector (of which NGOs are key actors). In this regard, I have greatly benefitted from John Keane’s writings on the defining characteristics of global civil society. These sources include Global Civil Society? (2003) which interrogates the variable meanings of the concept, and Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (1988). The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project18 is an ongoing comparative research project examining the global nonprofit sector. Lester Salamon’s and Helmut Anheier’s Defining the Nonprofit Sector: A Cross-National Analysis (1997) was one of the first major publications that resulted from the Johns Hopkins initiative. Although Salamon and Anheier did not include Kenya in the data collection for this publication, Salamon and Sokolowski have since collected data on Kenya and a number of “developing” nations, including Kenya published in Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector, Volume Two (2004). Karuti Kanyinga and Winnie Mitullah, the two Kenyan researchers primarily responsible for collecting the Kenyan data for Salamon and Sokolowski, later published The Non-Profit Sector in Kenya: What We Know and What We Don’t Know (2007) mapping the nonprofit sector in Kenya. This study drew upon many more resources and perspectives that pertain to Kenya in particular to attain a more nuanced perspective on the organizational landscape from the perspective of Kenyan researchers. Kanyinga’s and Mitullah’s research is an example of a quantitative study conducted within Kenya by Kenyans who may be privy to relevant perspectives and knowledge not available to non-Kenyan researchers like Salamon and Anheier. Two more recent broad based studies on the NGO sector in Kenya build upon Kanyinga’s and 18 Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society: The Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. http://www.ccss.jhu.edu/index.php?section=content&view=9&sub=3, accessed 3.25.10. 31 Mitullah’s study: “The Process of Reviewing the NGO Coordination Act of 1990: A Step by Step Road Map” (2009) by Faith Kisinga and “NGO Law Reform in Kenya: Incorporating Best Practices” by Rahma Adan Jillo (2009). Jillo and Kisinga examine law and governance apparatuses in historical perspective. A growing sub-discipline of social anthropology known as organizational anthropology has opened new pathways for conducting fieldwork in the sorts of organizational settings that my research will encounter. Some of the earliest organizational anthropologists active during the 1920s were social network theorists (Kilduff and Tsai 2003: 13). Beginning in the 1920s, a group of anthropologists in the Harvard Business School began a ten-year investigation of factory life in the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company (Kilduff and Tsai 2003: 14). These network theorists used a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to examine how the individuals that acted within the factory were socially connected. This approach consisted of diagramming the social linkages between individuals within organizations. Network approaches have since been utilized in a number of fields, including sociology, mathematics, psychology, physics, and biology but have particularly early roots in anthropology. Martin Kilduff and Wenpin Tsai’s Social Networks and Organizations (2003), Samuel Leinhardt’s Social Networks: A Developing Paradigm (1977), and John Scott’s Social Network Analysis: A Handbook (2000) comprise three foundational texts that address case studies, history, and methodology of this approach. Although social network methods often utilize surveys or archival records, I will derive my information primarily from field interviews and participation in the community and render these connections in ethnographic form. Nonetheless, the network approaches by these authors partially inform the theoretical design, methodology, and analysis of my fieldwork data. Since the 1980s, a surge of ethnographic and participant observation-based fieldwork has also come into being within anthropological studies. By taking into account the unique confluence of social factors resulting from the rule-governed nature of bureaucratic institutions in relation to those working within them, these studies offer perspectives on organizations and industries as discrete cultural entities. This line of inquiry is uniquely suited to an ethnographic study of NGOs. John Van Maanen’s Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography (1988), Susan Wright’s Anthropology of Organizations (1994), and David Gellner and Eric Hirsch’s Inside Organizations: Anthropologists at Work (2001) provide strategies for conducting fieldwork in organizational settings. 32 1.5 Background 1.5.1 Nairobi as a Location of Contingent Cultural Intersection Nairobi is an ideal locale to study the global streams of cultural contact such as those reflected in the manifestations of NGO music culture.19 The city’s identity has been, even long before its emergence as an urban capital, a contested space of cultural negotiation and convergence within the East African region. These convergences, like NGO culture, reference many points along a conceptual continuum spanning local to global contingencies. The emergence of global civil society culture in Nairobi thus carries forth recurring patterns of cultural fluidity that deconstruct imagined and exoticized stereotypes of Africa as a place of indigenous societies with static cultural histories. The following historical examples of cultural convergence and fusion in the region that came to be known as Nairobi provide background information about the site of this study and contextualize this dissertation’s conception of NGO music culture. Figure 1.3: Map locating Nairobi (marked by the green pin) within the East Africa Community (shaded yellow). Map created using Google Maps. 19 Chapter 2 builds on this background by providing a historical analysis of NGO development in Kenya and its intersections with music culture. 33 1.5.2 Precolonial Cultural Intersections 1.5.2.1 Early Settlers and Migrations Even ethnic communities considered most indigenous to the region of Nairobi, namely the Gikuyu,20 Akamba, and Maasai, starkly contrast one another in migratory histories, linguistic affiliations, and cultural traditions. Bantu and Nilotic migrations from East and West Africa respectively that began before the dawn of the first millennia foreshadow the theme of global cultural incursion on local settlements referenced in the emergence of global civil society culture in Kenya.21 The societies that arrived in East Africa as a result of the Bantu and Nilotic migrations later splintered into numerous East African ethnic groups and now constitute a majority of the over seventy ethnic communities residing within Kenya’s borders. These early historical trajectories supply the context for the presence of Gikuyu, Akamba, and Maasai communities in the region and reaffirm a portrayal of culture as fluid and shifting over time. The Gikuyu, who comprise approximately 20% of the Kenyan population, are Kenya’s largest ethnic denomination. Archeological and linguistic evidence suggests that the Gikuyu culture was passed down through descendants of Bantu migrations who arrived in East Africa around the sixteenth century. Gikuyu folklore traces the group’s ancestry to the Mount Kenya region, around one hundred miles outside the city limits of Nairobi. Given the substantial population of the community, it has for several centuries also populated the inner and surrounding areas of what is now Nairobi and consequently also played a significant part in Kenya’s government and commercial industries. Bantu migrations that brought Gikuyus to Mount Kenya placed them in direct contact with Maasai, who currently comprise around 2% of Kenya’s population, communities that had settled in the region centuries earlier. The incursion of new Gikuyu populations into regions primarily inhabited by the Maasai created struggles over resources such as land and cattle. The contrasting migratory backgrounds of the Maasai and Gikuyu caused the two groups to have distinct language and cultural practices, which encouraged divides between the societies. The co-habitation of Gikuyus and Maasai in the region did, however, encourage some inter-group mergers such as those created through intermarriage. The 20 “Gikuyu” is often spelled “Kikuyu” in scholarship, popular discourses and news media. I have chosen this spelling largely as a result of the advice of Gikuyu friends who suggested that it more closely reflects how they pronounce the word. In Chapter 11, I will discuss some of the politics of the Kikuyu/Gikuyu spelling differentiation in the context of Ketebul Music’s choice to use the “Kikuyu” spelling for their documentary, Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). 21 This historical development will be addressed in detail in Chapter 2. 34 Akamba, an ethnic group that like the Gikuyu and Maasai populate the areas in and around Nairobi, are also descendants of Bantu migrations but arrived in the region much later (during the first half of the nineteenth century) and currently comprise about 10% of Kenya’s population. Tensions between Maasai, Akamba, Gikuyu and numerous other communities over land and resources continue to resurface in contemporary strains of Kenyan society.22 1.5.2.2 Transcontinental Trade Routes Serving as an intersection of transcontinental trade routes, Nairobi and its surrounding areas were located along a path that linked inland and coastal East Africa. Most notably among the earliest groups to shape the history of transcontinental trade in East Africa were Arabs. Arabs came to East Africa as early as the fourteenth century seeking valuable resources, both dead (in the case of the ivory), and alive (in the case of slaves). 1.5.2.3 Religious Missionaries In addition to pursuing trade and commerce, Arabs also brought an Islamizing mission to the region the region Kenya now inhabits. These sentiments came to influence religious practices in the region, particularly in the coastal city of Mombasa, which now remains largely Muslim in religious affiliation. But it was the cultural imperialism of European nations reinforced by religious, exploratory, and enlightenment ideologies that most intensely influenced religious practices taking place more inland in areas such as those around present day Nairobi. Various waves of Christian missionaries settled in East Africa beginning in the fifteenth century. Portuguese Catholic missionaries settled in East Africa from 1498 until around the mid-1700s, and later the British Anglican church and other Christian denominations arrived in the region. One especially notable example of a British Anglican missionary presence in precolonial Kenya was the British Church Missionary Society by Johann Ludwig Krapf founded in 1844 (Strayer 1978: 30; Kidula 1998: 39). 1.5.2.4 Kiswahili: Language for Cross-Cultural Communication The history of intense intercultural mingling that characterized East Africa from the earliest societies that settled in the region, for which I have presented a very general overview, gave birth to the language of Kiswahili. Kiswahili acted and continues to function as a linguistic technology intended for purposes of facilitating communication between the multitude of ethnic 22 University of Pennsylvania, African Studies Center’s “East Africa Living Encyclopedia: Kenya- Ethnic Groups” Webpage (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/kethnic.htm, accessed 06.18.12). 35 groups residing and conducting business in the region. The hybrid language relies on core grammatical tenets of Bantu origin but also absorbed words from Nilotic and Cushitic languages in addition to English and Arabic. Kiswahili probably first developed as a specialized language used by Arabic and East African traders for purposes of business but quickly grew to become a lingua franca for much of East Africa. Realizing the utility of Kiswahili for purposes of evangelism, Christian missionaries also studied the language and created some of the first written documents in the language by publishing translated Kiswahili versions of the Bible. Later in Kenya’s history, in the mid-twentieth century, Kiswahili made possible unilateral multiethnic group resistance movements against the British colonial government. Kiswahili served especially well to forward this cause given the notoriously low level of fluency among British settlers. English, however, continued to hold sway as a language of utility and power for the newly liberated nation of Kenya. English became the first official national language in 1962 at independence. It was not until 1973 that the Kenyan government instituted Kiswahili as an official language. Even then, it retained a second-place status relative to English given the lack of an official Kiswahili curriculum in public school systems. Ten years later, in 1983, Kiswahili became a mandatory part of the national education agenda and is now taught in Kenyan public schools across the country.23 1.5.3 The Colonial Period and the Early Urbanization of Nairobi Initial urbanization of the region now known as Nairobi came about largely through its development as a central station for the Ugandan Railway, a British railway project that stretched from the coastal city of Mombasa into the center of Uganda. The installation of the station in 1899 served Christian missionary interests, as well as British interests in the procurement of resources, both human and material, which the inner geographical regions of East Africa provided. The growing population of British settlers in the region forcibly removed Gikuyu communities from the most fertile lands, setting in motion a cycle of land grabbing that continued throughout post-independence Kenya among the nation’s many ethnic groups. To facilitate the construction of the railway, British militias, engineers, entrepreneurs, and investors employed Indian and Pakistani merchants and laborers who settled in the region in search of business and trade opportunities. The industrial and colonial class structure then 23 University of Pennsylvania, African Studies Center’s “East Africa Living Encyclopedia: Kenya- Languages” Webpage (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/klanguages.htm/, accessed 06.19.12). 36 created a hierarchy in which the British grabbed the most fertile land. The resulting geographical and social phenomenon was that Nairobi became a city more reflective of the characteristics of its European, Indian, and Pakistani majorities despite its geographical location on the African continent. This occurred to the extent that the ethnic groups that were so-called indigenous to the area (Gikuyu, Akamba, and Maasai) supplied menial labor and were relegated to land on the margins of the city center. The marginalization of the indigenous African populations only increased in the years leading up to independence. As the Mau Mau resistance movement against the British colonizers escalated, the city administration required Africans to obtain specialized passes for travel within the city limits and curfews restricted the movement of Africans at night (Kidula 1998: 33). The British fully embraced the utility of Nairobi as an intermediary railway outpost between the coast and inner territories of Uganda by naming it the capital of the British protectorate in 1905, declaring it a municipality in 1919, the capital of the British colony in 1920, and an official city in 1950 (Kidula 1998: 33). This early history of Nairobi presents the city as one relatively recently constructed, in comparison to the coastal trading centers of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, through intersecting streams of global migrations rather than a place with long-standing local roots. Nairobi would later become one of the largest urban centers in sub-Saharan Africa and a hub for business and industry for East Africa. 1.5.4 Post-Independence and Construction of the Nation State Although the struggle for independence achieved a more localized culture of governance for Kenya compared to the previous British rule, the new nation state, led by Jomo Kenyatta, manifested a continuation of many pre-independence struggles over land and resources and brought a new set of economic struggles that were no less globally intertwined. In many ways, the new government reflected many cultural impressions left by the British. Nairobi became the nation’s capital, as it was the capital of the British colony, and the system and structure of government closely mirrored that of Britain’s. Kenyatta’s Kenya utilized many of the draconian strategies used by the British to exert control of the region. In particular, this largely consisted of grabbing land and favoritism based on ethnic alliances with a particularly large amount of spoils going to the family members of the president and the Gikuyu community he belonged to (Mutua 2008). At independence, Nairobi had become a key destination for many migrants from within 37 and also outside of Kenya. Proposed opportunities for labor provided key incentives in this regard, and as a result, informal urban settlements began to develop to house the growing population, much of which had traveled to Nairobi from rural locations within Kenya. Given the over seventy ethnic groups living within Kenya’s borders, Nairobi's informal settlements, which would come to be popularly classified as “slums,” created intensely complex spaces for linguistic and cultural interaction. Breaking down distinctions between rural and urban and giving way to a geo-historical exchange of economy and capital, these groups continue to travel back and forth great distances between Nairobi and their ancestral homes throughout Kenya. Nairobi thus has added new layers of cultural convergence to its already diverse character and history. Migrants also flocked to Nairobi from outside of Kenya. Political instability in neighboring countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (known as Zaire between 1971 and 1997), Uganda, and Somalia has resulted in many of these migrations. Although Kenya continued to undergo internal tensions since independence, it managed to remain more politically stable than some of its neighbors and therefore provided a safe haven for populations living in other countries fleeing persecution and war. These migrations from outside of Kenya have resulted in large settlements of refugees on the borders of Kenya as well as within Nairobi. Exemplifying a recent chapter in this trend, a growing population of Somalis living in Nairobi and in refugee camps and villages in Northern Kenya has become the focus of some of Kenya's most heated political and social debates. 1.5.5 Recent Struggles of National Politics and Ethnicity In 2007, several months of violence along ethnic lines ensued after a national election ballot count for the Kenyan presidency reported that Mwai Kibaki and the KANU political party had won a second term against the opposing political party, ODM led by Raila Odinga. The violence resulted in nearly 1,000 deaths and over 600,000 displaced people (BBC News 2008).24 Odinga, a Luo (Kenya’s second-largest ethnic community) by ethnic affiliation accused Kibaki, who is Gikuyu by ethnic lineage, and his political party, of corruption at the polls and in the ballot count. The violence not only referenced a concern over corruption and transition to a new political party but also signaled a past history of political leadership characterized by favoritism along ethnic and clan lines. As a result, violence broke out with particular ferocity in areas with 24 BBC News. 2008. “Some 600,000 Displaced in Kenya,” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7239234.stm/, accessed 06.18.12.) 38 histories of ethnic conflict, such as the Rift Valley where Kalenjins and Gikuyus had for years struggled over land rights and access to resources, many of which had been granted or taken away based on the ethnic identity of national and local political leadership. In Western provinces such as Nyanza, where Luos make up the majority of the population, ODM party sympathizers attacked Gikuyus, looted their businesses, and forced families to abandon their land. These recent events exemplify some of the negative dimensions of cultural intersection that have manifested in the arena of nation state politics. The following chapters will further reference these tensions and negotiations by exemplifying NGO initiatives aimed at addressing inter-ethnic conflict, encouraging national unity through pride in diversity. 1.5.6 Nairobi as a Site of Global Intersections of Music Culture The numerous intersecting cultures that have continually rehashed and renewed the diverse cultural landscape of Nairobi project a diverse music-scape full of divisions and fusions that contextualize contemporary Kenyan NGO music culture. The following historical view of Nairobi’s music culture emphasizes such convergences and provides an introduction to some of the genres and modes of production from which the city’s NGO music culture draws its expressive and aesthetic content. Many genres commonly heard in Nairobi’s soundscape, which I will discuss below, such as benga and mugithi, will be re-examined in subsequent chapters in addition to their relationship with independent music studios on Nairobi’s River Road. The following section will provide a brief introduction to these elements of music culture, which will be elaborated on throughout the course of the dissertation. 1.5.6.1 Precolonial Music-Scapes and Diverse Ethnic Heritages Kenya’s over seventy ethnic groups, each of which maintains remarkably diverse expressions of identity through music, have made the country rich in musical diversity. These expressions of culture also reflect ever-changing and cross-fertilizing customs and norms. During the precolonial era, the collective presence of Gikuyu, Akamba, and Maasai ethnic groups, and their musical practices, made the region a place of musical intersection long before its emergence as an urban center. Although Kenya's many ethnic groups maintained much of their musical heritage through cultural practices, such as rites of passage, funerals, and weddings, the societal changes that came with colonization, industrialization, and globalization caused the rapid natural attrition of many discretely ethnic musical heritages. This was especially the case for the Gikuyu, who faced substantial pressure to abandon traditional musical practices under the direction of the 39 British regional government. During the early twentieth century struggle for independence, the Colonial magistrate banned Gikuyus from participating in any form of musical engagement in response to uses of music in the Mau Mau resistance movement for organizing strategies of protest and revolt (Mwaura 2007). 1.5.6.2 Postcolonial “Folk” Music Preservation and Presentation After independence, institutionalized and government-sponsored presentation and preservation of Kenya’s ethnic music heritages assisted in promoting national identity by acknowledging the cultural diversity with the nation’s borders. Government offices based in Nairobi, such as the Ministry of Culture and Permanent Presidential Commission on Music (PPCM), as well as tourism outfits such as Bomas of Kenya, created numerous commercial and public avenues to identify, preserve, promote, and present the musical traditions of many of Kenya's ethnic groups. A notable example of this includes the Kenya Music Festival, a nationwide elementary through secondary school music competition that takes place at district, regional, and state levels. Among other genres of performance, the Kenya Music Festival encourages performances that promote the preservation of Kenya’s cultural heritage (Van Buren 2006: 313-325).25 Another example is the five volume Ngoma za Kenya, a video documentary series of archived “folk” performances produced by the Permanent Presidential Commission on Music. These sorts of institutionalized presentations of “folk” music reflect local and global streams of culture equally in that they emerge out of Kenyan political motivations to promote local culture but also reference a strategy imported from Western nation states for building national unity. Although notions of “folk” then necessarily import dimensions of Western political history, the government supported practice of cultural preservation has served to preserve, promote, and identify an exceptional diversity of music in Kenya. A number of these musics will be documented in Chapter 2’s review of historical contexts of NGO-oriented music culture in East Africa. 1.5.6.3 Nairobi as a Hub for Global Intersections of Popular Music Throughout the course of the twentieth century, Nairobi became a hub for popular music 25 In addition to the pages noted here, Van Buren’s 2006 dissertation “Stealing Elephants, Creating Futures: Exploring Uses of Music and Other Arts for Community Education in Nairobi” provides ethnographic documentation of numerous examples of music performance at the 2004 Kenya Music Festival by community music groups and education centers. 40 industries and technologies for the entire region of East Africa and much of sub-Saharan Africa. In the early twentieth century, the gramophone market serving British colonial settlers marked an early chapter in the presence of globally distributed music technologies in Nairobi (Gecau 1995: 561; Kidula 1998: 34). By the mid-twentieth century, European producers had created recording studios and were pressing 78 rpm records in the capital. International music production and pressing houses would soon follow in the 1960s, also migrating to Nairobi and surrounding towns. The largest and longest running of these was Polygram. Andrew Crawford, AIT, EMI and CBS also conducted business in these regions during the post-independence years (Wallis and Malm 1984; 1992; Nyairo 2004a: 1-38). The presence of these local and transnational operations would make Nairobi a center for popular music production, not only in Kenya but for the whole of East Africa. They were particularly successful in not only distributing Western music to the East African market but also providing distribution for Congolese rumba and soukous musicians to the entire continent and later into Europe. During the 1970s and 1980s, Tanzanian and Kenyan musicians began performing the Congolese influenced rumba music in Kiswahili and at faster dance tempos. The East African based multinational record labels capitalized on the growing popularity of this genre and produced some of the premier bands during that time, such as Super Mazembe, Mlimani Park, and Orchestra Virunga. The international production houses located in Nairobi hired local Kenyan brokers and scouts to seek out local talent. These independent contractors quickly learned the technical and business skills of the imported popular music industry and set up their own local music studios. By the 1970s, dozens of independent studios had sprung up throughout Kenya providing significant competition for the multinational recording outlets. Some of these local pioneer music producers/production house owners included A.P. Chandarana, David Amunga, Oluoch Kanindo, Mzee Daudia, Peter Colmore, and Charles Worrod. Although scattered throughout Kenya, most of these independent studios are located along Nairobi’s River Road, where musicians throughout Kenya come to record their music. The competitive edge of the local studios has always been the speed and low cost at which they are capable of recording albums and their close ties to the local market. During the 1960s, new local independent music studios such as Chandarana, Kanindo, and Melodica cornered the emerging market of benga, Kenya’s most iconic and widely 41 recognized popular music. Benga emerged as a guitar music sometime around the mid-twentieth century after an influx of soldiers brought by World War II came with Western guitars and guitar music. The Luo community of Western Kenya applied the plucking technique of the nyatiti (a lyre which has for a long time been a prominent symbol of Luo musical heritage) to the newly introduced guitars, which formed the basis for this new popular music. Although the cultural and stylistic roots of benga grew out of Western Kenya as a genre primarily performed by the Luo, the style also drew influence from widely popular Congolese rumba music. Benga quickly spread throughout Kenya to become a national popular music style adopted by many ethnic groups and sung in an equally wide array of languages. Perhaps the most famous benga musician was D.O. Misiani, whose popularity throughout the 1970s brought him to perform throughout East Africa, Europe, and North America. Today, various styles of benga are recorded in the studios located on Nairobi’s River Road and can be heard on Kenya’s “vernacular music” radio stations, which cater to local audiences using ethnic languages relevant to the geographic reach of the broadcast.26 The music most commonly heard on the vernacular stations around Nairobi is not Luo benga, but Gikuyu popular music which, although demonstrating influences from the benga genre, has an especially distinct historical development. The prevalence of Gikuyu music on radio waves in and around Nairobi was and is largely due to the large Gikuyu population in the area. Unlike the varied incarnations of the popular Luo music benga, Gikuyu popular music reflects the heavy influence of American country music styles. This influence manifests to the extent of Gikuyu musicians and even audience members wearing Stetson hats and cowboy boots as well as owning collections of American country records. Such transnational cultural fusions embedded within so-called local musics reaffirm the characterization of Nairobi as a place of cultural intersection.27 Musics of Kenya’s border regions as well as music imported from outside of Kenya also comprise a significant portion of Nairobi’s musical soundscape. Some of these genres include the Kiswahili popular musics taarab and bongo flava from Tanzania and the Kenyan coast. Congolese popular music is widely popular throughout Kenya. Additionally, a large audience of Somali migrants concentrated in the Nairobi district of Eastleigh has brought Somali popular 26 27 Osusa, Tabu. Retracing the Benga Rhythm. DVD. Distributed by Ketebul Music. Nairobi, Kenya, 2008. Osusa, Tabu. Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music. DVD. Distributed by Ketebul Music. Nairobi, Kenya, 2010. 42 music into the urban capital. Perhaps the most blatant instances of global influence in the history of Nairobi's music culture are the American and Caribbean popular music such as hip-hop and reggae that has come to dominate Nairobi's popular music radio stations and the tastes of a younger generation of Kenyans. The impact of the globally expansive commercial music industry of the United States has also resulted in the emergence of hip-hop styles created by a younger generation of Kenyans rapping in ethnic dialects, Sheng, Kiswahili, and English. “Part 2” of this dissertation will further examine these intersections of the American popular music industry and Nairobi’s NGO music culture. 1.6 Chapter Outline: A Contingently Structured Text Linking theory and method to presentation, the progression of chapters in this dissertation further emphasizes the notion of ethnographic contingency by paralleling the fieldwork process employed during the course of research. The discursive stance of the researcher (myself), will attain progressively closer proximity to the subject to reflect the research process, which first began primarily through secondary sources in the United States, then became increasingly participant observation-oriented throughout the fieldwork process in Kenya. As the dissertation progresses, I present shifts in methodological approaches employed during the fieldwork process in relation to the particular themes evoked in the text. Out of the various stages of the research process, contrasting themes, or voices, emerged that the chapters of this dissertation attempt to capture as equally valid relational perspectives on NGO music culture. 1.6.1 Part 1 Chapter 2 adopts a historical perspective that emphasizes macro dimensions of NGO music culture. It depicts the spread of European and North American nonprofit culture to Africa in the form of NGOs tied to global capitalist and postcolonial agendas and “development” ideology. I then contrast these global dimensions of NGO culture with local civil societyoriented East African music practices predating the post 1980s influence of NGO culture. Chapter 3’s comparative survey of international and local NGOs carrying out music initiatives in Nairobi, however, complicates the emphasis on Western influences of NGO culture by exemplifying a wide variety of NGO-oriented music activities in Kenya organized by locally administered Kenyan organizations. Western influence nevertheless continues to retain a prominent position, as the expressive behaviors of Nairobi’s NGO music production initiatives substantially incorporate Western nonprofit-based terminology such as “development,” 43 “sustainability,” “initiatives,” “mission,” “vision,” and “objectives” and reliance on funding channels that largely originate in the Global North. From a broad survey of organizations operating in Nairobi, Kenya, to the perspectives of musicians, producers, and managers that work with and within them, Chapter 4 offers a depiction of NGO music culture in which East African music industry moguls adapt the emerging revenue streams and resources of global civil society in response to a destabilized local music industry. 1.6.2 Part 2 Part 2 presents finer-grained, participant observation-based sets of contingencies by providing a monograph style account of Ketebul Music, an NGO music studio production house at the center of Kenya’s NGO music culture. Chapter 5 launches this participant observationbased perspective by providing an overview of the organization. I also examine the organization’s participation in the international World Music industry in relation to a large body of musicological scholarship interrogating globalization as a conceptual phenomenon exemplified by the World Music industry. I propose to address the underrepresentation of interviews with African musicians and World Music industry stakeholders in this body of research in Part 2. Chapter 6 is an autobiographical account of the life of Ketebul Music’s founder and director to document life experience-based context out of which the organization grew and currently operates. In stark contrast to Part 1’s cultural narrative of the macroeconomic and primarily Western historical/cultural incursions which shape East African music production, this ethnographic illustration of the life of Tabu Osusa demonstrates the powerful agency of an individual stakeholder in East Africa’s music culture whose life circumstances contextualize the mission of the NGO music studio Ketebul Music. Chapter 7 examines the socio-musical contingencies of music production at Ketebul Music through an ethnographic account of stylistic interpretations of Afro-fusion by the two first artists signed to the organization’s label, Makadem and Olith Ratego. Chapter 8 examines Ketebul Music from an organizational network perspective and documents how a series of collaborative projects with the transnational nonprofit, Alliance Française, resulted in the branding of the genre Afro-fusion. Chapter 9 presents a studio ethnography that examines the role and influence of the producer/sound engineer in the production of Afro-fusion. I present a close musical analysis of Jesse Bukindu’s studio production of the song “Halele” by the group Gargar. Chapter 10 documents how members of Ketebul Music, Kenyan scholars, and NGO grantees attempt to 44 impact and empower Kenyan historical consciousness though the production of documentary films that trace the cultural roots of Kenyan popular music. 45 PART 1 46 CHAPTER 2 NGO DEVELOPMENT, KENYAN MUSIC CULTURE, AND GLOBAL NGO MUSIC INDUSTRY INITIATIVES Universal history is the history of contingencies, and not the history of necessity. -Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977) 2.1 Introduction This chapter offers historical perspectives on the development of global civil society and preexisting forms of civil society-oriented East African music practices in order to contextualize the emergence of NGO music culture in Kenya. To outline these varied historical trajectories, I present a history of (1) the emergence of a global civil society culture of NGOs; (2) the rise of NGOs in Africa; and (3) the subsequent growth of international and local NGOs and NGO policies in Kenya. I also examine historical intersections of music culture and NGO culture that include civil society-oriented East African music performance contexts and intersections of the international pop music industry within NGO initiatives in Africa. Rather than present a linear historical presentation of the development of NGO music culture in Kenya, I have adopted a contingency-based approach that depicts numerous intersecting and simultaneously generated historical threads of circumstances. Supporting this contingency-based approach to history, I turn to Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s assertion that, Universal history is the history of contingencies, and not the history of necessity. Ruptures and limits, and not continuity. For great accidents were necessary… to fashion a new machine bearing the determination of the capitalist socius (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 154).28 The emergence of Kenya’s NGO music culture resulted from such contingencies of chance circumstance. Kenya’s historical and political ties to the United States and the United Kingdom, Kenya’s capitalist policy approach taken after independence, and post-Cold War efforts by capitalist countries in the Global North to divert multilateral and international aid away from the 28 Deleuze and Guattari recast Marx’s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1906) as a contingent history by reevaluating Marx’s assessment of proto-capitalist development (see Literature Review in the Introduction). 47 government and to local and transnational NGOs all played a role in this regard.29 Ironically, given their affiliation with a not-for-profit ethos, NGOs emerged as historical products of global capitalism for which the accumulation of capital has been a paramount driving force (Geertz 1973: 126-141). Although the common not-for-profit classification of NGOs challenges Marx’s notion that capitalist organizations must be indelibly tied to surplus value and exploitation of labor, many NGO initiatives have unintentionally and intentionally served to increase capital and control over means of production for those that fund them.30 Kenyatta University Professor of Communications Dr. Leonard Mjomba proposed an interpretation of the United States Peace Corps program that illustrated this point by expressing a common suspicion among Kenyans that philanthropic NGO initiatives often disguise United States’ strategies to attain geo-political control: Especially thinking about U.S. Peace Corps, the young American students who volunteer might have a cause, a genuine cause. But what they do not discover, from my view, is it is more than just philanthropy… There are many layers. One layer is that the U.S. is a great country with a great cause that is going to help liberate the world… the U.S. Peace Corps is out to help. But there is also another dimension, that the U.S. cannot run this world without knowing every corner of it (Mjomba 2011, Interview). Figure 2.1: Dr. Leonard Mjomba, Kenyatta University Professor of Communications (photo by author). 29 Kenya was and continues to be widely reputed as one of the most corrupt governments in Africa and was renowned for the creation of “shell” projects that siphoned aid money into the bank accounts of politicians. Increasingly since the 1990s, multilateral aid organizations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and United Nations began redirecting aid away from the government sector and instead to independent NGOs. 30 I position development discourse as an extension of neoliberal and capitalist economic ideology. Edelman and Haugerund have also argued this position in The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism (2005). 48 Contingent convergences also function in the historical hybridization of NGO culture and music culture. International popular music industry stakeholders played a significant role in the proliferation of NGOs in Africa during mid-1980s while East African contexts of musical performance, which predate the flood of NGOs into the region, reflect many characteristics of contemporary transnational civil society culture. These intersections of music and NGO culture form a contingently-situated historical perspective on NGO music culture development. 2.2 NGO Culture Development 2.2.1 Marx, Das Kapital (1867), and the Paradox of Global Civil Society The development of NGO culture is fundamentally ironic in its direct ties to the global expansion of capitalism. In order to locate the irony of these circumstances, I will first rehearse some of Marx’s fundamental arguments about the nature of capitalism and theorize the contingent relationship between surplus capital and the revenue accumulation of NGOs. Marx theorized that the generation of surplus value was an essential component to the underlying economic and historical principles of capitalism. Surplus value is the capital extracted beyond the absolute cost of production and therefore manifests as the exploitative measure of laborers (1906: 197-241). Expanding control over production of goods and exchange, the capitalist converts surplus value into capital. Capital, Marx asserted, is then reinvested in labor on a larger scale, producing greater surplus value, capital, and so on (1906: 634-648). Eventually, the bourgeoisie who control the means of production exploit the proletariat until revolutions ensue (1906: 786-801). Marx theorized that as in the era of serfdom, the bourgeoisie would become fewer in number, yet control larger proportions of production. The proletariat would become greater in number and increasingly exploited. Laborers would expropriate capitalists, “expropriate the expropriators,” and place production value back in the hands of the immediate producers. Marx’s insight into the functional mechanisms of capitalism caused many of his prophecies to be realized. The continual necessity to grow and reinvest surplus value has transnationalized the private sector, caused corporate monopolization, and as a result of these factors, widened the gap between the rich and the poor. An infinite number of contingencies, including social welfare, bilateral aid, military control, and many more mitigating factors have held up the en masse revolutions and reverse expropriations that Marx predicated. Of these contingencies, the emergence of a transnational civil society in the form of NGOs provided an alternative 49 destination for surplus value, as opposed to direct reinvestment. The funds through which NGOs develop and survive come from what Marx referred to as “surplus value.” Ironically, given their dependence on surplus value, NGOs reflect and reinforce the cultural formations of capitalist organizations and states that sustain them. Therefore, the general development of capitalism as a globally-dominant phenomenon brought its own version of civil society, thereby greatly diminishing the diversity of civil society organizing around the world. The following history of global NGO development provides the context for this argument. 2.2.2 The Rise of the NGO My historical exploration of transnational civil society begins with the African slave trade, a practice that Marx viewed as an especially crude and dehumanizing manifestation of capitalism and which held within it the seeds of its own demise (1906: 785). It was the surplus capital in the possession of opponents to slavery that formed some of the first transnational civil society initiatives that would play a major role in mobilizing global political opposition to the practice. These organizations constituted one of the first waves of NGO activity. Created through the British and American anti-slavery movements in the middle to late nineteenth century, one of the first large scale-transnational civil society organizations was Anti-Slavery International, which the British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson founded in 1839 (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 39– 79). The proto-NGO abolitionist organizations made substantial strides in raising abolitionist sentiment and played a major role in successfully lobbying the British government to derecognize the American South as a legitimate political entity. These early NGO initiatives manifested an example of acting on behalf of human rights against the accumulation of capital, but were nonetheless dependent on capital and the competitive socio-economic and political interests of nation states to become operational. Anti-Slavery International continues to operate currently and purports to be the “world’s oldest human rights organization,” continuing the mission towards “eliminating of forms of slavery throughout the world.”31 The organization is a registered charity in the United Kingdom with operations globally. The next proliferation of NGOs formed to aid rebuilding efforts in Europe after World War I and World War II. Some of these organizations, including Save the Children, CARE, OXFAM, and Christian Aid, currently remain active globally and especially in Africa. During rebuilding efforts after World War I and World War II, NGOs dually acted as stimulants of 31 Anti-Slavery International’s main Webpage (http://www.antislavery.org/english/, accessed 04.15.12). 50 economic growth and partners of the state by complementing state organized humanitarian relief efforts. By the 1950s, post-World War II rebuilding efforts in Western Europe were successful in that most dimensions of the economy and industrial infrastructure had surpassed prewar conditions, partially as a result of the Marshall Plan, the humanitarian efforts of NGOs, and significant transformations in technologies and industry (Fowler 1988). The range of early NGO activity in response to American slavery and postwar rebuilding illustrates that these new transnational civil society organizations variously denigrated and supported capitalist projects. In either case, their proliferation was intimately tied to the emergence of global capitalist. After the post-World War II rebuilding and recovery efforts came to an end in Western Europe, a new focus for the Euro-American project of “development” turned to Asia and Africa, and with it went the newly formed NGOs. 2.2.3 International NGOs in Africa Even before both World Wars, international religious civil society organizations had been active in colonized regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and mobilized under a range of pretenses. Their participation spanned from supporting colonial exploitation by coercively promoting colonial cultural reform and ideology, to advocating independence against the colonial regimes (Jennings 2008: 23-29). As a result of civil rights efforts, revolutions, and political strategies, most African nations had achieved independence by the 1970s. Several leaders, such as Kenyatta (Kenya), Nkrumah (Gold Coast, Ghana), Senghor (Senegal), and Nyerere (Tanzania), who had been trained in Western academic institutions, led major nationalist and pan-Africanist movements based on ideologies of self-reliance. Negotiating such initiatives in a world economy dominated by previous colonial nations often seemed more like neo-colonialism than independence (Nkrumah 1980; Nugent 2004: 326-339). Contributing additional problems to the nation state building project, some new African governments perpetuated similar predatory and divisive styles of governance to those common before independence (Mutua 2008). Foreign NGOs were consistently active in Africa throughout these developments. With the emergence of newly independent nation states throughout Africa, non-Western and Western NGOs scrambled to win allies whom would prove valuable in an impending, if imagined, new world order. Mary Nzokia, a Kiswahili and Akamba language instructor who provides cultural consultancy for NGO projects, discussed her earliest memories of NGO activity in Kenya as a primary school 51 student in the 1970s. In particular, she remembered the presence of Egyptian and Israeli NGOs drilling bore holes to create water resources for Kenyan communities: Author: When was the first time you recall seeing NGOs in Kenya? Nzokia: Oh, as long as I can remember. I believe when I was in primary school at the time. NGOs had started coming and doing stuff like community projects. I come from an arid area – a dry place. So the idea of drilling bore holes for water started many years ago and the NGOs are the ones who did that. I remember people talking about how there is a bore hole being drilled there by Israel or by Egyptians. People would go there to get a job, maybe, in terms of labor, and they would be paid (Nzokia 2011, Interview). Figure 2.2: Kiswahili and Akamba language instructor and NGO cultural consultant Mary Nzokia (photo by author). During the African independence years of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, large Western NGOs, such as CARE and OXFAM, transferred their attention away from postwar Europe to the project of “development” in Africa’s colonial territories and newly independent nation states. Simultaneously, Cold War politics motivated governments on either side of the capitalist/communist divide to incentivize and coerce allegiance from African states by means of bilateral aid money and also through NGO activity (Davies 2008). From the 1970s to the early 1990s, requirements for economic and military support from the United States and the United Kingdom were based largely on ideological and political allegiance to the cause of capitalism against communism. Both Soviet Union and United States militaries utilized NGOs as front organizations for intelligence operations in this mission. In the mid-1960s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency provided tens of thousands of dollars to the NGO The American Society of 52 African Culture and the International Development Foundation to conduct research and carry out initiatives related to U.S. Cold War interests (In the Pay of the CIA: An American Dilemma, A CBS Report. Columbia Broadcasting System. 1967). In coordination with Cold War politics as well as the ideology of “development” carried over by the European industrialization process, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both products of the Western European and United States capitalist mission, began lending money to African governments for the stated purposes of stabilizing declining economies and encouraging free market ideology. The IMF and World Bank attached structural adjustment policies (SAPs) that demanded lower trade tariffs in order to open opportunities for transnational corporate participation and fund private sector infrastructure growth while deemphasizing social welfare (Hornsby 2012: 331-398). SAPs had a devastating effect on the economic and social landscape of the continent. Little of the aid and loan revenue issued by the IMF and the World Bank, however, generated sustainable business infrastructures within Africa. Preventing the surplus of profits from recycling back into the community from which they came, free-trade tended to favor transnational corporations as opposed to the emergence of independent private sectors. Additionally damaging was the fact that government officials often engaged in rampant corruption by siphoning loan and aid monies into foreign bank accounts while creating bloated salaries and perquisites for themselves (Brown 2007: 301-331). Throughout the 1990s, neoliberal economics, democratization movements, corrupt governance, and internal conflicts made way for another wave of European and American NGOs to flood into the African continent. The World Bank and IMF, believing that NGOs could support social welfare in Africa with greater reliability than African nation states, collaborated with foreign NGOs to provide social welfare programs and distribute aid. Additionally, with two decades of Cold War politics subsiding, countries pushing a democratization agenda, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, claimed that aid directed to African governments slowed the democratization process by subsidizing corrupt political regimes. Consequently, they encouraged loans and aid to be redirected to NGOs, many of which were run and directed by non-Africans. In 1981, the World Bank invited sixteen of the world's leading NGOs, including OXFAM and Christian Aid, to comprise an official NGO World Bank Committee to coordinate the relationships between NGO activities and World Bank policies. 53 In 1984, as a result of criticisms that NGOs were compromising the interests of their public constituency by working too closely with the World Bank, the nonprofit organizations that comprised the NGO World Bank Committee created an independent coalition termed the NGO Working Group on the World Bank (Ndegwa 1996: 15-31). Regardless of tensions between international NGOs and the World Bank, the two groups continued to complement one another in their initiatives and policies. African states would borrow from international banks that were tied to the European and United States corporations and governments that subsidized and funded international NGOs.32 NGOs then in turn provided social services to African states that could hypothetically use profits from trade to pay back the banks that supported the international NGOs. As unequal trade, structural adjustment, and corruption diminished living conditions in much of Africa, the contingencies of economic interest continued to thwart the style of “development” that European-American funded banks had envisioned in their capitalist mission. 2.2.4 Kenyan NGO Development and Policy NGO development across Africa in the 1980s experienced particular traction in Kenya. Embracing capitalism after independence and during the Cold War, Kenya began a long history of close financial coordination with the IMF and World Bank that included subsequent neoliberalization policies and an increase in transnational civil society groups. Between 1993 and 2005, the number of registered NGOs in Kenya rose from 250 to 2,232 (Kenyan National Council of NGOs 2005 in Kanyinga and Mitullah 2007). By the year 2000, around 17% of the Kenyan population, or 5 million people, constituted the NGO membership base (Kanyinga and Mitullah 2007). Currently, the number of NGOs registered in Kenya is approximately 6,000 and the sector accounts for an estimate of $596 million U.S. dollars a year in revenue (Jillo 2009). In 1990, to account for the dramatic increase of NGOs, the Kenyan government created the “NGO Coordination Act.” This legislation aimed to motivate the formation of a central governing body to which mandated NGO registration and defined NGOs as a “private voluntary grouping of individuals or associations not operated for-profit or for other commercial purposes but which have organized ourselves nationally or internationally for the benefit of the public at large and for the promotion of social welfare development, charity, or research in the areas inclusive but not restricted to health relief, agriculture, education, industry and supply of 32 Subsidies from international banks to NGOs were not direct. These usually occurred indirectly as a result of affiliation with Northern host governments, private corporations, and citizen donor constituencies. 54 amenities and services” (1990). By 1993, all existing NGOs in Kenya were required to register with the NGO Coordination Board that formed as a result of the NGO Coordination Act (Jillo 2009). Tensions between government and the NGOs as well as legal obscurities in the definitive parameters of NGOs prevented effective implementation of the NGO Coordination Act and regulation of registration procedures. Members of the NGO sector in Kenya protested the law, claiming it was an attempt by the government to suppress civil society organizing and to regulate the NGO sector. The NGO sector proposed several amendments aimed at promoting selfregulation in limiting government participation in controlling the sector. Although these amendments created constitutional guidelines for the NGO sector, the lack of a policy paper regarding NGO benefits, risks, and proposed laws and regulations made effective implementation essentially nonexistent. In 2001, the government proposed the creation of an NGO policy, which eventually came to fruition 2006 after several delays, deliberations, and negotiations between government, NGO, and private sector participants. The NGO policy paper of 2006 also called for a review of the NGO Coordination Act of 1990 and the operations of the NGO Coordination Board. These reviews, which are currently ongoing, have focused on increasing collaboration between government and NGO constituencies, refining the process of defining NGOs (which remains broad and unclear), and registering them appropriately (Kisinga 2009). To date, the operational definition of NGO fails to encompass certain civil society organizations such as trusts and community-based organizations that also operate around shared values, or for public benefit, and are nonprofit. Multiple government offices have been created to register these non-NGO civil society organizations. Trusts, for example, are nonprofit organizations that do not have members and therefore do not fit the provisions of the NGO Coordination Act definition. Therefore, trusts register in Kenya under a separate act known as the Trustees Act. The lack of a central body to register all nonprofit and civil society organizations has caused further communication problems between civil society organizations and government bodies that additionally complicate the definition of NGO in the Kenyan context. The broad discretionary powers given to the NGO Coordination Board in granting NGO registration further limit effective NGO government collaboration. NGOs face many political 55 obstacles in obtaining legal status, causing the process to take as long as two years to complete. Tax benefits of the sort provided to 501(c)(3) organizations in the United States are even more difficult to obtain after registration, as there is no clear pathway for organizations to receive tax exemption or for donors to file for tax deductions. Although the NGO Coordination Act of 1990 guarantees these rights, the lack of a consistent administrative process has made its realization difficult. Finally, the resources available to the NGO Coordination Board are minor compared to the enormous clientele it is meant to serve. As of 2009, the NGO Coordination Board has a staff of fifty persons and a clientele of approximately 6,000 NGOs with an annual budget that only covers operational costs (Jillo 2009). The large number of NGOs served by a disproportionately smaller number of staff members at the NGO Coordination Board has led to a limited capacity for the NGO review board to oversee and coordinate with NGOs. As a result, mapping and defining the parameters of Kenya’s NGO sector is problematic because of the limited resources available to regulate and register NGOs. From this examination of the historical development and current state of NGO policy and culture in Kenya, it is clear that locating a strict classification for NGOs based on government registration and policies is untenable. I found throughout the course my research that many NGO-like organizations, which referred to themselves as “nonprofits,” “trusts,” or “NGOs,” had registered with the Kenyan government in some capacity, but that the process of registration differed from case to case. The directors of many other organizations conveyed to me that they were “in the process” of registering, which could take several years to complete and the process of doing so was not uniform. The variability of registration and regulation of NGOs in Kenya reflects the working process that the nation is undergoing to negotiate an agreed-upon set of rules and incentives through which civil society organizations will thrive. In lieu of these sociopolitical realities, I do not exclude from this study organizations that were not registered with the government nor do I focus on this as a central issue. That is for Kenyan policy makers and civil society advocates to work out. Instead, my focus here is culture. Chapter 3 will outline a classification of NGO culture that characterizes the organizations in the study and presents a catalog of these organizations and their music related activities. 56 2.3 NGO Music Culture Contexts 2.3.1 The International Popular Music Industry and the Spread of NGOs into Africa The growth of NGO operations in Africa had direct ties to the globally popular music industries of North America and Europe. North American and European popular musicians in particular played a significant role in the growth of NGOs operating in Africa during the 1980s. While NGO development across Africa rapidly gained momentum, international popular music icons/stars publicized NGO initiatives and encouraged their fans to engage in philanthropic activities. This section will examine the role of the global music industry in the development of NGO culture in Africa. In 1985, USA for Africa’s recording of “We Are the World” and BandAid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” culminated in the internationally publicized Live Aid concerts that brought worldwide attention to the 1983-1985 Ethiopian famine. The pop-star movement’s focus on famine, however, overshadowed military conflicts in Ethiopia’s Tigray and north Wollo that displaced millions of Ethiopians from their land and resources (de Waal 2002: 112-132). As a result of misdirected, media-driven fundraising, much of the aid to Ethiopia flowed to the government and insurgent military populations, thereby prolonging the regional conflicts and exacerbating the effects of the famine for those most severely in need. Despite the controversial outcome, negative aspects of the humanitarian relief effort went largely unreported by journalism outfits. The spirit of the Live Aid concerts spurred subsequent initiatives by numerous internationally recognized pop music icons, who have gone on to encourage the fundraising of millions of dollars for various African NGO initiatives. Bono, the lead singer for the internationally acclaimed Irish rock group U2, has been perhaps most prominent in this regard. Following the Live Aid concerts in which he participated, Bono collaborated with the organizers of the Live Aid initiative (such as Bob Geldof) to promote and construct a string of high profile NGO movements across Sub-Saharan Africa. The most current of these was the creation of the mega-NGOs ONE International33 and Product (RED)34 organizations with a mission to decrease poverty and disease across Sub-Saharan Africa as well as advocate for increasing aid to the continent by “first-world nations.” Like the Live Aid initiatives, Bono has also faced criticism 33 34 ONE International main Webpage (http://www.one.org/international/, accessed 04.24.12). Product (RED) main Webpage (http://www.joinred.com/red/, accessed 04.24.12). 57 about the effectiveness of his philanthropic philosophies and initiatives. In particular, Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia and a Goldman Sachs economist, in her controversial book Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (2009) writes, Bono attends world summits on aid. Bob Geldof is, to use Tony Blair’s own words, “one of the people that I admire most.” Aid has become a cultural commodity. Millions march for it. Governments are judged by it. But has more than US $1 trillion in development assistance over the last several decades made African people better off? No. In fact, across the globe the recipients of this aid are worse off; much worse off. It has helped make the poor poorer, and growth slower. Yet aid remains a centerpiece of today's development policy (2009: xix). Madonna has also actively played a role in NGO operations in Africa through the creation of a Malawian NGO named Raising Malawi.35 Her efforts in this area have, like the Live Aid concerts and Bono’s philanthropic advocacy work, also received criticism for lacking effectiveness due to insufficient knowledge of local contexts. Perhaps the most devastating of these criticisms came in response to a failed project proposing to build a school for impoverished girls. When the project fell short of raising the proposed U.S. $15 million and the management organizing the construction of the school in Malawi irresponsibly spent U.S. $3.8 million of donor funds before breaking ground, Madonna faced a significant backlash from the international community and the Malawi government alike.36 Raising Malawi temporarily abandoned plans to build the school and has since entered into collaboration with other more established and experienced NGOs in Malawi such as the Global Philanthropy Network and buildOn. The symbols of international NGO music initiatives spearheaded by global pop music icons of the West have ricocheted into the development of music programs by international development agencies as well. In 2004, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) invested in the communicative power of music to combat poverty, war, and hunger - all essential to achieving the UNDP’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - to produce an album consisting of eighteen popular African artists titled “Nous Sommes les Tam-tams (We are the Drums).”37 The album featured Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal, Yves Ndjock, and Manu Dibango, among other acclaimed African musical superstars of the international World Music industry. 35 Raising Malawi main Webpage (http://www.raisingmalawi.org/, accessed 04.24.12). Nagourney, 2011. “Madonna’s Charity Fails in Bid to Finance School” The New York Times. March 24, 2011. 37 Djibril Diallo. “We Are The Drums,” Soul Beat Africa Website (http://www.comminit.com/en/node/127355/38, accessed 04.24.12). 36 58 Topics engaged in the album’s songs reflected the United Nations Millennium Development Goals’ focus on ending poverty and HIV/AIDS across Africa while encouraging global partnership, environmental sustainability, and human rights.38 The undeniable symbolic, linguistic conflation of USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” and “We are the Drums” demonstrates one example of how music and the language of “development” in which NGOs are key players have intersected in Africa. 2.3.2 Historical Contexts of NGO-Oriented Music Culture in East Africa The following section approaches intersections of music and civil society in Africa from a contrasting direction, reviewing some of the prevailing institutions and cultural practices of music making that predate the flood of NGOs into Africa. Exploring forms of civil societyoriented music production that predate NGO culture in Kenya demonstrate that the music of civil society is not necessarily imported and that it occurs in varied cultural contexts. My intention here is to shatter any notion that civil society music making in Kenya is only an imported manifestation of Western influence that the previous sections of this chapter may have suggested. Specifically, this review will examine musical practices and forms of organizing around music in East Africa that reflect civil society dimensions of NGO culture yet did not arise through contact with the global phenomenon. This historical perspective provides a foundation from which to view the contingent relations between NGO culture and East African music culture that enabled the hybridization of the two cultures, which will be documented in the following chapters. I will identify the presence of NGO culture elements in East African music through two contrasting classificatory lenses. The first of these identifies long standing East African civil society-like organizations that have historically also included significant musical performance elements. In particular, I identify Kenyan harambees, Tanzanian labor associations, East African Beni Ngoma groups, and Ngoma healing associations as local historically embedded examples of musicoriented civil society organizing. The second of these analytical frameworks examines philosophical elements of contemporary civil society culture in East Africa's musical history. Music for purposes of education, social change, and protest will be central to this discussion. 38 United Nations Development Program, “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” Website (http://www.undp.org/mdg/, accessed 09.20.09). 59 2.3.3 Civil Society-Oriented Music Organizing in East Africa 2.3.3.1 Harambees Self-help and communal exchange groups that came to be known in Kenya during the post-independence years as harambees (from the Kiswahili “let us pull together”) have long existed as an early form of civil society organizing in Kenya (Jillo 2009: 41). Harambees reference a specific form of social organizing common to many ethnic groups in the East African region from before colonial times. These events consisted of groups of women or men organizing a social function for the purpose of assembling people and later raising money for various community initiatives, including building houses, harvesting crops, or clearing bushes. After independence, Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, promoted a national development philosophy based on the harambee concept in order to rally the populace into a unified effort of nation state building.39 Patricia Opondo’s dissertation research on dodo music in women’s associations (1996) showcases the important role of music in harambees, especially for purposes of fundraising and drawing community members to harambee events promoting various initiatives. About the centrality of music to encourage donations she writes, Performers realize that song stimulate the easy flow of money, and appropriately arranged their song text to excite the audience and encourage them to make contributions... If there is a fundraising event and no performers are invited to it, little money is raised (Opondo 1996: 67). Harambees have in recent years played a significant role in NGO initiatives given the parallel civic mission, public benefit, and fundraising dimensions of the two forms of civil society organizing. 2.3.3.2 Tanzanian Labor Associations The practice of associationalism in East Africa has a long and diverse history that predates colonial times. Such associations commonly manifested around labor activities in the form of, for instance, hunting, medicinal, porter, and farming associations, among others. I propose that such labor associations constitute a form of civil society, that they served a general civic purpose for explicit needs within the community, and that their primary motivation has not traditionally been the accumulation of surplus capital. Frank Gunderson has extensively documented the use of music in Sukuma labor associations in Tanzania (1999; 2010). In Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania: ‘We Never Sleep, We Dream of Farming’ (2010), 39 Tanzania's first president, Julius Nyerere, utilized similar approach which he titled Ujamaa. 60 Gunderson depicts the musical soundscape created by farming associations during harvesting season in western Tanzania: For a little more than two months, just after the onset of the first rains that routinely fall from late November to early February, the everyday rural soundscape of the Sukuma region of northwest Tanzania is transformed from a state of tranquility, to one of cacophony. This is the result of the intense competing drums found in neighboring farms, and heard for as far as the ear can hear, the rambunctious shouts and song of farmers, and the thud and clang of hoes striking the earth in rhythmic unison (2010: 7-8). Gunderson goes on to document a catalog of labor association songs that have been transmitted from generation to generation through precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial times. Such examples of civil society-oriented music and organizational adaptation also contextualize recent intersections between music and international civil society culture. 2.3.3.3 Ngoma Healing Associations Throughout East Africa, the word ngoma refers to modes of music, dance, and/or theater performance, including those involving “traditional” medicine and healing.40 The practice of ngoma healing rituals -organized by healers, mediums, community members, and medicinal associations- are tied to trans-continental migrations in Africa dating at least as far back as 2000 BC, and have commonly incorporated music as a catalyst for spiritual procession and ancestral communication (Janzen 1992: 60). They identify a music practice central to the historical identity of the region.41 Igniting social and spiritual connections between living and deceased members of ancestral lineages through possession and mediumship, ngoma rituals preserve and dialogue with past and present social realities. Several scholars documenting ngoma healing rituals in Kenya have also theorized these ritual spaces as locations for resistance, reflection, and negotiation of class, age, and gender hierarchies (Parkin 1972; Gomm 1975; Giles 1987; Gearhart 2005), while in the protected spiritual realm of possession, Gearhart and others have purported, participants voice critiques of those above their social rank. Such examples of medical and spiritual healing, social negotiation and reification of historical consciousness facilitated by discrete civic organizational groups (such as associations of healers) intersect with many of the social action and empowerment missions promoted by contemporary transnational civil society 40 Ngoma may also refer directly to the “drum” as an object or “rhythm.” During the course of fieldwork I found the word ngoma most commonly used in reference to various forms of “traditional” or “folk” performance. 41 Dating the linguistic cognates, Janzen has suggested that ngoma healing rituals are some of the oldest (protoBantu) and most ubiquitous cultural practices in East Africa. 61 organizations. Peter Hoesing’s dissertation on Kusamira healers and healing associations in Uganda (2011) highlights present-day adaptations of ngoma healing rituals to the contemporary “development” of NGO culture. 2.3.3.4 Beni Ngoma Dance Associations During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, diverse groups of East Africans living in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Lamu, negotiated the overbearing presence of British and German colonial military powers through construction of Beni Ngoma music and dance associations that merged elements of European military culture, such as a regimented marching dance and the use of wooden rifles as props, into pre-existing forms of competitive group music performance (Ranger 1975). Musicians adopted symbols of European origin and merged them with pre-existing musical practices, such as competitive group performance associations. They expressed the foreign socio-political import of colonialism while retaining and reinforcing local cultural practices. Beni Ngoma performance exemplified both agency and empowerment by initiating and controlling cultural hybridization through social organization. These new forms of performance also reflected, however, the foreign military influence on the region resulting from the European onslaught. Such cultural manifestations provide strong parallels to the ways in which Kenyan musicians have adapted to contemporary civil society organizational cultures. 2.3.4 Civil Society Ethos in East African Music Performance 2.3.4.1 Indigenous Music Practices for Civic Benefit Purposes The use of music to promote group cohesion, cultural identity, and social negotiation among other civic benefit-related purposes has a long standing historical tradition in East Africa and mirrors the civic mission ethos (Geertz 1973: 126-141) of Western civil society culture. Because of the vast, perhaps infinite, examples of uses of music within East Africa’s varied cultural heritages to serve the needs of its broader community, the small sampling documented below aims to showcase the diversity of social functions for music in East Africa (for purposes of context). They demonstrate that public benefit-related functions of musical production that predate the influence of NGO culture and therefore ground Kenyan civil society music culture in local contexts that eventually underwent further hybridization through the intersecting historical streams of the NGO economy. 62 2.3.4.2 Locating “Folk” Music This discussion primarily utilizes sources on East African indigenous musical traditions published by East African scholars. I utilize Simon Okumba Miruka’s Oral Literature of the Luo (2001) and Naomi Kipury’s Oral Literature of the Maasai (1983). I draw the majority of my examples, however, from George Senoga-Zake’s sweeping overview of Kenyan “folk” music titled Folk Music of Kenya: For Teachers and Students of Music and the Music-Loving Public (1986; 2000). An East African born in Uganda who moved to Kenya in his twenties, SenogaZake was one of the first East Africans to receive a degree of higher education in the British Music Conservatory system and the first to pass the Licentiate of Royal Schools of Music (LSRM). He dedicated his life to preserving and promoting Kenya's traditional music using European historical documentation methods, while remaining an active educator of traditional and Western music in Kenya’s and Uganda’s school systems. Bridging the cultural gaps between music practices in Kenya and Western European music traditions, he co-composed Kenya's national anthem to reflect the diversity of musical influences that characterized the nation. Senoga-Zake’s lifelong involvement in politics, education, and music performance/preservation highlights his interest in contributing to a post-independence Kenyan interethnic cultural identity through music. Senoga-Zake’s work illustrates numerous examples of Kenyan musical contexts that emphasize morals, history, education, play, courtship, and competition, among other topics. Contexts include children's play, circumcision rites, entertainment and social dances, war, work, weddings, and funerals. These examples of musical heritage drawn from a variety of Kenya’s ethnic groups illuminate and reference the civic mission and public-benefit dimensions of civil society by explicitly aiming to promote social cohesion and identity. Below I will illustrate only a small sampling of the genres and performance contexts historically practiced by some of the majority ethnic groups in Kenya. Despite tireless efforts to collect, record, and propagate Kenya's traditional music throughout his life, Senoga-Zake acknowledged the rapidly changing and hybridizing dimensions of Africa's musical traditions (Senoga-Zake 2000: 12). These factors of transition make pinning down any of the following ethnic groups’ musical practices as fixed and particular only to that ethnic group nearly impossible. For the purposes of this overview, I will explore the “folk” music (excluding discussions of the nationalistic political implications that terminology 63 invokes) of the Luo, Luhya, Gikuyu, and Kipsigis primarily through Senoga-Zake’s lens first published in 1986 (I am using the 2000 reissue). In the interest of limiting my scope to contexts that reflect strong currents of precolonial culture, I will not examine the politicalinstitutionalization of these “folk” music traditions and the formalization and recontextualization that occurs as a result of this process. In this respect, the examples below are portrayals of a socially imagined past (Appadurai 1990) from a historiographically significant 1980s perspective. Yet, Senoga-Zake’s work holds seeds of history (however, skewed and socially constructed as all history must be) highly relevant to the current social landscape of Kenya as “folk” songs and have been implemented into school systems in order to honor Kenya's ethnic cultural heritages. 2.3.4.3 Examples of Public Benefit-Oriented Musical Heritage of Luhya, Gikuyu, Kipsigi, Luo, and Maasai Culture Groups Eshilili is a Luhya dance that is popular among teenagers and young adults that facilitates courtship and socializing between young men and women before marriage. It usually takes place at night away from parents and sometimes goes on all night long. The dance, which is accompanied by fiddles and drums, is characterized by shoulder shaking although Senoga-Zake grumbles, “modern influence has played havoc with it and they sometimes dance the ikoranzi, which is sort of a waltz, or the kisikukha, which is no more than jumping” (Senoga-Zake 2000: 31). Buvule bwanje is a Luhya children’s dance that facilitates socialization and group cohesion. Boys and girls sit in a circle and produce rhythms by slapping the ground with their hands. Either a girl or boy soloist begins singing and begins by calling the name of one of the children in the group. That child stands up and dances in the center of the circle attempting to reflect the style of the soloist, until the soloist sings that the child should return to his or her sitting position. The cycle continues indefinitely. Muthunguci is a Gikuyu dance designed to give elders an opportunity to continue dancing while not lowering their dignity by dancing with younger people. This dance takes place in the afternoons as opposed to at night, when most Gikuyu social dances take place. Older people may even travel from neighboring towns to join in this dance. The dance consists of “wobbling one's head, body, and upper limbs” (Senoga-Zake 2000: 29). Men and women dance together, moving slowly but rhythmically. The music will stop suddenly signaling the partners to step back, break apart, and jump. When the music begins the partners rejoin and begin dancing again. 64 Mumburo is a Gikuyu dance for boys that occurs four months before the circumcision ceremony and is designed to prepare the initiates for the rite of passage. Boys cover themselves in white paint, hold shields, and wear leg rattles that provide rhythmic accompaniment while they dance. The song is facilitated by a leader who sings a call to which the group responds. If a boy's name is mentioned in a song, he shakes his shield. Teams from different towns, separated by a line in the sand, compete against one another in the dance. Pushing and shoving between the two teams often takes place during the dance and people are sometimes injured or run away. Female witnesses encourage their respective teams through ululations and high-pitched trills. Older male witnesses police the event so that the violence remains controlled. Singo is a Kipsigi dance that accompanies the rendering of historical narratives and therefore contributes to the preservation of Kipsigi cultural history. Dancing is not strictly prescribed. There is more freedom for the dancers to express themselves in ways that the moment provides. Married men and women face each other but do not touch when they dance. This is due to the fact that married women are not to be touched, even by their husbands, when dancing in public. Unmarried couples, however, are able to dance more closely with one another, as dances provide an opportune occasion to find a future husband or wife. The dance is characterized by the partners facing each other while moving back and forth as a unit competing against the other dancers. The instrumentation that accompanies these dances, which may be performed inside or outside, is the sugutit (drum) and ndureret (flute). Dancers paint themselves in okra and wear beads around their waist, wrists and the forehead. Dancers also wear kikeururoik (ankle bells) (Senoga-Zake 2000: 126). A catalog of Kipsigi songs and dances assists girls in preparing to undergo circumcision ceremonies. Dancing and singing begins several months beforehand, during the months of December and January, in preparation for the initiation (boys and girls are initiated at different times of the year). The initiation month for girls is February. Girls wear mbolol (leg rattles), and sonoek (beads), and carry a saruriet (fly whisk). The solo singer sits on a stool and sings to the chorus of girls. The words of the song asked the boy lovers of the initiates not to seek out other mates while the girls are going through the healing period. Girls perform these dances on sloping ground, and the dance moves from high ground to low ground. No instruments besides those the girls wear are used in these performances (Senoga-Zake 2000: 125). 65 Tigo is a Luo dance for married women and one of the few performance genres in which women play drums. Men cannot witness this dance. The women wear tight fabric, sisal, or animal skin around their waists and reveal patterns by pulling back layers of fabric. The dance primarily involves waists movements and is meant to keep married women “fit, young, strong and healthy” (Senoga-Zake 2000: 130). Simon Okumba Miruka in Oral Literature of the Luo (2001), writes about the prevalence of riddles, proverbs, extended narratives, and poetry as important aspects of Luo traditional culture. He also identifies the centrality of oral literature in preserving cultural identity. Much of the oral literature of the Luo is rendered in song form and can be categorized as oral literature. These performance formats are often either accompanied by a nyatiti (lyre) or performed solo. Miruka attests to the importance of song in this performance idiom stating, “Such songs reinforce themes, create suspense, enhance plot development and divide episodes. They also summarize the tales, offer dramatic relief, and involve the audience and the narrator in the performance, besides serving many other uses” (2001: 125). Naomi Kipury, in Oral Literature of the Maasai (1983), documents Maasai proverbs performed through song that, for example, warn against pretense and foolishness, foresight and preparation, discrimination, or discouraging war, among other values (Kipury 1983: 148-197). This body of Maasai oral literature likely predates European explorer and missionary contact. The tradition of oral literature practiced by Maasai, as well as numerous other ethnic/tribal/clan groups in Kenya, serves to challenge as well as reinforce socio-cultural identity. 2.3.5 Music as Protest Protest music has played a substantial role in Kenya’s political history and reflects the human rights-oriented ethos of many transnational civil society groups, including Anti-Slavery International, one of the oldest surviving NGOs registered in Europe. I have documented some examples of Kenyan protest music culture occurring before the mid-1980s proliferation of NGOs into the region in order to contextualize the hybridization of international NGO culture and more localized music practices in Kenya that would later occur. During British colonization, music served as a direct form of political protest against colonizers and played a substantial role in Kenya’s liberation. In particular, Gikuyu songs provided substantial motivation for uniting the masses against colonialism during the Mau Mau resistance movement that occurred from 1952 to 1960 (Mwaura 2007). Since independence, 66 musicians in Kenya have continued to intersect with politics extensively. The popular musicians D. Owino Misiani and Ochieng’ Kabaselleh utilized a combination of the local benga and highly politicized lyrics to voice political protest as well as praise of political leaders (Oloo 2007). Not surprisingly, both of these musicians were imprisoned at various points during their careers. Both Misiani and Kabaselleh also leveled critiques toward the preceding era of colonial rule. They also expressed the view that Western intervention was responsible for continued poor governance in Kenya. Adams Oloo describes, “in the song ‘I am Tired’ Misiani warns Kenyans and the Luo in particular against being swayed by Western culture at the expense of their own traditions” (2007: 191). Perhaps highly politicized music is particularly abundant throughout Kenya’s history because of the various forms of censorship it has survived in order to exist. British colonial rule placed a ban on all political activity and political expressions within music performances until 1957. Before and after the colonial regime lifted this ban, music served, even under threat of persecution, to voice political critique for the masses and oppressed minorities. Those in power, however, closely regulated such freedom of expression. The fact that music played a substantial role in Kenya’s struggle for independence as well as several regime turnovers is a testament to a defiant tradition of political participation among musicians in Kenya. 2.4 Conclusion This chapter presented several converging historical threads that underpin NGO music culture. They demonstrate that the contexts of contemporary civil society-based music culture in Kenya are grounded in the nonprofit cultures of Europe and North America (from which NGOs arose) as well as civil society-based forms of organizing with locally embedded histories. First, I examined the global expansion of NGO culture and its impact on Kenya from a historical perspective to demonstrate the neoliberal and capitalist economic roots, as well as Western development ideologies, which influence the varied manifestations of NGOs. I then presented an overview of forms of civil society-oriented East African music cultures that predate the post1980s boom of NGO cultural influence in Africa. These histories demonstrate the plurality that propels waves of cultural development. Global civil society appears in many forms here. They are highly regulated and uniform administrative organizations created in a post-World War two rebuilding efforts in Europe and the United States. They also are decentralized and unregulated in the context of a Kenya where the government and civil society struggle to create policies to 67 manage the merging of international civil society organizations and local organizations molding themselves on international models. Civil society organizing that intersects with music making presents additional incarnations. NGOs team up with stars of the global popular music industry and Kenya forms of community-oriented music activity reflect many of the sentiments espoused by civil society discourse. The myriad manifestations collide and hybridize in the contemporary Kenyan culture-scape. They create a distinct NGO music culture. 68 CHAPTER 3 CIVIL SOCIETY DISCOURSE FORMATIONS: MAPPING NAIROBI’S NGO MUSIC CULTURE-SCAPE 3.1 Introduction In the wake of the NGO boom of the 1980s and 1990s, music and performing arts organizations in Nairobi increasingly reflected the culture of transnational civil society. NGOs provided avenues through which musicians could pursue performance opportunities and at the same time local administrators, artists, and entrepreneurs created performing arts organizations modeled after the imported organizational models of NGOs. Brian Owango, director and founder of the youth empowerment performing arts organization Mayeli42 described how the impact of the NGO culture made Nairobi into a place where “everyone has an NGO.” He noted how this proliferation was so extreme that starting new performing arts organizations is especially difficult because of competition for funding and recognition: In times like this when economic times are rough and everyone has an NGO you have to have stamina and creativity on your side to start an organization. The main challenge is awareness and support. Typically, funders want you to get big and then support you so to cross that threshold is tough (Owango 2011, Email correspondence). Figure 3.1: Brian Owango performing Brazilian capoeira (left) and Indian dance (right).43 42 Mayeli showcases, promotes, and provides classes in a cross-cultural fusion of performing arts. The organization also facilitates a yearly festival called the Tandawazi Festival to showcase these performances and raise money for a youth organization located in Nairobi’s Huruma “slum.” 43 Personal photos provided to author by Brian Owango, director of Mayeli. 69 Organizations, Owango stated, find it difficult to present themselves as unique candidates for funding in the competitive organizational environment of the NGO sector. The aim of this chapter is to seek out common organizational structures and activities Owango described as creating a dense market. Only from that position can we begin to trace the degrees of variance from a norm and examine the unique ways in which individuals and groups twist and translate NGO culture to fit their own interests or respond to perceived needs in their community. Mapping the consonances of organizational culture, I present a classification system composed throughout the fieldwork process alongside a catalogue of organizations facilitating music activities in Nairobi in order to provide the reader with a sense of the music producing and funding organizational environment of Nairobi’s NGO sector.44 3.2 Locating NGO Music Culture The policies, laws, rights, and registration procedures for NGOs in Kenya remain in negotiated stages of formalization and institutionalization.45 A general lack of government regulatory and policy frameworks to formalize Kenya’s NGO sector has resulted in the growth of a diversity of organizational models and activities. I therefore do not limit the scope of NGO music culture to activities of organizations registered with the Kenyan National Council on NGOs. Instead, I propose that depicting NGOs or NGO-influenced musical expression requires locating tropes and repeated signs that come to form a loosely bound but socially recognizable cultural realm. 46 Although Kenya’s NGO sector is diverse and perpetually in transformation, many transnationally networked civil society organizations in Nairobi share similar administrative structures and express related symbols and language. Music performance in Nairobi demonstrates the impact of this NGO symbolic culture. Images and mission statements spun and re-spun to donors and clients alike in the form of concerts, festival staging, and expressive performance (both recorded and live) manifest what Bourdieu referred to as “transposable dispositions.” These perpetuate a habitus (1990: 52) that marks organizational discourse in addition to NGO-affiliated song texts and performance 44 This list also serves as a reference throughout the dissertation as organizations featured in later chapters will be introduced here. 45 See previous chapter’s historical review of NGO policy development in Kenya. 46 A significant body of scholarship in organizational culture studies has examined organizations as symbolic mechanisms. Some of the most influential and most cited works to utilize this perspective include Thomas Peters’ “Symbols, Patterns, and Settings: An Optimistic Case for Getting Things Done” (1978), Louis Pondy’s Organizational Symbolism (1983), and Pasquale Gagliardi’s Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape (1990). 70 contexts. Foucault’s notion of “discursive formations” probably best characterizes this repeated sequencing of signs and its manner of exchange (2002: 34-44). Sign sequences congeal into specialized bodies of knowledge, or “discursive formations,” which also reflect the power structures and hierarchies of the communities that create them (2002: 196-219). Institutions and individuals with the greatest power, according to Foucault, control the “episteme” of a particular group for a particular time (2002: 211).47 In the contemporary Kenyan NGO sector, formulas and tropes common to the symbolic realm of global civil society open doors to socio-economic upward mobility. These symbolic channels of opportunity constitute a socially acknowledged discursive episteme, or what one NGO executive who I interviewed termed “the NGO speak.” 3.2.1 Mapping Global Civil Society Since the period marking the end of the Cold War, the term global civil society has become increasingly prevalent in international media and public discourse. A number of internationally coordinated social movements that include campaigns for democratization, human rights, and poverty elimination48 have particularly resulted in this rise (Falk 1992; Lipschutz 1992; Drainville 1998). Despite the increased attention to global civil society as a concept, scholarship locating its conceptual boundaries remains varying and contested. 49 Defining, mapping, and evaluating the functions of these socio-conceptual phenomena has fast become a frequent point of deliberation among academics, policy makers, activists, philanthropists, and other constituencies that frequently engage in civil society related activities. Organizational theorists have tended to characterize global civil society as non-governmental and not-for-profit and organized around shared values and interests; yet, forms and roles of civil society organizations operating in contrasting contexts differ widely. Countries with century-old historically embedded relationships between the state and civil society, such as the United States 47 James Ferguson has examined the connections between “development” ideology and Foucault’s theories of discourse in his monograph ethnography entitled The Antipolitics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power and Lesotho (1994). Given the heavy incorporation of “development” discourse in NGO culture –especially the influence of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MSGs)- Ferguson’s study holds particular relevance to this chapter. 48 Additional global civil society activity includes numerous movements for political resistance, philanthropy, charity, religious expression, environmentalism, among other informally and formally constructed campaigns. 49 The project of mapping the dimensions of global civil society and NGOs has been a contentious work in process. John Keane (2003: 1-39), Helmut Anheier and Jeremy Kendall (2001: 1-16) and many others have articulated this point. This dissertation aims not to suggest universally applicable characteristics with which to define civil society from a global perspective. Rather, I offer a depiction of civil society contingently situated in a particular context while identifying themes and trends that operate within its fluidly negotiated space. 71 or the United Kingdom, possess laws and policies that protect as well as regulate various forms of nonprofit organizing. This is not the case in countries such as Kenya, where civil societyoriented associationalism practices can be traced back to before the postcolonial project of nation state building for which state governed civil society law remains in nascent stages (Jillo 2009; Kisinga 2009). Additionally, there has been little effort to theorize the role of music in, or as, civil society.50 Yet the egalitarian, inclusive, and democratic qualities that characterize civil society also mark musical expression. Like civil society, groups and individuals from all regions and walks of life have utilized music for millennia to convey the varied conditions of human experience. Humans have continually renegotiated and invented new formats for musical production depending on an infinite variety of needs and motivations. The overlapping plurality of these two cultural phenomena, in addition to the numerous anxieties within scholarship about mapping their identities, encourages an examination of their intermingling. 3.2.2 NGOs as Representatives of Global Civil Society Although a variety of organizations constitute global civil society, NGOs are the organizations most frequently cited in conjunction with the global phenomenon (Kaldor, Anheier, and Albrow 2006: 3). Demonstrating the intrinsic relationship between NGOs and transnational civil society as well as the growing social, political, cultural, and economic influence of the organizations, the World Bank’s official statement on Global Civil Society asserts, There has been a dramatic expansion in the size, scope, and capacity of civil society around the globe over the past decade, aided by the process of globalization and the expansion of democratic governance, telecommunications, and economic integration. According to the Yearbook of International Organizations, the number of international NGOs was reported to have increased from 6,000 in 1990 to more than 50,000 in 2006.51 Broadly conceived, NGOs are civil society organizations that tend to utilize international funding resources, operate in more than one country, and incorporate international networks of ideas and organizational culture. Distinguishing them from more locally situated civil society organizations (such as community based organizations, associations, and collectives), NGOs often receive the 50 A small number of publications have engaged notions of civil society in connection to music (Foxman 2008; Dewitt 2009; Ramnarine 2011). These describe forms of musical organizing as reflecting qualities of civil society as opposed to locating examples of music activity associated directly with civil society organizations, let alone transnational civil society organizations such as NGOs. 51 World Bank’s “Defining Civil Society” Webpage (http://web.worldbank.org/, accessed 05.01.12). 72 majority of their funding from external sources, and Global North-based constituencies play an especially significant role in this regard. 52 NGOs also reflect symbolic and structural elements of their European and North American nonprofit historical heritage. Their operations in the Global South consequently provide ideal research targets to trace flows of global culture. Operations conducted in the Global South may be carried out by either transnational or local organizations engaging with international networks of funding and institutional partnerships. Whichever the case, NGOs project a hybridization of cultures that occurs whenever forms of social organizing migrate and transmit to new geo-cultural environments. Such has been the course of NGO development in Africa. Transnational civil society culture reflects the influence of Western nonprofit organizations as a result of their historically embedded global dissemination in the form of NGOs. The prominence of international NGOs in Kenya since the 1980s has caused the number of local organizations modeling the structure, language, and activities of international NGOs to grow exponentially in number and resultantly come to influence music production in the region. 3.3 Classificatory Criteria The organizations listed below are organizations and festivals that I investigated in Nairobi during the course of my fieldwork. All of these organizations reflect the influence of transnational NGO culture. The corresponding numbered map on the following page shows their locations: (1) Hillcrest Secondary School- location of Blankets and Wine 2010 Concerts (2) Mamba Village- location of Blankets and Wine 2011 concerts (3) Carnivore Restaurant: location of Kijani Kenya International Arts Festival performances (4) Makini Schools Ltd.- location of the 2010 Gatwitch Peace Festival (5) Art of Music Foundation (6) Goethe Institut Kenia (7) Alliance Française de Nairobi (8) Ford Foundation Eastern Africa Office (9) Sarakasi Trust (10) Kenya Cultural Center- practice space for Pamoja Dance Troupe and Kenyan Conservatoire of Music 52 Despite the numerous varieties of transnational civil society organizations, I have limited the scope of this study to NGOs in consideration of their centrality to transnational civil society discourse as well as in global media. My choice to exclude other forms of civil society organizations, such as community-based organizations (CBOs), religious organizations, and informally organized social movements, associations, and collectives, is not intended to devalue the significant impact and importance of these organizations in shaping transnational civil society. Rather, my hope is that this study will urge other researchers to examine the relationships of music to other dimensions of transnational civil society. 73 (11) Purple Images Productions (12) Italian Institute of Culture (13) Sarit Center- location of Kenyan Music Week 2010 (14) Nairobi National Museum- location of 2010 and 2011 Tandawazi Festivals (15) Ongoza Njia Community Development Center- Location of Mayeli Project Baraza (16) GoDown Arts Centre (17) Ketebul Music (18) Kenya Conservatoire of Music Figure 3.2: Map and corresponding key indicating the locations of Nairobi NGO music culture organizations and initiatives documented in this chapter. Map created using Google Maps. I now turn to outlining the specific classificatory parameters linking the organizations listed above in order to provide an argument for their inclusion within an NGO music culture complex. 3.3.1 General Criteria 3.3.1.1 Identifying a Network Perhaps most relevant to the fieldwork process and ethnographic approach of the study is how these organizations constitute a network, in that they utilize similar or same funding sources and forge institutional partnerships. Throughout the fieldwork process, I encountered many partnerships between organizations and have included the details of these in the organizational overviews presented below. The Ford Foundation, Eastern Africa Region, has provided funding in the form of grants to Sarakasi Trust, in addition to the GoDown Arts Centre and Ketebul 74 Music. The organizations featured in this chapter are connected spatially and through their exchange of resources as well. The GoDown Arts Centre collaborates with the Kenyan Conservatoire of Music to supply a studio space for the Conservatoire, which provides subsidized Western classical instrument lessons to students in the Nairobi area. The NGO Ketebul Music studio resides within the GoDown Arts Centre compound, and from 2001 to 2008, Sarakasi Trust also rented subsidized space in the then newly built GoDown Arts Centre. In 2008, Sarakasi Trust received funding from the Ford Foundation, among other governmental and nongovernmental sources to purchase, refurbish, and move into what would become the Sarakasi Dome. Sarakasi Trust, like the GoDown Arts Centre, now rents out its performance space at subsidized rates for NGO-oriented music activities taking place in the Nairobi area. Purple Images Productions, for instance, held their 2010 African Music Festival at the Sarakasi Dome. In 2011, Jeunesses Musicales International (JMI) utilized the Sarakasi Dome to house the World Bank-funded Fair Play Anti-Corruption Youth Forum and JMI recorded a collaborative anticorruption themed song at Ketebul Studios the same weekend. Numerous additional examples of networking will be highlighted in the descriptions of the organizations catalogued below as well as throughout the dissertation. Linked by civil society-oriented and global identities, their involvement in music initiatives, resource exchange, and allocation, these organizations comprise a community of civil society organizations that I refer to as constituting an NGO network. 3.3.1.2 NGOs as Global Civil Society Revenue Gatekeepers My intentions with this study are to locate those organizations in Kenya that most directly engage with global economic and social supply chains of the transnational civil society. I have therefore limited my scope to those organizations which (1) utilize global funding and partners; (2) maintain a presence online through websites and social networking (constituting what Castells (1996) has termed “the network society”); and (3) tend to be cosmopolitan in their expressive faculties and skillful in the discursive tropes of the global civil society sector. Highlighting these features, the chief financial officer of Sarakasi Trust James Munga described the vital relevance of accessing foreign and local funding by aligning initiative themes with donor interests: In order to have festivals constantly year after year, it costs a lot of money. So we have sponsors. We have donors from the Netherlands Embassy; they have supported us in a big way. Stitching Doom from Holland has also supported us. 75 We have some corporates in Kenya, not a lot, but some such as Airtel, one of the mobile providers, co-sponsored us. Last year we had the referendum in Kenya so we partnered with Transparency International and USAID because, besides entertaining people, we provide civic education. You can have the musicians drive home issues like getting people to vote for the constitution because we have a referendum. We always get partners who step into co-sponsor, finance. If there is a theme or a cause that we can use a festival to further, we do that (Munga 2011, Interview). Figure 3.3: Chief Financial Officer of Sarakasi Trust James Munga discussing funding and partnerships at Sarakasi Trust (photo by Shino Saito). Larger, more internationally networked organizations such as Sarakasi Trust act as revenue gateways for smaller community-based organizations (CBOs) or more informally constituted social movements. Indeed, hundreds of small-scale communities and youth centers scattered throughout Nairobi’s most impoverished areas arguably make up a larger segment of Naiorbi’s performing arts-based civil society activity than the fewer larger and more powerful internationally connected organizations.53 CBOs operate with far less revenue than larger international NGOs and they lack the same political positioning or degree of institutional infrastructure. They therefore experience barriers to accessing international funding. Many of the organizations listed below (e.g. Sarakasi Trust, Alliance Française, Mayeli, GoDown Arts Centre, and Goethe Institute) have coordinated with many smaller CBOs located in Nairobi’s most impoverished areas. These NGOs constitute a civil society revenue gateway that influences the opportunities and activities of less internationally linked organizations. 53 See Van Buren (2006) for a full ethnographic account of performing arts and community-based organizing in Nairobi. 76 3.3.2 Specific Criteria In addition to general criteria, I establish five specific traits drawn from a cross-section of civil society literature54 to constitute the organizations within the scope of this dissertation as NGOs. All of the organizations I profiled as reflecting NGO culture: (1) engage in activities that reflect shared values as opposed to generating profits for shareholders; (2) do not operate under a branch of government, hence the title nongovernmental organization; (3) utilize external donors for funding and, in the case of Kenyan-based NGOs, much of that funding originates outside of Kenya; (4) incorporate jargon common to Western nonprofit culture such as “empowerment,” “sustainability,” “development,” “initiatives,” “projects,” “mission,” “vision,” and “objectives”; (5) create or engage with initiatives that reflect civic benefit-oriented or charitable and philanthropic causes such as education, economic development, environmental sustainability, the empowerment of marginalized groups (such as youth, women, immigrants, minorities, etc.), peace, bridging cultures, health, and cultural preservation. 3.3.3 Contentious Criteria Two particularly contentious dimensions of this study’s classificatory parameters include (1) the inclusion of for-profit organizations in the scope of Kenyan NGO music culture; and (2) the inclusion of NGOs and nonprofit organizations that lack a Board of Directors. 3.3.3.1 For-Profit Organizations as Civil Society Organizations? Some readers will certainly find a point of contention with my inclusion of for-profit organizations in a civil society organizational study. Keane (2003), in Global Civil Society?, includes some private sector corporations in his scope of global civil society organizing. Although Kenya possesses a resourcefully constructed peripheral private sector (often referred to in Kenya as the jua kali sector), its destabilized and globally marginalized formal private sector causes funding from international philanthropic organizations in the form of aid revenue to 54 See footnote one in the Introduction for a more in depth discussion on this point. These criteria have been especially influenced by my own personal participation in the non-profit sector as well as descriptions by numerous organizations and scholars, including Jan Scholte’s Global Civil Society: Changing the World? (1999: 2-3), Lester Salamon and Wojciech Sokolowski’s Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector, Volume Two (2004), the World Bank’s “Defining Civil Society” Webpage (http://web.worldbank.org/, accessed 05.01.12), Civil Society International’s “What is Civil Society?” Webpage (http://www.civilsoc.org/, accessed 05.01.12), among others. 77 appear more successful at accumulating revenue than even the business sector. This has become the case so much that for-profit organizations in Kenya have modeled themselves after NGOs, and in doing so obscure the categorical divide between for-profit and nonprofit. Demonstrating further conflations of for-profit/nonprofit dichotomies in Kenya, many NGOs promote “economic development” in their missions, in some cases aiming to empower small businesses and in others funding business ventures of marginalized groups. Within Kenya's NGO music culture, I encountered for-profit organizations such as Kenya Music Week and Blankets and Wine that embodied many of the organizational traits of NGOs. They utilized sponsorships and mission-focused agendas while frequently collaborating with registered NGOs. For instance, the registered NGO Ketebul Music maintains many social and professional ties to Kenya Music Week as well as Blankets and Wine. I, therefore, included a small sampling of for-profit organizations because they fall within the community of organizations that comprise the focus of this study and also reflect many characteristics of NGO music culture in Kenya. 3.3.3.2 No Board of Directors? Given the required presence of a Board of Directors for nonprofit organizations in the United States, as well as most of Europe, some readers may take issue with my inclusion of organizations that do not have a Board of Directors in the list below. I encountered several formal civil society organizations and even organizations that referred to themselves as NGOs that had not elected a Board of Directors to oversee their organization’s activities. An executive director of one of these organizations also informed me of an avenue to register as a nonprofit organization in Kenya without electing a Board of Directors. Given the variability of civil society organization registration systems in Kenya, I chose to include larger organizations that do not hold a Board of Directors in the list below. 3.3.4 Descriptive Approach I describe each organization below using a four-part approach. This four-part structure consists of (1) an Overview section that introduces an organization by briefly describing its history, activities, and some dimensions of its identity such as its current executive director and how they categorize themselves (whether “NGO,” “nonprofit,” “for-profit,” “foundation,” or “trust”) or legally registered (if applicable); (2) a Music Programming section that showcases the organizations engagement with music oriented initiatives to identify a variety of activities that 78 constitute NGO music culture in Kenya; (3) a Funding section that describes the sources of revenue that sustain the organization so as to locate them within the international economic supply chains of transnational civil society; and (4) an Orientation towards Shared Values section that describes the explicit mission-oriented dimensions of the organization in such a way so as to locate them within the cultural ideology of civil society. I have classified the organizations below into two categories: International Organizations and Kenyan Organizations. These categories highlight the distinction between international NGOs (INGOs) and a growing constituency of local Kenyan NGOs. Most INGOs (sometimes referred to in civil society literature as NNGOs, or Northern NGOs, as a result of their strong ties in the Global North) tend to have a larger funding base due to their close institutional affiliations in the Global North. As the descriptions below will demonstrate, INGOs commonly partner with Kenyan-based NGOs (sometimes referred to in civil society literature as SNGOs, or Southern NGOs, for their typical geographic position in the Global South). The asymmetrical economic and infrastructural relationships between the two groups identify a prevailing dynamic in which the Global North maintains considerable more power to influence the operations of organizations founded and operating in the Global South. 3.4 International Organizations 3.4.1 Ford Foundation, Eastern Africa Region Figure 3.4: Ford Foundation-funded Ketebul Music documentaries Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right) (photo by author). Overview: The Ford Foundation is an international nonprofit foundation formed in 1936 and registered in the United States as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The Eastern African regional office is located in Nairobi and serves as a grantmaking foundation that also provides oversight and guidance to projects, individuals, and organizations that receive Ford Foundation 79 funding. Reflecting the Ford Foundation’s broader mission of empowering local governance structures, the Eastern Africa regional office’s international team of program officers includes a majority of representatives who are Eastern Africa nationals, including the acting representative during the duration of this study’s fieldwork, Joyce Nyairo. Performing Arts Programming: The Eastern Africa office has provided grants for several performing arts related initiatives in Kenya, including numerous Kenyan music history documentaries produced by Ketebul Music (2007-present), the GoDown Arts Centre’s “organizational and asset development” (2011), the 2008 Spotlight on Kenyan Music tour by Alliance Française de Nairobi (2008), and facility construction and international exchanges by East African artists for Sarakasi Trust (2006). Funding: The Ford Foundation receives most of its revenue from the interest dividends of a diverse investment portfolio and fixed assets. Orientation towards Shared Values: The Ford Foundation's mission is (1) “to encourage initiatives by those living and working closest to where problems are located”; (2) “to promote collaboration among the nonprofit, government and business sectors”; and (3) “to ensure participation by men and women from diverse communities and all levels of society.” The Ford Foundation, Eastern Africa office proposes civic focused goals directly related to regional needs by “advancing reforms in land, livelihoods, rights, media and civic participation for women and youth.”55 3.4.2 Goethe Institut Kenia Figure 3.5: Kenya - Germany collaborative performance at Goethe Institut’s Inboda Dance Work Shop at GoDown Arts Centre on 02.26.11 (photo by Shino Saito). 55 Ford Foundation’s main Webpage (http://www.fordfound.org/, accessed 01.02.12). Ford Foundation Eastern Africa’s main Webpage (http://www.fordfound.org/regions/eastern-africa, accessed 01.02.12). 80 Overview: The Goethe Institut is an international nonprofit German cultural institution founded in 1951. It offers language courses and cultural cooperation programs in ninety-two countries, including Kenya. The Goethe Institut Kenia office is located in Nairobi and offers workshops and teacher training seminars for German teachers as a second language and administers/funds many arts and culture projects. Performing Arts Programming: The Goethe Institut supports and organizes several ongoing performing arts initiatives. The Jukwaani! Festival is a three-day festival of literature and performances organized and funded by Goethe Institute and Alliance Française. Since 2009, the annual festival has featured various forms of performed poetry, including hip-hop, Afro-fusion, and slam poetry. NRBLN-BLNRB is a collaborative music project that has been running from 2009 to present. The Goethe Institute administrated and funded young Kenyan and German musicians to create a collaborative electronic, hip-hop, and African influenced music community. The project took place in a Nairobi townhouse, where the artists worked, performed, and lived together. The Goethe Institute produces several music albums each year that feature a collaborative effort between German and Kenyan artists. The NRBLN-BLNRB project culminated in one such CD release in 2011. The Goethe Institute also organizes German-Kenyan dance collaborative projects, including hip-hop, B-boy battles and an initiative entitled Inboda: International Body and Dance Work. Inboda is a dance project in which dancers and choreographers from Germany come to work with children from Nairobi combining styles of urban dance, acrobatics, and contemporary Western dance. Funding: The German Embassy has provided the majority of funding to the Goethe Institute. The organization also receives support by partnering with various institutions, such as Alliance Française and GoDown Arts Centre, on specific projects. Orientation towards Shared Values: The Goethe Institute proposes to benefit the public by (1) “promoting knowledge of the German language abroad”; (2) “fostering international cultural cooperation by organizing a broad variety of events”; and (3) “facing the cultural policy challenges of globalization to develop innovative concepts for a world made more human through mutual understanding, or where cultural diversity is seen as an asset.”56 56 Goethe Institut’s main Webpage (http://www.goethe.de/ins/ke/nai/enindex.htm, accessed 01.02.12). 81 3.4.3 Gatwitch Records Figure 3.6: A performance at the Gatwich Peace Festival on 12.04.10 by Nairobi’s Pamoja Dance Troupe, a nonprofit performing arts group comprised of individuals with physical disabilities (photo by Shino Saito). Overview: Gatwitch Records is a for-profit record label founded in 2007 by a South Sudanese former child soldier turned hip-hop artist and activist, Emmanuel Jal. Although a for-profit record label, the organization exhibits many influences of NGO culture and extensively coordinates initiatives with NGOs and CBOs, including GUA (pronounced “gwaah” and translates as “peace” in the Sudanese language Nuer), a South Sudan NGO that was also founded by Emmanuel Jal. Gatwitch Records produces and promotes hip-hop and World Music and has offices located in Nairobi, London, and Juba. Performing Arts Programming: Gatwitch Records finances, records, and markets East African artists and partners with smaller record labels through events, collaborations, and joint marketing. The December 2010 Gatwitch Peace Festival was a music festival featuring collaborations with several local music organizations, including Ketebul Music, Pamoja Dance Troupe, and the Africa Yoga Project. Gatwitch Records advertises that a portion of all money raised through music sales is distributed to various nonprofit organizations, including GUA Africa. GUA builds schools in South Sudan and sponsors children's education in Nairobi “slum” areas. 82 Funding: Gatwitch Records receives funding through the record sales and performances of its artists, as well as through sponsorships. Resources and funding for the Gatwitch Peace Festival were provided by Makini Schools, Caipirinha Foundation, AccessKenya Group, Signature Media, and Silverbird Cinemas, among other organizations. Orientation towards Shared Values: Gatwitch Records is value centered in several ways. Its aim is (1) “to redefine the notion of a record label by seeking out and supporting local talent and offering fair deals to artists, both signed and independent”; (2) “to give artists an international platform, but also bring world attention to their communities of origin”; and (3) “to enrich local communities by putting up cultural and educational events, as well as sending part of the proceeds generated from music toward various community projects.”57 3.4.4 Alliance Française de Nairobi Figure 3.7: Koko Band performance raising awareness to fight deforestation at the Alliance Française de Nairobi’s Garden Stage on 11.26.10 (photo by Shino Saito). Overview: Alliance Française is a nonprofit organization founded in Paris in 1883 by a collective of notably influential French humanists, including Louis Pasteur and Jules Verne. They founded the organization with the objective of promoting the teaching of French language around the world. Alliance Française now comprises a global network of 1,016 offices in 135 countries. Its mission has expanded beyond French language education and is now aimed at fostering 57 Gatwitch Records’ main Webpage (http://www.gatwitch.com/, accessed 01.02.12). 83 cooperation and friendship between people through not only the promotion of French language but also arts and cultural exchange. The Alliance Française de Nairobi is a subsidiary of Alliance Française International and was founded in 1949 primarily as a French language learning center. Since its founding, Alliance Française de Nairobi has developed into one of the largest Alliance Française in Africa and functions within Nairobi as a French language center as well as a major cultural center, which carries out the Cultural Cooperation Initiatives of the French Embassy. These initiatives include many performing arts and visual arts-oriented activities. Performing Arts Programming: Alliance Française de Nairobi sponsors and organizes many performing arts events throughout the year at the garden stage performance venue located at the organization's main facility in Nairobi’s city center. The most consistent annual performing arts project facilitated by Alliance Française is the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative. This is a multi-tiered music program aimed at showcasing and promoting Kenyan Afro-fusion music, in order to economically and culturally empower the local Kenyan music industry.58 Funding: Alliance Française receives the majority of its funding from the French Embassy in Kenya but also receives grants such as the European Union's 2011 “Vital Voices and Culture” programme. Alliance Française de Nairobi has also received funding from corporate sources such as Total Oil, Brussels Airlines, Bank of Africa Kenya, Swiss International Airlines, and Laico Regency Nairobi. Orientation towards Shared Values: Alliance Française de Nairobi proposes three primary valueoriented objectives of the organization: (1) promotion of the French language; (2) developing an appreciation and understanding of French and Francophone cultures; and (3) promoting artistic and cultural diversity.59 58 See Chapter 8 for an extensive examination of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative and the development of the Afro-fusion genre. 59 Alliance Française’s main Webpage (http://www.afkenya.or.ke/, accessed 05.25.12). 84 3.4.5 Abubilla Foundation Figure 3.8: Ayub Ogada performing at an Abubilla Music-Ketebul Music partnership concert at Sippers Restaurant on 03.27.11 (photo by author). Overview: Abubilla Music Foundation is the nonprofit branch of the Abubilla Music record label/artist community and is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. The foundation functions as an extension of Abubilla Music to “support inspirational music projects around the world that actively preserve and promote cultural music heritage while also discovering and nurturing emergent talent.”60 Abubilla Music Foundation's activities in Kenya manifest primarily through a partnership with the Nairobi-based NGO, Ketebul Music, including a joint initiative entitled the Singing Wells project (described below). The following trustees oversee Abubilla Music Foundation initiatives: James Allen, a global management consultant for Bain and Company and founder of Abubilla Music; Martyn Ward, the managing director of Adevia Health Ltd., an international healthcare recruitment company, and Kathy Allen. Performing Arts Programming: Abubilla Music Foundation currently funds and oversees two global music initiatives: Meninos do Morumbi and Singing Wells. Meninos do Morumbi is an initiative in São Paulo Brazil aimed at increasing the digital marketing capabilities of the large youth percussion, dance, and singing group, Meninos do Morumbi. Abubilla Music Foundation provides funding and technical resources to the group. Singing Wells is a collaborative initiative with the Nairobi-based NGO, Ketebul Music, and promotes the preservation of East African musical heritage as an infusion of these rooted cultural streams into the popular mainstream 60 Abubilla Music Foundation’s main Webpage (http://www.abubillamusic.com/abubilla-music-foundation/, accessed 05.27.12). 85 music market. Abubilla Music Foundation provides funding to the initiative and has generated a collaborative strategic plan combining studio engineers, producers, and musicians both from Abubilla Music and Ketebul Music. Together, they record “traditional” East African music in villages throughout East Africa using a mobile recording studio and produce Afro-fusion compositions that bring together urban and rural, young and old, “traditional and contemporary” musicians from diverse backgrounds. Funding: Abubilla Music Foundation is funded in part through private donations, grants, and its parent organization, Abubilla Music. The foundation is also registered with the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) that provides tax deductible donations through the CAF American Donor Fund. The Institute of International Education has provided additional funding to the Abubilla Music Foundation through a 2011 grant in support of the Singing Wells project. Orientation towards Shared Values: Abubilla Music Foundation’s stated mission is to “help ensure that the historical roots of global music are preserved and that “traditional” music is treasured and brought to new audiences in a modern context and in accessible formats, for this generation and generations to come.” They aim to do this through an objective of “teaming up with brilliant partners who are leaders in their communities and who are well respected musicians, producers and leaders in the creative world. They utilize combined resources from the Abubilla Music Foundation and Abubilla Music record company.61 3.4.6 Jeunesses Musicales International (JMI) Figure 3.9: Flier for JMI’s World Bank-funded Fair Play: Live and Direct Concert held at the Sarakasi Dome 04.29.11. 61 Abubilla Music Foundation’s main Webpage (http://www.abubillamusic.com/abubilla-music-foundation/, accessed 05.28.12). 86 Overview: JMI identifies itself as the largest youth music NGO in the world and was created in Brussels, Belgium in 1945 with the mission “to enable young people to develop through music across all boundaries.”62 The organization functions as a networking organization for its subsidiary member organizations in forty-five countries. Member organizations pay annual dues to JMI in exchange for a heightened international profile and opportunities to engage in crossborder programs funded by JMI. In Kenya, the Nairobi-based performing arts NGO, Sarakasi Trust (listed below), is a member organization of JMI and participated in the 2010 JMI program entitled Fair Play: Anti-Corruption Youth Voices funded by the World Bank Institute. Performing Arts Programming: JMI undertakes some 36,000 music activities a year that embrace all styles of music and coordinate internationally. The organization categorizes these activities into four “priority activity fields:” Young Musicians, Young Audiences, Youth Empowerment and Youth Orchestras and Ensembles. In Kenya, JMI has most directly involved itself through the Fair Play: Anti-Corruption Youth Voices initiative, which is a global anticorruption campaign and music video competition that aims to increase youth participation in the global fight against corruption. The competition encourages young musicians (ages 18-35) to submit music videos featuring original music that communicates the impact of corruption on youth to a broad public. JMI chose Sarakasi Trust, in Nairobi to facilitate the Fair Play AntiCorruption Youth Forum held from April 27-29, 2011 that brought together a global youth demographic of competition finalists to record collaborative anti-corruption songs and perform at the Sarakasi Dome performance space in Nairobi. The music of the Fair Play Anti-Corruption finalists presented at the Nairobi conference also recorded a selection of collaborative songs at the NGO music studio Ketebul Music. Funding: JMI receives funds through a number of public, private, and civic channels, including the World Bank Institute, Desjardins Securities, The European Cultural Foundation, Belgian Science Policy, membership dues, and individual tax deductible contributions. Some of the funds for JMI initiatives flow through and are managed by the charitable arm of JMI, JMI Foundation, which describes itself as an “international nonprofit organization.” Orientation towards Shared Values: JMI operates under the stated mission “to enable young people to develop through music across all boundaries” and the objective “for young people and audiences to have access to music. The organization advocates “quality formal and non-formal 62 JMI’s main Webpage (http://www.jmi.net/page.php?n=2&s=1, accessed 15.28.12). 87 music education for young people and music learning for young audiences.” 3.4.7 WOMEX Figure 3.10: Screen capture of the VirtualWOMEX online networking platform main page.63 Overview: WOMEX (short for World Music Expo) is an international world music networking organization founded in 1994 by the current president Christophe Borkowsky. The organization holds an annual conference that it advertises as the world’s largest world music expo and manages an online world music networking site called virtualWOMEX. WOMEX aims to provide spaces for stakeholders in the world music industry to network in order to facilitate various business partnerships, including international tours, record contracts, and the production of documentary films. Although WOMEX’s organizational headquarters are based in Berlin, Germany, several influential organizations and musicians in East Africa such as Sauti za Busara Ketebul Music, Alliance Française, Kenya Music Week, Samba Mapangala and Tabu Osusa, are registered with the organization. Performing Arts Programming: WOMEX supports the development of the World Music industry at its conference that features a trade fair, concerts, and awards for musicians, organizations, and other music industry stakeholders. virtualWOMEX provides a marketing and networking platform through which artists, producers, festival organizers, and record labels connect with one another based on mutually beneficial opportunities showcased on their member 63 Available at the WOMEX website at http://www.womex.com/virtual/, accessed 06.03.12. 88 profiles and participation in the annual WOMEX conference. Funding: WOMEX has received funding from various nongovernmental, governmental, and private organizations but primarily operates as a for-profit organization receiving revenue from member dues and conference tickets. Orientation towards Shared Values: WOMEX was created by its founders out of a concern for the marginalization of the world music market and decreases in opportunities for international artists as a result of the dominance of the global popular music industry. Although the organization does not publicize the stated mission, its underlying ethos addresses advocacybased values that transcend the mere accumulation of profits.64 3.5 Kenyan-Based Organizations 3.5.1 GoDown Arts Centre Figure 3.11: The GoDown Arts Centre’s promotional booklet picturing the main performance space (photo of booklet by author). Overview: The nonprofit GoDown Arts Centre is a 10,000 square meter space in Nairobi for arts organizations representing a range of art forms. The complex contains offices, visual arts and music studios, and rehearsal and performance spaces. In the center of the complex is a large art gallery for exhibitions, a main performance space for music concerts and theater performances, 64 WOMEX’s main Webpage (http://www.womex.com/, accessed 05.28.12). Jon Pareles, 2005. “Castanets and Slide Ukuleles, Looking for a Chance to Be Heard.” In The New York Times October 31st, 2005. 89 as well as a restaurant. The organization is a registered Kenyan nonprofit organization that became operational in 2003. The organization's founders, including its executive director, Joy Mboya, created the center during the 1990s to provide facilities and networking opportunities for a large and growing community of artists living in Nairobi. Performing Arts Programming: The GoDown Arts Centre sustains several long running yearlong programs. The Centre collaborates with the Kenyan Conservatoire of Music to support the National Youth Orchestra that provides subsidized training for students in the Nairobi area in Western classical music throughout the year. GoDown also supports the Dance Forum Nairobi program that provides training for youth in contemporary dance. The program features workshops and residencies at the GoDown Arts Centre as well as opportunities to perform internationally. The students perform publicly and have received training from contemporary dance professionals, including Aloyce Makonde of the Visa to Dance Festival in Tanzania. GoDown holds several festivals throughout the year, including Dunda Mtaani, a community festival aimed at giving local youth groups opportunities to showcase their artistic talents through music, dance, and acrobatics; and Battle of the Bands, a monthly music competition in the form of a concert that culminates in a yearly finalist competition entitled Showdown at the GoDown. The Centre also serves artists and residents by providing studio spaces at subsidized rates. Funding: The GoDown Arts Centre has received funding from several foundations and embassies, including Ford Foundation, the Royal Netherlands Embassy, the Doen Foundation, Tides Foundation, Lambent Foundation, and Scanad. For specific projects, the organization has received funding from H Young Company, Swedish Institute, USAID, the European Union, and Hivos. Orientation towards Shared Values: The GoDown Arts Centre’s mission aims to (1) “develop independent artists across multiple art forms”; (2) “participate in the advancement of the cultural sector”; and (3) “thereby contribute to the establishment of a robust arts and culture sector with expending receptive audiences.”65 65 GoDown Arts Centre’s main Webpage (http://www.theGoDownartscentre.com, 03.01.12). 90 3.5.2 Sarakasi Trust Figure 3.12: Sarakasi Dome performance space (photo by author). Overview: Sarakasi Trust is a registered performing arts Kenyan NGO based in Nairobi and established in 2001 with the aim of building capacity in Kenya's performing arts sector. The organization operates under the policy “culture for development,” that asserts culture can play a central role in diminishing poverty. The managing director and founder is Marion van Dijck, a Danish expatriate and full time resident of Nairobi who began the organization after witnessing the touristic acrobatic performances by youth performing in hotels around Nairobi. Inspired by seeing these performances and motivated to increase the opportunities for the struggling performers, van Dijck began Sarakasi Trust by creating a training and outreach program at the GoDown Arts Centre involving youth and young adults from Nairobi's most economically impoverished areas. Sarakasi Trust has since added an “audience building program” that features performances at the Sarakasi Dome Performance Center. Construction was completed in 2008. The organization manages a variety of special projects, including the Africa Yoga Project and Sarakasi Trust Hospital Project. Sarakasi Trust is governed by a Board of Directors, a managing director, and business manager and has a staff of approximately forty-two part-time employees. The Board provides overall leadership and guidance for the organization and is publicly accountable for the activities of the organization, while the managing director oversees day-today operations and delegates staff duties. 91 Performing Arts Programming: Sarakasi Trust oversees several annually recurring music and performing arts-based initiatives. At the core of Sarakasi’s activities is its youth acrobat troupes made up of marginalized residents of Nairobi’s impoverished urban settlements. Sarakasi provides equipment, practice space, funding, and strategic business and marketing coaching, as well as international exchange programs for the troupes that perform in Nairobi as well as internationally. Sarakasi Trust acrobatic troupes also perform at the annual Sawa Sawa Festival, Nairobi’s largest music festival that is also organized by Sarakasi Trust. In addition to Sarakasi’s acrobat troupes, the Sawa Sawa Festival features some of Kenya’s and East Africa’s most popular music performing acts as well as new emerging talents. The Sawa Sawa Festival particularly features partnerships with other organizations active in Nairobi’s NGO music culture, such as Ketebul Music, from which two of its featured artists, Makadem and Gargar, performed at the 2012 Sawa Sawa Festival. WaPi is an initiative initially founded by the British Council but now administered by Saraksi Trust. WaPi is a monthly youth concert that showcases emerging musical acts from Nairobi. Each month targets a theme such as environmental awareness, women’s rights, or confronting substance abuse. Each concert attracts around 1,000 youth attendees and gives underground or unknown artists opportunities to gain an audience base. WaPi is a central component to Sarakasi’s “audience building program.” The Sarakasi Hospital Project runs entertainment programs in various hospitals and children rehabilitation facilities throughout Nairobi. The program promotes positive entertainment as a contribution to healing and rehabilitation. Amani Lazima is an initiative in which youth of Nairobi’s “slums” are coached to create their own performance-based initiatives and partner with community-based organizations already operating in the “slums” where they live. The ultimate goal of Amani Lazima is to use music and dance specifically is to advocate on issues of peace and anti-violence. Funding: Sarakasi Trust has received a significant amount of funding through international channels of private, philanthropic, and governmental organizations. Governmental organizations that have supported Sarakasi Trust include the British Council, U.S.A. Embassy of Nairobi, Royal Norwegian Embassy of Nairobi, Royal Netherlands Embassy of Nairobi, Stichting Doen Netherlands and the Danish Embassy of Nairobi. Civil society groups that have provided support to Sarakasi Trust initiatives include the Ford Foundation, Tejcheve Foundation, Umoja Cultural Flying Carpet, UNICEF, FK Norway, United Flower Organization Netherlands, and Mundial Productions. 92 Orientation towards Shared Values: Sarakasi Trust operates under a vision statement of “arts and culture for a better world!” The organization’s mission is “to develop, facilitate, support and promote performing arts and culture for social and economic advancement of society.”66 3.5.3 Purple Images Productions Figure 3.13: The Zimbabwean theatre troupe Rooftop Promotions performing “Rituals” for Purple Images Production’s All Africa Peace Festival on 12.05.10 (photo by Shino Saito). Overview: Purple Images Productions is a Kenyan-based nonprofit organization founded in 1996 with the objective of using the performing arts and mass media communication to promote social and health awareness among youth and communities in the Eastern African region. A selfdescribed “development” communications agency, the organization is staffed by communications specialists who specialize in project design, monitoring and evaluation, event management, social mobilization, and communications training. The initiatives that Purple Images Productions has implemented include thematic communication campaigns, music concerts, roadshows, theater, audiovisual productions, and other forms of alternative forms of media. They have collaborated on initiatives with several NGOs, including Family Health International, Path, Action Aid, UNICEF Kenya, UNAIDS, UNIFEM, UNFPA, UNDP, National Council for Population and Development, UNDCP, and International Labor Organization/IPEC. Purple Images Productions is also a member of the Kenya AIDS NGOs Consortium and reports winning more grants from the United Nations for The U.N. International Days than any other 66 Sarakasi Trust’s main Webpage (http://www.sarakasi.org/, accessed 05.28.12). 93 African organization. Performing Arts Programming: In the area of the performing arts, Purple Images Productions organizes music concerts, cultural festivals, exhibitions, conferences, and roadshows that feature music, dance, and theater to mobilize youth in health and “development” issues. Of these events, Purple Images organized a youth targeted music concert, community roadshow, and drama festival in commemoration of the International Human Rights Day in 2000. In 2005, Purple Images Productions hosted the performing arts event, “Beats from Kids” children star search to commemorate the Day of the African Child. The organization has held an annual music and dance festival since 2006 featuring community based cultural dance groups from throughout the East African region. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 these dance festivals featured the theme of peace by celebrating the role of cultural dance in peace building and human understanding. The dance festivals also included technical training workshops on the topics of choreography, dance drama/dance theatre, dance journalism, the role of community and dance, dance festival productions, and the role of dance in promoting peace, governance, and “sustainable development.” Funding: Purple Images Productions has received funding and resource support for initiatives from Family Health International, Kenya Medical Association, Federation of Women Lawyers, Ipas Kenya, Global Fund Against Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, Co-operative Bank of Kenya, Kenyan Department of Culture, GoDown Arts Centre, Sarakasi Trust, and Kenyan National Theater, among other local and international nonprofit and corporate organizations. For some events, such as the Dance for Peace Festivals, registration fees for the performing groups who did not receive scholarships to attend the conference added additional revenue. Orientation towards Shared Values: Purple Images Productions indicate several ways in which the organization aims to benefit a wider segment of society, including (1) “creating communication activities that initiate the translation of information and education into actionoriented options for motivational processes that reflect, in culturally relevant terms, the needs, hopes, values, and traditions of specific audience groups;” (2) “creating awareness and empowerment to influence attitudes and behavior change in different social, health and development problems facing targeted audiences;” (3) “promoting the Eastern African identity through cultural dance expression and thematic communication, education and entertainment;” (4) “promoting cultural integration and cooperation among the citizens of Eastern Africa through 94 friendly cultural and artistic dance competitions;” (5) “building technical skills and dance and dance drama;” and (6) “formulating dance development programs to address health issues, governance and democratization, peace and conflict management among other development issues facing the region.”67 3.5.4 Kenya Music Week Figure 3.14: Makadem of Ketebul Music performing at the 2010 Kenya Music Week on 12.12.10 (photo by author). Overview: Kenya Music Week is a for-profit music festival created by a partnership between Kenyan music industry stakeholders PHAT! Music & Entertainment and Triple P K Publishers. The festival features performances by Kenyan musicians, a trade exhibition, and educational workshops. The first Kenya Music Week festival took place in December, 2004 at the Sarit Centre Expo Hall in Nairobi and has since occurred annually each following December. The central aim of Kenya Music Week is “developing a [Kenyan] music industry that is professional, transparent and profitable for all.” The initiative was a response to a disempowered Kenyan music industry dominated by music piracy that lacked sustainable revenues. Although Kenya Music Week is a for-profit organization, its mission to develop a sustainable music industry in Kenya addresses a socioeconomic need that many members of Kenya’s music industry express. 67 Purple Images Productions’ main Webpage (http://www.purpleimages.com/, 03.01.12). 95 The event also coordinates and receives support from nonprofit organizations such as Goethe Institut, Music Copyright Society of Kenya, and Ketebul Music, as well as government organizations such as the Permanent Presidential Commission on Music. Finally, each year the festival embraces a new socially conscious theme that reinforces the mission-based dimensions of the organization. The 2011 theme was “Towards Vision 2030,” a reinforcement of Kenya’s proposed Vision 2030 Development Goals that are based on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Performing Arts Programming: Kenya Music Week features four days of performances exclusively by Kenyan artists. The event includes a trade exposition room where various companies associated with the Kenyan music industry network, publicize, and market to concertgoers. One day of the festival is a workshop where Kenyan music industry stakeholders of varying levels of experience and influence share ideas and strategies for stabilizing and enhancing Kenya's music industry. Funding: Kenyan Music Week has received funding from numerous corporate, private, and nonprofit supporters, including the World Music Expo (WOMEX), Goethe Institut Kenia, FIYUHWORKS, Xtreme Media Solutions Africa, Phat Buzz, and Triple P K Publishers. The event also acquires revenue by charging a fee to rent booth space at the trade exposition. Orientation towards Shared Values: Kenya Music Week purports to benefit the greater whole of Kenyan society through the music industry by (1) “providing an accessible public forum for musicians, producers, promoters, distributors, consumers, government, and NGOs to interact and produce solutions to industry problems”; (2) “educating the public on industry issues such as music piracy”; (3) “using this united assembly as a publicity opportunity to lobby for the enforcement of music copyright and the elimination of piracy through press conferences and petitions”; (4) “encouraging stronger win-win partnerships between industry stakeholders nationally, regionally, and internationally”; and (5) “conducting industry census and register industry stakeholders into a central database for future intercommunication purposes.”68 68 Kenya Music Week’s main Webpage (http://www.kenyamusicweek.com/, 01.03.12). 96 3.5.5 Blankets and Wine Figure 3.15: Blankets and Wine director, Muthoni the Drummer Queen, and Dela performing at Blankets and Wine XXI on 11.28.10 (photo by Shino Saito). Overview: Blankets and Wine is a monthly Nairobi music festival that showcases genres of Afrofusion music. The organization is a for-profit company that demonstrates intersections with NGO music culture by coordinating the festival with NGOs, such as Ketebul Music, receiving sponsorship to subsidize event costs, and seeking to provide a public benefit through music. The director of Blankets and Wine is the popular Nairobi performing artist Muthoni the Drummer Queen. Performing Arts Programming: Performing arts programming consists of a monthly, picnic style music festival that takes place every first Sunday of the month from 2 PM to 7 PM in alternating outdoor venues. The festivals strategically feature a mix of high profile artists such as Kidum, Thandiswa, Suzanna Owiyo, Oliver Mtukudzi, Eric Wainaina, Makadem, and others, in order to draw crowds. The festival also features lesser-known Kenyan artists who gain exposure by opening the festival for the more popular acts. Funding: Blankets and Wine has received sponsorship from Kenyan and international corporate sponsors, including KCB Bank, Dormans Coffee, Asilia, Provate Safaris, Capital Colors, and Wedding & Events by Kui. The event also receives subsidies from ticket prices that are 1,000 KSH in advance (about U.S. $11.5) and 1,300 KSH (around U.S. $15). 97 Orientation towards Shared Values: Blankets and Wine indicates dimensions of public benefit that extend beyond the festival’s commercial interests by promoting what they refer to as “Afrobased music and lifestyle experience” that is definitive of “urban Afro-based culture.” In this way, the organization is part a cultural empowerment organization. Specifically towards promoting the cause of live Afro-fusion music, envisioned by its performers as a response to the global commercialization of the music industry in Kenya, Blankets and Wine aims to (1) “create a platform for artists to share their skills and art in a relaxed and receptive atmosphere”; (2) “encourage domestic consumption of world-class Afro-based music, created and performed by African musicians or those of African descent”; (3) “solidify the culture of life music consumption”; (4) increase awareness and visibility of Afro-based fusion music, musicians, and genres of related to Afro expression”; and (5) “develop and contribute to the urban tourist industry by sharing the music and venues of East Africa with domestic and non-domestic tourists.”69 3.5.6 The Kenya Conservatoire of Music Figure 3.16: Program for the Kenya Conservatoire of Music’s Christmas performance of One King on 12.12.10 (photo by author). Overview: The Kenya Conservatoire of Music began in 1944 as the East Africa Conservatoire of Music, an organization formed by an exclusively European expatriate teaching staff and clientele. Since 1944, the organization has transitioned into a nonprofit organization staffed by a mix of 69 Blankets and Wine’s main Webpage (http//blanketsandwine.com, accessed 12.3.11). 98 expatriates and Kenyans serving over 300 students from a range of ages and backgrounds in Nairobi. Stylistically, the music taught and performed through the Kenya Conservatoire of Music is primarily Western classical in its orientation, with the exception of the jazz ensemble. Performing Arts Programming: Kenya Conservatoire of Music offers individual and group lessons in music theory, ensembles, instrumental, and voice. Lessons take place at both the Kenyan Cultural Centre as well as the GoDown Arts Centre. There are eight grade levels for each instrument and after completion of the eighth-grade level, students are eligible to test to acquire a diploma from The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM). The Conservatoire is also the official representative for ABRSM in Kenya and oversees the administration of all practical examinations, of which over 1,500 candidates enroll to test their proficiency in a variety of Western classical instruments each year. The Kenya Conservatoire of Music Orchestra comprises of students and staff members performing in at least four Conservatoire concerts annually in addition to occasional tours that have brought the orchestra to perform in the Diani, Mombasa, Kampala, and Dar es Salaam. In addition to the feature orchestra, they also have maintained a string quartet, junior orchestra, and jazz ensemble. The Conservatoire also draws international performing artists to conduct master classes and workshops. In 2010, the South African Soweto String Quartet was one such group. Funding: The Conservatoire acquires revenue through multiple avenues. Concert tickets and fundraisers as well as lesson fees charged to students comprise a substantial portion of the Conservatoire’s operating costs. Nonprofit organizations, including the GoDown Arts Centre and the Art of Music Foundation, in addition to governmental organizations such as the Kenyan Cultural Center have also contributed resources and funds to the Conservatoire. Orientation towards Shared Values: The Kenya Conservatoire of Music proposes to provide a benefit to society by (1) “working to teach and promote good music of all styles in Kenya”; (2) “ensuring that every child has an opportunity to experience the benefits of learning to play and sing music”; and (3) providing an inroad for Kenyans to achieve an internationally recognized certificate of instrumental proficiency through the ABRSM exam.70 70 Kenya Conservatoire of Music’s main Webpage (http://conservatoire.co.ke/, 03.01.12). 99 3.5.7 Mayeli Figure 3.17: Youth acrobats from Nairobi’s Huruma and Ongoza urban settlements performing at the Tandawazi Festival 12.29.10-01.04.11.71 Overview: Mayeli is a Nairobi-based nonprofit organization founded in 2010 and mobilized around the promotion of the Afro-Brazilian martial art/dance form of capoeira as well as other African-based performance traditions. The organization was founded by capoeirista Brian Owango who trained in the Senzala De Santos capoeira school headed by Mestre Somba in the United Kingdom. Owango runs the only capoeira school in Kenya from which the idea for the creation of a capoeira-centered nonprofit organization began. In addition to the creation of the performing arts festival and several performing arts-based initiatives, Mayeli raises funds to refurbish and build a second floor to the Ongoza Njia Community Centre in Huruma, one of Nairobi’s most economically impoverished urban settlements. Performing Arts Programming: Mayeli organizes a yearly performing arts festival called the Tandawazi Festival that showcases diverse performing arts styles, including capoeira, acrobatics, and music performance of popular, “traditional,” and fusion genres. Mayeli’s director, Brian Owango, also teaches weekly capoeira classes at the Ongoza Njia Community Centre in Nairobi’s Huruma urban settlement. 71 Photo provided by Brian Owango, director of Mayeli with permission for publication. 100 Funding: Mayeli receives most of its funding from the private hospitality company Aqueous that is also run by Mayeli’s Executive Director, Brian Owango. Additional funds and resources for the Tandawazi Festival were received from a spattering of private corporations, including Prime Bank, Power Hire, Tribe, Hennessy, Capitol FM, and Java House. Orientation towards Shared Values: Mayeli operates under a mission to use the arts to engage and enhance the lives of youth in marginalized communities. Organizational initiatives aim to provide youth with skills that will better their economic situation and that of their families as they grow with their preferred skill sets and to create confident worldly individuals.72 3.5.8 Kijani Kenya Trust Figure 3.18: Photo of Kijani Kenya Trust’s Nairobi Orchestra performing at the 2008 Kijani Festival.73 Overview: Kijani Kenya Trust registered as a British nonprofit charity and also a Kenyan Trust founded in 2004 working to provide music education, health and HIV/AIDS services, general education, and conservation in Kenya. The organization’s founders created Kijani Kenya Trust to bring internationally acclaimed music and cultural events to Kenya in order to raise funds to support conservation and HIV/AIDS projects in the region. Kijani Kenya Trust is run by a local and international group of volunteers and Nairobi-based administrator. Performing Arts Programming: Kijani Kenya Trust holds the Kijani Kenya Music Festival every year in late February and early March in Nairobi. In coordination with the Festival, music education workshops take place throughout the year featuring international artists holding master 72 Mayeli’s main Webpage (http://www.tandawazi.com/index.php, accessed 05.28.12). Available at Kijani Trust online photo gallery at http://www.kijanikenyatrust.org/blog/festival-photo-gallery/, accessed 06.03.12 73 101 classes for music teachers, musical exchanges with Kenyan artists, and workshops for young people in the care of children’s homes, and HIV+ orphans and vulnerable populations. Youth members across Kenya rehearse throughout the year to participate in Kijani festivals. The Festival features a diverse range of music genres, including Western classical groups (The Bridge Quartet, Vienna State Ballet and London Adventist Chorale), Afro-fusion groups (Eric Wainaina and Suzzana Owiyo), and international contemporary styles (Conjunto Sabroso Salsa Band, The Lucia Alvarez Flamenco Group, and Gaurav Mazumdar). Funding: Kijani Kenya Trust has received funding from their United Kingdom-based charity, Kijani Kenya Trust UK as well as various international and Kenyan corporate sponsors, including Safaricom Kenya (Vodafone), CFC/Stanbic Bank, Holiday Inn Nairobi, Severin Sealodge Mombasa, GM Moters Kenya, Capital FM Kenya, Air Kenya Ltd., Fly 540, AAR Health Services Kenya, and Leopard Beach Hotel Mombasa. Orientation towards Shared Values: Kijani Kenya Trust proposes to benefit society by (1) “acting as a catalyst to finance grassroots projects in Kenya and partnering with groups organizations that have a proven track record of project management”; (2) “acting as a generator, to help initiate ideas, partnerships and funds for projects which support the health and environmental conservation in Kenya”; and (3) “bringing internationally acclaimed music and cultural events to Kenya, to visit major centers around the country to educate and raise funds for conservation and HIV/AIDS projects in Kenya.”74 3.5.9 Drum Café Figure 3.19: Call for Papers for Drum Café’s 2010 Peace Arts Festival/Conference on 09.20-21.10. 74 Kijani Kenya Trust’s main Webpage (http://www.kijanikenyatrust.org, 03.01.12). 102 Overview: Drum Café is a nonprofit organization that organizes conferences, performances, and workshops to promote African cultural creativity with an emphasis on music. The organization's director is Edward Kabuye, a musician and intellectual of Ugandan descent who has resided, worked, and performed, in Nairobi for several years with his group Talking Drums that has performed internationally. Kabuye’s music and life has been a central focus of Kathleen Noss Van Burren’s ethnomusicological research and is featured in her dissertation entitled, “Stealing Elephants, Creating Futures: Exploring Uses of Music and Other Arts for Community Education in Nairobi, Kenya” (2006) as well as the African Music article entitled “Locating Hope in Performance: Lessons from Edward Kabuye” (2009). Performing Arts Programming: Drum Café has held several major workshops in conjunction with various local and international organizations. The first Drum Café event in 2006 featured a performance and workshops at Alliance Française in Nairobi benefitting from Kabuye’s extensive experience as a teacher and performer of African musical heritage. After the 2006 Alliance Française event, subsequent Drum Café events have included lecture presentations and dialogues with a wide range of cultural entrepreneurs and empowerment stakeholders. These include choreographers, music directors, theatrical directors, cultural experts, and scholars across disciplines. In 2009, Drum Café expanded its strategic objectives beyond the arts into the realm of cultural entrepreneurship broadly conceived. The expansion culminated in the Drum Café 2010 Peace Arts Festival and Conference focusing on “cultural development and social change towards peace and sustainability.” The Festival showcased performances by a wide range of African performance groups, including Kabuye’s own group Talking Drums of Africa, and featured presentations by representatives from universities, the private sector, and government offices. Funding: Drum Café has received a mix of financial and resource support from UNESCO, Amref, Sarakasi Trust, Unity College, and the GoDown Arts Centre. Orientation towards Shared Values: The major objectives of Drum Café is to promote certain nonprofit driven values, including: (1) to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions; (2) to encourage dialogue among cultures with a view to ensuring wider and balanced cultural exchanges; (3) to foster intercultural dialogue in order to develop cultural interaction in the spirit of building bridges among people; (4) to give recognition to the distinctive nature of cultural activities, goods and services as vehicles of identity, values and 103 meaning thus creating job opportunities for young cultural operators; and (5) to encourage diverse approaches to building an effective infrastructure for a cultural creativity industry.75 3.5.10 Art of Music Foundation Figure 3.20: Art of Music Foundation’s Kenyan National Youth Orchestra.76 Overview: The Art of Music Foundation promotes the use of and education in “art music” (music deriving primarily from Western classical musical performance practices and instrumentation) to enhance the lives of Kenyan youth. The activities of the organization focus on providing governance and oversight for music initiatives as well as seeking out secure funding channels to support the implementation of sustainable music programs. The executive director of Art of Music Foundation is Elizabeth Njoroge, a Kenyan opera singer and pharmacist who has performed with the Royal Scottish Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra Choir in addition to editing Kenya’s classical music magazine Classics. The Foundation also operates under the oversight of a board of nonexecutive trustees who specialize in the fields of music, business, law, and marketing. Julius Kipng’etich, CEO of Kenya Wildlife Society, serves as Chairman on the Board of Trustees. Performing Arts Programming: The Art of Music Foundation organizes Kenya’s only National Youth Orchestra that draws together instrumentalists under the age of 25 from around the country. The Foundation also funds and facilitates community music programs, such as the Ghetto Classics program, which aims to use music to better the lives of disadvantaged youth. 75 76 Drum Café’s main Webpage (http://thedrumcafe.jigsy.com/, accessed 03.01.12) Photo provided to author by Jim Pywell of Art of Music Foundation with permission for publication. 104 The Art of Music Foundation’s facility includes an education learning resource center that provides a library for musicians, training for music teachers, and provides grants for musical study for those in need, as well as local art music compositions. The facility also includes a media center that facilitates the publication of the Classics magazine and a radio station focused on the promotion and dissemination of classical “art music.” Funding: The Art of Music Foundation receives funding and resources through several nonprofit, private, and public funding channels, including the GoDown Arts Centre, the Kenya Conservatoire of Music, and the Permanent Presidential Music Commission. The Ghetto Classics program receives support and partnership with the Kutoka Network, a network of Catholic parishes and organizations working in urban “slums” to create policies to provide employment for “slum” dwellers. The Foundation also receives funding through individual donations. Orientation towards Shared Values: The stated mission of Art of Music Foundation is “to provide information, encourage excellence and increase the opportunities for those pursuing careers in art music.”77 3.6 Conclusion This chapter drew upon the previous chapter’s historical analysis of NGO development in Kenya to provide an outline of the classificatory criteria used to identify organizations reflecting the influence of NGO culture. Illustrating a distinct NGO music culture, I presented a catalog of international and local organizations facilitating music initiatives in Nairobi. The organizations and their music activities reflect the symbolic influence of European and North American nonprofit cultures in language, funding, and administrative structures; yet, many are locally administered and networked and facilitate music initiatives for a variety of purposes, not all of which can easily be identified as drawing heavy influence from Western philanthropic and civil society cultures. 77 Art of Music main Webpage (http://www.artofmusic.co.ke/, accessed 03.01.12). 105 CHAPTER 4 ECONOMIES OF REMEMBRANCE: NGO INITIATIVES FOR THE RELOCALIZATION OF EAST AFRICAN POPULAR MUSIC Opening ceremony of the 2011 Sauti za Busara Festival at the Old Fort, Zanzibar; February 9th, 2011… Yusuf Mahmoud: There was an artist here a couple of years ago. I’m sure many of you remember Samba Mapangala. Crowd: Yes! Yusuf Mahmoud: Samba Mapangala says this is a gift for the people of Zanzibar. He made this song after he arrived home in the U.S.A. Now we will listen to this song for Zanzibar, a new song that he will release soon.78A new song specially made, dedicated to the people of Zanzibar by one of East Africa’s most popular and loved musicians, Samba Mapangala… I think we should just celebrate a little before getting off stage. Please, weka weka flava dada! - Yusuf Mahmoud, the Executive Director of Busara Promotions. Figure 4.1: Busara Promotions board members, staff, and Executive Director dance to Samba Mapangala’s “Zanzibar” at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Sauti za Busara Festival (photo by author). 78 Kiswahili Translation with interspersed English spoken by Mahmoud: “Unamjua? Samba Mapangala? Sasa, last week we got a very nice surprise, a zawadi kutoka Samba Mapangala. Anasema hii ni zawadi kwa wananchi wa Zanzibar. Akatenganeza nyimbo baada ya kufika nyumbani kule U.S.A. Sasa tutasikiliza ile nyimbo ya Zanzibar, nyimbo mpya tatoa kesho kutwa.” 106 4.1 Introduction In 2009, Samba Mapangala, the famed leader of Orchestra Virunga, composed “Zanzibar”79 in commemoration of his experiences performing at one of Africa’s largest annual music festivals, the Sauti za Busara Festival. The Tanzanian NGO, Busara Promotions, organized the six-day festival. Busara Promotions maintains close regional ties with Ketebul Music, a Nairobi-based music studio and registered NGO founded by Mapangala’s long-time friend and colleague, Tabu Osusa. Together, Osusa and Mapangala comprise the musician-manager team most responsible for the creation and success of Orchestra Virunga, one of East Africa’s premier dance bands of the 1980s and early 1990s. In conjunction with CC Smith, Mapangala’s current manager, Osusa and Ketebul Music assisted in booking Mapangala to perform at Sauti za Busara, after which Mapangala recorded “Zanzibar” at the Ketebul Music studios in Nairobi before returning to his home in the United States. This chapter merges the historical and symbolic foundations of NGO music culture presented in Chapters 2 and 3 through an account of prominent East African musicians and managers utilizing global networks of NGOs in response to what they view as a destabilized East African popular music economy and generational disjuncture of local historical consciousness. Circumstances and histories arising from the excerpt above will follow throughout this chapter to offer a contingency-based examination of the cultural phenomenon of NGO music culture through social contact, economy, and history. In particular, I document the musical activities and histories of Tabu Osusa and Samba Mapangala that additionally intersect with a multitude of organizations, individuals, and East African musical encounters in the globally expansive NGO sector. The rising presence of NGOs in Kenya occurred concurrently with the economic and institutional collapse of the locally-based East African commercial music industry for which Nairobi served as a central production and networking hub. The consequences of these separate but related global historical trajectories compelled a segment of East Africa’s popular music industry players to seek opportunities in the internationally funded NGO sector. Through NGO-affiliated music organizations, initiatives, and festivals, industry moguls of decades past like Osusa and Mapangala found supplementary economic alternatives to the heavily 79 Although Mapangala composed “Zanzibar” in 2009, a year of recording and production followed its conception. “Zanzibar” is featured on Mapangala’s most recent album Maisha Ni Matamu (2011). 107 Western-influenced commercial market and piracy-driven local East African popular music industry. They also utilize the mission-oriented dimensions of the international culture of NGO initiatives explicitly to advocate for remembrance, relocalization, and invigoration of East Africa’s contemporary popular music industry. Throughout the course of this chapter, I will (1) trace the rapid decline of Kenya’s popular music industry during the course of the 1980s and into the mid-1990s and its impact on Mapangala’s and Osusa’s musical careers; (2) examine how the industry decline caused Mapangala and Osusa to adapt strategies of musical entrepreneurship to alternative organizational structures and resource networks, particularly those of the growing global economy of NGOs; (3) characterize the patterns of exchange and resource allocation within NGO music culture by examining several international and regional networks; and (4) showcase the specific themes of remembrance and relocalization that manifest in conjunction with these NGO music networks. 4.2 Decline: Destabilization of the Mainstream Kenyan Popular Music Industry “When I came back, I said, ‘My goodness, what has happened to the music scene here?’ The music scene was terrible. Where had it gone since I left?” (Osusa 2011a, Interview). In the early 1990s, Tabu Osusa left Kenya for the United Kingdom after over a decade of managing Orchestra Virunga. The breakup of Virunga, the political atmosphere of the Moi regime era, and financial opportunities presented to him in the United Kingdom motivated the temporary immigration. After three years of working at a vegetable packing plant as a migrant laborer, he returned to Kenya in 1997 to witness the cultural overhaul of the Kenyan music industry, which he recalled was the result of a cumulative process of delocalization, Westernization, and economic destabilization. The destabilization of Kenya’s popular music industry, given its importance as a music industry hub, also had consequences for the wider region of East Africa. A number of factors related to those that motivated Osusa’s departure from Kenya created the cultural overhaul that he perceived upon his return. Music piracy, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and an imported American popular music media onslaught were prominent forces in shifting music industry dynamics. By the late 1990s, the number of regularly performing, financially successful 108 East African rumba80 groups, of which Orchestra Virunga featured prominently in the last wave, had drastically declined. Music piracy was perhaps the greatest contributor to the decentralization of the East African popular music industry. A rise in piracy due to the introduction of tape cassettes during the 1980s made the inexpensive and fast reproduction and distribution of popular music possible without contracts or compensation to artists or producers. These undermining forces impacted East African and global music markets.81 The exit of Polygram Records, East Africa’s largest production and distribution plant, was particularly impactful to the region. A decline in record sale revenues due to piracy was the primary reason for Mapangala’s eventual immigration to the United States in the early 1990s. About the correlation between music piracy and Mapangala’s migration, CC Smith, who is Mapangala’s current manager and current custodian of a catalog of his recordings, stated, When Samba left Kenya, it was because he couldn’t make any money on his records because of the piracy. Also, the major label, Polygram, closed and pulled out of Kenya as well… But before that he had been very successful in Nairobi when he was working there. I mean, they had the best band in East Africa. (Smith 2012a, Interview) In recent years, Smith has attempted to curb the piracy of Mapangala’s music by way of social networking on Internet platforms such as blogs, websites, and YouTube. She encourages his fan base to purchase recent and reissued recordings using CD Baby and iTunes, through which he earns royalties. The campaign, however, is only beginning to offset several decades of financial losses. Even after an extensive European and American tour in the summer of 2012, Mapangala stated that he had not procured a livable wage from the concert dates and that, although his CD download sales had increased, he would not be able to survive off of royalties alone. Resultantly, he has been unable to earn a sustainable income through music despite a catalog of recordings regularly performed by cover bands and heard playing in matatus and restaurants throughout East Africa. Compounding the economic effects of music piracy, a general decline in economic infrastructure handicapped possibilities for financial support from the East African public. Like 80 The rumba music (also referred to as Lingala - a language spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo - or soukous in common parlance in East Africa) is an East African popular music dance genre with roots in Congo that drew significantly upon stylings of the Cuban son among other local and non-local musical influences. 81 Nyairo (2004a) and Wallis and Malm (1984; 1992) have provided comprehensive assessments of the effects of music piracy on Nairobi’s music industry. 109 many African postcolonial nation states, Kenya experienced a period of post-independence optimism and growth followed by decline. The economic growth lasted roughly from independence in 1963 until the late 1970s (Nyairo 2004a: 10; Hornsby 2012: 331-466). From the 1970s onward, a constellation of internal and external effects, including Cold War politics (Adar 1995: 89-102), neoliberal economic policies (Hornsby 2012: 331-398), and government graft (Brown 2007: 301-331), inhibited potential for stability within institutional, private, and public sector development. A final significant variable in the economic dislocation of East Africa’s music industry was the loss of a generation of musicians due to the widespread effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Osusa suggested that the impact of HIV/AIDS on the music industry killed an entire generation of popular musicians: There was an entire generation of musicians that got wiped out [by AIDS/HIV]. So you have a gap there now where before there was a very productive middle ground. It’s just the young and the very old. I could even name them for you. Like all of the best benga musicians, they all died. And now young people are trying to learn but they don’t have role models… You found that an entire generation of musicians all died all within a four year span… And there were Congolese musicians also, big, big, musicians! (Osusa 2011b, Interview) As the careers, influence, and music of an older generation of musicians temporarily faded into the background, some of the successful musicians and managers of the 1970s and 1980s left Kenya seeking financial opportunities in the Global North. Reflecting this trend, Mapangala migrated to the United States and Osusa moved from Nairobi to the United Kingdom in 1993. 4.3 Adapt: Strategies of Music Production and NGO Economy Upon his return to Kenya in 1996, Osusa was deeply disappointed to discover a Kenyan mainstream music industry on its way to molding itself into a copy of the American popular music industry. Because of the combined effects of AIDS/HIV, rampant music piracy, and economic destabilization, Osusa also believed that young Kenyans had lost ties to their “cultural roots” (Osusa 2011c, Interview). The fallout of institutional support for local popular music encouraged the persistent colonially instituted influence of Western culture. Manifesting a cultural bias for Western music, the state-controlled media conglomerate Voice of Kenya (VOK) had since independence, preferred to broadcast Western media over local sources (Wallis and Malm 1992: 84-86). A general lack of appropriate state regulatory policies to enhance local technological production and distribution capabilities in Kenya also made international music 110 cheaper and more abundant (Ibid.: 86-91). With the emergence of several private FM radio stations in the mid-1990s, a greater percentage of locally produced artists began to emerge on the Kenyan radio waves, but they closely modeled their style on the hip-hop and R&B styles of the international popular music industry (Nyairo 2004a: 15-16). Osusa’s disturbed reaction to the Kenyan music industry upon his return from the United Kingdom stemmed from this delocalization combined with the poor production capabilities of the local music industry. Opposing what he viewed as a depletion of Kenya’s cultural identity became his primary preoccupation. In the late 1990s, Osusa expressed his opinions about the negative state of the Kenyan music industry by writing editorials in newspapers and magazines as well as appearing on radio talk shows. In 2000, feeling the limited impact of editorial commentary, he formed the Nairobi City Ensemble, a collective of young musicians fusing what Osusa referred to as “authentic” East African musical influences with the American-influenced styles popular with Kenyan youth. The group enjoyed moderate success during the early 2000s blending African genres like soukous and benga, languages signifying local, including Kiswahili, Dholuo, and the Kenyan urban dialect of Sheng, as well as instruments that marked Kenya’s musical heritage such as the Luo orutu.82 Attempting to expand his vision to the extent that it could impact Kenya’s music industry more broadly, Osusa disbanded the Nairobi City Ensemble in 2004 and began a commercial music recording studio in the same year that he named Ketebul Productions. Osusa strategized he could work more effectively toward music cultural change by running a music studio that produced many artists thereby showcasing their individual styles and reaching a wider audience base. In addition to promoting locally influenced musical styles which he and others would later term Afro-fusion,83 Osusa designed Ketebul Productions with the intent of nurturing musicians’ development over a longer period than the low cost operations typical of Nairobi’s River Road music industry that tended to produce entire albums in one or two days.84 The finances that such an operation required, however, proved unsustainable in the treacherous environment of the Kenyan music industry. On this point Osusa stated, 82 For a more thorough account of the Nairobi City Ensemble see Nyairo (2004a) and Nyairo and Ogude (2003). The genre title Afro-fusion came about through Alliance Française’s Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiatives. The Kenyan music industry stakeholders, including Osusa, who comprised the Spotlight search committee created the genre moniker to brand and market a style of Kenyan music that fused “African” and global influences. 84 A number of small independent music production houses are located on and around Nairobi’s River Road and provide low cost studio services to artists. The River Road production houses facilitate the majority of” vernacular” and gospel recordings in Kenya. Wallis and Malm (1992) and Nyairo (2004a) have published briefly on the River Road music scene although to date there has been no comprehensive scholarly account of the industry. 83 111 I wanted to do a lot more for the artists and I realized I did not have enough money to do it on my own. Like when I started doing all of these things, it was just with my own money from my savings to push them and promote them. Then I realized that the returns were not actually that fast and I didn’t want to support any more artists (Osusa 2011b, Interview). With few reliable opportunities to pursue commercial music industry ventures, Osusa sought financial stability outside the private sector in Kenya’s rapidly growing and internationally funded civil society sector. He created an additional organizational dimension to the music studio by registering the name Ketebul Music as an NGO in 2007: So I talked to my friend and he said, “Well maybe you can ask for funds.” I said, “Well, I don”t know how to ask for funds.” He said, “The problem is that you are not going to get funds because you are for-profit. There is no donor who is going to give you money just to make money for yourself.” So I said, “But I am not making money for myself. I make money and I turn it over to musicians.” He said, “But they do not understand that. What you need to have is an NGO. Then they will give you funds.” You know he was right. Because I wasn’t even making money but I was doing it as an individual and of course no donor would want to hear that I am just making money for myself. And that’s when I decided to start Ketebul Music (Osusa 2011b, Interview). The facility itself remained unchanged but, in title only, became two separate organizational entities. For tax and legal registration purposes, the commercial for-profit Ketebul Productions continued to earn revenue and file taxes on commercial ventures while the NGO branch, Ketebul Music, opened up opportunities to receive tax-deductible donor revenue.85 Ketebul Music was one of a growing number of NGO sector arts and cultural organizations forming in Nairobi in the new millennia. The NGO sector had, up until then, primarily engaged in initiatives related to humanitarian relief, human rights, environmental preservation, and other “development” related activities. But by the year 2000, NGOs had become a mainstream market in Kenya, and one which stakeholders in arts and culture related activities began to utilize with greater frequency. Associations between NGOs and international revenue sources in the public consciousness spurred on a widely held perspective that the NGO sector was capable of providing as many, if not more, opportunities for upward economic mobility than the private sector. Reflecting elements of resourceful adaptation and hybridization, Osusa founded Ketebul Music with the explicit intention to promote his vision of a Kenyan popular music industry 112 grounded in local culture. The organization utilized Ford Foundation funding to produce a series of documentaries about Kenyan music history titled the Retracing Series. Ketebul Music partnered with the international NGO Alliance Française on several initiatives, including the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative, a yearly CD and concert series featuring local Kenyan artists. The NGO designation also facilitated numerous NGO-affiliated performance opportunities for Ketebul Music musicians at festivals like Sauti za Busara as well as collaborations with the United Kingdom registered nonprofit organization Abubilla Foundation. Samba Mapangala, like Osusa, increasingly utilized this large network of transnational civil society organizations after moving to the United States from Kenya in the early 1990s. When asked to what degree NGOs have supported Mapangala's career after the 1990s fallout of the recording industry in East Africa, Smith gave the following statement, From what I can tell the NGOs are pretty much our only hope. I mean they are the ones that are really carrying the ball at this point. Very few people are able to make any money presenting live music nowadays. We rely on nonprofit radio stations and festivals. There aren’t that many independents who are going to bring a band in because they can’t make money like that anymore. But we've played various museums, various cultural centers, you know. They are really the only road at this point. (Smith 2012a, Interview) Most of the United States festivals and organizations that Smith referred to in the excerpt above are registered as 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations in the United States. They comprise a component of transnational civil society supply chains that carry musicians from the Global South to the North to perform or provide small temporary sources of income for musicians who have immigrated to the North from the South. In my conversations with Mapangala, he noted that the pay for performing at these festivals usually does not cover much more than the cost of airfare, food, and hotel if transnational travel is involved. Mapangala also noted that the pay for performing at nonprofit festivals in the United States where he lives cannot provide a sustainable career. Demonstrating the global scope of transnational civil society music culture, Mapangala has performed at nonprofit festivals in North America and Europe as well as participated in East African NGO initiatives. Without substantial revenues from record sales and with a limited fan base in North America and Europe, nonprofit music festivals provided the bulk of Mapangala’s 85 Other music organizations in Nairobi, such as Sarakasi Trust, have also employed this innovative strategy of dual designation to expand possibilities for commercial for-profit and nonprofit business operations. 113 performance opportunities in the decades following his departure from Kenya. Since 1997, Mapangala’s nonprofit festival performances have included Grand Performances in Los Angeles (1997), Central Park Summerstage Festival in New York (1998), Montréal Jazz Festival (1998), Nuits D’Afrique in Montréal (1998, 2007), Afrofest in Toronto (2007), WOMAD Festival in Reading, England (2007), Chicago World Music Festival (2008), Global Union Festival in Milwaukee (2008), Kennedy Center UNHCR World Refugee Day in Washington D.C. (2009), Lincoln Center Midsummer Night Swing in New York (2009), and the National Folk Festival in Nashville (2011), to name a few. In addition to nonprofit music festivals in the Global North, Mapangala has also found support from a growing network of NGOs active in East Africa. Suggesting a historical upswing in NGO-affiliated music activity in East Africa, Mapangala’s and Osusa’s engagement with East African NGO networks became more intensive after 2006. Since 2006, Mapangala has participated in numerous NGO-sponsored performances, including performing at Ecofest in Nairobi (2006) and the Sauti za Busara Festival in Zanzibar (2009), recording for the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Music With a Message initiative (2009), and undertaking several projects and performances associated with Osusa’s NGO Ketebul Music. In some cases, such as the Nairobi Ecofest and the WWF Music with a Message, Mapangala’s status as an East African cultural icon provided strategic sociocultural capital for NGOs to convey their mission to an older and influential generation of East Africans. The 2006 Ecofest was one such event that took place in Nairobi. Coordinated by the organization Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (KOAN), Ecofest was a festival formed on the theme of raising awareness about a host of environmental issues. The festival’s press release heralded Mapangala’s performance as the main attraction stating, “Leading local musicians are set to team up with legendary Congolese musician Samba Mapangala at this year's Ecofest… Today, he is one of the most successful African artists residing abroad.”86 East African musicians and NGOs form these sorts of reciprocal relationships through the exchange of publicity at NGO event performances. NGOs require popular media attention in order to connect with a targeted public consciousness, while artists such as Mapangala gain publicity and find an economic alternative to the commercial music market through commissions earned at NGO performances. NGOs also commission artists to compose music based on a 86 “Samba Mapangala @ Ecofest ’06,” Africanambiance.org online magazine. (http://www.africanambiance.org, accessed 2.7.12). 114 message that the organization is interested in promoting. Such was the case with Mapangala’s song, “Les Gorilles des Montagnes” commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund in 2009. Mapangala described the circumstances in which the World Wildlife Fund commissioned him to compose and record a song advocating for the protection of mountain gorillas living in the Virunga Mountain landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo: I have a friend who works for the World Wildlife Fund. One day he called me at home and said, “Samba, I want to meet you again and we want to give you a proposition to sing a song. In Congo, people are killing gorillas. People are eating them like bush meat and it is not good for tourism, not good for the country, and it is also not good for the environment” (Mapangala 2012, Interview). Signaling the linguistic nuances of East African regional cultures, Mapangala rendered the text of “Les Gorilles des Montagnes” in Kiswahili, stating, “I sing the song in Swahili because in that area, Virunga and Bukavu, they speak Swahili, all those rural areas.” He composed it in the classic rumba style most often associated with Orchestra Virunga, given the popularity of the band’s style with East African audiences. Utilizing the recognizability of Orchestra Virunga’s hits from the 1980s, Mapangala referenced the group’s signature song, “Virunga” (1981), in the first lines of “Les Gorilles des Montagnes.” About the strategic cross-signifying at play in the composition Smith stated, One reason WWF asked Samba to compose the song is because his band is named after Virunga National Park in Congo, and that is where the endangered gorillas live. He chose the a capella opening lines from his original “Virunga” (1981) which is the group's signature song, to open the Gorillas song because of its recognizability to all his fans. We thought it would get their attention, expecting the original song, and then hit them with the ecological message and the new melody (CC Smith 2012b, Interview). Demonstrating the sociocultural capital that artists like Mapangala carry, the WWF viewed Mapangala as an ideal public figure to connect with those living in the Virunga Mountain region. Advertising the initiative, the WWF stated on their website, Who better to encourage people to protect and nurture Virunga than one of their own? WWF teamed up with the much loved Congolese musician Samba Mapangala and his Orchestra Virunga to work on a new conservation resource… It is being distributed as a free resource in the Congo basin where we hope the message will take firm root as it spills out of local radio stations, in homes, schools, and on the streets.87 Mapangala’s central role as a cultural icon in the WWF Music With a Message program 87 “Music With a Message,” World Wildlife Fund Website (http://www.worldwildlife.org, accessed 2.7.12). 115 highlights the underlying power structures of economy that generated the initiative. These reify common international NGO-culture trends in which Northern civil society groups such as WWF channel capital-driven missions into unindustrialized territories of the Global South, like the rural Virunga regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The dichotomy present in the WWF statement above, “Who better to encourage people to protect and nurture Virunga than one of their own?” further re-inscribes these global geo-economic implications by grouping Mapangala and the target audience in the Congo as “them.” Such dichotomies between the privilege of the North in contrast to the South were expressed by many of my informants who also, as a result of these inequities, expressed suspicion about the underlying motives of NGO initiatives. WWF could potentially transcend such suspicians if they employed a cultural icon of East Africa to sing in the nae of their cause. Highlighting the contingent ironies inherent in these circumstances of global cultural production, Mapangala cannot be easily demographically characterized as solely Congolese or even East African. In addition to his Congolese heritage, he lived in Kenya for many years as a permanent resident and has been living in Maryland for almost two decades as a naturalized U.S. citizen. Scenarios in which local networks of NGOs operating exclusively in East Africa direct and influence NGO music production and performance initiatives, even when those activities receive foreign funding, further complicate discursive tropes of Northern control. As the following section will illustrate, it was through these channels of East African NGO networks that the 2009 Sauti za Busara Festival featured Samba Mapangala as a headlining performer. 4.4 Rise: NGO Music Culture Networks Illustrating the interconnectedness of East Africa’s regional NGO music culture, Ketebul Music has maintained a close organizational relationship with Busara Promotions. These intra-regional NGO linkages facilitated the circumstances in which Osusa provided the Sauti za Busara Festival organizers with Smith’s contact information in 2008, an exchange that eventually resulted in Busara Promotions’ request for Mapangala and Orchestra Virunga to perform at the 2009 festival. Since 2003, the NGO, Busara Promotions, has cultivated the six-day Sauti za Busara Festival into one of Africa's largest music festivals. Further illustrating the relationship between the local East African NGO sector and international revenue flows, the festival receives funding from an assorted group of NGOs, embassies, corporate sponsors and individuals. The large audience includes volunteers and NGO staffers working in various parts of 116 Africa, international tourists, expatriates, and East Africans, among a membership of thousands. Noting the festival’s benefit to the Tanzanian and Zanzibarian tourism industry, the President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, and President of Zanzibar, Ali Mohamed Shein, have both provided media endorsements for Sauti za Busara. Mapangala’s performance generated mutual benefits to both the festival, given Mapangala’s popularity throughout East Africa, and his own musical career, given the substantial size of and media attention given to the festival each year. His performance at the 2009 Sauti za Busara Festival featured a set of Orchestra Virunga classics, including “Malako,” (1984) “Virunga,” (1984) “Vunja Mifupa,” (1989) and more recent compositions, including “Dunia Tunapita,” (2001) “Obama Ubarikwe” (2009) and “Nyama Choma” (2006). Singing every word at decibels matching the sound system, the audience proved that the music of Virunga was alive and well in the public consciousness. Mapangala stated that he had not expected such a reception, especially given that he had never performed in or visited Zanzibar: It was my first time going to Zanzibar and I was really, really happy. In fact, all of the crew, the musicians, and Smith loved Zanzibar also. I was surprised because I did not know that my songs were really popular there. When I was on the stage, I saw everybody singing and I really liked it. I think it was because my songs are in Swahili and Swahili is the main language there (Mapangala 2012, Interview). About the origins of the song “Zanzibar,” Mapangala stated, That day it came to me and I was very happy. I really liked the audience and the people of Zanzibar so I decided to sing a song about Zanzibar. After playing we went back to the hotel and I got a very good feeling. I decided to start thinking about making a song praising Zanzibar and Sauti za Busara (Mapangala 2012, Interview). Mapangala composed and recorded “Zanzibar” a few days later at Ketebul Music studio during a stop in Nairobi before returning to the United States from Sauti za Busara. Smith described the various local and international music production networks that facilitated the recording of “Zanzibar”: We spent three weeks in Nairobi after Sauti za Busara because Samba had a performance there at the end of the month. So we went to Ketebul’s studio and Syran Mbenza and Komba Bellow Mafwala the drummer were there as well as some local musicians. Tabu also called Awillo Mike Otieno and the song literally sprang fully formed. So we had the basic bones of it from Ketebul. Then Samba did some post-production at a studio in Virginia and we were sending the files back and forth to Paris for Syran to produce it (Smith 2012a, Interview). In addition to coordinating with artists such as Mapangala, Ketebul Music and Sauti za 117 Busara engage with each other directly through the exchange of resources and information. Many Ketebul Music artists have performed in the Sauti za Busara Festival that offers performers a financial token for their participation as well as an opportunity to reach a wider fan base by performing at the large and heavily publicized festival. Ketebul Music artists and groups that have performed at the festival include Olith Ratego (2007), Makadem (2007 and 2010), Gargar (2011), and Ogoya Nengo (2012). Busara Promotions also hired Steve Kivutia, Ketebul’s project manager, administrator, and sound engineer, to manage sound production for onstage monitors during the festival. Utilizing these regional and international networks of revenue, technology, and organizational culture, directors such as Osusa and the director of Sauti za Busara, Yusuf Mahmoud, and performers such as Mapangala are waging a war of remembrance and localization against what they view as tides of an exacerbated degree of global music cultural incursion. 4.5 Remembrance: Advocacy for Past and Present Local Music Culture Figure 4.2: Tabu Osusa (left) and Samba Mapangala (right) at Alliance Française, Nairobi on 03.03.11 (photo by Shino Saito). Before premiering Mapangala’s newly released song, “Zanzibar,” for the audience at the 2011 Sauti za Busara opening ceremony (featured in the excerpt at the beginning of the chapter), Yusuf Mahmoud drew attention to local lineages of East African music culture by acknowledging prominent Tanzanian musicians who had passed away in the previous year. The list of recently departed included “Mustapha” Charles John Ngosha of Mlimani Park Orchestra, Abu Semhando, founder and leader of Twanga Pepeta Group, and Remmy Ongala, among other 118 musical giants of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Sauti za Busara manifests remembrance for this generation of artists whose music has been re-genre-fied in recent decades as zilizopendwa88 by commissioning performances for surviving members of classic rumba and soukous groups, including Super Mazembe, Mlimani Park Orchestra, Msondo Ngoma Band, and Orchestra Virunga. The theme of remembrance at Sauti za Busara, through advocacy of locally generated musical lineages, extends beyond the Congolese rumba-based styles to Zanzibar’s home grown classical music tradition taarab. Among the many classic and modern taarab stars to perform at Sauti za Busara, performances by Isha Mashauzi, Segere Original, Culture Musical Club, and Ikwani Safaa Musical Club have been especially notable. The festival’s most publicized and anticipated annual performer is Bi Kidude, Zanzibar’s most prominent taarab performer, who continues to perform regularly in Zanzibar and throughout East Africa at over one hundred years of age. Expressing kinship of East African popular music heritage, Mapangala’s “Zanzibar,” in addition to serving as an ode to Sauti za Busara, also praised the island’s taarab queen, Bi Kidude. The following text and translation from “Zanzibar” expresses Mapangala’s sentiments towards the festival and Bi Kidude: English: I departed from the U.S. I arrived on the island of Zanzibar I loved it I met with Bi Kidude A famous singer of Zanzibar Sauti za Busara Kiswahili: Nimetoka Merikani Nimefika kisiwa cha Zanzibar Nimeipenda Nilikutana na Bi Kidude Mwimbaji mashuuri za Zanzibar Sauti za Busara Figure 4.3: Song text and translation to Mapangala’s “Zanzibar” (2011) (translation by author). “Zanzibar” also functions as a sonic signifier of remembrance through its loyalty to the classic soukous style that Osusa, Samba and Orchestra Virunga helped popularize. Despite the extra cost of hiring instrumentalists to achieve this large ensemble sound, Mapangala explicitly retains the original Orchestra Virunga style for his new recordings, not only to address the desire of an older generation to reconnect with the past, but also to influence the aesthetic tastes of a younger generation. About his choice to retain an aesthetic style Mapangala stated, 88 Zilizopendwa, meaning “that which was loved” in Kiswahili, refers to an ever-changing and socially negotiated catalogue of “classic” East African music that has retained the attention of popular audiences even decades after its release. 119 Music is changing you know, but I am trying to keep my style. I’m not trying to modernize it or anything. I am trying to keep it as it was before. The younger generation doesn’t get it yet but I hope if we keep introducing good music they will get it. Like some of our songs are twenty and thirty years old but people still go for it. Even if I’m playing a gig someone will say, “Samba, play Malako! Play Vunja Mifupa!” Which I did in 1989 and still now people love it. The other song was Malako. I did that in 1981 and people never get tired of it (Mapangala 2012, Interview). Returning again to the opening ceremony of the 2011 Sauti za Busara Festival, Mahmoud also spoke in favor of mending the historical disjuncture of a younger generation that Mapangala referenced. He advocated for alternatives to trends of global popular media directed at the local “youth market:” Last September, a few months ago, I was invited to a music conference in Johannesburg. One of the M-NET [South African television network] producers there was asked in a panel discussion, “why does Channel O [M-NET”s subsidiary music channel] play almost exclusively music from the U.S.A. when we are in Africa?” I was quite shocked by his reply. He said, “We aim for the youth market, and we give the people what they want.” Later I asked a South African radio presenter what she thought of his response. She said, “It’s like fruit. If you’ve only ever tasted apples, how can you know what a mango or an orange tastes like.” I think that’s where Sauti za Busara comes in (Mahmoud 2011, Sauti za Busara opening ceremony speech). Addressing these dislocations of remembrance and localization has also been Osusa’s personal and professional mission, realized through the initiatives of Ketebul Music. In this spirit of remembrance and advocacy for re-localizing the musical interests of a younger generation, Ketebul Music initiatives expose young performers to locally derived music traditions. Osusa organized a 2011 Nairobi concert featuring Mapangala, who was visiting East Africa to film the music video for “Zanzibar.” The concert featured Mapangala, the widely acclaimed nyatiti performer Ayub Ogada, and a young Kenyan artist named Winyo. Ayub Ogada, who composed and performed the soundtrack for the film The Constant Gardener among other globally recognized music endeavors, opened the evening with a performance drawing from centuries of Kenyan Luo nyatiti performance heritage. Mapangala followed Ogada with some of East Africa’s most cherished Orchestra Virunga hits. The evening closed with a performance by Winyo, to whom Ketebul Music provided promotional and production support on his first album release. The concert initiated a series of collaborations between Ketebul Music and the United Kingdom nonprofit Abubilla Music Foundation. The current ongoing mission of these initiatives, 120 titled the Singing Wells Project, is “to capture East Africa’s disappearing musical past while drawing to it the attention of a younger generation of East African musicians.”89 Mirroring the project’s mission, the concert brought together a spread of generations and genre genealogies. Referencing a cross-section of generational influences operating within the concert, Osusa’s opening speech included the following statements, This is a union between Ketebul Music and Abubilla Music, and we are so honored today. We wanted to have dinner and play some music because that is our business. Samba is a gentleman who I have worked with for a long, long time… from when we were kids. And another artist that we have is a very young artist who goes by the name Winyo. I think you might get into something when I say this is a “great” artist following Samba. It may not sit very well. I say no, this is different. Because you see Winyo is really shaped by [Mapangala] because Winyo is from a younger generation. So he is a young artist and we are trying to take him from one level to another level (Osusa 2011, speech at Abubilla-Ketebul Music partnership concert at Sippers Restaurant in Nairobi). 4.6 Conclusion Facing a situation in which they perceive notions of the local as under threat by an imagined global, East African music industry moguls like Osusa and Mapangala have utilized global streams of capital and organizational networks of NGOs to give voice to their particular historically embedded music cultural lineages. The capacity for East African musicians and managers to pair their personal interests with those of the NGO sector underscores the contingent nature of cultural production while preserving the role of agency within that conceptual framework. Nonprofit organizations of the global north hire musicians like Mapangala to showcase a particular slice of East African heritage. These organizational communities send messages of environmental conservation to East Africans through what they view as a local musical culture-broker (in the case of the WWF song). In other cases, resourceful East African music administrators like Osusa, disenfranchised by the commercial music industry of the United States and Western Europe, seize opportunities to match an interest in promoting their musical tastes and legacies with those in the global North interested in supporting local cultures of 89 Sound engineers and videographers from Ketebul Music and Abubilla Music travel throughout East Africa in a mobile studio designed specifically for the East African rural terrain and weather to record the surviving custodians of the regions quickly passing music traditions. The Abubilla Music Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Abubilla Music has provided the bulk of funding and resources for the project with additional assistance from the Institute of International Education. Winyo accompanied the mobile recording studio team during their field recordings to fulfill the influences component of the project goals that, in addition to preserving and collecting Kenya's older music traditions, facilitates musical collaborations between young popular Kenyan urban musicians like Winyo. 121 foreign nations in the Global South. All of these dynamics reflect the contingent nature of global cultural production. Multiple voices operating from the same or even similar geographical and cultural perspectives find partners in one another to pursue similar goals for contrasting reasons. 122 PART 2 123 CHAPTER 5 INTERLUDE: SITUATING PART 2, A MONOGRAPH OF KETEBUL MUSIC 5.1 Introduction Part 2 of this dissertation turns the narrative of Global Northern influence presented in Part 1 on its head by examining how local Kenyan and East African cultural flows constitute NGO music culture. The preceding chapters portrayed the economic, cultural, and historical expansion of global civil society arising lock-step with the escalation of global capitalism and resulting in an influential NGO presence in Kenya. European and North American nonprofit organizational cultures and sources of funding present in a survey of East African NGO music culture activities further emphasized the influence of the Global North. In contrast to these depictions, the chapters that follow explicitly deemphasize Western influence and instead highlight NGO initiatives born out of personal histories and local circumstances of social contact, in addition to needs perceived independently of North American/Western European “development” ideology. The activities and perspectives of those working within and in affiliation with the Kenyan-based NGO music studio Ketebul Music will constitute the scope of this portrayal. Their activities are characterized by adaptive agency. Fittingly, Ketebul Music’s initiatives articulate advocacy for localization in ways that, like the shifting perspective of this text, pushback against the picture of NGO culture controlled by foreign sentiments. The individuals profiled in subsequent pages strategically influence regional, national, continental, and global intersections of music genre, economy, and cultural discourse through the NGO initiatives they construct. In this regard, the ethnographic text and method mirrors articulations of its informants. Acknowledging the relative and contingent character of conceptualizing the local, I begin with the musical products that emerge from the efforts of individuals and small social networks (Chapter 6 and Chapter 7). I expand this scope to include the networks of organizations that these individuals and social groups create (Chapter 8). Finally, technologies and discourses illustrate meta-variables that function to bolster the expressive impact of these organizations in the global media-scape (Chapters 9 and 10). 124 5.2 Introducing a Fieldwork-Based Study of Ketebul Music The shift of ethnographic style in the subsequent portion of the dissertation also reflects a differentiated fieldwork methodology from previous chapters. Most of the material presented up until this point did not reflect intensive participant observation. In order to gather data on a crosssection of organizations in Nairobi during the first three months of fieldwork, I attended NGO affiliated concerts, events, and festivals and conducted isolated interviews without becoming intimately involved in any one organization’s daily activities. With each chapter, I have attempted to provide an increasingly more finely grained resolution to this picture. The chapters in Part 2 level out at a ground level vantage point by utilizing ongoing participant observation research with Ketebul Music. Like so many ethnomusicological fieldwork encounters, the site of participant observation came into being through chance meetings and subjective interest; through compatibility between myself and the Ketebul Music community. 5.2.1 Contingencies of Contact in the “Field” My University of Nairobi affiliate advisor, Professor Humphrey Ojwang, provided initial contact with Ketebul Music through his personal relationship with the organization’s director, Tabu Osusa. Ojwang had known Osusa for many years through a network of academic and nonacademic stakeholders in Kenya's cultural capital. Osusa’s ties to the University of Nairobi academic social circles were so strong that at one point many students and professors assumed that Osusa was a faculty member due to his frequent presence in the faculty lounge. When my wife and I met Professor Ojwang for the first time, he immediately arranged for us to meet Osusa, given the relevance of the Kenyan music mogul’s career and his organization to my study. First contact with Osusa occurred at the Fiesta Restaurant outdoor lounge in Nairobi, located in close proximity to Alliance Française, where he had recently come from a meeting. We discussed the nature of my project and my interest in learning more about Ketebul Music as an example of an NGO music studio. Osusa offered his assistance with the warning, “I should tell you I often disagree with people and not everyone likes what I have to say.” Over the coming months I would learn that many members of Kenya’s music industry did not share Osusa’s opinions about musical aesthetics and ethics. I witnessed on many occasions his willingness to vocalize the opinion that Kenyans and Kenyan youth in particular had lost ties with their cultural roots and were in need of renewed cultural self-knowledge. As I spent more time listening to his critiques and his vision to create an economically and culturally empowered Kenyan music 125 industry, a perspective that also manifested through the activities of Ketebul Music, I dropped my impartiality and became an advocate of his views. Inherent within the subsequent chapters, then, is a certain degree of advocacy for Ketebul Music, its mission, and its members. I have attempted, however, to provide a detailed and balanced account so that readers can construct their own opinions about the organization. Osusa invited Shino and me to numerous Ketebul Music events, facilitated a relationship between us and the Ketebul Music staff, and introduced us to many individuals in Nairobi’s music industry. He graciously invited us to tag along with them on projects and allowed us to make nuisances of ourselves (as researchers inevitably seem to do) around the premises of the studio where we conducted interviews, asked questions, and observed the daily activities of the organization. Finally, Osusa participated in several extended interviews about his life history. These interviews were crucial to mapping the organizational identity of Ketebul Music from the perspective of its creator and represented a large donation of Osusa’s time, given the continually accumulating projects and responsibilities for which he was an integral member. Equally important as Osusa’s assistance in understanding the organizational culture dynamics of Ketebul Music was the assistance of project manager Steve Kivutia. Kivutia is a multi-talented and skilled individual who functions in many capacities within the organization. I highlight him here because he is the second most involved member of Ketebul Music’s activities and his benevolent role assisting my wife and myself during the research process was especially crucial. Kivutia’s many skills include being a trained sound engineer, graphic designer, administrator, and cultural consultant. During the process of fieldwork, Kivutia functioned in all of these roles, in addition to handling matters of scheduling and correspondences for Osusa and other Ketebul Music members. Kivutia therefore enabled Osusa to focus primarily on concept development and social networking. During interviews and conversations with Kivutia, he provided extensive inside information about Kenya’s music industry and often facilitated the scheduling of meetings between Shino, myself, and Ketebul Music staff, musicians, and other members of Nairobi’s music industry. 5.2.2 Reaching for Applied Dimensions of Participant Observation Attempting to realize the contribution-oriented dimensions of participant observation methodology, my wife and I strived to assist the organization throughout the research process as well. At times we would assist Ketebul Music’s videographer Patrick Ondiek by providing an 126 extra camera angle at concerts. For the most part, Ondiek gave us more of his time in interviews and education on the finer points of film editing and documentary videography than we were able to provide him in assistance. Hoping to benefit the Ketebul Music artists through free publicity, I posted many of the recorded concerts on Ketebul Music's YouTube channel and conducted interviews with them about their music, which I have published here and in other sources to come. Finally, throughout the research process I attempted to benefit the organization through small monetary contributions. This occurred by purchasing media productions such as artists’ albums and organizational video documentaries in addition to providing small compensations to Ketebul Music artists for conducting interviews with me. These forms of socially engaged participant observation also inform the material within the subsequent chapters. Next I offer a brief overview of Ketebul Music’s history, staff members, and mission. 5.3 Ketebul Music, A Brief Overview 5.3.1 Mapping Space and Place Figure 5.1: The entrance to Ketebul Studios (photo by author). Ketebul Music is located in the GoDown Arts Centre compound in Nairobi. The studio’s exact location within the compound is the second office on the left after entering the gate and immediately turning left. Under the awning pictured above, tables and chairs host guests and staff who often convene outside of the studio. The entrance to the studio gives way to the waiting 127 room in which Ketebul Music’s secretary, who sits at a desk immediately to the left of the entrance, will address visitors. A leather couch provides a resting spot for guests in waiting. Pictures of Ketebul Music artists, such as Makadem and Olith Ratego as well as notable musical heroes of Osusa’s such as Salif Keita, decorate the wall and give the room an ambiance that echoes the organization’s mission. Figure 5.2: Ketebul Music facility (graphic by author). Osusa’s office is located through the door to the left after entering the waiting room. The workspace is small and modest, filled almost entirely by a desk that usually remains uncluttered and cleared of objects with the exception of a CD player and Osusa’s laptop. The door to the right of the entrance to the waiting room leads to a multipurpose office that functions as a project management/meeting room and contains two computers and a printer. Directly opposite the front 128 entrance to the waiting room is a hallway. Studio A is located on the left side of the hallway and comprises two rooms. The first room on the left after entering the hallway serves as the main engineering room and is outfitted with a Mac Pro computer that runs Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Reason, Cubase, and Nuendo. The room also contains a Digi 002 Pro Tools control surface, Korg Triton workstation synthesizer, Finalizer 96K sound processor, Focusrite pre amp, Proverb Effects Processor, Tascam CD/tape/ADAT units, and MOTU midi timepiece. The adjacent room (second door on the left after entering the hallway from the waiting room) is the sound booth. The first door on the right side of the hallway leads to the main video editing room. Studio B is the second door on the right and is a project studio for single voice/instrument recording and video editing. 5.3.2 The Staff Tabu Osusa: Osusa is the director of the organization and long-time participant in Kenya's music industry. Steve Kutivia: Kuvitia is Ketebul Music’s project manager who also assists as a sound engineer, documentary editor, and graphic designer. Priscah Waimiru Nyambura: Ketebul Music’s front office assistant. Nyambura manages the flow of guests arriving to the studio, keeps track of the organization’s schedule, communicates messages to the Ketebul Music staff, and oversees Ketebul Music media transactions of the CDs and documentary films available for sale in the front office. Patrick Ondiek: Ketebul Music’s chief videographer and documentary filmmaker, Ondiek has an extensive background in documentary film and music video production. Jesse Bukindu: One of Nairobi's most established music producers and the head studio engineer at Ketebul Music, Bukindu works tirelessly conducting back-to-back recording sessions and editing after hours at the Ketebul Music studio. Bukindu’s stylistic fingerprint characterizes almost all current Ketebul Music sound productions. Willie Gachuche: Gachuche is Ketebul Music’s second studio engineer who, having acquired almost a decade of recording experience, works in the studio alongside Bukindu. 5.3.3 The Artists Makadem: Makadem is a vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter who began his music career performing in hotels and later became a popular Kenyan reggae dancehall performer. Since 129 meeting Osusa and joining Ketebul Music, Makadem has specialized in Afro-fusion performance. Makadem’s career comprises a large portion of Chapter 7 of this dissertation. Olith Ratego: Ratego is a vocalist, nyatiti player, and songwriter, who began his career performing soukous music and later dance hall reggae and hip-hop influenced styles. After meeting Osusa and joining Ketebul Music, Ratego has specialized in the genre of Afro-fusion and has drawn influences especially from the Luo dodo style of vocal performance and storytelling. Chapter 7 will document Ratego’s career in music further. Winyo: Winyo is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, actor, photographer, and TV producer. He sings in his paternal language Dholuo and the Kenyan national languages Kiswahili and English. His music addresses numerous social issues, including homelessness, migration, family struggles, and love. Gargar: Gargar is a group made up of four women of Somali origin living in the North Eastern Kenyan town, Garissa. They are part of the larger women’s self-empowerment group called Bismillahi Gargar who was formed in 2003 with the purpose of reminding Somalian Kenyans about their “traditional” culture. Their music is sung in “traditional” styles arranged and produced by Bukindu using digital studio production and electronic instruments. The collaborative process of Bukindu’s and Gargar’s music and studio productions will be the focus of Chapter 9. Ogoya Nengo: Born in the late 1930s in a town called Magoya on the shores of Lake Victoria, Nengo followed her family tradition of oration and singing dodo music. By age 12, she was performing regularly in Luo weddings and funerals and became a well-known performer in her region. Ketebul Music has facilitated several performance opportunities for Nengo and became involved in the process of recording and archiving her song catalog of musical heritage. Ontiri Bikundo: Bikundo was born in 1976 in the Nyaribari Chache constituency of Kisii District. He is a self-taught musician who began playing the eight-string Kisii harp, Obokano, at an early age. He blends Obokano style vocal harmonies with globally influenced popular music arrangements. Bikundo’s songs showcase a variety of social issues, including love and marriage, HIV/AIDS, and ethics. 5.3.4 The Board of Directors Paul Kelemba: Kelemba is a nationally known political cartoonist in Kenya who has been published extensively in The Standard and The Nation and runs a visual media and publishing 130 company called Communicating Arts LTD., which produces illustrations and cartoons for the United Nations. Bill Odidi: Odidi is the chief radio producer with the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation in Nairobi where he is currently in charge of the English Service Radio. He has worked as an international journalist for over ten years and has interviewed numerous public personalities, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, South African a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and the Jamaican music group Burning Spear. 5.3.5 A Brief Organizational History Tabu Osusa founded Ketebul Productions as a commercial music studio in 2004 and registered the company as an NGO in 2007 under the name Ketebul Music. Ketebul Music’s mission statement “To identify, preserve, conserve and to promote the diverse music traditions of East Africa” serves as a guiding ethic and ethos for the activities of the organization. These activities consist of commercial for-profit production which falls under the domain of Ketebul Productions and nonprofit production which falls under the domain of the NGO, Ketebul Music. The for-profit commercial activities of Ketebul Productions consist of music studio production and video editing paid for by a range of clients active within Nairobi's music industry. The revenues generated through for-profit commercial activities provide supplementary revenue to support the organization’s nonprofit initiatives, which also draw upon an array of international funding sources and organizational networks. Before forming and opening the Ketebul Studio in 2004, Osusa created and managed the Nairobi City Ensemble, a music group designed to create music aimed at re-grounding the Kenyan music industry in local influences. The Nairobi City Ensemble fused Kenyan-based music styles such as benga, ohangla, and mugithi, “traditional” influences of the many Kenyan ethnic groups, and popular non-Kenyan styles, including the American influenced global commercial idioms popular in Kenya such as R&B and Hip-Hop, as well as pan-African popular musics such as Tanzanian Bongo Flava, Congolese soukous and rumba, and Cameroonian makossa, among others. The mission and initiatives of the NGO Ketebul Music grew out of this blueprint for cultural advocacy that would later congeal into the Afro-fusion genre. Key among Osusa’s motivations for disbanding the Nairobi City Ensemble and creating a music studio was his belief that he could expand his impact on Kenya's social landscape if he supported many artists of diverse backgrounds and individual styles through the organizational 131 mechanism of a music studio as opposed to one music group. Explaining his reasoning for expanding the Nairobi City Ensemble concept from a music group into the mission of a music studio and production house, Osusa stated, Towards the end with Nairobi City Ensemble I thought maybe starting a band is not enough. I should make a proper recording studio to promote artists and so on. Nairobi City Ensemble was sustainable on its own but what it meant was that I had to do Nairobi City Ensemble and nothing else. And of course there were so many other artists who were coming and I couldn’t have a membership of a hundred musicians. So I thought it was easier to support musicians through a studio (Osusa 2011a, Interview). While the Nairobi City Ensemble emphasized Kenyan stylistic influences, Afro-fusion embraced a wider range of pan-African musical influence. Osusa described Afro-fusion in the following way, “Afro-fusion, in short, is music which has traditional African roots blended with various influences from other parts of the world” (Osusa 2011d, Email Correspondence). From various conversations and interviews with Osusa, I understood his conception of “traditional African roots” to refer to sounds that signified an African heritage that expressed pride in African identity. Osusa’s Afro-fusion genre conception evokes Bakhtin’s notions of genre, discussed in “Discourse in the Novel” (written in 1934; translated into English by Michael Holquist and published in 1981) and Hobsbawm’s and Ranger’s notions of invented tradition (1992). Bakhtin positions genre as a way of expressing points of view on the world that emerge through social and dialogic processes. Hobsbawm’s and Ranger’s notion of invented tradition casts tradition as a social project that is perpetually in flux, always reinventing itself, and offering new forms of self-definition for those that shape it. Osusa utilized the social construction of genre to promote a particular worldview that past musical traditions of Kenya and East Africa could be fused with more contemporary genres to create a new tradition of musical performance. He first employed his philosophy of music fusion in the Nairobi City Ensemble. The music of The Nairobi City Ensemble mixed Luo folk instrumental styles such as nyatiti (a twelve stringed lyre), orutu (a one stringed fiddle), and ohangla (a hand drum) performance, with popular East African genres like soukous. Osusa also hired some of Kenya’s most popular hip-hop groups, Gidi Gidi Maji Maji, to participate in the experimental fusions of what he conceived of as “traditional” and “modern.” He stated on several occasions that part of his rationale for working with hip-hop artists was that, although he objected to the derivative rap stylings of young East African artists 132 imitating American rappers, he considered rap to be a musical style similar to the spoken-word poetry rendered by jothum (nyatiti playing griots of the Luo community). The rappers that Osusa employed, unlike rappers attempting to model the American hip-hop style in English, performed synergies of local languages such Dholuo, Kiswahili, and Sheng. The narratives they wove spoke to issues of common to the Kenyan experience and utilized inside references that non-Kenyans would likely be unaware of. The dialogic and mediated process of developing afro-fusion then cut across generational divides to shape new forms of genre that acknowledged the perpetual reinvention of tradition. The genre that would later emerge from this approach was afro-fusion. Osusa argued afro-fusion would serve to strengthen East African cultural identity for musicians and audiences that engaged with it. In 2005, Osusa and other Kenyan music industry participants collaborated to create a marketing campaign to promote Afro-fusion through the production of compilation CDs and concert series. The NGO Alliance Française headed the campaign, titled Spotlight on Kenyan Music. The steering committee for Spotlight on Kenyan Music consisted of Osusa, Alliance Française’s director of arts and culture programs, Harsita Waters, and former members of the Nairobi City Ensemble such as Suzanna Owiyo, in addition to other Kenyan music industry stakeholders. The group collectively decided to brand the genre that would lead the Kenyan music industry revitalization effort, Afro-fusion. Although it is likely that before 2004, Afrofusion, as a term, had been used in common global discourse to loosely describe various fusions of African and Afrodiasporic musics, no previous social and institutional agenda developed Afro-fusion into a genre in the manner that Osusa and the collaborative of NGO and music industry affiliates had. Similar to the function of Afrobeat and Highlife for South and West Africa, respectively, the intention here was to fashion Afro-fusion into a concise signifier for culturally recognizable East African music. Osusa and other members of the steering committee for the Spotlight on Kenyan Music capitalized on the recognizability of the term paired with its uncommodified status to create a marketable genre title. The social context in which Afro-fusion developed reveals a World Music genre directed at empowering African consciousness, as opposed to providing spectacle for the touristic gaze. Reacting to the necessity for economic viability in a transnational capitalist mediascape, however, Osusa networked the genre globally to European-based World Music industry hubs like WOMAD and WOMEX. The musicians supported by Ketebul Music in turn utilized the global 133 marketing strategy of creating a brand-name for Ketebul Music’s style to access both local and foreign markets. Perhaps not by coincidence, European and American music industry agents had utilized a similar strategy in their approach to marketing World Music, a genre title that coalesced during a series of meetings in London’s Empress of Russia pub in 1987.90 Unlike the European and American demographic of the Empress of Russia meetings, the genre production and promotion of Afro-fusion involved Kenyans from diverse backgrounds utilizing the power of global civil society culture and genre to promote a cultural need organically perceived through a chain of locally embedded circumstances stretching far back before the creation of Nairobi City Ensemble. The production and promotion of Afro-fusion artists whose expressive output manifests the fundamental tenets of the organization’s mission constitutes a core tenant of Ketebul Music’s organizational outputs. The organization provides free studio production, promotion, marketing, and performance opportunities to these artists through its studio facilities and a range of industry networks. Additionally, Ketebul Music produces historical video documentaries titled the Retracing Series, which research and document dimensions of Kenya’s musical heritage with the intended goal of acquainting Kenya’s mainstream and youth populations with the region’s historical legacy of cultural production. Funded by the Ford Foundation’s Eastern Africa office, these historical music documentaries include: Retracing the Benga Beat (2008), Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010), Retracing Kenya’s Funky Hits (2011), and Songs of Protest: The Social and Political Revolution in Kenya (2012). Most recently, Ketebul Music partnered with the United Kingdom-based music organization Abubilla Music, for a project titled the Singing Wells initiative. The Singing Wells initiative records and documents a diverse range of East Africa’s musical traditions using a mobile recording studio that travels to rural and urban locals in the region. This initiative began during my final weeks of fieldwork in Kenya and therefore will not be reviewed in this dissertation. 90 After the successful release of albums featuring collaborations between African musicians such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and European and American popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, and Johnny Clegg, industry executives met at a London pub in 1987 and determined that “World Music” would become the title under which such international music fusions would be marketed. See Folk Roots, online magazine, “Minutes Of Meeting between the Various ‘World Music’ Record Companies and Interested Parties: Monday 29th June 1987” (www.frootsmag.com, accessed 07.10.12). 134 5.4 Ketebul Music, Afro-Fusion, World Music Discourses, and Musicological Critique The story of Ketebul Music contributes a case study to a substantial and growing body of musicological scholarship on topics related to World Music and globalization. Paralleling the prominent profile of Western capitalist and Global Northern influence in representations of global civil society, scholarly assessments of the commercial World Music industry have also tended to foreground the role of Western European and North American actors and ideologies. The World Music industry and global society are also tied through shared resources and partnerships. Non-profit organizations and NGOs organize many World Music festivals and concerts. Cultural NGOs like Alliance Française provide opportunities for African artists like Makadem to travel to Europe for music residencies and workshops. Finally, NGOs and nonprofit music organizations like Ketebul Music and Busara Promotions regularly attend international World Music conferences like the annual WOMAD and WOMEX meetings. These overlapping territories of the World Music and NGO industries are especially relevant in relation to Ketebul Music. The following section reviews some of the themes and assertions of this research and situates Ketebul Music as a unique Kenyan organization forging pathways in transnational economies of the World Music industry. 5.4.1 World Music Discourse and Musicological Critique Musicological scholarship, engaging the variously titled but rather synonymous World Music, World-Beat, Global Pop industries, has often focused on how forces of global capitalism system have commodified, re-spun, re-produced, and re-sold signifiers of difference that reenforce regional, social, cultural, political, and economic inequities (Garofalo 1993; Seeger 1996; Erlmann 1993a, 1996b; Feld 1988, 1996, 2000; Zemp 1996; Aubert 2007; Haynes 2010; Feld and Kirkegaard 2011). I argue two fundamental reasons for the onslaught of critical assessment. The first major cause for critique of the World Music industry exists on ethical grounds. Those institutions and individuals in the Global North, who exude significant control over the World Music industry market, so the accusation goes, have commodified “difference” in a way that echoes essentialist notions of non-Anglo “Others” as exotic, savage, and otherworldly. World Music market entrepreneurs champion global diversity in sentiment only, while the ultimate financial rewards of the industry continue to reflect colonial-era power relationships. Despite the professed egalitarian ethic of the World Music industry discourse, loci of control, 135 means of production, and primary economic beneficiaries remain regionally WesternEuropean/North-American, racially Caucasian, commercially corporate, and male. Additionally indicative of the Anglo gaze is the fact that one genre moniker “World Music” subsumes thousands of distinct music genres emerging from Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and marginal North America/Western Europe. The second primary critique by musicologists of the World Music industry stakeholders grows out of a particularly disagreeable interpersonal and professional history involving the commercial exploitation of musicological archival recordings and the artists featured on those recordings. Following Benjamin’s claim that art equally suffered from modernity’s historical processes of “mechanical reproduction” (1936), technological advances enabled direct sampling from archival ethnomusicological recordings without contacting or compensating researchers or the communities they recorded. Such instances resulted in several unresolved disputes between musicologists with record labels and World Music. Notable among these were Eric Moquet and Michel Sanchez's unsolicited sampling of Hugo Zemp’s 1969 UNESCO, Solomon Island recording of Afunakwa singing “Rorogwela” for their multi-million selling album Deep Forest (Feld 1996; Zemp 1996) and Brian Eno and David Byrne’s sampling of Poul Rovsing Olsen’s ethnomusicological field recordings presented in The Human Voice in the World of Islam (1976) for their 1981 art-pop album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Feld and Kirkegard 2011). In these cases, ethnomusicologists proved insignificant challengers to the commercial interests of record companies and the artists they protected. A handful of scholars, however, have presented less scathing portrayals of the World Music industry. Peter Jowers countered the negative assault by submitting an ethnographic account of the British World Music community as an exemplary case of a contemporary social movement (1993). He illustrated, using a case study of the World Music organization, WOMAD, that industry players navigate treacherous commercial marginality with the ultimate intention of reaching positive, egalitarian ends. Similarly, Jan Fairley depicted the industry from a balanced historical perspective, examining the formation of social networks of artists, promoters, managers, and radio and record company actors that led to the emergence of the European World Music enterprise (2001). Finally, Martin Stokes has forwarded perspectives on the complex, contradictory, and divergent social, economic, and aesthetic manifestations of World Music in 136 relation to German-Turkish music. He submits that research on the World Music industry offers insights on the ongoing dynamics of globalization (2003, 2004). The majority of these studies, critical or not, have tended to limit their ethnographic scope to individuals and organizations located in the Global North. Particularly, less ethnographic-based research explores viewpoints of non-Western European or non-North American managers, producers, and musicians participating in the World Music economy. Many of the scholars noted above rebuke the World Music industry for Othering. They rightly argue that World Music promoters and record labels espouse a one-world propagandist theme while reinforcing economic inequities through capitalist modes of production in which major industry players such as record labels, pop stars, and World Music organizations leverage influence and control over the Majority World (Kâğıtçıbaşı 1996) participants that the industry purports to benefit. The lack of ethnographic documentation amplifying the voices of the non-European participants in the World Music industry, however, reinforces the same sort of marginalization that academic discourse critiques. Add to the debate retorts by European World Music industry players against the academic critique, and the resulting paradox is two elite groups (Western academics and capitalist entrepreneurs/musicians) attacking each other’s ethics while leaving the World out of the discussion. 5.4.2 World Music Industry Recast as Subversion to Global Capitalism Ketebul Music, an organization that intentionally engages the European and North American World Music industries markets and networks, exemplifies Kenyan music industry participants fashioning a World Music genre, Afro-fusion, which addresses regional and global concerns while reflecting personal experiences and musical taste. Musicians and producers creating music specifically for a World Music marketplace reveal a different story than the common trope of oppressed Third Worlders bending to a First World aesthetic and capitalist economics. The story that follows in the subsequent chapters is one of Kenyans utilizing the flexibility of a European manufactured World Music ideology to combat American commercial pop-music domination in Kenya. Their goal is to re-infuse Kenya's mediascape with signifiers of Kenyan and East African culture to empower their own community and also to explore their personal aesthetic identities with fewer boundaries than the American popular music model provides. The following case study of Ketebul Music’s fashioning of an Afro-fusion genre provides an alternative to ethnographic accounts of African artists crafting musical fusions and 137 alterations for the European touristic gaze (Kirkegaard 2001), or under control of an allencompassing oppressive system of capitalist production that subsumes pre-existing genres and cultural traditions in a process of aesthetic cannibalism (Appadurai 1990: 308; Erlmann 1994; 1996b; 1999). While the oppressiveness of this capitalist global economy reflects a sort of neocolonialism (Sartre 1964; Nkrumah 1968; Chomsky 1997), there are self-directed World Music musicians and producers in Africa who have utilized the World Music industry in ways that reverse the flow of cultural and economic domination. Ketebul Music and its relationship to Afro-fusion offers an example of a World Music genre created in circumstances of ideological resistance to globalizing capitalist media forces as opposed to the transnational corporate commodification of the distant local by European World Music industry participants (Feld 2000). In addition to strategizing the creation of a globally marketable genre, Osusa utilized the power of a global organizational framework by combining the structures of a commercial music studio and NGO to promote his vision. These strategies incorporated by Ketebul Music and its affiliates simultaneously dialogue with local and global cultural and material elements. 5.5 Conclusion Ketebul Music provides a case study of a Kenyan NGO characterized by agency, invention, resourcefulness, and adaptability. In contrast to the causes of “development” promoted by first-world nations that have primarily focused on food, clothing, and education to Africa’s young and poor, individuals like Osusa and the musicians at Ketebul Music twist the common tropes of Africa’s “need.” They employ music as a resource to fight for a shared sense of cultural distinctiveness and convince younger generations to look within East African and Kenyan musicscapes as opposed to abroad. The social momentum they rally in their cause, as the following chapters will demonstrate, affirm that such forms of identity construction are powerful tools for shaping global culture. 138 CHAPTER 6 CONTINGENCIES OF LIFE EXPERIENCE IN MEMORY: REFLECTIONS OF FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TABU OSUSA 6.0 Conceptual Signpost While Part 1 presented elements of NGO music culture shaped by macro-economic and global-political influence, this chapter offers a sharply contrasting contingent perspective that personal life experience provides the seeds for NGO music cultural action. Both narratives have equal merit and I place them side by side in suspended states of contrasting relevance. Ketebul Music’s vision and mission did not trickle-down from superstructure ideology in the North. It grew from embedded histories that span a spectrum of local and global contingencies. To illustrate this point, I examine the life story of Ketebul Music’s founder and director, Tabu Osusa, from whom the organization draws its mission and driving ethos. I adopt an ethnographic style that privileges the voice of Osusa. His words, drawn from interview transcriptions, show that agency plays a central role in shaping NGO culture. Osusa has defied societal pressures throughout his life. This path set the stage for the eventual development of Ketebul Music and its mission. Ketebul Music is not merely a product of global civil society trends in a postcolonial context. It is a reflection of choices made by an individual who has continually, throughout his life, created new opportunities for himself in uncharted ways by envisioning realms of possibilities outside established norms. His autobiographical account demonstrates that NGOs in Kenya do not arise solely in response to global socio-economic, political, and ideological forces; they also form through the power of human agency. I will demonstrate these connections between agency and NGO development throughout the chapter by providing interpretive commentary preceding Osusa’s autobiographical excerpts. These highlight themes relevant to the emergence and organizational identity of Ketebul Music. 6.1 Introduction The chronologically assembled interview material below provides insight into the psycho-social development of Ketebul Music’s conceptual foundation and organizational behavior. The analysis is based on three extended interviews conducted by the author with Osusa 139 on the topic of his “life story” (Titon 1980) from birth to the present. One of these interviews also included Samba Mapangala, who provided additional recollections about Osusa’s time with Orchestra Virunga. Although interview transcriptions are usually the “stuff” of archives, illustrating Osusa’s personal history warrants an exception for several reasons: (1) increasing direct access to his words for archival and ethnographic benefit; (2) enabling a first-hand account of the various stages in music production leading up to the emergent role of NGO sponsored music initiatives in which Ketebul Music is now a significant factor; (3) demonstrating that although Ketebul Music is a young organization, its construction emerges from an individual with decades of experience in East African music, and; (4) finally, the purpose of the extensive interview material used here is to emphasize the voice of the informant over the researcher (myself), subject over author. This is an ironically impossible task in the construction of any text; yet it is an ethic rooted within the core values of ethnographic practice. Although ethnomusicologists have tended to focus on the social and cultural patterns of groups, researchers such as Timothy Rice (1994), Jesse Ruskin (Ruskin and Rice 2012), Michael Veal (2000), Jonathan P. Stock (2001), Virginia Danielson (1997), David Locke (1990), Jeff Titon (1980), and others have increasingly emphasized the role of individuals as foci for theoretical discussion. David Locke’s documentation of the life and music of the Dagomba musician Alhaji Abubakari (1990) highlights how individuals can provide encyclopedic information about cultural traditions under threat of extinction. In other cases, such as Virginia Danielson’s biography of Umm Kulthum (1997) or Michael Veal’s biography of Fela Kuti (2000), ethnomusicologists research individuals of exceptional historical significance who, through their wide reaching influence, affected cultural change on a large scale. Osusa is not a culture bearer of tradition nor is he a public historical figure recognized by thousands of people, yet his influence as a facilitator and conceptual director of music culture has been vast. His life story reveals a relatively off-stage, out-of-the-spotlight individual who planted seeds of influence that played a role in shaping an entire region’s musical culture. An examination of Osusa’s life history documents the contingencies of life experience that springboard cultural influence and, as they pertain to the subject of this dissertation, provide the conceptual foundation for Ketebul Music’s organizational identity that will be the subject of the subsequent chapters. Each titled segment below presents a snap-shot of Osusa’s life organized chronologically from the interview content. 140 6.2 Individual as Agent of Cultural Change Tabu Osusa is an agent of cultural change. He has been active in East African popular music for nearly four decades and has impacted the history of Kenya’s popular music industry perhaps more than any other individual. In the historical trajectory of his life, Osusa’s participation in the NGO sector is one of many responses to economic-cultural shifts within postcolonial Kenya. He assisted and nurtured the careers of many of the country’s most prominent international performing artists and groups, including the internationally recognized Samba Mapangala and Orchestra Virunga, Jabali Afrika, Nairobi City Ensemble, Suzanna Owiyo, Iddi Achieng, Makadem, Olith Ratego, Gargar, Winyo and many more. Osusa also mentored two of the most important producers in Kenya’s current music industry, Gabriel Omondi, who the Safaricom cell phone company commissioned to compose and produce the Safaricom anthem, and Robert Kamanzi, also known as ‘R Kay,’ who has won numerous awards, including a 2009 MTV African Music Award as well as the Kenyan Kisima Awards’ “Producer of the Year” in 2008 and 2009. Osusa has also published many articles on music in magazines and newspapers, including the revolutionary Society magazine, which was renowned for fearless reporting of government exploitation of the Moi regime. He has served as a consultant to numerous artists and scholars conducting research on music in Kenya and expanded his scope of activities in recent years to include the production of documentary films. Since 2008 he has been producing documentaries on Kenyan popular music as a historical subject. Included among these documentaries are Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), Retracing Gikuyu Popular Music (2010), Kenyan Funky Hits (2011), and Songs of Protest: The Social and Political Revolution in Kenya (2012). In the current global popular music industry, the producer plays a central role in the development of an artist or music group, especially given the increasing number of tasks the producer oversees and influences: marketing, management, sound engineering, digital composition, creative concept, and so on. Although the realm of the producer and the artist often overlap, music producers, like NGOs, facilitate music production but nonetheless influence music culture. This has been the case in Kenya since the mid-twentieth century. Steve Kivutia discussed the role of the producer in the contemporary music industry: I think the producer is very important... The same artist with the same song can be completely different with two different producers. When you're working with a producer, it’s more of a collaboration. It’s an exchange of ideas. One producer 141 may have a different direction in the arrangement, for example. If he’s going to use a particular guitar line, or a particular groove as opposed to another one for the rhythm section (Kivutia 2010, Interview). A general distinction between producers and the artists they work with is that artists commonly receive media attention for their performative and compositional contributions. After all, artists are the face of the marketed product. They occupy the public space of music performance and creation. Producers, on the other hand, commonly remain in the background of the commercial media output. There are, of course, many exceptions to this trend. From Duke Ellington to Kanye West, artists have marketed themselves as producer-artists by performing, composing, and producing their own music, but the general trend remains that producers do not receive nor do they seek the same degree of media attention as artists for the music they produce. In line with this trend, Osusa has kept a low public profile. Within Kenya’s music community, most know of at least a small portion of Osusa’s contributions to Kenya’s music industry and his name often appears in published media sources in conjunction with the projects that he produces. Joyce Nyairo’s dissertation titled “‘Reading the Referents’: (Inter)textuality In Kenyan Popular Music” (2004) and multiple related subsequent publications by Nyairo and James Ogude (Nyairo 2005; Nyairo and Ogude 2003; 2005) provide extensive documentation about Osusa’s Nairobi City Ensemble as well as interviews with the producer about his perspectives on the Kenyan popular music during the 1990s and early 2000s. Aside from Nyairo and Ogude’s writings and a scattering of newspaper mentions, usually in conjunction with more widely recognizable artists or groups such as Samba Mapangala or Nairobi City Ensemble, the producer’s life history has remained mostly undocumented. A general lack of documentation about Osusa in scholarly or journalistic media sources is understandable given that he rarely indulges in public self-promotion unless necessary for supporting the artists with whom he works. As a result of his desire to put others first, the breath of his influence and involvement in East Africa’s music scene may be lost on history. Building on Nyairo’s and Ogude’s lead, the ethnographic material below provides another link in the process of documenting Osusa’s contributions to Kenyan music and culture. 6.2.1 Childhood and Polycultural Influence As the following chapters will demonstrate, Ketebul Music is one of several organizations at the forefront of creating and promoting Afro-fusion, a genre of music that, in Osusa’s own words, “fuses music which has traditional African roots blended with various 142 influences from other parts of the world” (Osusa 2011, Email Correspondence). Grounding the Afro-fusion aesthetic in lived experience, the earliest periods of Osusa’s life included exposure to a diverse spectrum of cultures and musics. Osusa remembered his childhood as a time characterized by fusions of global cultures. His father was Luo by family lineage and represented his cultural heritage to the extent of becoming a chief within his community. Osusa also remembered that his father was also one of the first in his community to receive Western-style schooling. He described listening to music in his childhood household that reflected these polycultural influences. His father’s position as a Luo chief enabled Osusa to witness performances by nyatiti, ohangla, and orutu musicians on a regular basis. Paying tribute to his father’s important role within the community, poet lyricists performed these instruments at the family compound. Osusa’s family was also Catholic. He grew up listening to Catholic choir music, Western classical music, and American country music. Osusa’s early experiences with a variety of musics and cultural systems exemplify contingencies that foreshadowed his life long process of combining disparate music cultures and organizational cultures. I was born in South Nyanza, which is in Western Kenya in 1954, actually to be exact- the 21st of July, 1954. I had a family of seven, four boys and three girls. I am the fourth born. My grandparents lived and were born in the same place and also my parents. My parents were very staunch Catholics. My father was a teacher and also a chief of our area. He was actually one of those early Africans who went to school. And he lived to a very ripe old age of about 100 and died about ten years ago. My mom did not go to school but both my parents were very good. My earliest musical memories were both church and traditional because, you see, at our home, there was always traditional music on holidays or special occasions. Musicians used to come and sing for my father. My father was quite respected so they used to come and make music for him. I was introduced to early African music like nyatitis and orutus. But I was also aware of music from the West like classical music and even country music from America. We also used to have choral music like Catholic Hymns and such. So I think I was very lucky that I grew up embracing both cultures. I knew my African culture but I was also raised in a modern society. I knew both by the way. It helped me a lot because if you are weak on one, then you are disadvantaged. 6.2.2 Early Migrations: Preparing a Life of Continual Reinvention and Relocation At ten years old, Osusa left his home in Nyanza to live at a Catholic Seminary in Uganda. 143 His early childhood travels reflect the many migrations that Osusa embarked on throughout his life, including living for extended periods in Zaire and the United Kingdom. Osusa learned at a young age that the comfort of a fixed location was not guaranteed and processes of migration and change, adapting to new cultural surroundings, and doing so on one’s own, was a possibility and probability. The fact that he made these transitions alone without his family made the learning process all the more stark. Perhaps these early migrations away from home fuel Osusa’s current mission to advocate on behalf of locally-rooted Kenyan music. A central theme of Osusa’s childhood was certainly dislocation. His dedication to encouraging younger generations of urban-raised Kenyans to reconnect with music of “the village” may in many ways stem from his own sense of searching for a childhood home lost in migration. Regardless of contextual causation, the theme of locating, preserving, and promoting African identity emerges later in his life and becomes a core goal of Ketebul Music. Osusa’s early involvement with the church intimately exposed him to imported social and cultural systems. These experiences provided contingent foundations for later encounters with NGO culture given the related historical trajectories of early Catholic Missions to Africa and NGOs. Through a Catholic Missionary education, Osusa negotiated circumstances of a colonial political reality and his cultural heritage and identity. He also received a Western education that would later provide the administrative skills to manage musicians and their contracts, run a music studio, transform that studio into an NGO, and write proposals to earn funding. When I was about ten years old I left South Nyanza and went to Uganda to live with some missionaries. It was because my parents were very staunch Catholics that they trusted me to be taken to the Seminary. Luckily, I was not abused or anything like that that I hear about these days. Actually, when I compare my education with education today, even guys who have gone beyond University, it was quite good. The seminaries provided the best Western education. I find that even most University education today is not quite as deep. There was a Catholic priest who was in my home mission called Mirogi and he was called Father Okodoi. His name was Louis Okodoi. He was from Tororo. He came from the Tesos community who live between Uganda and Kenya. He was going back to Tororo after his term ended in Mirogi. This Catholic priest came to visit our home. I was young, I think I was about nine. I had gone out looking after cattle or whatever. So I came back home and there was a guest and then my sister who was about two years older than me said, “Hey William,” my other name 144 is William by the way, “They have slaughtered your best chicken.” I said, “What!” I was so angry that I just started to cry. The priest asked, “What is wrong with the young man?” And of course my family did not want him to know that it was because of the chicken that they had slaughtered for him to eat. So he called me and said, “Hey, hey, stop crying.” He had some sweets so he gave me some sweets. So he asked me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” And at that time I did not know priests very well but I used to see nuns, Catholic nuns. So I innocently told him, “When I grow up I want to be a male nun.” So he said, “Ok, male nuns are called priests.” And he never forgot that. So when he was leaving to return to Tororo, that was 1963, and I think I was about ten years old, he asked my parents. So casually like that. And they said, “Yeah please, take him.” And I was told, “Hey by the way you’re leaving Kenya to join a missionary school.” So I said, “Ok.” The place was called St. Paul’s Amukura in Uganda. Actually, now it lies within Kenya. So I went by myself and joined standard three. I was all alone in a mission so I had to fend for myself, make meals for myself and everything and at an early age actually I started being alone. And then after three years in the primary school he took me to St. Peter’s Seminary, which is in Kakamega, Uganda. So I joined the Seminary in standard six. I was about 15. I was there for a long time. And from there I went to a place called Tindinyo, which was run by some American brothers called Xaverian Brothers. And then this priest who was taking care of me, Father Okodoi, died in 1972. 6.2.3 Individualism and Agency: Musical Protests at the Seminary During his teenage years at various Catholic Seminaries, Osusa demonstrated individuality and agency with regard to musical taste. His strong opinions about music remain today and perhaps drive Ketebul Music’s unique ability to remain mission-focused despite the temptations to embrace the shifting trends of international aid culture. During my fieldwork, I witnessed him engage countless individuals of diverse professions, ethnicities, ages, and classes in debate over the merits of various perspectives on music and the music industry. Osusa described how his passion for African music, which included the Luo music he heard growing up in southern Nyanza, as well as the popular Congolese music of the day, created tension between him and his Catholic teachers. These tensions with authority eventually caused him to part ways with the Church, an issue also raised in Joyce Nyairo’s dissertation on Kenyan popular music. Nyairo illustrates how Osusa’s passion for African music, often to the annoyance of his teachers, 145 earned him the nick name, “Tabu,” which signifies the Kiswahili word, taabu, meaning troubles or misfortune, and which is also the name of the popular Congolese musician, Tabu Ley Rochereau, formerly known as Pascal Tabou (Nyairo 2004, 69–70). As a teenage seminarian, he remained uncompromisingly rooted to what he perceived as African cultural heritage while participating in foreign organizational and ideological frameworks such as the Western education system of the Catholic Church. This is when I started getting into problems with the priests. I always liked music but somehow I did not like church music. I always wondered why we had to conform to the music of the church and perform something that was so alien to us. I remember I started trying to introduce some African rhythms and beats and the priests didn’t like it. I think those were some of the things that got me into problems with them because I started asking a lot of questions why is this that or this like that? And obviously they don’t like being asked too many things. Maybe they thought I was not too keen on becoming a priest. They can know that this guy is not really keen. So I was called and they told me, “Well, do you want to become a priest?” Without Father Okodoi guiding me to become a priest anymore, I changed my mind. I thought to myself, “Look I think I’m not too keen on becoming a priest anymore.” So I told them, “Well, I’m not too sure.” They said, “Maybe you should take a break and let us know if you change your mind.” I never went back to the Seminary, but I did sit for my A levels. Although I had thought I would become a priest eventually, I decided I wanted to do other things and left Tindinyo just before my sixth form. I left and went back home. 6.2.4 Resilience and Resolution The years following Osusa’s departure from the Seminary demonstrated Osusa’s resilience and resolve in complete goals regardless of deterrents. After leaving the Seminary in Uganda, Osusa began teaching at his family home in Nyanza. Unwilling to settle and drawn to the excitement of the popular Congolese music scene, Osusa embarked on a journey to Kinshasa, Zaire. Prepared by his early experiences living in various seminaries in Uganda, he was not afraid to travel and demonstrated a restlessly adventurous desire to do so. Osusa’s journey to Kinshasa did not prove to be as easy as he first expected. During a failed attempt to reach Zaire, Osusa and a close friend ran out of money and resorted to impersonating famous musicians to return to Kenya. Although Osusa’s second attempt to reach Zaire was successful, it was not without many detours. 146 Enabling Ketebul Music to adapt to changing economic and social tides, Osusa’s resilience and experience adapting to obstacles and hardships manifest contingent circumstances that inform the organizational identity and behavior of the organization. Of direct relevance to Osusa’s role as the director of Ketebul Music is the fact that during this period of his life, he employed himself as a teacher. Chapters 7 and 10 return to Osusa’s identity as a pedagogue and mentor to younger musicians and industry professionals, a dimension of his persona that characterizes much of his career in Kenya’s music industry, including at Ketebul Music. At home in Nyanza, I became a teacher at a primary school. I was not trained as a teacher but I decided just to try to make ends meet. But then, you know, I was an adventurous guy I thought, “Look, maybe I want to do music or just see the world. Am I going to spend the rest of my life as a teacher? No, no, no.” So I got a little money from teaching and said to my buddy Amos, “Hey Amos, why don’t we go to Congo?” I used to think Congo was great because we used to hear the music around the village. It was the popular music at the time. But there were a few problems. One thing was we didn’t have passports or anything. All we had was a geography map of Africa and some money. But we went ahead anyway. We went to Migori. From Migori we took a bus to Mwanza. In Mwanza we were supposed to take a train but that night some thieves stole most of our stuff. We were stupid sleeping at the railway station and when I got up my shoes were gone. Luckily I had another pair of shoes and my money still. We then took a train to Tabora and went all the way to Kigoma. Kigoma, you know, is on Lake Tanganika. Across the lake is a town called Kalimi which is the Congo. You are supposed to cross the lake to get into Congo. So we tried to get into this boat because we wanted to cross. The authorities asked us, “Where are your passports?! You have no passports. You can’t go anywhere.” And I don’t know whether I was being connish or smart because I figured out this plan. I saw these fishermen from my tribe. There were actually lots of fisherman who were Luos around Lake Tanganyika. So I went to this camp where these Luos were staying. I said, “Hey guys! We are just from Congo and we are BIG musicians. But thieves stole our stuff so we don’t have money. We need to go to Nairobi to record you know.” You see what happens according to our culture is we like singing about people. So I said, “We are about to make a song and if you give us some money to get back to Nairobi you guys are IN THAT SONG!” So they were very kind. They wrote their names down and said, “Please sing about so and so…” and I said, “Good 147 brother, give us money.” So they gave us money and we retraced our way back to home in South Nyanza. But I still wanted to get to Congo. It was partially because of the music but I also didn’t want to spend my life as some teenage boy in a village doing nothing. I just wanted to get out of that place and see what is out in the world. I took about a week to study the map very well and I saw there was a better way through Uganda through Kampala to Arua, and then into Congo. There was no lake or anything like that. So I didn’t even tell Amos I was going this time. I just got into the bus. So as I tried to cross the border in Arua to the Congo, again I was stopped. They said, “No passport, you can’t go.” But for some reason the officer there really liked me and he said, “What do you want to do in Congo?” I said, “Look I need to get to Bunya. My brother is there.” He said, “But you don’t have a passport.” I said, “Yeah but I need to go.” So he said, “What you can do is go back to Arua to the D.C.’s office and he will give you a travel document. I don’t know why this officer liked me but he did so he wrote me a letter that said I was his friend and I need to get to Bunya. So I went back to Kampala and the D.C. gave me a nice travel document. It was stamped and as good as a passport. Those days East Africa was almost like one. You could get a travel document from Uganda and use it for Congo. So I went back to Arua and the guy said, “Ok if you want to go to Bunya you need to catch a lorry, which comes once a week or so. Don’t worry about staying in a hotel. You can just stay at my place with my family until the lorry comes.” So I stayed with him for about a week. When I got to Bunya I found a Seminary there and told them I would like to stay at the Seminary for a while. I knew that I could stay at the Seminary because seminaries were like one big family. So after they knew I was a seminarian they let me stay. I immediately started asking around to see if there was any music in town and they all said, “Aw man this is a dead town. If you want to hear any music you have to go to Kisangani.” They were telling me how great Kisangani is and they would tell me, “Man if you go to Kisangani you’ll be teaching English.” One day I just left and took a lorry to Kisangani. I had already made some inquiries about how to get into these schools to teach English. So I was in Kisangani staying at a cheap hotel and I used to walk around town asking people, “Is there any music here?” They told me about a couple of bands in town but I thought, “What was I going to do with a band?” I could do some English songs but they were doing mostly Congolese stuff. 148 So I was able to do some James Brown types of things with them but the music scene was not as happening as in Kinshasa. 6.2.5 Musical Apprenticeship: Journey to Kinshasa The boat Churchill facilitated Osusa’s final and long awaited passage down the River Congo to Kinshasa. In Kinshasa, Osusa received musical training in arguably Africa’s most vibrant popular music movement from the 1950s to present. This training provided contingent experience to pursue over three decades of influential participation in Africa’s music industry. The music marketing, arranging, and performance strategies employed by Congolese rumba bands in Kinshasa during the 1960s and 1970s set the standard for East Africa’s music industry during that time, if not for all of Africa. Osusa learned these strategies by apprenticing musicians and groups in competitive Kinshasa music environments. He participated in music groups as a featured side performer of American funk cover songs (a style referred to at that time in East Africa as jerk), made possible by his English-speaking capabilities. After three years away from home, Osusa learned of his mother’s passing and returned to Nyanza. So after making some money teaching at a Baha’i school in Kisangani I decided I needed to go to Kinshasa. Me and my good friend, Pierre Cortzee, began our trip to Kinshasa. I had met Pierre at the school in Kisangani where he was also teaching English. Pierre was FrenchCanadian and traveling around on adventure. We had been hanging out in Kisangani for quite some time, listening to music and drinking. Now, to get to Kinshasa, we got into this boat that takes you to Kinshasa from Kisangani on the River Congo. This boat was called “Bateau Churchill.” It takes seven days to get to Kinshasa and we had money from teaching! We were spoiled on the boat because they had bars and bands! River Congo is damn big. It is very interesting. There are some places where you can’t even see the other side of the river. So we were drinking and enjoying ourselves for seven days. It was night when we arrived in Kinshasa. We were asking around for where there was a band performing. Some people told us that there was a band called Orchestre Kiam playing nearby, which was actually quite a famous band. So then we got a hotel and every night we were going around listening to music. One night some people asked me, “Where are you from?” When I told them they said, “Oh man we have a Kenyan saxophonist here! He is deadly man!” I said, “I’d really like to meet him.” So one of the musicians took me to meet this guy. He was named Ben Nicholas. When he saw me he said, “Where are you from?” I said “I’m from home.” He 149 said, “What do you want to do here?” I said, “Really I don’t know I just want to do some music.” He said, “Well that’s good. I play with a band in town at a place called Jambo Jambo. I’ve also got a place so you can come and stay. I can also get you some gigs. But he also said “You can’t come here with that guy (pointing at Pierre). You know he’s white and Mobutu will get him.” Which was true, Idi Amin and Mobutu both were very difficult towards whites. So Pierre was so depressed. He told me, “Hey Tabu, you know look. I think I’ve just had enough of Africa. I’m going back to Canada.” I would love to find him again because we haven’t spoken since those days. I think this was around 1975. When I got back from seeing Pierre off at the airport, Ben asked me, “Hey what happened to that guy?” And I said, “He left to go back home.” Ben said, “Oh that’s good. You know Mobutu has all of these spies around and if he sees that there is a white person around they will be asking all sorts of questions.” Mobutu was a big asshole by the way. So Ben took me under his wings musically. He took me to this club and I was doing a little singing here and there. He taught me how to do this thing called “Jerk,” these James Brown types of things. And I wasn’t that good but as long as I was doing something in English those Congolese loved it. That was also around the time that I first heard of Samba Mapangala, who I worked closely with for many years. I met some friends and when they heard I had come from Kenya they asked me, “Hey there used to be this guy who we played with called Samba Mapangala. Do you know him??” But at the time I didn’t know any of the people there. A few years later, when I returned to Kenya, I would meet Samba. So I was in Kinshasa doing music and also found another job teaching English. I really settled. I was able to perform and listen to so many bands and I really learned about the music scene that way. My Lingala is perfect by the way. I picked it up a little first in Kisangani because there they spoke a little Lingala and something called “Kingwana” but in Kinshasa I spoke mostly Lingala. So I was there with Ben’s band. Then in 1977, I received a letter that my mother had died. I said, “Oh god.” So I told Ben, “I think I’ll leave to go back to Kenya.” And Ben was so sad. He said “Oh really do you really have to go back?” But he also said he understood why. He said, “Are you going to fly?” I said, “It will take me so long to get a passport. Why don’t I just go the same way I came.” So I had money and I came right the same route back to Kisumu actually where I met my sister and said, “I hope you guys were just making a joke. I’m back now. Just tell me that my mom is alive.” She said, “No, no, no, it wasn’t a joke. Our mom died.” That was 1978. 150 6.2.6 The Virunga Years: Recollections of Tabu Osusa and Samba Mapangala After Osusa returned home to Kenya for his mother’s funeral, he planned to return to the East African music hub of Kinshasa. Upon meeting Samba Mapangala in Nairobi, however, Osusa agreed to manage a group led by Mapangala called Les Kinois. Later, Mapangala and Osusa created one of the most influential soukous bands in East Africa, Orchestra Virunga. The following three excerpts, subtitled, “Part 1,” “Part 2,” and “Part 3” are of Mapangala and Tabu Osusa discussing their time with Les Kinois and Orchestra Virunga during an interview with the author at Alliance Française in Nairobi on March 3, 2011. Given the widespread historical influence of Orchestra Virunga and the group’s music, I incorporated dialogue between Mapangala and Osusa for purposes of historical corroboration as well as archival benefit. His role in shaping Orchestra Virunga into one of the top bands in East Africa illustrates that he was an agent of cultural change on a large scale long before his participation in the NGO economy. The narrative contextualizes the growth and cultural reach of Ketebul Music’s as another stage in a life of molding musical culture for an entire region. 6.2.6.1 Apprenticeship to Practice: Forming Kenya’s Top Band Having apprenticed in East Africa’s vibrant music industry center of Kinshasa, Osusa was prepared to apply the lessons he learned about music management to the budding rumba scene in Nairobi. Osusa and Samba Mapangala, a Congolese virtuoso vocalist, musician, and entertainer, began a musical partnership that combined Mapangala’s musical and vocal brilliance with Osusa’s music management skills to create Orchestra Virunga, which would become one of the most popular music groups in East Africa. Nearly two decades after the group disbanded in 1992, radio stations continue to play their music and dance bands cover their hits throughout East Africa. The management tactics that Osusa employed to make Virunga, what Osusa and Mapangala refer to as the “top band,” reemerge in Osusa’s subsequent projects, including the formation of Ketebul Music. Tabu Osusa: When I came for my mom’s funeral I hung around some night club in Kisumu and met two friends: Fred Odhiambo, who is now a doctor in the U.K. and also another professor called Larry Gumbe. So we were having a drink and I told them, “You know I am back from Kinshasa,” and I’m thinking I’m a tough guy now. I’ve been around the world. So they told me, “Yeah man Kinshasa’s great but we have some new guys that just arrived in Nairobi and they are really hot.” And I thought ok, ok, let me see. Because to me I thought that the only music that 151 was really hot had to be in Kinshasa. Anything outside throughout East Africa was deemed to be not as good. They called it “Kinshasa mentality” or “Kinois mentality” which was that anything which was not in Kinshasa was sub-standard. Like we had bands here Mazembe, Mangelepa, High Fives, Bwambe… there were many bands but none of them really came direct from Kinshasa. But my friends told me there is this group called Les Kinois so I asked them where I could find them and they said, “Well if you go around Garden Square, I’m sure you’ll catch up with them.” I went there and there was this guy playing table football. So I asked him, “Are you Samba?” and he said “Yeah, who are you?” I told him, “My name is Tabu I just came from Kinshasa” and he said, “I’m the band leader for Les Kinois. What are you doing around here?” I said, “I’m just chilling around maybe I’ll go back to Kinshasa or whatever.” He said, “Why don’t you come to the show tonight?” and it was interesting because I was speaking Lingala and they were asking me, “Are you sure that you are Kenyan?” Samba Mapangala: Because he was speaking the REAL Lingala from Kinshasa. I thought he was Congolese. I couldn’t tell. When he told me he was a Kenyan I said, “Oh come on.” But he said, “Yeah I’m a Kenyan.” Because he was talking pure Lingala. The way he was talking Lingala at that time was the Lingala from Kinshasa. Even Mangelepa wasn’t from Kinshasa. I was happy to hear that sound again. I said, “Welcome! When did you get in? Tabu Osusa: So then we became friends and he said, “Well since you’re here why don’t you help us to promote this band so that we can really do something.” So I said, “Ok. Let me see.” We needed some music equipment. So me and Samba went to Jinja to buy musical equipment and we met this great artist named Johnny Bokelo. Actually he is the one who started soukous. Not the soukous of Paris. The real, real soukous of Congo. So he had this equipment from a tour he did and he had this idea to sell it after the tour. We had an Indian producer who was supporting us. He was called Melodica and so was his music shop. So Melodica said, “You guys go see if this guys is serious and if he is I will buy the equipment for you guys.” Hi shop was on Tom Mboya and its still there. So we went to Jinja. So we were there and then there were these guys that were trying to overthrow Idi Amin. This was 1978 I think. So we went to see Johnny Bokelo. After his show it was about 10pm. So we were there having a drink and at about midnight and there was a curfew at that time and everyone was supposed to be in bed and the lights switched off! The next thing I heard shots. They were shooting through the windows! And then the soldiers stormed the 152 bar. We didn’t know what to say, you know. One of the army commanders asked us, “What are you guys doing here?! You are supposed to be in bed now!” So Johnny says, “I’m a State guest! I’m a State guest!” Because Johnny was a very big musician you know. So the soldiers asked him, “Who are you?” He said, “I’m Johnny Bokelo.” They said, “Ahh, you’re that musician that does that song Kilikili?” but of course that song was not even sung by Bokelo. It was sung by another famous musician named Dr. Niko but Johnny decided to be that guy now. He said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah… It is me.” Because the soldiers had cornered him. And then Johnny points to us and says, “and these are my friends!” So the soldiers said, “You know you shouldn’t be out this late. You need to go to bed or someone will just kill you.” So that was the end of that. Matthew Morin: So you never bought the equipment? Tabu Osusa: No! At daylight we left immediately. We never wanted to go back there. It was terrible; we were scared! In those days we almost died so many times. And we were with Les Kinois for how long? Samba Mapangala: About three years. Tabu Osusa: Yeah, I guess about three years. And we were good. We were making a mark at least. But I thought to myself, these guys are good but their mentality, and their type of music it wasn’t quite mature. It was more like a young boy band type of thing. So I told Samba, “These guys are good but they’re not serious or business oriented. They just like to sing and have fun. Why don’t we start a real band. Something where we can give those other bands a run for their money.” Because older people liked big bands like Mangelepa but younger people liked Les Kinois quite a lot. The older people preferred Mangelepa because they were a bit more subtle. So we wanted to make a band that appealed to the younger and older generation. So Samba said, “Well I think you have a point.” You see there were three main singers. There were like three singers. There was Samba there was Pele, there was Mado. So you see they were all trying to steal the lime light from each other. And they put on a very good show by the way. But after a while there was like a little jealousy about Samba. Samba was becoming a bit too popular for them. But of course Samba was the band leader. But after a while it just got too bad. They were saying, “Samba this and Samba that. Why does it always have to be about Samba?” You could see there was some sort of a sentiment. Matthew Morin: How did the band react? 153 Samba Mapangala: Well they were not happy about that but what could they do. You remember Tabu, our friend Odhiambo?, we all sat down and discussed. Three of us sat down and we said now we should start our own band seriously. And we didn’t even have much. Nothing, no guitars. No instruments. But we thought we should start with a recording. Tabu Osusa: We had nothing by the way! All of the equipment that was the band’s we just left it with them. We just walked out of that band with nothing. And those guys must of thought “These guys are crazy. Just let them go.” We even used to walk a lot because any small money that we used to get from royalties Samba would give out. We would be around River Road and go to a place like Melodica where they would give us five hundred bob, which was a lot of money in those days by the way. Then we would walk on the street and one guy would be like, “Hey Samba can I have a hundred bob.” And then a few others would come up to us as well saying, “Samba, Samba, Samba!” By the end of the day we would say, “How are we going to get home? I guess we’ll just walk.” We wouldn’t have any money so we would walk back home. Most of the money we were getting was coming from recordings we had made earlier on from these labels like Melodica, like royalties. So we got together and the first thing we thought is we need to have a good recording. Without a good recording we would just be the guys that broke from Les Kinois. So we assembled a very strong team. We said we need to rehearse properly. First we went to Polygram and they assured us that we would be allowed to record so we began rehearsing. That was when we got together Melako, Yembele, Ahmed Sabit, Virunga. We also had the name Virunga already because Samba said he really liked this mountain in South Congo called Virunga Mountain. So I said, “Why don’t we call the band Virunga?” Samba Mapangala: And then Virunga was born. What Polygram did was give us a contract which I couldn’t read so I said, “Tabu can you read this contract.” He read it and said it was ok and then we signed the contract and they gave us some money to pay musicians. Tabu Osusa: Then once we did that we became very successful by the way. We said, “Well now that we have the band let’s get some equipment.” Samba Mapangala: But before we bought equipment we needed a place to play. Tabu Osusa: Oh that’s right. Which is now the Integrity Center. We went and approached Robbie Armstrong, who was a very successful manager. But you see we kind of got everything right. We had a good album out, we had a big record label behind us. It was actually quite easy now to get 154 good musicians. In fact most of the session musicians we used for the recording we ended up getting to play in the band. All of the best musicians in Nairobi wanted to join us and then we became so big. I told you this joke the other day. One time we went to see Franco because he was in Nairobi. So we all went down to his hotel room and when he opened the door he said, “Is this supposed to be O.K. Jazz or what?” because we were so big. So things worked very well for us and then we became the top band for years. Our performances were very good at the Integrity Center. We had a mixed crowd also that appealed to the old and the young. We always insisted on rehearsals. We had to practice and practice and practice until we got it RIGHT. We had our music and then we also interpreted songs by the top musicians like Tabu Ley and Franco but we quoted them correctly. We made sure that when we played it and someone was outside the club they thought it was the actual band. We actually got a lot of fans like that. Some of the more established people. But we also had the young people music. That was about 81 until 85. Then around 85 we had some problems. We were really getting big as I told you. There were a lot of jealous musicians who began saying, “They are not Kenyan” and then they denied us a work permit. Me I was Kenyan anyways but the majority of the group was Congolese. So they denied us a work permit. We had been playing all along with no problem but then one day they just decided to deny us our work permit. Then there was a splinter group from Virunga named Ebeba. Them, they were given a permit! And where did they go? To Carnivore? Samba Mapangala: No, to the same place! And it was funny because you know what I think? There were Congolese musicians behind it. They wanted to stop us and become the top band. Take over everything we had, the club, and they even took our musicians. So then they started a group called Ebeba. So we got our equipment. Most of the musicians left us but some of the more loyal ones stayed with us. So it was me, Samba, Bejo, Talos. We tried to regroup and we said well if we can’t play here why don’t we go to Uganda. If we’re not accepted in one country let’s go to another country. So we said fine, we got our stuff, our equipment, and there were those musicians who wanted to join us and we went to Busia. Samba Mapangala: [laughs] Adventure starts now! 6.2.6.2 Innovation to Survive: Reincarnations of Virunga through War and Displacement Osusa’s ability to gauge and react to shifting political, economic, and social environments contextualizes his success transforming his personal mission into a recording studio and later 155 into an NGO. He partly honed his ability to employ these adaptive organizational strategies during Orchestra Virunga’s struggle to rebuild itself after being exiled from Kenya’s music industry. Osusa continually responded to unstable political environments and shifts in the global music industry with creative and adaptive measures. On a number of occasions the band nearly escapes death as political instability and revolution surround their musical journey. Osusa’s resourcefulness adapting to these new circumstances demonstrate self-directed identity formation as a central factor leading to his skills as the innovative creator-director of Ketebul Music. Tabu Osusa: Yes. Adventure starts now. Busia is a border town and there is a club there. So we’re performing in Busia and we’re still in Kenya kind of. [laughs]. Samba Mapangala: But Tabu, you remember we didn’t have quality musicians. Tabu Osusa: Yeah we didn’t have quality musicians. We’re back at the beginning again. And we didn’t have quality musicians. All of the best musicians remained behind. And we were so disappointed because these musicians weren’t delivering what we wanted. Also we didn’t really like Busia because it was a small border town. So we worked in Busia for some months and then we went to Kampala. But this was during the time of Obote II. Samba Mapangala: And things there were not quite stable. Tabu Osusa: So we were playing there but we still weren’t happy because the quality of the artists was not quite there. We really tried to rehearse but it was like flogging a dead horse. [laughs] Because you know it wasn’t about the money. We had money now but it was only when we were playing good music that we were happy. But then luck came. One time I’d gone to Kampala somewhere and I met this guy who said, “Aren’t you Tabu?” I said, “Yes,” and he said “Do you remember me? I’m Django.” I said, “Oh yes, what are you doing here?” They told me that they had just come from Sudan. They looked dirty, rough, hungry… so I was so excited I phoned Samba and I said, “Samba, I’ve found the musicians man. I know this guy, he’s a drummer, and this other guy he’s a bassist! They are very good musicians.” I said “Django, this is you?” Because he looked so dirty. He said, “Yes it’s me. We had gone to Sudan and our band broke. I have a drummer, he plays bass, I’ve got a singer, and a rhythmist.” When Samba came Samba said, “Tabu you can’t be serious?!” Samba Mapangala: I said, “Wow this is wrong. Because they were dirty, they were drunk. They just looked ruffled.” 156 Tabu Osusa: They had been through so much hardship in Sudan. You know Southern Sudan was rough. They were down adventure I guess. Going around playing in a band and then the band broke up or they were kicked out by the Sudanese or whatever. But Samba said, “If you think they’re good just let them come for practice. Samba Mapangala: So they came for practice and I was in the other room when I heard, “crack, crack, crack [drum sounds]” I said, “What was that!? We got it!” Tabu Osusa: So we cleaned them up, we fed them, gave them good clothes, we rehearsed and when they came out they were better than the band we had here in Kenya. Even when our previous band came to hear us they were jealous. Samba Mapangala: People were jealous. They came to listen and said, “Virunga’s back. Wow!” Tabu Osusa: But the band was getting too big and these other guys weren’t very good but we kept them up to Congo. But then we were in Kampala during war time now. Museveni was still a gorilla but the guy fighting was Tito Okello. The war was bad man. You couldn’t sleep. We were living in this place called Makarere Nursing Home. Samba Mapangala: It was a nursing home that had been turned into an army barracks. Tabu Osusa: One of our friends had arranged it for us because it was cheaper to stay there. There were many rooms. So this one day we hired a van and went to Jinja. It was like a four hour drive. We came and left everything in the Nursing Home. Samba Mapangala: Because we thought we would come back. Tabu Osusa: So we went to perform. We performed the first day. Samba Mapangala: We didn’t perform! We were just tuning up. Then we heard gun shots… Tabu Osusa: That's right! “Rack, rack, rack” [gun-shot sounds] Samba Mapangala: We went outside and asked what was going on. They told us the president was gone. And that was it. Tabu Osusa: And you know in the morning our equipment was still in the hall and there was fighting everywhere. But somehow we managed to get our equipment from the hall to our hotel. So we were holding up in the hotel until the fighting died down. And they were checking passports. This one soldier said, “You, you’re a Kenyan.” I said, “Yeah.” I thought what is this guy going to shoot me or what? But he goes, “Don’t worry it’s ok.” [laughs] So then we asked about the situation in Kampala and they told us we better not go back there. We will be shot for sure. 157 Samba Mapangala: You remember our friend had to drive off naked? Tabu Osusa: One of the promoters he decided to drive back to Kampala to go home. But he was stopped by the soldiers who made him remove all of his clothes and he had to drive back naked. So when he got home he had to ask his wife to bring him some clothes. But we never got back to that house where we lived in Kampala. We didn’t have any of our belongings but at least we had our equipment. We had lost all of our clothes, our personal belongings. But you know we just kept thinking. We didn’t want to be defeated in anything so we said, “If Kampala is at war, we’ll move on.” So where did we go to? Congo! [laughs] It was very interesting that train we took to Kasese. You would travel through one area and the government would change. There would be different soldiers there. It was a very dicey situation. Anyway what we did was we went to Kasese. Samba Mapangala: And then we went to perform at Katwe. You remember you are playing and the soldiers are just dancing with the guns. “cack, cack, cack…” The soldiers would then say, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” [laughs]. And from Katwe we went Kasindi and from Kasindi… Tabu Osusa: We went to Kasindi and they told us Kenyans we needed a visa to get into Congo. They told us to go back to Kampala to get a visa. But I said, “We can’t go back, there is a war there right now!” But they refused to let us into Congo without a visa. So me and my fellow Kenyan, who we called Soldier, had to go back. And Kampala was interesting then because it was one moment it was so peaceful and after five minutes, “cack, cack, cack, cack!” And then people would be scattering! So I remember we were waiting to take passport photos for the visa and the next moment you know guys were running! The guy in the photo shop had taken off! We were staying with a friend from Kenya. So we stayed overnight and tried again the next day. The first time the gun shots went off again and everyone scattered but then we went back a couple of hours later and we got the passport photos. We finally got to the Congolese Embassy and we got the proper papers to go to Congo. But Soldier was complaining, “I need to go home!” He really wanted to go back to Kenya. Me and Samba, we liked this adventure very much but he was so fed up. So we joined again at Kasindi and the band was very happy to see us. And then from there we went to Beni where we played at this club Papaya. Samba Mapangala: We played there for about four or five months. And then we went to Bukavu to Bukira. So from Ngoma we went to Bukavu and there the president Mobutu wanted us to play for him. We went to play for Mobutu and he came to Uvira where we met him. We played for him, 158 we praised him, like he’s the boss, and finally he didn’t pay us. And we were going for our payment and the commissioner said, “Well if you are insisting then we won’t let you leave the Congo. We’re going to stop you from going back to Kenya. Because if you’re Congolese you need permission from Kinshasa.” And then it took us almost a year and a half to get back to Kenya. Tabu Osusa: Then it became very hard to get back to Kenya. Even one time we were in Ngoma and I was arrested because there was some guy who was trying to get the band to play for nothing. But I said no. He was saying, “You know this Kenyan he’s making everything difficult.” Next thing I didn’t even know what had happened, I was IN [jail]. But don’t think I slept there because this rich Kenyan who was the owner of Super Match [a cigarette company] and he said, “I want this guy out!” He really liked us because he was a businessman in Ngoma but he came from Kenya. He used to make me laugh. He would say, “In my car my tank is always full. Because this volcano [Virunga] can erupt any time.” And it did by the way. One time we had to flee. In fact that’s why we left Ngoma. We were running from the volcano the band is named after. Samba Mapangala: We were in a hurry. Like, “Let’s go, let’s go,” because the volcano was erupting. Yeah we started seeing smoke and people were talking. We said, “What’s going on?” And then we would see small, small animals running from the park coming into the city. Tabu Osusa: We had to move. So we traveled to Burundi and played in Burundi for a while. Samba Mapangala: Tabu would always go ahead and arrange things. Then we would come. Tabu Osusa: Even when we made our return to Kenya. I came back with the equipment and talked to the people at Garden Square. Then I went back and told the guys, “I’ve got a contract. You guys come over.” And that was the return of Virunga and things were very good from then on. Things were forgotten. The work permit thing had gone. And we were playing at Garden Square opposite City Hall. Samba Mapangala: This was 1987. In 1990 or so, we performed in Denmark, the U.K., and other places. 6.2.6.3 Quality Control: Setting Standards for Musical Performance In the final sections of the interview with Mapangala and Osusa, Osusa discussed how Orchestra Virunga emphasized the quality of the music over the amount of money earned. On several occasions, Osusa mentioned to me that Kenya’s lack of an internationally recognizable musical identity is not due to the lack of a Kenyan “sound” per se. He suggests mugithi, benga, and ohangla music are all well positioned to represent Kenya uniquely among styles of music 159 hailing from other African countries such as Afro-beat (Nigeria), Congolese rumba (D.R.C.), Taarab (Tanzania/East African Coastal Swahili), South African jazz (South Africa), or highlife music (Ghana) but that Kenya’s unique popular music genres lacked quality instrumental arrangements and careful production, elements which he has insisted upon in the production of Ketebul Music’s recordings. Osusa’s devotion to his musical ideal over financial gain also characterizes the organizational behavior of Ketebul Music’s initiatives which have remained singularly focused as opposed to reflecting shifts in development ideology. Virunga’s experience in the 1980s World Music industry in Europe also laid the contingent framework for Osusa’s later utilization of the World Music industry market through Ketebul Music. Tabu Osusa: We were actually one of the first bands that started performing for those types of World Music festivals. That was the first time for us as a band although Samba used to go and record in Europe a lot. One thing I can tell you for those festivals is that I think I didn’t like them because you see we used to be sort of underrated. So maybe they put us before a big name and we would blow them off. Because we were so strong. And they were like, “Had we known we would have let these guys perform before.” Because anyone who performed after us became almost like a shadow. Because we were a big band. With horns, wood, percussion, drums, so they would always make that mistake. Even in East Africa we always believed that anytime we were not here there was always a vacuum. When we were not fully engaged in the music scene we felt that the music kind of went down because we always put our mark up. And it made the other bands want to catch up. And we have never been second to any band whether we were in Congo, or Uganda, anywhere. Because we believed in rehearsals. And we didn’t believe in nepotism. If you weren’t a good musician then you were out. If you cannot really keep up your act then you were out. A lot of bands didn’t really care like that. They just were playing as long as they were paid. Us we really wanted quality. That’s why I was saying that when we went to Uganda with the mediocre musicians we steered most of them away and replaced them with better musicians. So generally that is the story of Virunga. Maybe we have forgotten a few things. And people always ask, “Why did you break up?” But we had been together for so long. Eventually everything has to come to an end. 6.2.7 Music and Politics Osusa discussed the breakup of Orchestra Virunga and its relation to intersections of politics and music performance. Refusing to provide musical propaganda for a political regime 160 with which he did not agree, Osusa proved to be capable of denying himself financial opportunities if they come in conflict with his ethical compass. Osusa’s perspectives on music and politics remain relevant to the initiatives that Ketebul Music undertakes in its attempt to remain a nonpolitical entity. After the breakup of Orchestra Virunga, Osusa revisited these intersections by writing magazine columns about the ways in which music could be used for political protest. These articles present a possible source of inspiration for the recently released Ketebul Music documentary titled Songs of Protest: The Social and Political Revolution in Kenya (2012). With Virunga, we didn’t really sing much about politics as it was. We tried to just do our own music. We didn’t like the politicians much. But one of the reasons why Virunga eventually broke up was politics. Because in 1992 there were a lot of fans of Virunga who were in government. And they wanted to have a campaign for Moi... Moi’s regime. In fact the group was called YK92 and Ruto, the current guy, was one of the leaders. But see, I was always of the position that I didn’t like what the politicians were doing and when they paid Virunga some money to have the tour, half of the band resisted but some others went for it. They called a guy from the Congo who was a very big musician and they had some other musicians also. We were supposed to go tour with them and campaign for the Moi regime. I refused. I said, “This guy, I won’t support him. I didn’t agree with what he was doing.” And after that I quit the band by the way. I left Virunga. First I wrote articles for The Society, which was one of the magazines that was hitting very hard on the government. But I wrote about music and how people should use music as a tool to make people aware of what was happening in the government. So in a way, yeah I guess I was involved in some political things. But the heat came down on the guy that was running the magazine, Paris Nyamweya. He was exiled actually. But he was very hard hitting. He used to hit on the government and I would write mostly on music. That’s when I went to go live in the U.K. 6.2.8 The Immigrant Experience: Life in the United Kingdom and Returning to Kenya Eventually, as political pressure rose in Kenya, Osusa moved to the United Kingdom and lived as a student and migrant laborer working ten to twelve hours a day in a packing plant for three years. Through this experience, Osusa gained a valuable comparative perspective on life in Europe verses in Kenya. Although Osusa earned a substantial income in the United Kingdom, he found his lifestyle lacking fulfillment. During a holiday visit back to Kenya, Osusa perceived the 161 Kenyan music scene as quickly westernizing itself into a copy of the American popular music industry. He returned to Kenya and began pursuing music management once again. His disappointment with what he viewed as a cultural colonization of the Kenyan music industry fueled the mission-driven focus which now characterizes Ketebul Music. I had some friends in Bedford in the U.K. who told me, “Come on, forget about music. There’s no money in music. There’s a vegetable factory here called Parripack where you can come and work.” At that time I was also tired of music even though I still continued to do some recordings on my own. So my friend Larry said, “This factory is so easy. You go there and you clock in and work for a bit. And you make a lot of money. But first we have to enroll as students so we can get the proper papers to work.” So I enrolled and studied computers. So there we were packaging vegetables. The pay was quite good. But then we started to get greedy and they had so much work we could get overtime so we used to work from 5am to 8pm. Most of the British guys just worked 8 hours a day but the Indians and foreign workers used to grab all of the overtime because they had so much work for us. I even bought a sports car! Then I worked there for three years and began to ask myself where is my life going? But the employer used to like me so much because I was so organized. The manager even used to have me run the place when he wasn’t there. So that was 1997. So I was there for about 3 years. Actually, I meant to go back to Kenya just for holiday and then go back to Bedford. When I came back to Kenya, I said, “My goodness what has happened to the music scene here?” This music scene was terrible. There was all of this funny hip-hop and things like that. So I started writing about music again. I met up with my friend, whose name was Paul Maddo. He had this magazine called African Illustrated. I also used to go on talk shows, radio, talking about how pathetic the music industry was. And some people were like, “Yeah, you’re right but it cannot be changed.” So I said to myself, “Let me stop criticizing these guys and see if I can do it.” That’s when I started this band called Nairobi City Ensemble. 6.2.9 Seeds of the Afro-Fusion Movement: Formation of Nairobi City Ensemble To combat the cultural dislocation of Kenya’s music industry, Osusa formed the Nairobi City Ensemble, one of East Africa’s first Afro-fusion groups. Drawing upon management and production tactics learned from many years of experience, Osusa set into motion a new 162 generation of young East African popular music performers looking to their own history and culture for their musical voices. Through Nairobi City Ensemble, Osusa helped ignite the careers of now international performing artists Suzanna Owiyo, Iddi Achieng, and Makadem, producers Robert Kamanzi and Gabriel Omondi, and many other Kenyan music industry players. At first I was just doing it as a hobby, trying to bring something correct because I didn’t like the music that these young guys were playing in Kenya. So I was not too, too serious. My idea within Nairobi City Ensemble was not to go back full time to music. I realized that I needed to pay the bills and sometimes music doesn’t pay the bills. I wanted maybe to run a band loosely and maybe make money doing something else. Most of the artists were young and quite inexperienced. Suzanna Owiyo was based in Kisumu actually. I’m the first one who gave her her break to sing in Carnivore and stuff like that. Before that, she was more of a dancer for these Congolese bands. Iddi Achieng was in the group also. I gave her her break also. She wasn’t really a singer at first. She was more of an actor. One day I was having a dinner at the theater and I heard her sing “Happy Birthday” and I said, “I think you can sing. Why don’t you come to a rehearsal with my band.” There was also a guy called Koyo Natite who’s very good also. He went to the U.K. They looked up to me to guide them. And they knew that they lacked experience in music so I said, “Try this,” and somehow they enjoyed it. They saw the reaction of the crowd. It didn’t take us that long to become popular by the way. We rehearsed quite a bit and then had our first launch at Carnivore. Then we used to get lots of gigs after that. It was quite big actually. After our launch at Carnivore people knew we were serious and we meant business to make good music. We released an album called Kaboum boum. It was our first project. In fact what we did was we took a very famous song and we did our own version. We took a song called “Le Boucheron,” a song done by Franklin Boukaka and we made a rendition of that. We also did the song “Lunch Time.” We also made this Benga-based song but a little bit more funky. And we had this guy who was one of the first Kenyan rappers. He was named Poxi Presha. But I thought, “Well maybe it’s a bit too Lingala. I know about Congolese music but maybe I should do something more Kenyan, more deeper.” So I started thinking now about more traditional Kenyan music and fusing it with hip-hop flavor. The idea was to have something modern. Like modern beats that the young generation could identify with but at the same time have music with roots. We even incorporated hip-hop but had roots in music from different parts of Kenya. Then we did Kalapapla. Most of those songs were traditional Jaluo songs. We just sat 163 with them and made an arrangement. They are songs sung in the village, funerals, and whatnot. And then there were these two rappers: Gidi Gidi and Maji Maji. We did some recordings with them as well. I brought them to do some rapping with our music. We were recording at a studio called Next Level. A guy called Mourice Oyando. And one of the sound guys was called R Kay who was one of the pioneers here at Ketebul Music. Another guy named Gabriel Omondi, also has a studio now. We did a few shows in Djibouti and traveled around East Africa and then I became involved with Ketebul Music before Nairobi City Ensemble ever began touring Europe. But one thing that has made me happy is that most of the artists from Nairobi City Ensemble have become stars in their own unique right. I mean Iddi has been everywhere in the world, so has Suzanna Owiyo, Abura, and Makadem. Of course Makadem also joined Nairobi City Ensemble. By the way, I never feel bad when people move on. I never feel like, “Hey you’ve left me and gone to become big without me?” And the other thing is the kind of music that we had pushed in Nairobi City Ensemble developed into Afro-fusion, which is rooted in something modern but still has a nice traditional touch to it. 6.2.10 HIV/AIDS and A Lost Generation Osusa discussed how the lead singer of Nairobi City Ensemble, Dokta K’Odhialo, became physically weak as a result of having contracted HIV/AIDS. He shared his perspective that the impact of HIV/AIDS on the music industry was immense, to the extent that it killed an entire generation of African musicians. Because of the absence of these musicians, rampant music piracy, and the media imperialism of the West, asserts Osusa, young Kenyans lost ties to their cultural roots. Since its inception, responding to this depletion of cultural identity has been a focus of Ketebul Music’s initiatives. The main singer for Nairobi City Ensemble was Dokta K’Odhialo who died just a year ago. He had a fantastic voice. He was young. He died of AIDS. There was an entire generation of musicians got wiped out by AIDS. Makadem really looked up to him a lot, the way he sang. It was very sad. Dokta was always sick. When we were on tour, Makadem had to sing most of his parts. I used to take him to the hospital. And when he died Olith was the one who managed the funeral. He hired a van and we went back to his home. In fact I think AIDS wiped out an entire generation. That’s likely one of the reasons the music industry suffered so much in Kenya. Because of AIDS, you have a gap there now where before there was a very productive middle ground. It’s just the young and the very old. I could 164 even name them for you. Like all of the best benga musicians, they all died. I think this group is just kind of like wiped out. And not only Benga musicians. The years from 2000-2005. Those years were really crazy. Nearly everyone went. And the ones that were left were just trying to fill that void because the real talent was gone. They were almost like the second string in football. I know you guys don’t know football in America but we call them the second eleven. And now young people are trying to learn but they don’t have role models. It’s a sad thing but there were always these women called groupies. These women used to share different artists and follow the bands. You found that an entire generation of musicians all died all within a four year span. They all died around the same. Big, big, musicians! Like Fela Kuti, he was in denial about AIDS and he died because of it. So did Franco. And there were other Congolese musicians also. You know I admired both Fela and Franco but I didn’t know why they didn’t have that strength, especially towards the end before they died, to come and say, “Look, I got AIDS because of this and that and you guys try to avoid this situation.” Like in 1987 when we were in Congo. There was this bassist I really liked a lot. His name was Django. He was one of the guys that we got from the “dirty dozen” that came from Sudan and Samba and I met in Kampala. So we were touring and he used to get around with many women. I used to tell him, “You know Django, you shouldn’t be going with all these women. There’s AIDS and other stuff.” But he was very funny guy. He said, “Tabu, do you know anybody who has died from AIDS? It’s a Western creation. Name me so and so, son of so and so, who has died of AIDS. Tell me who you have seen!” So we did our tour and we came back to Kenya. One day Django was saying, “Man I’m always sick. I think I’m going to go for a check-up.” So after the check-up he calls me and says in Lingala, “You know Tabu, they have found me with it.” I said, “They’ve found you with what?” Then he said, “Sida!” which means AIDS in Lingala. He said, “Look Tabu, I know exactly what you are thinking. You warned me and look what happened. But let me tell you, I lived my life, I enjoyed it, and if I had to do it over again, I would do the same. But I’m asking you as my good friend, I’m not going to die in Kenya. I have to go and die in Congo. So please find me a way to raise money to go back to Congo where I can be buried.” Django really was my best friend. And he was a GREAT musician. In fact some of the songs that Samba sings were written by Django. Like the song “Morena.” But I don’t think Django was well credited. He even played with Tabu Ley. That’s why I liked him. He was the 165 main guy in Kinshasa. That’s why I was so surprised when I met him in Kampala when he came from Sudan. Some of Tabu Ley’s best songs were written by him. So I raised some money from my friends at Garden Square that we had performed for. Then I had enough money and one day we bought a ticket from Air Cameroon. And you know those days he was quickly deteriorating. He had lost hope and was becoming thin. He wasn’t the same guy. In a week’s time Django was very weak. I met this guy who told me that if you check in Django very early at the airport, by the time the pilots come they will not be able to stop him from boarding the plane. So Django left on the plane that way and he wrote me this nice letter that said, “Thank you so much, I made it back safely. I’m so happy to be back.” Then another month went by and I received a letter from his son that said, “I’m so sorry, papa passed.” And that was the last I heard from them. So many artists from Nairobi City Ensemble and Orchestra Virunga, they’re all dead. They were not really aware of AIDS but I think right now the people know. But for the older generation… it’s very sad, very sad. 6.2.11 Music Studio as Culture Weapon: The Formation of Ketebul Productions In 2004, Osusa set out to create a commercial music studio, Ketebul Productions, that would promote and develop a new diverse wave of Kenyan musicians to fill the void left by AIDS and music industry economics discussed in a previous interview excerpt. Although the Nairobi City Ensemble was a step in the direction of pursuing such a goal, Osusa strategized that he could affect greater music cultural change by running a music studio that produced many artists and showcased their individual styles. This would later become a central aim of Ketebul Music the NGO. Osusa confronted a number of challenges running a music studio. These challenges distinguished artist and music group management from directing an organization and included balancing the politics of partners and shareholders, as well as the ethics of business management. Osusa quickly adapted once again to a new context: organizational culture. Finally, deconstructing distinctions between for-profit and nonprofit classifications, Osusa describes how, as a music studio, Ketebul Music essentially acted as a nonprofit organization by following a civic mission, keeping profits and accumulation of surplus value at a minimum, and forwarding proceeds to support artists in an industry offering few opportunities for excessive financial gain. Actually how it began was I was passing by the GoDown Arts Centre, which was new at the time, and I went in and told them, “I would like to start a restaurant here.” And they said, “Oh really!?” I said yeah and I actually applied for that. But I don’t know what ever came of 166 that. I did not hear from them again. But later I asked them, “What happened with my restaurant?” And they said, I don’t think we’re really keen on a restaurant just yet.” So I said, “What about this place?” Because there were all of these empty spaces. They said they didn’t know and I said, “Actually I’ve got a recording studio.” And the lady said, “Well that sounds quite interesting. Hey why not. If you want a studio, it’s an arts center so in fact we will give that preference over anything else.” When you talk about partners these days it can mean just about anything. At that time I was recording Nairobi City Ensemble at this place called Next Level owned by this guy named Mourice Oyando. Mourice Oyando had a business partner, a kind of an investor, named Charles Ogada, but somehow they fell apart. And then I knew this other guy named Robert Kamanzi, ‘R Kay.’ He now has his own studio around here and is a very well known producer now. So we built the place with ‘R Kay’ as the sound engineer, I was the producer, and Charles was just a business man investor who worked at the Serena Hotel. So we started making music, but you see I am an artist and my partner Charles was basically a business man. He thought that when you are given a studio the money will start pouring in, but when you are starting out you need artists and most artists are poor. So we really started having a lot of tension work wise. He used to say, “Hey man what is going on? There is no money coming in blah, blah, blah… And what are these artists doing hanging around here?” Because there used to be guys that would just hang around. So I told him, “The music world does not work like that. You know you work in a hotel and at the Serena Hotel things are different. You guys sell mandazi and cakes or whatever. It’s a different ballgame in music. You have rooms and x, y, z. Here it’s all a matter of supporting art and you won’t know what CD will be a hit or not. I get an artist and record a CD there is no guarantee that the song will be a hit. It’s a gamble. That’s the way it is in the arts. You can’t record this and say I’ll have a hit here and a hit here. The art world does not work like that.” So we started actually having a lot of friction. At the time we were called Ketebul Productions and he had more shares in the company than I did, and there were other shareholders as well. And they started to control the money and they started to channel the money elsewhere other than supporting the artists. And I was the one who was bringing in the artists, and the idea was mine. So what I did was register another company called Ketebul Music, which had nothing to do with Ketebul Productions. Any artists that I worked with went through Ketebul Music and we paid Ketebul Productions for the use of 167 the studio which was very cheap. The shareholders said, “What are you doing?!” And I said, “Well we paid the studio didn’t we? So it’s none of your business where that money is coming from.” I used to bring in all of the artists and sometimes I would get a job for like one million Kenyan Shillings or like ten thousand U.S. dollars and I would pay a hundred thousand Shillings to the studio to record the album and keep the rest. Then Ketebul Productions started to get starved out of money because they weren’t bringing in any artists. So they got themselves into a fix. And then I told my partner, “Look brother. I don’t think you will manage. Let me just buy you out.” So I bought him out. But we decided to be kind and left on good terms. I just combined both the companies. 6.2.12 Commercial to Nonprofit: Ketebul Music Turns NGO With the mission statement “To identify, preserve, conserve and to promote the diverse music traditions of East Africa,” Osusa transitioned Ketebul Productions into an NGO in 2007. In order to capitalize on funding from grants, Osusa registered the organization as a nonprofit while keeping the for-profit company intact as a commercial music studio. Such organizational dynamics illuminate intersecting realms of for-profit and nonprofit organizations in an economic environment such as Kenya’s music industry where conventional for-profit models of production break down. This supports the ironic reality that music-NGO development in Kenya may partially result from increased opportunities for revenue accumulation in the non-profit sector as compared with Kenya’s for-profit sector. I wanted to do a lot more for the artists and I realized I did not have enough money to do it on my own. Like when I started working with an artist that I wanted to support, like Olith or Makadem, it was just with my own money. It was with money from my savings to push them and promote them. Then I realized that the returns were not actually that fast and I couldn’t support any more artists. So I talked to a friend of mine and he said, “Well maybe you can ask for funds.” I said, “Well I don’t know how to ask for funds.” He said, “Well the problem is that you are not going to get funds because you are for profit. There is no donor who is going to give you money just to make money for yourself.” So I said, “But I am not making money for myself. I make money and I turn it over to musicians.” He said, “But they do not understand that. What you need is to have is an NGO. Then they will give you funds.” You know he was right. Because I wasn’t even making money but I was doing it as an individual and of course no donor would want to hear that I am just making money for myself. But to receive grants I had to be registered 168 as an NGO. And that’s when I decided to make Ketebul Music an NGO doing a lot of not-forprofit work supporting local artists. That came in the year 2007. I started writing proposals and getting money. I still had Ketebul Productions Limited to do commercial work. But now I also had Ketebul Music to do not-for-profit work. Ketebul Productions is where we get money from studio recordings but Ketebul Music is more about supporting the artists. When you come, you don’t pay. We give you the studio for free, record you, make for you a CD, and promote you as an artist. But it’s tough because Kenya is not like the developed world you know. If someone has to choose between buying a CD or buying bread they will always choose to buy bread. You find that of course downloading and piracy doesn’t help much either. But the main thing now is Ketebul Music, like the website and everything is Ketebul Music. But for the work where we pay taxes, when artists contract us to use the studio to make a recording for instance, then it comes under Ketebul Productions. 6.3 Conclusion This chapter grounded the themes and values that characterize the operations of Ketebul Music in the life experience of one individual, Tabu Osusa. Contextualizing the formation of an NGO music studio through the past memories of its director and founder, I aimed to sharply contrast Part 1’s narrative which emphasized macro influences such as global capitalism, “development” ideology, and inequities of the global economy as predominant influences over the cultural expression. This illustration demonstrated the power of agency. Osusa defied institutional influence by abandoning the missionaries that provided his Western education. He refused politicians attempting to persuade him to become part of their propaganda machine. He sacrificed financial opportunities by leaving teaching jobs in southern Nyanza to journey to and live in Kinshasa’s booming music scene. Osusa left financially lucrative employment in the United Kingdom to return to Kenya and advocate for renewed music industry. This life story provides the context for Ketebul Music’s organizational development, mission, and initiatives. It deconstructs Part 1’s position of global shifts in economy as inescapable forces shaping NGO development. NGO culture does not merely conform to macro-societal pressures. It also forms by way of creative invention, dogged individualism, and agency. 169 CHAPTER 7 SOCIAL CONTINGENCIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY: THE MUSIC OF MAKADEM AND OLITH RATEGO 7.0 Conceptual Signpost In this chapter I utilize a close-range ethnographic lens to assess the particularities of cultural experience that emphasize the power of agency as well as the importance of cause and effect circumstances. I present stories of personal encounters gathered through participantobservation fieldwork not as an example of how all or even most NGO musical expressions arise, but as possibilities within certain contexts. While the chapters of Part 1 suggested that music production likely emerges in response to the symbols imported into Kenya from a transnational economy, this chapter aims to illustrate a more nuanced picture. The music analyzed herein grows out of childhood memories of artists, folklore, stories, genres of Western Kenya, and conscious aesthetic preferences for trans-African popular genres over those of the global popular music industry. Decoding these music expressions generates a depiction of NGO music culture grounded in local contingencies of individual experience and social contact.91 This is not music of “elite” artists that Makadem’s quote referenced in the Introduction of this dissertation.92 The artists featured here produce music and perform in internationally-funded and NGO-affiliated contexts, yet they do not compose this music based on the fashionable themes of a global philanthropic ideology. Their choices about music composition are uniquely grounded in local contexts and personal experience and therefore contrast with a depiction of NGO music culture, or for that matter any contemporary manifestation of global culture, which suggests primary influencing factors arising out of a hegemonic global economy. Instead, these music products of Nairobi’s NGO sector layer into the realm of relational reality that ethnographic 91 Examining the social contingencies that constitute these aesthetic sound products of global culture invokes Appadurai's The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1988), which examines the socially mediated nature of production and distribution in a globalized world. 92 See pages 3-7 in Chapter 1. 170 contingency attempts to capture. 7.1 Introduction The following ethnographic exploration documents the first two independent music projects undertaken at Ketebul Music, Olith Ratego’s album Osuga (2005) and Makadem’s album Ohanglaman (2005). Interviews with Makadem and Ratego, artists who have remained very active in Ketebul Music from its inception to the writing this document, illuminate how social experiences, personal pasts and presents, economics, ethics, and aesthetics influence the music-sound and poetic texts of their compositions. Key among the circumstances of social contact that influenced Olith Ratego’s and Makadem’s musical output was meeting Tabu Osusa and aligning their creative approach with Ketebul Music’s mission of re-localizing the Kenyan commercial music market through the promotion and production of the Afro-fusion genre. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 exemplified how Osusa strategically marketed Afro-fusion within the international channels of the World Music industry. Makadem and Ratego negotiated and recast Osusa’s conception of Afro-fusion through their performances and compositions in individual and unique ways. Bakhtin’s assertion that genre is dialogic and socially negotiated finds relevance once again here. Makadem and Ratego represent a younger generation of Kenyan musicians expressing their identity through the Afro-fusion ethos. They fuse local traditions with contemporary music-scapes in ways that directly connect to their own pasts and present circumstances to create a version of Afro-fusion that is very different from that of Osusa’s Nairobi City Ensemble in that they draw upon is very different from Osusa’s generational perspective. They nonetheless retain the fundamental principles behind the genre that Osusa first implemented with the Nairobi City Ensemble and that remain a central part of Ketebul Music’s organizational mission. Makadem’s and Ratego’s music activities in the NGO sector also present a case study of the World Music industry as a malleable domain of creative expression and economic production. The transnational makeup and power dynamics within the World Music industry parallel global civil society in that both are primarily dependent on revenue in the global north and. This narrative will counter scholarly assessments of the World Music industry that emphasize the influences and voices of Western European and North American actors (Garofalo 171 1993; Seeger 1996; Erlmann 1993a; 1996b; Feld 1988; 1996; 2000; Feld and Kirkegaard 2011; Zemp 1996; Haynes 2010) in addition to portrayals of NGOs that emphasize Global Northern cultural elements. The focus in this account shifts to World Music musicians and entrepreneurs based in the Global South. They engage with international World Music industry channels to expand their creative impact at home in Kenya and internationally. 7.2 Constructing Afro-Fusion: The First Ketebul Music Artists Makadem’s and Olith Ratego’s partnership with Osusa and Ketebul Music has included numerous contingencies from before Ketebul Music’s inception to the present activities. The musicians’ peripheral involvement with the Nairobi City Ensemble during its final years, becoming Ketebul Music’s first representative performers, and their continued active involvement within the organization’s initiatives six years later, makes them integral to the NGO’s organizational identity. Makadem’s and Ratego’s first albums were also Ketebul Music’s first representations of the then newly branded Afro-fusion genre. Their considerations of music production and presentation manifestations of Osusa’s ethico-aesthetic (Guattari 1995) ideal: a genre that emphasizes locally rooted cultural influences and personal identity, while utilizing the international market of the World Music industry. When citing the reasons for creating a studio, as opposed to continuing to manage the Nairobi City Ensemble, he expressed that continuing his project of locally-rooted popular music production with only one group would be “killing creativity.” To this effect, he stated, I had found this idea of Kenyan artists that had Kenyan roots in their sound in the Nairobi City Ensemble but also I wanted to support musicians and give them the freedom to do their own thing. Because not all genres of music or individual musicians would fit with Nairobi City Ensemble. So it was easier to create Ketebul to support a wide range of genres. I didn't want everyone to sound the same. That would be killing creativity. I want someone to sound like Makadem and someone to sound like Olith. I wanted each artist to sound different. Because if I brought different artists into Nairobi City Ensemble and asked them to sing a certain way it wouldn’t really have worked. But with Ketebul I could support artists in whatever genre they do (Osusa 2011c, Interview). Osusa utilized the organizational framework of the “studio” in order for artists like Makadem and Ratego to pursue individual projects. Despite the producer’s emphasis on encouraging expressive freedom, he required that any artist recording on the Ketebul Production label conform to the underlying aesthetic and ethics of the Nairobi City Ensemble, which is what 172 Osusa described as music with local and “traditional” roots fused with contemporary global influences. Through a multi-organization movement with Osusa at the center (examined in Chapter 8), a philosophical expansion of the Nairobi City Ensemble concept came to fall under the genre moniker, Afro-fusion. Although Osusa’s mentorship influenced Makadem and Ratego to adopt the conceptual framework of Afro-fusion, the artists’ reflections on the experience of creating their first albums mirrored Osusa’s own interest in creating a studio that provided more individual creative expression than was possible in the Nairobi City Ensemble. I asked Makadem how much of the music on his album was influenced by Osusa to which he responded, “It was all me, except for when Tabu feels that something is not good enough” (Makadem, Interview 2011a). The textual and aesthetic content of Ratego’s and Makadem’s music therefore reflects a synergy of Osusa’s conceptual influence, their personal pasts, and the contemporary economic and cultural milieu of Kenya. 7.2.1 Afro-Fusion as a World Music Industry Gateway Genre The wider World Music market that Afro-fusion provided to Makadem and Ratego offered an alternative to the mainstream popular music markets through which both artists had attempted to pursue a career. In Kenya, especially in Nairobi, the influence of Western media created a predicament whereby Ratego and Makadem had sought financial gain by performing commercially popular genres such as reggae, R&B, and hip-hop. Yet, they received very few substantial monetary returns through these avenues. They directly experienced the pitfalls of the mainstream Kenyan music market that Osusa observed upon returning to Kenya from the United Kingdom in 1997. This included an unsustainable degree of foreign musical influence, which he responded to, by promoting a re-localized and diversified Kenyan music industry through the Afro-fusion genre. Makadem described how steering his creative vision to reflect the philosophies of Afro-fusion enabled access to a larger fan base. International arts and culture NGOs with offices and performance spaces in Nairobi, such as Alliance Française de Nairobi and the Goethe Institut Kenia, frequently collaborate with World Music artists and draw Kenyan and non-Kenyan audiences to their performance spaces. About his expanding fan-base, Makadem stated, Because Nairobian’s have come to accept me, they attend my concerts. We also 173 have art lovers from different places like those who attend concerts by Alliance Française or the Goethe Institut, or those who come to the GoDown. Those types of people who like the theater, the types of people who want to know who is doing World Music in Kenya (Makadem 2011a, Interview). However, the process of creating Afro-fusion and securing its position as a regional (East Africa/Kenya) and global (World Music industry) music-industry genre did not occur without careful strategic networking. 7.3 Makadem When Osusa met Makadem in 2001, the young musician had attained moderate popularity in Kenya as a hip-hop and dancehall reggae artist largely through his 1999 dancehall single titled, “Mr. Lololova.” Having spent years developing his stage craft by performing a wide range of music styles for tourists in Mombasa hotels, Makadem’s charismatic performances earned him a significant following. Despite his moderate success in terms of recognition, the performer made very little, if any, money from these recordings. Piracy, costs of promotion, and a poor infrastructure to support the production and sales of albums made achieving sustainable financial returns on artistic investments difficult. One failed avenue that Makadem pursued to generate revenue was submitting his music for radio commercials. Promoters paid businesses to use Makadem’s music for their commercials with the hope that broadcasting his music would build a following of fans who would then purchase albums and attend live shows. Unfortunately the money Makadem’s promoter spent on marketing his single canceled out the financial returns (Makadem 2011a, Interview). During the artist’s varied efforts to reap rewards from the mainstream commercial market, Osusa managed the Nairobi City Ensemble. Nairobi City Ensemble was experimenting with collaborations with well-known Kenyan hip-hop artists such as Gidi Gidi and Maji Maji who were featured on the second Nairobi City Ensemble album Kalapapla (2003). As a result of Osusa’s interest in working with dance hall reggae and hip-hop artists as a way to reach a mainstream audience, Osusa offered Makadem an opportunity to perform with the Nairobi City Ensemble. Makadem described his introduction to Osusa and his experiences in the commercial music industry as follows, When I met Osusa he knew me as a rap artist. I was singing this song pretending as if I was this rich guy. [sings] “Lololova, I’m a hero in a discotech, I need a 174 queen to crown me up, a good girl to be my best half!” [laughs]… But he liked that song. So when I met Osusa in 2001, he gave me his card and said, “When you come to Nairobi we will do something because we are also working with Gidi, Maji, Poxy,” who are all rappers. He was not refusing rap artists. He knew that Luos actually had rap in their traditional music and felt that if you were really doing it well we could incorporate the Luo style into World Music and it could actually work (Makadem 2011a, Interview). Makadem’s musical versatility extended beyond hip-hop and reggae, though. He had performed various styles of music, including calypso and benga for tourists, and he was a proficient guitarist as well. He had also formulated a style that reflected some of the attributes of Osusa’s Afro-fusion concept. He termed this genre Anglo-benga, I took a guitar and said, “Let me play for you some Anglo-benga.” He [Osusa] said, “Anglo-benga, what is that?” I told him it is English benga. He said, “I would like to hear that. And you even play the guitar?” I said, “Yeah I used to play at hotels.” So I played and he said, “You know what? You can keep your hip-hop and reggae, that’s what I want” (Makadem 2011a, Interview). Having achieved moderate recognition performing rap, he refrained from pursuing possible commercial avenues for Anglo-benga until his encounter with Osusa. Makadem’s genre designation Anglo-benga signified combining the Luo popular music genre benga with English lyrics instead of the more common practice of performing benga in the Dholuo language. Osusa expressed his interest in pursuing this sort of locally rooted culture blending. He was particularly interested in broadening Makadem’s fusion concept beyond the adaptation of English lyrics in benga music to a complex Afro-fusion genre that incorporated a wider range of Kenyan traditional styles as well as non-Kenyan genres to reach audiences across Kenya as well as in the international World Music market: Osusa introduced me to this World Music scene which is not so benga. What I was doing was a type of benga which was very benga, but it wasn't really marketable to an international market. He said, “You know you really need to fuse them up…” At that point I was thinking, “What am I going to fuse?” I had a friend who told me to go back to the village and think of what you're going to do. But I didn’t need to go back to the village because I had that music in my head… I grew up listening to ohangla and nyatiti because those are the things that my dad and my sister would listen to (Makadem 2011a, Interview). 175 Figure 7.1: Makadem discussing the aesthetics of his music (photo by author). Benga has many variants and reflects influences from a number of East African and Afrodiasporic music cultures, including Luo traditional nyatiti performance style and Congolese rumba. Makadem stressed, “What I was doing was a type of benga which was very benga.” Despite utilizing the English language, his style of Anglo-benga primarily exhibited benga influences. Below is a sound clip from D.O. Misiani’s “Lala Salama,” a classic benga selection by one of Kenya’s most iconic popular musicians and benga artists. Although I will review the history and genre characteristics of benga more thoroughly in Chapter 10, I provide a brief sound excerpt of an iconic example of the genre here in order to provide an aural reference for readers unfamiliar with the style. Musical Example 7.1: Audio excerpt of D.O. Misiani’s “Lala Salama” (1973). Fast tempos characterize most benga songs, including D.O. Misiani’s “Lala Salama.” Demonstrating the influence of benga on Makadem’s musical sensibility, all of the songs on Ohanglaman incorporate fast tempos. Driving these tempos forward, benga commonly incorporates fast paced intricate linear rhythmic patterns played on a Fanta soda bottle, cowbell, 176 side of the drum, or closed hi-hat. The hi-hat part of Makadem’s “Nyaktiti” reflects these characteristic benga patterns. The following comparison between the side stick pattern of “Lala Salama” and the hi-hat part of “Nyaktiti” illustrate this similarity. Musical Example 7.2: Notated excerpt of the repeated side stick pattern from D.O. Misiani’s “Lala Salama” from the album Great Hits from Nairobi Vol. 2 (1973). Musical Example 7.3: Notated excerpt of the repeated closed hi-hat pattern from Makadem’s “Nyaktiti” on the album Ohanglaman (2005). Moving towards a broad conception of music-fusions through Osusa’s encouragement, Makadem began composing songs that drew from a wider scope of Kenyan, African, and global soundscapes to create complex cultural fusions of style, language, and narrative. The artist drew particularly from Luo “folk” styles he had grown up listening to, repertoires he performed for tourists in Mombasa hotels, as well as a cross-section of East African, African, and global popular music. About the incident Makadem recalled, 7.3.1 “Nyaktiti:” Fusions of Instrumental Style Consistent with Osusa’s vision, Makadem’s music fused compositional styles, social themes, and languages from disparate cultural realms of the Kenyan social landscape. Composing and arranging the song “Nyaktiti” on the album Ohanglaman (2005), Makadem combined styles of music thought to be culturally disparate and stylistically incompatible to the extent that the sound engineer Gabriel Omondi doubted its aesthetic feasibility: The style for “Nyaktiti” is nyatiti with ohangla. But for the beat I wanted makossa (a style of Cameroonian popular music). And actually we had a fight with Gabriel the engineer. Because he was saying, “You can’t have nyatiti and be singing ohangla with a makossa beat!” I went to Osusa and I said, “Osusa, this is what I want.” Osusa went into the studio and said that it is what I wanted. So Gabriel said, “Ok, I’ll try it.” Gabriel listened to it and said, “It works!” So I went 177 in the booth with my paper and did it. It was a one take thing (Makadem 2011a, Interview). The style “nyatiti with ohangla” Makadem mentioned in the interview segment above refers to the traditional Luo instrument nyatiti, an eight string lyre, and the ohangla, a cylindrical hand drum secured by an arm strap and played under the performer’s arm. Figure 7.2: Nyatiti accompanied by ohangla. Still image from the Ketebul Music documentary Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) featured in Chapter 10. The musical lyre, nyatiti, is one of the most common material signifiers of Luo musical heritage, and the performance styles associated with it form much of the basis for many contemporary Luo styles. Of these, the most notable is benga. Omondi (1980) and Igobwa (2004) have asserted, based on historical archaeological and organological evidence, that ancestors of the Luo ethnic group traveled with the lyre from the region now known as Sudan with waves of Nilotic migration that arrived in East Africa around 1500 A.D. Charles Nyakiti Orawo’s research (2005) documented the current Luo word for “music,” thum, before the twentieth century only referred to performances that incorporated the nyatiti. Orawo suggests 178 that Luo musicians applied styles associated with nyatiti performance to Western instruments in the second half of the twentieth century. These hybridized styles formed the contemporary Luo genres onanda and benga. From the word thum, the nyatiti musician-poet earns the vocational title, the jothum.93 Regarding the pairing of ohangla and nyatiti, which Makadem referred to in the interview excerpt above, ethnographic evidence suggests that the ohangla drum entered Luo performance contexts through contact with the Luhya ethnic group at the beginning of the twentieth century and gained commonality through its use in marriage and funeral ceremonies. It began serving as an accompanying instrument to the nyatiti in the first half of the twentieth century (Okong’o 2011). Locating a singular technique that typifies nyatiti performance practice proves difficult due to a long history of change and variation (Igobwa 2004). Even so, a few generalizations can be made: nyatiti performances are characterized by fast driving tempos emphasized by the pulsing gara (leg rattles) and oduong’o (a metal toe ring which taps against the neck of the nyatiti). The jothum is essentially a storyteller who combines singing and speaking oral poetry with accompanying himself or herself by plucking varied ostinati on the nyatiti. When accompanied by ohangla, the ohangla player provides improvised ornamentation around the pulse created by the jothum’s oduong’o. Makadem’s song “Nyaktiti” reflects influence from several of these attributes. In the following excerpt of the first twenty measures of “Nyaktiti,” the rapid tempo of 132 BPM, marked by a pulse and synthesized clavichord ostinato, signals the ohangla and nyatiti style. Providing the role of the ohangla are multiple midi percussion instruments, including a conga sample ornamenting the pulse.94 Musical Example 7.4: Audio excerpt from introduction to Makadem’s “Nyaktiti.” 93 Customarily only men were allowed to play the nyatiti in public but in recent years women nyatiti performers have emerged into the public spotlight, including a well-known Japanese nyatiti performer whose stage name, Anyango, was given to her by her Luo teachers. 94 The full score transcription of the introduction to “Nyaktiti” is located in the Appendix. 179 The synthesized clavichord ostinato heard in the introduction to “Nyaktiti” references the timbre of the nyatiti by simulating plucked strings95, and its two measure pattern repeats throughout the song in a manner similar to that of the nyatiti ostinato. Additionally, a synthesized muted cowbell and closed hi-hat echo the sound and rhythmic style of a metal oduong’o marking the pulse against the wood of the nyatiti.96 These stylistic elements of timbre, ostinato, and pulse notated in Musical Example 7.5 can be heard in the sound excerpt of the nyatiti virtuoso Okuro Geti, also available for listening below. Musical Example 7.5: Notated excerpt of mm. 1-4 of “Nyaktiti.” Musical Example 7.6: Audio excerpt of a nyatiti performance by Okuro Geti on the album Luo Traditional Nyatiti (2002). Makadem’s interview also cites that he drew influence from ohangla drum performance styles when he composed “Nyaktiti.” The influences of the ohangla performance style are evident in the Afro-Cuban conga tumbao sample that begins in measure five of “Nyaktiti.” The 3/2 tumbao conga performance practice mirrors the performance practice of the ohangla hand drum through the incorporation of alternating tones and touch-slaps. For comparison, I have noted these attributes notated in Musical Example 7.7 and provided an audio excerpt of nyatiti and ohangla featured in Musical Example 7.8. Musical Example 7.7: Notated excerpt of the conga tone (Cnga.) and slap (T.s.) that begins on mm. 5 of “Nyaktiti” and repeats throughout. 95 For this reason I have labeled the synthesized clavichord part “synth-nyatiti” in the transcription of this segment available. The full score to the introduction is located in the Appendix. 96 For this reason I have labeled the synthesized hi-hat and muted cow bell parts Synth-oduong’o. 180 Musical Example 7.8: Audio excerpt of the Ohangla and Nyatiti performers featured in Ketebul Music’s documentary Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and pictured in Figure 7.2 above. Although the use of tones and slaps is present in ohangla performance practice, the conga sample’s 3/2 clave structure (Musical Example 7.7) references a particularly Afro-Cuban meme, which also retains a prominent place in the Congolese rumba, influenced styles that spread throughout East Africa after World War II. The clave pattern references not only a past history of forced migration from Africa to the Caribbean but also the return of those influences to the African continent and their extensive dispersion throughout the popular global musics-capes of the twentieth century. The Afro-Cuban clave influence remains particular noteworthy in contemporary Congolese dance music, Kenyan benga, as well as the Cameroonian makossa, a style that Makadem also cites as having been consciously infused into “Nyaktiti.” The locallyrooted tradition of Luo music heritage converges with the wider geo-historical and cultural scope of Afro-diasporic stylistic fusions and historical global dialogues. Turning now to Makadem’s indication of the presence of makossa styles in “Nyaktiti,” there is evidence of makossa influence in its syncopated rhythmic accents.97 An examination of stylistic elements present in specific iconic examples of makossa that are also present in “Nyaktiti” provides sensorial reference points that articulate makossa influence. Accenting a sixteenth note pick up to beat two is a common trope found in iconic examples of makossa well as the snare drum hits in “Nyaktiti.” The notated excerpt of the looped digital drum-set part of “Nyaktiti,” which begins in measure eight, illustrates the use of syncopated snare drum strikes. These syncopated emphases can also be heard in the audio example of “Nyaktiti” above. Musical Example 7.9: The looped drum kit part begins on mm. 9 in “Nyaktiti” and repeats throughout. Yellow highlights mark the makossa-style syncopation of the snare drum. 97 Makadem, the sound engineer Gabriel Omondi, or the instrumentalists who performed on the album did not sample or copy from one makossa song directly. Identifying makossa influence therefore is an interpretive process. 181 Compare the snare drum part of “Nyaktiti” to similar syncopated accents present in sound excerpts of makossa classics such as Toto Guillaume’s “Mba Na Na e” (1981) and Hoigen Ekwala’s “Longue Di Titi Nika” (1991). Both selections repeatedly emphasize the sixteenth note pick up to beat two with instrumental and percussion hits. “Longue Di Titi Nika” also emphasizes the second eighth note of beat three in a similar manner to “Nyaktiti.” Musical Example 7.10: Audio excerpt of Toto Guillaume’s “Mba Na Na Ne” (1981). Musical Example 7.11: Audio excerpt of Hoigen Ekwala’s “Longue Di Titi Nika” (1991). Makadem’s idiosyncratic choice to fuse styles of Luo nyatiti with ohangla and Cameroonian makossa found relevance in 2011 at the Canadian World Music Festival International Nuits d’Afrique where both Makadem and Manu Dibango, the most widely recognized progenitor of makossa, performed. Perhaps not coincidentally, Makadem chose the song “Nyaktiti” to be presented on the festival compilation CD which also features Dibango’s “Soul Makossa 2.0” (2011). Following these contingent linkages further, makossa made a significant impact on American popular music, particularly by way of Manu Dibango’s 1972 single, “Soul Makossa,” which American popular music stars copied extensively. These included Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” and more currently, Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music.” Makossa is a genre with roots in local and “traditional” Cameroonian Duala music culture. But, like Afro-fusion, it incorporates a kaleidoscopic array of global influences. The genre additionally draws varying degrees of influence from Congolese rumba, Afro-Cuban and American jazz, West African highlife, and especially soul and funk, among other globally popular musics. As a result of makossa’s orientation towards hybridity and fusion, the Cameroonian stars frequently perform in World Music festivals and therefore represent a community of African World Music performers parallel to the Afro-fusion advocates of Kenya. 7.3.2 “Nyaktiti:” Linguistic Fusions While the music styles incorporated in “Nyaktiti” fuse Cameroonian (makossa) and Luo 182 (nyatiti with ohangla) influences, the narrative fusions incorporate Kenyan Luo oral history with English and urban style lyrics. According to Makadem, in traditional Luo folklore, “Nyaktiti” is a snake that seduces a village chief's daughter named Achieng. He threatens the girl, warning her not to reveal the truth about their relationship or he will swallow her. Eventually, when the girl is questioned she confesses her secret. Instead of rendering the song's lyrics strictly in Luo, however, Makadem incorporated a combination of Dholuo and English lyrics. He stated that by fusing the Dholuo with English lyrics he intentionally “corrupted” the oral tradition: “Nyaktiti” is supposed to be oral tradition. Like, [singing] “Booooh Nyandalno. Nyaktiti to ema ogoona ngerono.” But I corrupted it. It is supposed to be traditional, but I took that part and added my own story (Makadem, Interview 2011a). The “oral tradition”-based text of the chorus to which Makadem referred in the interview segment above is followed by the linguistically “corrupted” text of the first verse that mixes English, Dholuo, and Sheng to narrate the story of the Achieng’s temptation: Chorus 1: Booooh Nyandalno. Nyaktiti to ema ogoona ngerono Verse 1: Achieng was her name because she was born in the daylight Daughter of Ruoth, a chief, a girl very bright Rateng' ka muhdho to lake tar racharr dhirr Till a big snake befriended the daughter of nyipirr Achieng' nyamam I love you but Only you and I should know this alone And if not you will die Baby give me a chance she nodded thuol let me try Herea nopoto Achieng' never told a lie Season after season many questioned her action Spilling all the beans to her self destruction Figure 7.3: Lyrics to the chorus and first verse of “Nyaktiti.” “Nyaktiti” simultaneously attempts to communicate to a global and local audience through its incorporation of English during verses and Dholuo in the oral-history component of the chorus. In addition to rendering traditional lore with English language, a language capable of translating the Luo oral history to a global audience, Makadem fuses local narrative styles of heritage such as those of nyatiti poets with the global predicaments of economics and culture caused by 183 globalization. 7.3.3 “Ohangla Man:” Narrative Fusions The song, “Ohangla Man,” also heard on Makadem’s album Ohanglaman (2005), narrates the story of a Kenyan musician from a rural village who is dissatisfied with his current life in Africa and seeks fulfillment in the Global North. A general characteristic of all Makadem’s music is its emphasis on storytelling, a quality also present in the performance tradition of nyatiti oral poets previously described. Before the first verse, Makadem introduces the character “Ohangla Man” in a rhythmic spoken word style reflective of the “traditional” nyatiti performance practice of spoken word introductions.98 During this segment jothum may praise attending audience members and their families in much the same manner as West African Mande jelis. Makadem utilizes this same narrative device to launch the storyline of “Ohangla Man.” Below is a recording of such an introduction by the nyatiti poet Onyana Obiero followed by the introduction “Ohangla Man” performed by Makadem. Musical Example 7.12: Audio excerpt of a nyatiti performance introduction by Oyana Obiero from the album Luo Traditional Nyatiti (2002). Musical Example 7.13: Audio excerpt of the spoken word introduction to “Ohangla Man.” This is the story of Ohangla Man who was used to eating at his neighbors And drinking free beer, free chang’aa, free busaa, free munazi, and free muratina And always seducing village women So he goes away hoping for the same in America Listen… Figure 7.4: Opening spoken word introduction to “Ohangla Man.” When I asked Makadem what his inspiration was for the story of “Ohangla Man,” he articulated that the song drew influence from a local Kenyan context: the life of village musicians living in villages and rural areas throughout Kenya. About this cultural context 98 Nyatiti poets traditionally opened their performances with a spoken word introduction. 184 Makadem featured in “Ohangla Man” Makadem stated, There is a village life that perhaps you don’t know that is in Kenya. The way a musician is treated in the village is not a person who is paid. He is given alcohol and he is given food. That’s what Ohangla Man is tired of. You find that Ohangla Man is accustomed to this type of life where he moves from one home to another, from a funeral to a wedding party. You know Luos have after death parties. When you die and everything has been done, you go back to “sweep.” You call it sweeping or chasing away the evil spirit that brought about the death. It’s a huge, huge party. So musicians are the ones who perform. Ohangla Man eats a lot of meat and drinks a lot. He sleeps by the side of the granary and when he wakes up, there are women there for free. If he wants more food he goes to the neighbor and brings very nice stories to their home… That is the life that he is tired of (Makadem 2011a, Interview). Ohangla Man, discontented with the life of an itinerant village musician, manages to emigrate to the Global North. Ohangla Man’s situation becomes difficult after his attempt at a new life outside of Kenya. After the second chorus Makadem once again utilizes a spoken word style reflecting the nyatiti tradition to describe Ohangla Man’s situation after leaving Kenya: Ohangla Man goes to suffer, The visa was for three months and is now expired The man has no friends The man realizes he needs to live there with money And the place is very, very hard to deal with Very, very cold, very far away from his mother and his friends Figure 7.5: Spoken word interlude to “Ohangla Man.” Ohangla Man eventually overstays his visa, and immigration police deport him back to Kenya. When he returns his friends and family shun him and he curses the places that deported him. Kiswahili Sitarudi naenda Amerika kutafuta dola Sitarudi naenda Uingereza kutafuta pauni Sitarudi naenda Japani kutafuta yeni Sitarudi naenda Europa kutafuta euro Figure 7.6: Chorus to “Ohangla Man.” English I will not return to America to look for dollars I will not return to England to look for pounds I will not return to Japan to look for yen I will not return to Europe to look for euro Musical Example 7.14: Audio excerpt of the chorus to “Ohangla Man.” 185 Although the storyline refers to the character of Ohangla Man as one person, the chorus identifies multiple locales in the Global North (America, England, Japan, and Europe) from where he finds himself returning to Kenya. This rhetorical shift in the chorus expands the scope of the song to address the migration of Kenyans to the Global North generally as opposed to specifying one location. Ohangla Man, then, is a hypothetical signifier for not one but many Kenyans attempting to live outside Kenya. Makadem indicated that the narrative of “Ohangla Man” speaks to the strong desire of many Kenyan musicians to perform in Europe, the United States, Japan, or anywhere in the Global North so that they can immigrate there and live. During live performances of “Ohangla Man” that I attended during the fieldwork process, Makadem vividly embodied the narrative arc of migration and return by engaging the audience in call-andresponse. After performing the first verse describing Ohangla Man’s discontent with his life in Kenya and his decision to venture Global North Makadem shouts the following refrain, Call: Bye Bye Africa! Response: Bye Bye! C: Bye bye my Mama land! R: Bye bye! C: Bye bye Kenya! R: Bye bye! C: Bye bye my homeland! All: Bye bye bye bye bye bye! Figure 7.7: Call-and-response refrain A of “Ohangla Man.” After the narrative traces Ohangla Man’s return to Kenya by way of deportation from the Global North Makadem returns to this refrain. This time he embodies the man shouting “bye bye!” as he is forced out of the Global North and back to Africa: Call: Bye Bye America! Response: Bye Bye! C: Bye Bye Dutchlandi! R: Bye Bye! C: Bye bye Englandi ! R: Bye Bye! C: Bye Bye Italiani! R: Bye Bye! Figure 7.8: Call-and-response refrain B in “Ohangla Man.” 186 Musical Example 7.15: Video excerpt of Makadem performing A + B refrains. The B refrain documents the audience response (video by author). 7.3.4 “Ohangla Man:” Memories of Global Encounter The storyline of “Ohangla Man” resonates with Makadem’s memories working as a tour guide and performing music during the 1990s in the popular coastal tourist destination of Mombasa. The influx of wealthy foreigners on holiday vacations promised financial opportunities, but the competition in the tourism industry made income inconsistent. Living hand to mouth, Makadem temporarily replaced his brother, who had fallen ill, as the lead singer of a wedding band for extra income. Makadem eventually became a permanent member of his brother's band, performing rumba, calypso, reggae, and popular American music for tourists at Mombasa hotels. Exemplifying typical cultural conflations of the global tourism industry, the group impersonated Caribbean musicians to attract foreign tourists vacationing on Mombasa’s “tropical” shores. The group strategized that Caribbean music, and the constellation of signs it projected, would create a heightened “sense” of being on vacation for foreign tourists. Makadem conveyed this comic remembrance of his time performing in hotels and mentioned that he and his fellow musicians wore Mexican sombreros for additional effects: We used to dress like Caribbeans at these hotel gigs. We even used to wear sombreros! There was even a time when Allegra Resorts came to Mombasa and they were looking for a Caribbean band then they were told that there was one there. And it was us! We thought, “Wow that's what we want” (Makadem 2011a, Interview). These early experiences with the global culture of the tourism industry partly inform narrative of “Ohangla Man.” 7.3.5 Lessons in “Ohangla Man” Discussing the story of “Ohangla Man” with Makadem, I proposed an interpretation of 187 the song that suggested it is a lesson that the reality of life outside of Kenya is not always rich in opportunity. Makadem, however, disagreed with this interpretation and instead illustrated deeper meanings within the storyline. He asserted that external dynamics of North-South relations and cultural-economic difference are less to blame for the sad condition of his subject than the character’s inner psyche, which perpetually caused his sense of isolation and dislocation. Illustrating this point he stated, Okay, Europe has better pay which is true. But again when they chase him for his own undoing he abuses the Europeans and the Americans and the Japanese… the English. Are you getting me? He can’t live in either place. In Africa he abuses them because they can’t pay him money… But maybe he could’ve come to Nairobi to look for his money, or Kisumu, rather than just working funerals and stuff or going from one home to another home and eating free food and drinking free alcohol. So it’s not actually teaching Africans not to go to Europe, it’s teaching that there are these modalities. There is Africa, how do you work there? There is the West, how do you work there? And if this is the type of person who you are then you’ll go there and fail (Makadem, Interview 2011a). Ohangla Man does not find peace in Kenya or in America because he is never satisfied wherever he is. His predicament, according to Makadem, is more the result of an inability to find happiness within himself than the global conditions of economic imbalance. These complex and often ironic portrayals of the globally connected life of Kenyans play a reflexive role in Makadem’s life, as the following section will demonstrate. Makadem has consciously shaped his own identity as an artist to capture the plurality that is at the heart of contemporary global culture. 7.3.6 Commercial Liminality and “Vernacular” Genre Breaking Makadem, like any poet, capitalizes on irony. As the above analyses have shown, his music casts multiple and often converging narratives and uncommon combinations of musical styles. On stage, he embodies shifting personalities to reflect varying perspectives within even one song’s narrative. Makadem explains that he uses the alias “Makadem” to protect himself from personal identity confusion as a result of extreme code switching. “You know as an artist, you need two personalities otherwise you will confuse yourself. Like Makadem is not Charles Ademson. The person who composes is different from the person who is on stage” (Makadem, Interview 2011a).99 Despite the creative merits of Makadem’s versatility, he views this as having 99 Olith Ratego, and Tabu Osusa are also aliases for Musa Odhiambo Omondi, and William Ogutu respectively. 188 inhibited his commercial success in both the World Music market and the local Kenyan industry. Demonstrating the interplay between industry and genre, his music exists precariously in a selfinflicted state of commercial liminality (Turner 1967). It falls within the cracks of ethnic or cultural categories. A particularly striking and even controversial approach to genre breaking that Makadem embraces is his frequent use of the term ohangla, a term which signifies the popular Luo music genre in Kenya ohangla. Ohangla demonstrates influences of Luo onanda (accordion) music, benga, and Congolese rumba, among other genres, but ironically does not commonly incorporate the traditional ohangla drum previously discussed. One of the defining characteristics of the contemporary popular Kenyan ohangla genre is the use of a synthesizer keyboard, in contrast to the benga genre for which the guitar is the primary melodic instrument. If individuals are not familiar with Makadem’s music and they see the album title Ohanglaman, they are likely to expect to hear a style of music featured at an “ohangla night” at a music club, not Makadem’s Afro-fusion, Anglo-benga stylings. Makadem intentionally emphasizes the irony of this historically embedded genre conflation. He purposefully infused very few ohangla (the popular Kenyan genre) or even Luo stylistic elements in “Ohangla Man,” a song with a title that suggests the presence of ohangla elements. Instead of drawing from the popular genre ohangla, Makadem drew from non-Luo musical influences from coastal Teso and Giriama communities to dominate the song's soundscape. This creative move has at least on one occasion caused a Luo audience member expecting to hear the popular genre ohangla to become irate. About this occasion, Makadem stated, “Ohangla Man” is not very Luo. It’s based on Teso and Giriama music. Giriama has a reggae-like beat. They are from the coast. [sings] Ni kweli ma sipendi, Kijeli ma sipendi! That’s very coastal. One Luo guy told me once, “Why are you lying to us? Saying that you are doing Luo music.” And he was very angry. We had just gone to Mombasa for the launch of Ohanglaman and he said, “You are not even the Ohanglaman. Your music is not even Luo!” He was referring to that song. But the song is called “Ohangla Man” it is not called “ohangla music” [laughs] (Makadem 2011a, Interview). The following excerpts provide a comparison of what many Kenyans popularly recognize as the genre, ohangla with an excerpt of the song “Ohangla Man:” 189 Musical Example 7.16: Audio excerpt of the song “Night Oberana” by Onyango Alemo off the album Onyango Alemo Vol: 02 (2010). Musical Example 7.17: Audio excerpt of the section of “Ohangla Man” that Makadem identified as Giriama and Teso influenced. Makadem asserted that “Ohangla Man” incorporated stylistic influences from “Teso and Giriama music.” He goes on to state that, “Giriama has a reggae like beat. They are from the coast,” and sings the phrase heard in the excerpt above “Ni kweli ma sipendi, Kijeli ma sipendi!” stating, “That’s very coastal.” The following musical examples reference the non-Luo genres Makadem fused into “Ohangla Man.” Makadem does not state specifically from what Giriama and Teso genres he drew influence. Below, I present recorded segments of a Giriama “folk” style (titled mungao) and a Teso “folk” style (titled akisuku) from the Permanent Presidential Music Commission’s Ngoma za Kenya (2008) series in order to provide a reference to possible soundscapes from which Makadem drew: Musical Example 7.18: Audio excerpt of the Giriama style mungao performed by the Gonda La Mijikenda Cultural Troupe (Ngoma za Kenya: Volume 4 2008). Musical Example 7.19: Audio excerpt of the Teso style akisuku dance performed by the Iteso Traditional Dancers (Ngoma za Kenya: Volume 3 2008). Makadem purposefully and knowingly makes creative choices that contradict expected genre style, reflect his preference for ironic humor, and infuse convergences of global signification. Although he is Luo by ethnic lineage, Makadem is wary of tying his identity to ethnicity alone. In our interviews, he told stories of how people within one ethnic group betray each other, while also discussing examples of social boundary crossing, whereby members of non-Luo ethnic groups have strongly supported his music. His use of language in music transcends these barriers as well. He describes the distinction between singing a song in a language in order to connect with the people who speak that language and singing in a language 190 to creatively explore new modes of artistic expression. The statement below demonstrates his tendency to purposefully place himself in a state of textual and linguistic liminality or inbetweenness: Luos have their music like the ohangla. Those are Luo musicians and they sing in accordance to how Luos speak, how they brag, how they feel, the things they say. Like in the U.S. there are things you say, like when you talk about “Benjamin’s.” What do I know? Only Americans understand what you mean by “Benjamins.” So these Luo musicians use such things that Kisumu (an area of Western Kenya with a large Luo community) people say. The phrases they use, the things they say, the storylines there. So that makes you very Luo. I will use Luo but I will use a phrase that is rarely used by Luo but perhaps more used by an American or a Nairobian. I actually remove myself from them. I use phrases that they don’t know even though I am using their language. So you see, I have alienated myself. Like if I use a phrase that is very Swahili but I say it in Luo, Luos are not going to get me. They will understand what I’m saying, but it’s not what they use (Makadem 2011a, Interview). Linguistically, Makadem pursues a plurality that speaks to the diversity and tensions within Kenyan society, as well as the plurality and tensions within a global society. He perpetually seeks ever more complex expressionistic devices and believes such a strategy makes his music more accessible across global culture divides. Making this point he stated, I think that my music speaks to everyone because I have not tied it, you know? Like if someone wants to understand it I tend to drop English here and there, Kiswahili, Luo and I am even coming up with new ones where I want to drop more languages like French, Danish, and Japanese (Makadem, Interview 2011a). Many Kenyans whom I interviewed described Kenya as a place negotiating poly-vocality and attempting to find coexistence despite difference. Makadem’s uncategorizable music therefore remains reflective of the contemporary context of Kenya as well as the global community, a post-modern reality full of interconnectedness. The fusion of sounds in his music speaks to the intermingling and global migration of media, culture, and populations while also reaching to retain local rootedness. 7.3.7 World Music Industry Marginalization Makadem also described receiving criticism from World Music industry participants for the diversity of styles from which he draws. Although the term, “world music” would seem to indicate an openness to diversity even within one artist’s repertory, from Makadem's perspective, World Music industry agents are subject to the same tendencies of social conformity as any other commercially interested representatives of art: 191 I have become quite versatile and it is costing me. It’s costing me not amongst the revelers [public audience] but within the circles of the agents. Music agents in “World Music” tend to think that they know what the audience wants. To them you need to be like Oliver Mtukudzi whose rhythm you can tell when the song starts. You can tell right away, that's Oliver Mtukudzi. Or Salif Keita, that’s Senegalese…So they tell me, “Hey you need to put your things in order because we need a rhythm.” I find that boring (Makadem 2011a, Interview). Despite his perception of maintaining a marginalized status in the World Music industry, the artist has managed to create a significant fan base in Denmark and is increasingly making appearances at the international World Music festivals. Carolina Vallejo, a World Music manager who lives in Denmark, has managed to obtain performance opportunities for him in her home country and around the world: The manager I have in Europe didn’t think the way other world music agents do and it has worked magic for me. I mean people don't move away from me when I start a performance. Because with every song, it's like you can't say that you've listened to that before. No way. Because my rhythm keeps changing (Makadem 2011a, Interview). Vallejo still admits, however, that the World Music industry is a difficult market in which to attain success and that Makadem has not yet achieved the attention he deserves. To this effect, she stated, “I want him to be able to be living from his music, to be paid from his CDs etc, and this is a constant problem. So at the moment I am still doing the work of four people but I know that we will reach the point where we can laugh at our efforts” (Vallejo 2011, Email correspondence). Vallejo’s promotional company, .One World,100 is a company registered with the international World Music networking organization WOMEX profiled in Chapter 4. .One World has yet to establish itself as a major force in the World Music industry, but has been securing a formidable catalogue of tours and performances for artists like Makadem. Vallejo’s work obtaining concert opportunities for Makadem suggests growth for the company in the coming years as well as for Makadem’s career. In 2011, he performed at a number of World Music festivals in North and South America as well as in Europe. In Canada, he performed at the Festival International Nuits D’Afrique and Sunfest; while in Europe, he performed at the African Culture Festival and the Baobob Festival in Sweden as well as dozens of clubs and festivals in Denmark. Continuing his rise in Denmark, in October, 2011 Makadem opened for Seun Kuti, 100 The period preceding the name of Vallejo’s company, “.One World” is part of the company title, not a typo. 192 son of Afro-Beat legend Fela Kuti, and his band Egypt 80, as well as performing on the national Denmark television network TV 2 GO. When I asked Makadem about the relationship between Ketebul Music and .One World he stated that .One World handles most of his international and European management and promotion, while Ketebul Music is his local production house. Makadem also indicated that although Osusa is not his official manager, their long-term friendship consists of extensive exchanges about Makadem’s music industry choices. Additionally, Makadem’s association with Ketebul Music has landed him many appearances in Kenya and the East African region, including a Ford Foundation Grantees Reception, Sauti za Busara, the Kisumu Peace Festival, Blankets and Wine concert series, and the Rift Valley Festival among others. The shared responsibilities of Ketebul Music and .One World demonstrate a maximization of resources and strategies required to straddle the multiple geographic and cultural realms inherent in the contemporary global music economy. Examining Makadem’s success in solidifying a career, despite his self-proclaimed stylistic marginality, demonstrates the powerful role of the agency of individuals networking and partnering in the World Music industry, even amidst the economic deterrents of global media trends. 7.4 Olith Ratego The following analysis of Olith Ratego’s album, Osuga, released through the Ketebul Music label in 2005, documents how the artist’s personal memories from childhood, economic obstacles throughout his life, and influences born through social contact manifest in the stylistic choices and narrative themes of the album and ground the production of NGO music culture in localized contingencies. Explicating these nuances, I rely heavily on Ratego’s own words through the presentation of transcribed interview segments for purposes of grounding the analytical text in the voice and perspective of the composer of the music. Such an approach also advocates a particular localization of ethnographic process. Ratego’s alternating incorporation of English and Kiswahili for purposes of communicating his perspective to me highlights the logistics of cross-cultural/cross-linguistic communication that often take place in fieldwork. Dholuo is Ratego’s first language, or “mother tongue.” A Sheng dialect of Kiswahili Ratego’s secondary language, English is his third language and the one in which Ratego has the most difficulty communicating. Given my lack of Dholuo proficiency and only conversational ability in Kiswahili, we communicated during interviews using a mix of Kiswahili and English. These 193 nuances of cultural negotiation and communication that occurred during the fieldwork process highlight how my contingently-situated position as a researcher shape my access to and interpretation of data. Figure 7.9: Olith Ratego discussing his personal history and musical composition (photo by Shino Saito). Beginning with the manifestation of personal memory in the present and the locally embedded contingencies of Kenya’s NGO music culture, we turn to Ratego’s reflections on the development of his identity as a musician. Interviews with him about his life story revealed an unavoidable draw towards music balanced with a dependence on capital to survive many of his professional and personal life choices. The songs of Ratego’s Ketebul Music album, Osuga, also reflect the tensions between desire and monetary needs. In interviews with Ratego during which I inquired about the origins of his path to becoming a musician, the artist noted his mother as a key guiding influence. Ratego also noted direction from a supernatural higher power which imbued musical talent within him. Ratego’s self-constructed narrative of his entry into music exemplifies his professed commitment to his identity as an artist101: Now begins the issues regarding music. One day my mother was singing. I saw when I was still young. She was singing with other mothers [Ratego is referring to the dodo music that his mother used to sing with other women]. Now one day my 101 Olith Ratego spoke to me in Kiswahili and English. Transcriptions of the Kiswahili are footnoted in the following interview segments. 194 mother and I were going to the farm to work the land. I saw a certain bird flying. Now I said to my mother,102 “Mama why are you not catching this bird for me? I want to eat it.” And you see here I’m angry. My mom tells me, “No this bird is not good for you to eat.” So I ask her, “Why?” And she told me, “This bird is only for people who sing.” So I told my mom, “Mom! I like to sing. I want to be singing. Please catch this bird for me. I want to go to eat it because I can sing, I can sing mom!” So my mom listened and she loved me. So we continued with digging. When we were coming back home I didn’t know if God picked for me the spirit of singing because nilimwomba Mungu (Trans.: I prayed to god). Mungu listened to the way I talked to my mom and God gave me the talent that even me I don’t know (Ratego 2011b, Interview; translation by author). In the excerpt above, Ratego described that as a child he wanted to eat the bird that was meant only for singers and how his desire to eat this bird created a confluence of circumstances that connected him to music for the rest of his life. When discussing his inspiration for the songs on Osuga, Ratego again echoed the signifier of the bird from his childhood. About the origins of the melody for the song, “Awuoro,” Ratego commented, Nilisikiliza sauti ya ndege. Fanya (Trans.: I listened to the sound of a bird. It went) [Ratego whistles the melody of Awuoro]… so I take it and I put it in my radio. I start listening to the way the bird is saying [singing] ya la le le la la... So me, I start writing the song with that voice (Ratego 2011b, Interview; translation by author). Musical Example 7.20: Notated excerpt of the bird call in “Awuoro.” Musical Example 7.21: Audio excerpt of the bird call in “Awuoro.” Ratego recalls that after praying to God to become a singer, he began imitating the music he heard on records even before the age of ten. He described attempting to imitate the benga artists, Collela Mazee and D.O. Misiani, while creating rhythmic accompaniments with his hands in the mud on the ground. Ratego sang and tapped incessantly in schools, causing teachers to 102 Kiswahili segment: Sasa vile hivyo anza mambo ya muziki. Siku moja mama yangu alikuwa anaimba. Mimi, niliona wakati nilikuwa bado mdogo. Yeye alikuwa anaimba na wamama wingine. Sasa siku moja mama yangu na mimi alikuwa anaenda kwa shamba kulima. Niliona ndege fulani aliruka. Sasa nilimwambia mama wangu… 195 send him home as a punishment on several occasions. These childhood experiences formed a foundation of musical involvement that would continue throughout his life. Ratego’s early musical memories also serve as guiding motivation for his current musical development. This motivation has persisted despite many difficulties securing a sustainable income from music throughout his life. Ratego did not continue schooling after Standard 5103 due to a lack of school fees. After leaving school as an adolescent he invested his efforts in building a career in music. At age fourteen, Ratego asked the famous benga musician Ochieng Kabaselleh for advice on how to record his music. Kabaselleh advised Ratego to travel to Nairobi and find sponsorship to pay for time in a recording studio. He worked odd jobs in Busia to make money to pay for the transportation to Nairobi. When Ratego arrived in Nairobi, however, he was unable to make the proper connections and procure sponsorship. As a result, he temporarily abandoned the pursuit of his music career and began working as a wood worker building furniture in Nairobi. About these early struggles finding an income as a musician, Ratego stated, I was fourteen years old. Now I wrote these songs. I met this person who was playing the guitar. His name, he was called Ochieng Kabaselleh. I went and I said to him, “I have my songs here and I don’t know how I can record them…” So he said, “Ok, here in Busia you can't get a studio. So if you want to record you must go to Nairobi to look for a studio there. Look for somebody who will find for you money. Then book a studio and go to record.” So I listen to that, I start asking myself, “I’m young. I don't have money to go to Nairobi.” I don't know what I can do but something told me, “Ratego, you go and look for some jobs here. Some little jobs.” And I went to look for work. I did little jobs. Then I found money. Then I took a bus and arrived in Nairobi. Now when I arrived in Nairobi I began to look for a studio and began to find a sponsor but I didn't get one. So I leave music away. I don't have money and nothing in my hand. So I start looking for a job to do. And my father is a carpenter. So my father taught me how to make the chairs and tables. Now I can get money but leaving the music away. I started to make cupboards and sofas and then I got some small money. So I’m getting little living somewhere (Ratego 2011b, Interview, translation by author). 7.4.1 Social Contingencies of Contact: Olith Ratego Joins Ketebul Music Osusa came into contact with Olith Ratego at a point in Ratego’s career when he, like Makadem, was performing hip-hop and reggae to build a following in Kenya's commercial Western Popular music market. Some of Ratego's songs achieved moderate commercial 103 Kenya’s U.K.-based educational system “Standard 5” (also referred to as “Class 5”) is grade 5 in the U.S.. 196 recognition, but like Makadem, the artist received very little compensation after the costs of promotion and production. Ratego received some radio airplay for his song “Mamano Daa” (“That is Law” in Dholuo) which eventually brought the artist into contact with Osusa. Ratego described his first meeting with Osusa in the following way: One day I was singing for my friend Mighty King Kong [a well-known reggae artist in Kenya during the 1990s and early 2000s].104 Then I met Tabu Osusa and Osusa heard me sing. After I finished singing Osusa called me and told me, “Ratego, you have a nice voice. I think you are a good performer. I can help you. But I don’t don’t like these reggae songs because this is not a Luo style. These are Jamaican songs and you are not a Jamaican, you are a Kenyan, and you are a Luo. You need to sing the traditional songs of Luos so you can teach people. If you agree, I can help you. But before I help you, you need to change your style.” Then I told Osusa, “I’m happy with you. I can change style. That is what I need to grow in music. I don’t want to grow in reggae or benga, but in all music” (Ratego 2011b, Interview, translation by author). Osusa suggested that Ratego write contemporary popular music in a Kenyan-Luo style of music known as dodo. Ratego was familiar with dodo music because it was music his mother had sung when he was a child. Ratego’s mother achieved national recognition for her group’s dodo performances and often performed for Kenyan dignitaries, including the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. Osusa told me, “Can you compose the songs called dodo?” I said, “Yes I can.” He said, “dodo is the music for the old women of Luo. If you can compose that music, I can record you. I’ll take you to the studio and we can record.” I told him, “Yes” (Ratego, Interview 2011b). Instances of economic incentive, such as these, suggest that those who facilitate opportunities for artists, in this case Osusa, also stand to influence the directions of the music created out of those partnerships. This influencing role of funders speaks also to the significance of the NGO sector and its ties to global economy as a guiding force in Kenya’s music industry. Despite underlying economic motivations made necessary by the need for survival, the following segment demonstrates that the particular aesthetic choice made by Ratego in the construction of a dodo based Afro-fusion were self-directed. Below is Ratego's recalling of some of the circumstances that facilitated the creation of his first album titled Osuga: So Osusa told me, “Ok, go back to your house and when you are finished, come 104 Kiswahili segment: Siku moja nilikuwa kuimba kwa Mighty King Kong, rafiki yangu. Nikakutana producer Tabu Osusa na Osusa alinisikia kuimba. 197 back and tell me.” So I’m doing like that. I composed for Osusa thirteen songs in one day. Then I called Osusa in the morning and I said, “Osusa I composed those songs you asked of me.” He said, “You composed?” I said, “Yes, I composed.” He asked, “How many songs?” I said, “Thirteen.” He said, “No, no, no! You are lying. You can't compose thirteen songs in one day.” I said, “I want to play for you and you listen.” Osusa said, “Ok, look for fare from somebody and you come. I want to listen to that music. Where do you put it?” I told him, “I put it in tape.” He said, “Come to this little theater and we'll meet.” So Osusa took the tape in his car. He started listening. He listened to one song, second, third. He said, “Oh this is the thing I want. This is what I’ve been looking for and now I get it. Ok, Ratego we need to meet tomorrow.” So I do like that, I rest and arrange that music… I start composing to make my music very good and Osusa starts making his studio here. Then we start recording. That is my story (Olith Ratego 2011b, Interview). After Osusa heard Ratego’s dodo influenced compositions, he began providing financial and professional support for Ratego to record the album in his studio. 7.4.2 (Re)Invention of Tradition Osusa and Ratego referred to dodo music during interviews as a style of “traditional” music sung by senior women in Luo communities. Kenya's Permanent Presidential Commission on Music similarly describes dodo as, A gracious dance performed at beer parties, harvests, and funerals by elderly women. The graceful movement symbolizes gentleness, understanding, obedience, charm, and a sense of the welcoming characteristics of a Luo woman (Ngoma za Kenya Vol. 5 2008). By reworking dodo music from the male perspective and in the male voice, Ratego seemingly breaks with the social norms of the style, a move that does not adhere to a conservative reading of the tradition that would insist on a female voice. Demonstrating the flexible and shifting nature of tradition, even the prevailing perspective of dodo music as a traditionally female genre is contestable. Patricia Opondo’s dissertation, Dodo Performance in the Context of Women’s Associations Amongst the Luo of Kenya (1996), portrays dodo as having developed from songs led by men at occasions for imbibing. Opondo’s research suggests dodo emerged from the beer drinking song known as kong’o and an older women’s dance form, nyangore. Women began leading songs sometime before the 1950s because, by that time, dodo music had become associated with women’s groups and known as a predominately female style (Opondo, 64-70). This historical perspective adds layers of interpretation to Ratego’s reworking of dodo, a style collectively thought of as elder women’s music but which can also be historically deconstructed as having developed from a male genre. Invoking Hobsbawm’s and Ranger’s “invention of 198 tradition” (1992), the history of such developments challenge notions of dodo as a fixed tradition and situate Ratego's move to co-opt the style as consistent with continual processes of adaptation and change in East African music. 7.4.3 Narratives of Female Empowerment in Dodo and Osuga According to Opondo, Luo women's groups in Kenya from the 1950s to present have utilized dodo as a vehicle to socially construct “womanhood” in a public space (Opondo 1993: 75-96). The genre became most actively incorporated in women's associations that emerged out of the practice of harambees. By the 1990s, these women’s associations had begun registering themselves with the government as community based organizations (CBOs) and partnering with international and local NGOs in community development initiatives. Dodo performances continue to give these groups a public forum to express various perspectives. Although the lyrical content of dodo songs covers an ever-expanding diversity of topics, many overtly or implicitly voice frustrations with the social constraints placed on women. Other songs praise virtuous women who have managed to lead a professional working life where they earn as much money as a man while at the same time meeting their responsibilities in the home. Through these themes, dodo songs have therefore provided a forum to promote an empowered female perspective in a largely patriarchal society. Compounding layers of cultural history to make music that carries within it the seeds of its previous forms, Ratego composes songs that speaks to women’s issues and advocates on behalf of women’s rights. Ratego’s contemporary take on dodo signals layers of historical tradition that dually reference past forms and present transformations (Bakan 2007). Addressing the importance of advocacy for women's rights from a male perspective, the song “Wa Mama” speaks out against domestic violence to women. The text to “Wa Mama” describes a woman who is educated but has a husband who does not respect her. He has forgotten that his wife is a learned and virtuous person. The man beats his wife and engages in extra-marital affairs while his wife stays at home tending to housework. Ratego admonishes the man he described in the narrative. He reminds the man a woman carried him in her womb for nine months and he originally married his wife for love as opposed to arrangement. Ratego ends the song by warning the song’s antagonist that a woman can live independently on her own, but when a man is living on his own he cannot manage well because he turns to drinking and becomes lost: 199 Kiswahili Wa mama semeni tumekata Verse 1: Mke wako sio adui yako Mke wako ni mpenzi wako Mke wako ni mbavu yako Alitoka kwa mwili wako Wamama mnatulisha Nyinyi mnatulea Kutubeba miezi tisa Mnastahili heshima eee Wamama English Those who are mothers, tell them we refuse Verse 1: Your wife is not your enemy Your wife is your lover Your wife is your rib She came from your body Mothers you feed us You provide for us Carry us for nine months You deserve respect Mothers Verse 2: Umeoa mke Umemtupa hapo Na hutaki kajua Mkigombana unamfukuza Na kesho kuoa mwingine Umewacha mke Wako kwa nyumba Na kuotea wajirani Ama wa fulani Ukiulizwa watoka wapi Ni hasira na kuanza vita Eeee eeee Verse 2: You have married your wife You have dumped her there And you do not want to know When you fight you chase her away And tomorrow marry another You have left your wife In the house And have taken to cultivating/nurturing neighbors A certain woman When you are asked from where you came You show anger and start war Verse 3: Verse 3: Usimdharau mke wako Do not undermine your wife Nyumbani anapika At home she cooks Usimwone akiosha viombo Don't you see her washing utensils Ukadhani ni mjinga And think that she is foolish Ni mtu amesoma She is a person who is learned Ingawa ametuliza Although she has caused calm Unamgurumia kama simba You roar at her like Kwa nyumba amenyamaza In the house she is quiet Usidhani ni mjinga Do not assume she is foolish Na hata kumcharaza And even beat her Siku ataishia The day she disappears Utabaki ukiwaza You will be wondering Kwa bila mume For without a husband Mke anaweza A woman can continue Lakini bila mke But without a wife Mume huteleza sana A man backslides very much Figure 7.10: Chorus and first three verses to “Wa Mama” (translation by author and Asunta Njeru). 200 Musical Example 7.22: Audio excerpt of the first verse of “Wa Mama.” The song text of “Wa Mama” echoes some of the dodo song texts found in Opondo’s research. Opondo described the difficulty Luo women often encounter when a man has paid a bride price for them and they are forced to leave their family home and live with a stranger. The following dodo song is such an example: Ni “common” To otundo kama Ng'atni thula to ogweya Kiny otwo nowuok Kendo aduogo godhiambo Emomiyo chow okak marach Chowgi ochayowa mon It is “common” It has reached a stage where This man throws me out with a kick The next day he alleges that I left And returned in the evening That is why the men think they are powerful These men look down upon us women Figure 7.11: Untitled dodo song text transcription (Opondo 1996: 213). Asunta Njeru, the Kiswahili language specialist who assisted me in the English translation of “Wa Mama,” commented that the situation narrated in the song was familiar to her in the contemporary Nairobi social context. She described how Kenyan boys and girls are beginning to receive equal access to education. Despite an increase in the percentage of women who receive an equal education to men, gender inequality persists in the household even when husband and wife are equally educated. Njeru went as far as to say, “You know sometimes you see women walking around Nairobi talking to themselves. They have gone mad because their husbands do not treat them well. Yet, they are very educated.” Ratego’s direct experience of such circumstances inspired his composition. Ratego described how he wrote the song at a point in his life when he was living with his step-brother who regularly verbally and physically abused his wife: This song, I made it when I lived with my brother. Even it is a real story. I lived with my step-brother. And he has a wife but he is drinking too much. So if he arrives in the house he starts to annoy her. He starts beating her and telling her, “You can take your things and go. You are giving me a headache in this house.” So I look at him and I start talking with my heart and I start to tell him, “Brother please don't go drink and come and start beating your wife. It's not good.” So that's how I arrived at this song. Because his wife is educated in school very good and she knows how to do a job and she's speaking good English and she has pride. But this man does not see that. If he comes home, he is beating her and 201 she's telling him, “Me I want to get a job,” and he's saying, “No! Do you think I don't have money? Why do you want to go make job!?” (Ratego 2011b, Interview). Ratego added that although the circumstances of the song emerge from his personal past experience and are relevant to Kenyan contexts, his intention was also to speak to a wider global audience: I didn’t write this story because of this one person. I wrote it because I needed all people in the world to listen to this story and all men to take care. It’s not only in Nairobi but all over the world. Many men like to behave badly to their wives, you see (Ratego 2011b, Interview). Ratego's intention to address a global situation in which women continue to face obstacles because of their gender traces the historical trajectory of the dodo tradition in its intersections with global streams of culture. The fact that Ratego considered the relevance of “Wa Mama” in a global context reflects the globalization of media as well as intercultural migrations in and outside of Kenya. The merging of global and local perspectives in Ratego’s interpretation of dodo reflects Osusa’s stylistic influence by referencing the Afro-fusion blueprint. The analysis above, however, also illustrates Ratego’s personal past through the re-working of dodo. The following section explores this interplay between personal identity and the creative product of Ratego’s music. 7.4.4 False Promises of Financial Opportunity As discussed in the documentation of Ratego’s early musical experiences before meeting Osusa, economic struggles have been continual obstacles throughout his life. These monetary impediments therefore inspire many of Ratego’s song texts. The song “Awuoro” echoes Ratego's personal experience of pursuing opportunity in Nairobi but finding only a false promise of prosperity. Like Ratego’s attempt to find sponsorship in the urban capital, the song tells the story of a boy’s journey to Nairobi in search of employment. The boy’s brother takes him to Nairobi and promises him a job but when he arrives in the city he finds no work and is stuck there. Without a steady income, the boy works odd jobs around his brother's house. He begins to wonder if his brother’s original intentions were to bring him to Nairobi to obtain a cheap source of household labor: 202 Dholuo Awuoro Olith awuoro (x4) English I wonder Olith I wonder Verse 1: Kangato goli mana edalau Teri Nairobi bwore Nidhi miyi tichi Kangato goli mana edalau Teri Nairobi bwore kapango Nidhi miyi tichi Kangato goli mana edalau Teri Nairobi Nidhi miyi tichi Kangato goli mana edalau Teri Nairobi To kichopop bwore Tokatatichi-ongee eeeee Verse 1: Somebody takes you from your home village And takes you to Nairobi Promising a job for you Somebody takes you from your home village And takes you to Nairobi to stay there Promising a job for you Somebody takes you from your home village To Nairobi Promising a job for you Somebody takes you from your home village To Nairobi When you reach Nairobi there is no job I sympathize for myself Verse 2: Verse 2: Madiweya akonwe wuonwa edala You should have left me to help my father To tichi onge There is work to do Madiweya akonwe ebabana If you left me to help him Dinabeto dalawa I could have cleared the bushes Madiweya akonwe minwa You should have left me to help my mother Japuru onge Work the land Madiweya akonwe minwa You should have left me to help my mother Japuru ongee eee eee Work the land, I regret Figure 7.12: Chorus and verses one and two of “Awuoro” (translation by Olith Ratego and Steve Kivutia). The word “Awuoro” translates as “I wonder” in Dholuo and expresses the perspective of the boy who is questioning his brother's motivation for bringing him to Nairobi. As described in Chapter 1, the story reflects the journeys of large populations over several generations that have migrated to Nairobi from rural areas in search of employment. An excess labor force in the urban areas has made jobs difficult to find and wages low. This predicament created large informal settlements in Nairobi. Among these, the areas of Mathare, Huruma, and Kibera have earned a reputation as notorious Nairobi “slums.” Many living and working in the informal urban settlements take jobs as house cleaners or construction workers, often for less than a livable wage. Ratego’s personal experiences overlap with those of a large percentage of the Kenyan population, a population attempting to negotiate the necessity of capital in a globalized economic 203 context without reliable means to securing it. Highlighting the prevalence of this theme in the music of Osuga, a majority of songs on the album reference the struggles of living in a capitalist climate with little access to income. Below are additional summaries to songs from the album Osuga that confront the corrupting influence of capital: “Jomoko:” a song about people who make themselves seem like friends but make promises that they do not keep. They will buy alcohol but will not give money for food. “Mamano Daa:” a song discouraging people from becoming jealous at others' success. This jealousy will even lead to lies about how people have become successful through ill means. “Osuga:” a bitter vegetable, but considered a delicacy among the Luo. The song compares this vegetable to a beautiful woman who is never satisfied with her husband. The woman's husband, going to great lengths to please her, resorts to crime and is imprisoned. “Jawanya:” the name of the character in this song. Driven by greed, he only thinks of himself when dealing with others. He is always considering the ways that he can obtain money or opportunity from them. “Jodongo:” a song that criticizes the older generation in Kenya for not being good role models. The singer suggests that the greed of the elders has been passed down to the younger generation. By offering “sponsorship,” Osusa provided avenues for Ratego and Makadem to resist imitating the commercial music industry, an industry rich in false promises of wealth and fame, and to explore their own creative voices. Ratego described the circumstances in which he agreed to work with Osusa as follows: I told Osusa, “I want to be a musician, a great musician and to get a sponsor is hard. So if you can sponsor me, I’m happy with that…” In the morning, I come to meet with Osusa again. Osusa gives me money and first he asks me, “Where do you stay?” I told him, “I am staying with Mighty King Kong.” He said, “No I don't want you to stay with somebody. From today I need you to buy your house. I need you to buy everything. I want to be working with you.” So I do like that. He gives me thirty thousand to go buy everything (Ratego 2011b, Interview). After Osusa decided to create an album with Ratego, he provided the financial support that Ratego needed in order to develop a distinct style of Afro-fusion. 7.4.5 The Persistent Presence of False Promises in Ratego’s Life The stories of false promises and financial struggle, however, continue to be relevant in Ratego’s life. At the time of this writing, Ratego continues to negotiate the treacherous terrain of the music industry and work towards an indeterminate future of economic security. Ratego has yet to achieve the same degree of success as Makadem in recent years and continues to experience circumstances in which opportunities present themselves but do not come to fruition. 204 One such example of this occurred during the time period of my fieldwork. Ratego and another Ketebul Music dodo artist, Ogoya Nengo, were scheduled to perform in the Ese Festival in New York City with the German contemporary composer, Sven Kacirek. Earlier that year the Goethe Institut Kenia had funded Kacirek to travel to Kenya to create an album based on Kenyan traditional music. The album, titled The Kenya Sessions (2010), featured Ogoya Nengo and Olith Ratego on two separate tracks prompting Kacirek to invite the two performers to perform with him at the Ese Festival in New York City. Figure 7.13: The flier listing Olith Ratego and Ogoya Nengo as featured performers to appear with Sven Kacirek at the 2010 Ese Festival in New York City. A short time before their departure, the U.S. Embassy denied Nengo and Ratego visas to travel to the United States to perform. Ratego’s cancelled performance contributed to yet another example of many accumulated experiences of false economic promises and serves as a reminder of the continual struggle of Kenyan performers to negotiate the global industry channels and capital. 7.5 Conclusion Through the genre concept of Afro-fusion, Osusa recruited musicians who had previously attempted to make a career in Kenya’s mainstream music industry, such as Makadem and Olith 205 Ratego, to participate in the mission of Ketebul Music. The strategy was to produce “locallyrooted” music that could access Kenyan, global European and North American World Music markets. The World Music industry, in this case, acted as an economic wedge to compete with the Western popular music-dominated mainstream media in Kenya. In addition to building a fan base in Kenya, the artists hoped to generate revenue from performances in Europe and the United States as well as in Kenya. Despite the strategic aims of the genre to reach diverse global markets, the narrative themes and musical styles of Makadem and Ratego’s songs grow from personal experiences. These musical manifestations of personal pasts are filtered through memory, not shaped by the discourses of the global economy or NGO philanthropic culture. Such expressions of NGO culture demonstrate that the musical content of globally-funded civil society organizations does not necessarily trickle down from the revenue supply chains from where they derive sustenance. This portrayal builds on Chapter 6’s deconstruction of Part 1 by demonstrating the plurality of cultural production brought about by personal experience and social encounter. 206 CHAPTER 8 SOCIAL POLITICS OF INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERING: THE SPOTLIGHT ON KENYAN MUSIC INITIATIVE 8.0 Conceptual Signpost The chapters of Part 2 have thus far attempted to demonstrate agency and circumstantial positioning of individuals as formidable contingent factors shaping NGO music culture and global cultural production on a broad scale. This chapter will demonstrate how individual social action shapes the movement of organizations. I show localized social dynamics forming organizational partnerships which, in turn, harness the resources and social capital to amplify the shared sentiments of individuals and produce ideological movements. These in turn enter into national and international discourses and connect notions of local to global from the bottom-up as opposed to top-down. Unlike the North American and Western European historical roots of global civil society, the contingent circumstances of interpersonal encounter featured here will involve agents of change in the Global South strategically creating globally impactful movements of cultural change. 8.1 Introduction This chapter’s contingent lens pans outward from the previous chapter’s focus on social contact between individuals to an examination of partnerships between organizations. Through organizational and institutional partnerships, stakeholders in NGO music production (musicians, administrators, donors and recipients, etc.) negotiate respective positions of power and mutual interests to achieve greater program capacity. The branding and promotion of Afro-fusion as a distinct “Kenyan” genre resulted from such socio-political dynamics, which inevitably comprise most strategic NGO initiatives. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, the campaign most responsible for popularizing Afro-fusion in Kenya, consisted of a partnership between Ketebul Music, Alliance Française, the Kenyan Department of Culture, and several international funding organizations, including Total Oil, the French Embassy, the Ford Foundation, and the European Union. This collaborative NGO music initiative is aimed at creating a broad social, political, and economic impact to urge the historical and institutional construction of a music cultural symbol to which Ketebul Music and its affiliated performers would associate themselves. 207 Despite institutional hierarchies implied by the flow of capital from donors to recipient organizations, social dynamics involved in the Spotlight on Kenyan Music complicate a simplistic top-down reading of institutional power and influence. Program administrators, consultants, and individuals that worked most closely with the musicians featured in the initiative often influenced the direction of the project more than donors and executive directors. In this respect the director of Alliance Française’s Art and Cultural Cooperation Department, Harsita Waters, and Ketebul Music’s Executive Director, Tabu Osusa, were especially significant. Their perspectives on the development of the initiative will be featured prominently in the following depiction. Top-down dynamics also undeniably played a role, however, as program directors modified programming to meet grant requirements and producers influenced musicians to adapt to the philosophical tenets of Afro-fusion. As political circumstances and global philanthropy agendas shifted from year to year, the directors of Spotlight on Kenyan Music responded by incorporating new themes into the initiative. In response to the 2007 post-election violence, for example, program themes emphasized “reconciliation” and “unity in diversity.” Ultimately, a variety of partners and sponsors with contrasting agendas constructed Spotlight on Kenyan Music and illustrated the contingent nature of globally networked cultural production in Kenya’s NGO sector. Before further exploring the particular role of each of these organizations, the following section provides a brief overview of the initiative’s development that began with its initiation in 2005. 8.2 The Development of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music Initiative Alliance Française, a French cultural organization with offices in several cities throughout Kenya, has historically maintained a close organizational relationship with Ketebul Music. Alliance Française frequently utilizes Ketebul Music’s film and sound studio resources by commissioning Ketebul Music’s videographer, Patrick Ondiek, to record concerts held at the Alliance Française Garden concert stage in Nairobi and recording music projects at Ketebul Music’s studios. The locally based international NGO also hires Osusa as a consultant on projects. The relationship between Alliance Française and Ketebul Music is most prominently showcased through the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative. The Spotlight on Kenyan Music program began in 2005 with the intent of promoting Afro-fusion music in Kenya through a tiered strategic plan. This includes the production and promotion of CDs featuring Kenyan artists, career training for artists featured on the CDs, and 208 paid live performances. The musicians commissioned for the project represent a diverse crosssection of Kenya's ethnic groups. The explicit mission of the program is “to create country-wide local audiences for Kenyan Afro-fusion music, therefore contributing to building a sound domestic market for a sustainable music industry that will generate revenue for the artists, and ensure sustained promotion of Kenyan music through local and international media and all other possible avenues.”106 In recent years, especially since the 2007 post-election violence, Spotlight on Kenyan Music has focused increasingly on themes of reconciliation and cultural diversity. The project has, since 2005, consisted of a steering committee of leading Kenyan musicians and producers involved in the Afro-fusion movement. Harsita Waters and Tabu Osusa have jointly overseen the committee since its inception. In addition to Osusa and Waters, the steering committee has consisted of some of Kenya’s most established artists, including Achien’g Abura, Suzzanna Owiyo, Suzanne Gachukia, Iddi Achien’g, John Katana, and Abbi. Mapping the early roots of the Afro-fusion genre in Kenya, the members of the steering committee included two members of Osusa's Nairobi City Ensemble (Suzanne Owiyo and Iddi Achieng), the first music group to promote the aesthetic philosophy that would later be termed Afro-fusion. Osusa, Waters and the Spotlight on Kenyan Music steering committee utilized the initiative to forward a large scale multi-organizational campaign to institute Afro-fusion as a formidable market category in the Kenyan and international music industry. 8.3 Socio-Institutional Convergences of Genre Construction The following email correspondence with Osusa indicated that the Spotlight on Kenyan Music steering committee was the driving force behind the development of Afro-fusion as a genre label: The genre title “Afro-fusion” was indeed first used and popularized by the Steering Committee of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music in 2005. The program, which was an initiative of Alliance Française of Nairobi, Kenya in collaboration with various stakeholders in the music industry, was started with the aim of searching for talent in the various regions within Kenya and giving these artistes the opportunity to record and showcase their music both locally and internationally. Afro-fusion in short, is music which has “traditional” African roots blended with various elements from other parts of the world. However, of late there are many artistes who have decided to use the term Afro-fusion loosely with no regard to what the genre is! (Osusa 2011, Email correspondence). 106 Alliance Française: Spotlight on Kenyan Music Background. Unpublished document provided to the author by Harsita Waters of Alliance Française. 209 Drawing from Osusa’s email correspondence, the steering committee for Spotlight on Kenyan Music created the genre title Afro-fusion to provide a music industry signifier for music that blended “traditionally African roots” with “various rhythms from other parts of the world.” At the same time as Osusa’s participation in the first years of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative, he was also producing and releasing Olith Ratego’s and Makadem’s first albums as exclusive Ketebul Music projects. These albums also utilized the Afro-fusion genre title as a marketing tool. Given that the initiative was a Kenyan cultural initiative, the genre has come to be largely associated with Kenyan artists.107 Although the term Afro-fusion loosely signified various fusions of African and Afrodiasporic musics, the institutional agenda of Spotlight on Kenyan Music aimed at developing Afro-fusion into a discrete marketable genre. Similar to the function of Afrobeat and Highlife genres for South and West Africa, respectively, the steering committee’s intention with Afrofusion was to fashion the style into a World Music brand. European and American music industry agents had utilized a similar strategy of institutional partnering in their approach to creating the genre moniker, World Music, which coalesced during a series of meetings in London’s Empress of Russia pub in 1987.108 World Music, like the term Afro-fusion, had prior to 1987 occupied no official genre category in the music marketplace. It did not crystallize as a formal music industry genre until the employment of a significant institutional campaign. Illuminating genealogies of genre production and music market strategy, contingent intersections link the development of Afro-fusion, Spotlight on Kenyan Music, and the World Music industry’s historical emergence on the global stage. After a Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert at Alliance Française, Nairobi in 2010, Osusa introduced me to the World Music industry mogul Ben Mandelson who had arrived in Kenya that week from the United Kingdom. Kenya Music Week had hired Mandelson as the 107 At the end of the email correspondence above, Osusa regrets that some artists loosely apply the term, Afrofusion. Here, he was likely concerned with recent attempts by some artists to appropriate the Afro-fusion brand, due to its emerging popularity. My assumption here is based on conversations with Osusa about the strategic ways in which Kenyan artists have also, in Osusa’s opinion, misappropriated the genre title, benga, in order to market their music more effectively. 108 After the successful release of albums featuring collaborations between African musicians such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and European and American popular musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, and Johnny Clegg, industry executives met at a London pub in 1987 and determined the title World Music to market such international music fusions. See Folk Roots, online magazine, “Minutes of Meeting Between the Various ‘World 210 “international speaker” for the festival.109 In addition to speaking at Kenya Music Week Mandelson attended the Spotlight on Kenyan Music concerts and purchased several Kenyan instruments to bring back to his home in the United Kingdom. In a casual encounter, in which Waters was also present, Osusa introduced me to Mandelson as “one of the guys who came up with the term World Music.” Indeed, Ben Mandelson was one of the original members of the 1987 World Music industry meetings in London. He has produced dozens of World Music albums under various labels, including Globestyle, a label which he co-founded, and is also one of the original founders of WOMEX, the online World Music “trade fair” organization to which staff and musicians of Ketebul Music maintain close ties. Mandelson’s presence at this 2010 Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert, his relationship with Osusa, and Ketebul Music’s participation in WOMEX, suggests that Afro-fusion’s development as a genre is part of a larger socio-historical continuum that included the emergence of the World Music industry. Unlike the European and American demographic of the Empress of Russia meetings, however, the genre production and promotion of Afro-fusion involved Kenyans from diverse backgrounds utilizing the power of global institutions to create what they viewed as a locally rooted music culture.110 The steering committee for Spotlight on Kenyan Music responded to the global condition of an internationally linked music economy by staking a claim to genre and utilizing NGO institutional partnering as a vehicle for promotion. 8.4 Marketing Cross-Cultural: Volumes One and Two Utilizing the Kenyan Department of Culture’s provincial offices throughout Kenya, the steering committee determined which Kenyan artists would represent the then newly branded Afro-fusion genre. Each year they judged music auditions in the eight Kenyan provinces, which spanned the Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern reaches of Kenya. From 2004 until 2010, auditions were held in Kakamega, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Embu, Machakos, Nyeri, Mombasa, Garissa and Nairobi. Each year, eleven artists or groups were chosen from the auditions to be showcased on a CD produced by Ketebul Music. The steering committee also chose many of these artists to perform at the yearly Spotlight on Kenyan Music Concert Series at Alliance Music’ Record Companies and Interested Parties: Monday 29th June 1987” online magazine (www.frootsmag.com, accessed 07.10.12) 109 For information regarding Kenya Music Week, refer to Chapter 4. 110 Indeed, this was a cultural need that came about, largely through Osusa’s vision, which resulted from a chain of circumstances stretching far back before the creation of Nairobi City Ensemble. 211 Française’s Garden Stage in Nairobi. Several of the artists featured on Volume One (2005) such as Makadem, Michel Ongaro, Juma Tutu, and Hannah Wakesho were able to use the promotional boost created by the project to launch their music careers to a nationally and, in some cases, internationally recognized level. Volume Two (2006) enhanced the exposure of musicians Zippy Okoth, Bosco Mulwa, and Teto Tutuma. The promotion of these artists occurred largely through news stories about the series on radio and television stations such as NTV, KTN, KBC, Citizen, MTV, National Geographic, MNET Channel O, STV, and EATV. On the 20th of July, 2007 Alliance Française presented a Best of the Spotlight 2005/2006 concert in its Gardens, which was filmed by KBC and broadcasted nationwide in December 2007. Figure 8.1: Album cover to Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Two (2006). Despite the successful results of promoting several artists through the project, the Spotlight on Kenyan Music coordinators found difficulty infiltrating the Western popular music saturated Kenyan music industry. About the difficulty reaching a wider Kenyan audience with the Spotlight on Kenyan Music CDs, Waters stated that broadcasting companies and radio stations had not actively promoted the project. She intimated, however, that the lack of commercial support for music projects that cut across ethnic and cultural divides in Kenya identified the need for Alliance Française to create Spotlight on Kenyan Music: We don’t infiltrate the mainstream market. What we do is we give musicians a space where they can have live concerts, live performances that expose their art… Even the Spotlight albums we tried to find distributers for the first three albums 212 and we had an agreement with A.I. records… but they didn’t do a brilliant job I don’t think. So at the end of the day it doesn't sell, it hasn't sold… You know, the mainstream broadcasting corporations have been very reluctant to play this sort of music. I mean you send them that and then you hardly hear the Spotlight music being played on the local radio stations… Then there’s the “vernacular” stations, which are very popular. So if you are addressing one community that is very popular. But something that cuts across the communities as it were does not seem to find a mainstream audience and that’s very peculiar but then that just shows the divisions or the lack of understanding of other local traditions from other communities (Waters 2011, Interview). Waters’ statements suggest the ethnically targeted and linguistically exclusive “vernacular” stations cater to only the ethnic identity of regional broadcasting bases and therefore do not embrace a cross-cultural endeavor, such as Spotlight on Kenyan Music, which features music by artists from various ethnic groups. Additionally, the mainstream broadcasting corporations do not play music rooted in Kenya’s cultural traditions because they believe that a broadly diverse Kenyan national audience will be more likely to listen to music demonstrating imported influences such as Western popular music, Tanzanian bongo flava, or Congolese rumba. As a result of low sales figures, Alliance Française downsized the production of CDs from 1,000 in Volume One to 500 in the following volumes. Volume Five (2011) was released during the time of writing this document. During the period of my research the organization expected an increase in sales. Lack of profit has also caused yearly stipends paid to artists based on royalties to remain low. 8.5 Bridging Divides and Reconciliation: Volumes Three, Four, and Five Volumes Three (2007), Volume Four (2008), and Volume Five (2010) of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music project embraced new themes in addition to the initial mission of supporting Kenyan artists and promoting the Afro-fusion genre. Volume Three (2007) brought elder and younger artists together to emphasize a theme of inter-generational communication. This also further emphasized musical heritage and featured larger numbers of “traditional” music specialists than previously incorporated. 213 Figure 8.2: Album cover of Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Three (2007). Volume Four, released in 2008, responded to the post-election violence that occurred in 2007 by subtitling the volume Unity in Diversity and involving artists from highly marginalized ethnic groups, such as the Somali group Gargar and the Sabaot group Ben Kisinja and Chebin Band. The talent search for Volume Four focused increasingly on locating musicians whose primary experience was performing “traditionally-rooted” music and auditioned 231 musicians, the largest number of auditions to date. Figure 8.3: Album cover of Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Four: Unity in Diversity (2008). 214 Confronting the ethnic and regional tensions that arose from the post-election violence, the Ford Foundation funded a 2008 Spotlight on Kenyan Music national tour, which brought artists of diverse cultural backgrounds to perform in Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu, Kakamega, Nyeri, Meru, Machakos, and Mombasa. Characterized by a peace and reconciliation mission, artists from diverse cultural backgrounds performed music in front of audiences that did not necessarily share their ethnic heritage. During the time of my fieldwork, Patrick Ondiek and John SibiOkumu, who have played a significant role in the Ketebul Music documentary projects featured in Chapter 10, were finishing the production of a documentary film about the tour. The documentary follows the artists on the tour and features a segment on each concert. The footage was shot entirely by Ondiek, who Alliance Française had hired to film the concerts. Sibi-Okumu, a well-known Kenyan actor, journalist, producer, and public personality, assisted in the editing process and provided voice over narration to the documentary.111 Now completed, the documentary supplements the Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Five: Weapons of Mass Reconciliation CD and informational booklet. The reconciliation theme that connects Volume Four (2008) and Volume Five (2011) is stated in the liner notes to Volume Five: In the wake of the Kenya’s post-election crisis of early 2008 when the country was divided along ethnic lines and rivalries, the Spotlight national tour came at an opportune time contributing to the various reconciliation building efforts in the country. This weapon of mass reconciliation was used to promote “unity in diversity” by taking musicians and music from different regions to introduce them on new turf in an effort to create a better understanding and tolerance of “similarities in differences” (Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Five: Weapons of Mass Reconciliation 2011). The Volume Five (2011) CD/DVD set addresses the theme of reconciliation by focusing on the particularly destabilized and marginalized region of Northern Kenya. Pastoral communities, which inhabit the Lake Turkana region of Kenya, have experienced a long history of civil, economic, and political unrest as well as substantial inter-ethnic violence. For the 2011 initiative, the European Development Fund (EDF) awarded Alliance Française an arts and culture grant for non-state actors, the goals of which closely aligned with their Weapons of Mass Reconciliation theme. Further detailing of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music will follow throughout the chapter as I 111 The production of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music documentary followed a similar process to the production of Ketebul Music’s Ford Foundation funded Retracing series which is the focus of Chapter 10. 215 discuss the role of institutional partnering in the initiative. Below, I will profile the institutional identity and activities of each organization affiliated with Spotlight on Kenyan Music. 8.6 Social Politics and Institutional Partnerships 8.6.1 Alliance Française The following discussion of the organizational cultures involved in the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series begins with an overview of Alliance Française, the initiative’s executive organization. Alliance Française is a multi-national NGO, maintaining over 1,040 offices in over 136 countries throughout the world. Its institutional history is tied to France’s expansionist, nationalist agenda and some of the country’s most significant cultural paradigm shifters. In 1883, political figures Paul Cambon and Pierre Fortin headed the formation of Alliance Française to promote the French language on a global scale. Several of France’s most prominent cultural icons assisted the institution’s initial development, including Louis Pasteur, a founder of microbiology and Jules Verne, a grandfather of the science fiction literary genre. The forming of the organization coincided with a flurry of emerging cultural institutes formed by European colonial powers to promote nationalist agendas, particularly through language education (Paschalidis 2009; Bruézière 1983). Alliance Française has since expanded its scope to include the following three-part mission, applied to all Alliance Française offices worldwide: (1) “offer French classes for all, both in France and abroad” (2) “spreading awareness of French and Francophone culture” and (3) “promoting cultural diversity.”112 Alliance Française’s international network is extensive. The size and resources of each individual office, however, vary from region to region and each office is independently responsible for program oversight, initiative development, funding and programming. The decentralized character of the Alliance Française offices lends to a characterization of each office as an independent NGO entity as much as a composite of the broader international NGO network. For this reason, an examination of Spotlight on Kenyan Music as a product of Alliance Française’s development in France and the current state of its global network, would overly generalize in scope. We turn now to the organization module most directly involved with the project, Alliance Française, Kenya. 216 8.6.2 Alliance Française, Kenya Alliance Française, Kenya consists of four offices, dispersed throughout Kenya. These centers are located in Mombasa, El Doret, Kisumu, and Nairobi. Although all of the Kenyan offices offer language and culture programs, Alliance Française, Nairobi, the largest Kenyan office, organizes and administrates most Alliance Française initiatives. Alliance Française, Nairobi was the first Alliance Française office in Kenya, beginning in 1949, and is currently the largest Alliance Française center on the African continent. The center admits over 4,000 French language students and produces many exhibitions, including concerts, festivals, films, and theater productions. Although Alliance Française, Nairobi is part of the Alliance Française global consortium, it dictates many of its activities independently through a “Kenyan-based” Board of Trustees made up of local “Francophone and Francophile personalities.”113 Given the jurisdiction of Alliance Française, Nairobi over most Alliance Française, Kenya programs, including Spotlight on Kenyan Music, this section will focus only on the Nairobi office. Before 2005, Alliance Française, Nairobi primarily functioned as a language center. During this time, arts and culture programs played a significantly smaller role in the organization than they do at present. The large role of arts and culture programs that developed after 2005 resulted from a French Embassy mandate that French Cultural Cooperation initiatives and activities previously managed by the French Embassy to encourage cultural cooperation between France and Kenya transitioned to Alliance Française’s domain. That is, the French Embassy in Kenya would continue to fund cultural programs as it had before 2005, but after 2005, the Embassy outsourced management of the initiatives to Alliance Française as opposed to using its internal French Cultural Cooperation office. With this merger, the French Embassy became a significant sponsor of Alliance Française. Waters, a previous Program Coordinator for French Cultural Cooperation initiatives under the French Embassy since the 1980s, became the Director of the Artistic and Cultural Cooperation at Alliance Française, Nairobi. I interviewed Waters about her role at the organization: I am in charge of the coordination of arts and cultural activities within Alliance Française but I’ve been with the French Cultural Cooperation since the late 1980s. 112 Alliance Francaise, France, “Who are We” Webpage, http://www.alliancefr.org/en/who-are-we, accessed 11.11.11. 113 Alliance Francaise, Kenya, “Who are We” Webpage, http://www.afkenya.or.ke/spip.php?rubrique42, accessed 11.11.11. 217 I worked with the French Center in the same role or rather as a program coordinator because as a cultural cooporation that was our main role but with Alliance we have the language side and now of course they have the culture side and I’m in charge of the culture side (Waters 2011, Interview). The “French Center” that Waters refers to, also known as the “French Cultural Center” is the previous name for the facility where Alliance Française now resides. The French Cultural Center was, before 2005, the main operating base for the French Embassy’s French Cultural Cooperation programs. When the French Cultural Cooporation initiatives became the domain of Alliance Française, Alliance Française moved its language programs into the French Cultural Center and added Arts and Cultural Cooperation to its organizational programming. 8.6.2.1 Why Kenyan Culture? Why Afro-Fusion? Despite the French organizational identity of Alliance Française, Spotlight on Kenyan Music is a music cultural initiative that involves very few intersections with French culture. Additionally, the Afro-fusion music showcased in the initiative does not feature any fusions with French language or musical styling. The support of Kenyan culture by an organization rooted in a history of French colonial cultural imperialism through the spread of French language education may seem an ironic twist of organization behavior; yet, the promotion of Kenyan culture by Alliance Française reflects the expansion of the organization’s mission during the course of the twentieth century to include “promoting cultural diversity.” Gregory Paschalidis has argued with merit that institutions, such as Alliance Française, persist as “instruments of national agendas and political-economic interests, despite their internationalist rhetoric” (2009). Nonetheless, the shifts in global politics over the twentieth century that have resulted in an increase of democratic “internationalist” rhetoric have, for whatever their latent motivations, undeniably caused the cultural institutions of postcolonial superpowers to provide support for the cultures of their host countries. The Spotlight on Kenyan Music is an example of one such initiative and demonstrates that institutions with historically nationalist missions, such as Alliance Française, no longer focus exclusively on the promotion of French culture. Alliance Française’s dedication to the promotion of diverse cultures made the Spotlight on Kenyan Music an appropriate project to pursue for the organization. The organization’s focus on “all cultures,” however, does not explain what motivated the Frenchbased NGO to embark on a campaign to specifically promote Afro-fusion as a genre. Circumstances more specifically related to the administrative history of Alliance 218 Française, Kenya contextualize the NGO’s support for Afro-fusion as a World Music genre rooted in local cultural expression to empower Kenyan music cultural identity. The merger between Alliance Française and the French Embassy’s French Cultural Cooperation initiative was an important factor here. Waters described how, long before the partnership with Alliance Française, the French Cultural Cooperation had actively supported Kenyan music and culture. In particular, this department of the French Embassy funded concerts in Kenya by popular West African World Music artists, whose locally rooted music hybrids would later provide the blueprint for the Afro-fusion genre associated with Ketebul Music. Waters’ interview excerpt below illustrates a historical thread connecting the French Cultural Cooperation’s funding of World Music concerts by West African musicians in the 1980s and 1990s to the subsequent emergence of Afro-fusion artists in the early 2000s: As far as music is concerned, from the late 80s and early 90s, through the support from the French Ministry, the French Cultural Cooperation organized regional music tours, especially for West African musicians. Lots of the big names such as Salif Keita, Manu Dibango, all of those big guys, were first brought to East Africa to perform live through this French Cultural Cooperation. And that is how many artists now here in Kenya, artists in the Afro-fusion genre, got exposed to music rooted in local African traditions as opposed to what we find now with the American-style hip-hop and popular music. So by having brought these leading figures in the West African music scene, as it were, to Kenya, local musicians were exposed to what they could do or what is possible and I think they were influenced by that style of music. So there is this first wave of musicians, Suzanna Owiyo, Iddi Achieng, etc., the big Afro-fusion stars. And there are the Winyos now, who have learned from what this first wave of musicians has done. So the French Cultural Cooperation, I must say, has been very instrumental in supporting this (Waters 2011, Interview). By funding concerts featuring West African musicians performing contemporary fusions of their “traditional music,” Waters suggests many Kenyan musicians became inspired to incorporate their own traditions in popular music as opposed to merely copying the Western popular music industry. From this perspective, the French Cultural Cooperation then contributed at least in part to the historical emergence of Afro-fusion, the genre that the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series showcases and aims to promote as emblematic of Kenya’s diverse music culture. A final significant factor contributing to the context surrounding Alliance Française’s promotion of Afro-fusion is neither Waters’ nationality nor ancestry is French despite her vocational position in a French organization. Waters expresses a passion for the promotion of a unified Kenyan culture based on her personal ties to the culture. The following interview 219 segment features Waters’ assertion that her Kenyan identity has played a role in the emphasis she places on promoting Kenyan culture and provides further context to the development of Spotlight on Kenyan Music: Yes well I’m Kenyan, you know I was brought up in Kenya, so music is part of the African culture. I’m not French or anything else. I'm an Asian Kenyan brought up in Kenya with my grandparents who immigrated from Gujarat, India in the 1920s. So I’m a second-generation Kenyan Asian. I’m not French so definitely everything about local arts and culture is very much a part of me so therefore I'm very passionate about promoting it. And as for my role here, there is more interest because I'm coming from a Kenyan background myself. If you're French, for example, you may not have the same drive for what we're doing here (Waters 2011, Interview). Waters’ Kenyan identity deconstructs the possibilities for monochromic views that foreign-based international NGOs, such as Alliance Française, merely represent the culture of their institutional origins. The value that Waters places on her identity as a Kenyan versus a French foreign national manifests in her passion for promoting Kenyan culture as well as her intrinsic sociocultural ties to the place. On the relevance of Spotlight on Kenyan Music series to the contemporary Kenyan political and social landscape she stated, I think there’s a growing sense that arts and culture can play a major role in creating a sense of national identity and also positive ethnic identity as well. And that is something that, well, as you know where we’ve come from in 2007 and the Ocampo Six and all that, so you know the role of arts and culture is ever more useful. Because every community has its identity and they should not shy away from their identity. It should be reinforced but in positive tones as opposed to the way it’s been politicized at the moment to create division (Waters 2011, Interview). 8.6.2.2 “The Institution and Not the Individual” The previous examination of the relationship between Alliance Française and Spotlight on Kenyan Music suggested Waters was a significant driving force behind the creation and development of the initiative. Exemplifying a common ethical dilemma in ethnographic representation, Waters’ characterization of Spotlight on Kenyan Music contradicts several dimensions of the one I have presented. Whereas I have tended to emphasize the role of the individual (Waters) over the institution, Waters favored a description of the initiative as the product of the institution, Alliance Française. In an email exchange between myself and Waters on July 29th, 2011, I updated her on the progress of the dissertation and notified her I was planning to feature her as one of the central figures responsible for the development of Spotlight 220 on Kenyan Music. Her response humbly suggested that because the project is an Alliance Française initiative, “it is the institution and not the individual that matters,” a characterization that admittedly contrasts with the personal and socio-historical depiction presented above. What follows is the related material from our correspondence: Thank you for the email and the kind words therein as well as a copy of the transcript… The Spotlight project is an Alliance Française initiative, so it is the institution and not the individual that matters. I accept that my involvement in the Arts and Culture in Kenya through my long standing service on behalf of French cultural cooperation in Kenya make a significant contribution to the sustainability of such cultural development programmes (Waters 2011, Email correspondence).114 Waters’ response highlights the iconic capacity of “institution(s)” to represent cultural change despite the reality that such artifices are comprised of acting individuals. In this way, institutions can be viewed as cultural agents irrespective of the interpersonal dynamics within them. Examining the cultural repercussions of organizational partnerships can be viewed from numerous vantage points through an investigation of organizations as entities in and of themselves or through ethnographic portrayals of the individuals that work within them. My foregoing depiction of Waters’ central role in the Spotlight on Kenyan Music attempted to represent both dimensions. The behavior of organizations (Alliance Française and the French Embassy) can be traced to an individual (Waters) as the connective thread advocating on behalf of a specific brand of cultural production. As a programming director at Alliance Française, Waters’ continued the French Embassy’s French Cultural Cooperation sponsorship of African World Music performances that began in the 1970s and 1980s. Spotlight on Kenyan Music exists, in large part due to Harsita Waters. As an attendee at Alliance Française concerts I observed Waters’ intensive involvement to every detail of events and concerts. 8.6.3 Ketebul Music Even before the inception of Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Waters’ self-proclaimed 114 Waters’ email prompted me to consider my ethical obligation to represent the perspective of the culture bearer. In presenting this email correspondence, I have attempted to do this but I maintain, however, that an institution is nothing without the people working within it, and it is often individuals, like Waters, who work on its behalf, that are most instrumental in creating institutional action. I also believe there is a risk that, if ethnographic documents such as this do not present the activities of individuals in organizational behavior, historical record will attribute institutional action to the exclusive efforts of their executive directors alone and overlook lower level administrative directors, such as Waters, who also play a substantial part in transforming the institution into an agent of cultural change. 221 devotion to promoting an empowered Kenyan music culture, specifically Afro-fusion music, and her long term participation in Kenyan culture and music through the French Cultural Center facilitated a strong relationship with the music producer Tabu Osusa. She discussed working on projects with Osusa several years before the French Cultural Cooperation programs infused into Alliance Française. When I asked Waters why it was that Alliance Française chose to work with Ketebul Music over so many other organizational partners, Waters stated, Tabu is a very recognized individual in Kenyan music. The French Cultural Cooporation has been working with Tabu since 2000. We first did Made in Kenya at the dawn of the new millennium and that's when we started work with him. You know, he is a committed professional and he is there to develop. He wants to do the right type of music as well so certainly we have a fantastic relationship with him and all the respect for him and what he has been trying to do for the local music scene (Waters 2011, Interview). Below, I will illustrate how social dynamics defy implied institutional hierarchies by documenting the substantial influence of Tabu Osusa and Ketebul Music’s role in Spotlight on Kenyan Music despite comparatively minor administrative jurisdiction or economic contribution in the initiative. In any multi-partner NGO music initiative, organizations that provide economic support and hold administrative jurisdiction stand to influence a project’s outcome. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, however, defies unidirectional scenarios of political economy in which benefactors possess more influence than the recipients. In Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Osusa and Ketebul Music steer the concept and music production of the initiative as much, if not more, than the project’s administrating organization, Alliance Française, or its donors Total Oil, French Embassy, Ford Foundation and European Development Fund. The bottom-up influence in this case occurs through the embedded social relationships and circumstances of music production that emphasizes the role of the studio in contemporary music production. This perspective provides a socially-based alternative to an economic interpretation of organizational culture that suggests capital holds absolute control in global environment of NGO initiatives. The following analysis illustrates that internal social dynamics produce organizational action as much as administrative and economic factors. I asked Patrick Ondiek, Ketebul Music’s videographer, how much input, power, or influence Ketebul Music maintained in their relationship with Alliance Française on the Spotlight on Kenyan Music to which he answered: “Spotlight is Tabu. That project is about his concept… 222 but it’s not really Ketebul’s. It is still an Alliance Française thing” (Ondiek, Personal communication 2011). Ondiek’s statement suggested that although Alliance Française is the primary administrating organization for the initiative, Osusa’s vision significantly contributes to the direction of the project. Additional factors suggest Osusa’s influence in the project. Traces of Osusa’s past music projects manifest in the initiative’s connection to the Nairobi City Ensemble through the involvement of Iddi Achieng and Suzzanna Owiyo (former members of the music group) who have sat on the Spotlight on Kenyan Music steering committee since its inception. Additionally Ketebul Music’s staff of studio engineers, musicians, and graphic designers produced the CDs. The social position of Osusa as a central figure in Kenyan music culture inverts the economic power dynamics of Spotlight on Kenyan Music. Although he and his organization, Ketebul Music, are positioned at the bottom of the revenue stream they exert the most influence over the initiative. At the time of my research Alliance Française had most recently completed Volume Four (2008) of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series, which featured a greater number of rural musicians with limited urban performing experience than previous volumes. The presence of performers of acoustic “traditional” instruments who previously performed mostly in rural village settings is another trademark of Osusa’s and Ketebul Music’s approach to Afro-fusion production. After the production of Makadem’s and Ratego’s Ketebul Music albums, the producer became increasingly involved in promoting musicians living in rural areas who, as he saw it, were less influenced by global media and popular music and therefore represented a more specifically Kenyan rooted cultural style. This method of Afro-fusion production contrasts with Osusa’s earlier projects, such as Makadem’s and Olith Ratego’s albums, in which artists performing mainstream foreign influenced popular genres infused local and “traditional” elements into their compositions. This new approach to Afro-fusion, prominently featured in Volume Four (2008) and Volume Five (2011), involved recruiting artists primarily accustomed to performing local acoustic music in a village setting and fusing their music in the studio with mainstream popular genres. During conversations with Osusa about his interest in performers whose primary experience was local rural village settings, he commented that their music was more firmly rooted in Kenya's ethnic traditions than their urban counterparts and therefore, were ideal ambassadors of Kenyan culture to future generations of Kenyans, as well as to the international 223 community. In the same vein, Afro-fusion producers merge popular, contemporary, and global genres to negotiate the politics of global media production that is controlled by economically empowered industries residing outside of Kenya. Before their involvement with Spotlight on Kenyan Music, many of the musicians featured on Volume Four (2008) had very little previous experience recording in studios, performing with electric instruments, or on stage venues such as the Garden Stage at Alliance Française, or large scale World Music festivals such as Sauti za Busara. Artists previously operating within the local “vernacular” market such as Ben Kisinja & Chebin Band, Gargar, Katana Bin Kalama, and Joshua and Joseph Kesses, transitioned to performing on such stages in front of a rather “upmarket” Nairobi crowd. The artists also engaged in a negotiation of musical style with urban studio musicians and studio producers with whom they performed and recorded for the Spotlight on Kenyan Music events and media productions. The process of studio production that characterized Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative realized the studio as a particular place of power and influence despite its relatively minor role in the generation of revenue. 8.6.3.1 The Politics of Studio Aesthetics The process of transforming the “traditionally”-based “vernacular” styles of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music artists demonstrates how numerous creative choices made in studio production influence the aesthetic end-products and reveal the immense contributions of Jesse Bukindu, the arranger, engineer, and producer for most of the recordings featured in the project. Jesse Bukindu, an accomplished Afro-fusion and popular music producer, plays the largest role in transforming the “traditional” musicians into Afro-fusion performers. The July 7, 2011 Standard newspaper article titled “The Faces Behind the Big Hits” featured Bukindu, stating the producer’s experience with multiple genres; “Jesse’s name is pinned on the beats of award-winning tracks such as “Si Lazima,” by P-Unit, all songs by Bobby Mapesa [both popular Kenyan R&B and hip-hop artists], as well as the latest Suzanna Owiyo’s album amongst others” (Odongo and Nzioki 2011). In Volume Three (2007) and Volume Four (2008) of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Bukindu produced, engineered, co-composed, and performed much of the instrumentation for the recordings with the rural musicians. He found himself in this multi-faceted role because many of the artists had never recorded in a studio before and had little experience adapting their music to such a setting. Bukindu believes, like 224 Osusa, that the “traditional” music of the “villages,” although possessing much needed cultural value, must merge with what he views as the “modern world” in order to achieve marketability. I asked Bukindu if a marketable CD could be produced if the musicians were recorded as they play in the village with no additional arranging or production to which he responded, “With ‘traditional’ music, I don’t think it will work. You have to make it blend with the modern world.” The final products of the studio engineered music of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music artists were as much Bukindu’s compositions as those of the artists featured. In addition to adapting their performances to an urban popular music style, Bukindu limited each song to three to six minute time constraints common to popular music radio singles. His creative duties as studio engineer/producer involved composing accompanying instrumental parts in identifiable Western chord structures as well as catering to common popular music song forms that included choruses, bridges, and verse segments. This merging of the distinct cultures of musical knowledge realized the fusion-based ontology of Afro-fusion yet top-down politics were unavoidably present here as well, given the power of the studio as the place of fusion. Even when organizational power dynamics are marked by bottom-up social action, such as Ketebul Music’s influence over funders of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative (given the organization’s role facilitating music production), dominant culture dynamics and economics persisted. Although Spotlight on Kenyan Music aimed at promoting the musical traditions of Kenya and honoring “traditional” music practitioners as carriers of important cultural heritage, the process of fusing “traditional” music to contemporary global popular and World Music styles necessarily involved the rural musicians relinquishing a certain degree of creative control during the production of their albums and future performances of the music featured on the albums. The economic and social status of organizations such as Alliance Française and Ketebul Music, when compared to the rural “traditional” musicians featured on the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series, unavoidably politicized the process of music production. Such disparities also manifested in the construction of terminology regarding music style. Bukindu made a distinction between “knowing about music” and “singing for the sake of singing” and suggested social divides existed between the urban studio musicians/producers and rural “traditional” musicians: I work with different people – different groups… guys who have never been to the studio. Guys that just sing for the sake of singing. They don’t know anything about music, but they can sing. We’ve had guys from Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Meru, 225 since we’ve been producing these Spotlight on Kenyan Music, and most of the guys who win and get to come are from the villages…. They have not been in the music industry. This is their first time, and you happen to be the guy to nurture them into the industry… We do many takes. We do the first take, and then we keep talking to them in a polite way so they won’t be nervous. You have to make sure they get used to the studio. The first take is always shaky-shaky because they are nervous, but after one, two, three takes, they catch up and they get used to it. Then, you crack some jokes, they smile, then you can tell them to do this and that… (Bukindu 2011b, Interview) Drawing from Bukindu’s perspective articulated above, knowing about music can otherwise be understood as understanding methods of production common to technologically sophisticated urban music studios. Highlighting the power relationships inherent in urban-rural partnerships, the knowledge required to produce the rural and acoustic performances, which Bukindu defined as “singing for the sake of singing,” submitted to the cultural realm of the studio and producer. The studio enveloped and negotiated multiple political positions. The aim of Spotlight on Kenyan Music was and continues to be about confronting the political dynamics of the global popular music industry. Nevertheless, the initiative has, perhaps unavoidably, utilized the digital recording studio to infuse global popular music elements in order to accomplish this goal. Helene Bekker, Executive Director of Alliance Française published the following statement on the liner notes to Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Four (2008): “Spotlight on Kenyan Music aims at popularizing Kenyan Afro-fusion music so as to ensure the legacy of Kenya's musical traditions in a world where intangible heritage is increasingly at risk of being eroded.” (2008). Bekker’s comment suggests Afro-fusion music is a viable vehicle to preserve “the legacy of Kenya's musical traditions.” Ironically the genre must also become popular in the music market to attain a wider cultural impact. Such politicization then is arguably a necessity given the politics and socio-economics that characterize a global music industry and global economy. The following overview of the involvement of the Kenyan Department of Culture in the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiatives further complicates these political dynamics of necessity by examining the involvement of a governmental organization in a categorically nongovernmental -given its NGO affiliation- endeavor. 8.6.4 Kenyan Department of Culture Adding a local governmental dimension to the international NGO endeavor, the Kenyan Department of Culture has been involved with the Spotlight on Kenyan Music project since its inception. Such partnerships between governmental and nongovernmental entities confirm NGO 226 culture is far from free of governmental influence or involvement. Demonstrating a common stated agenda, the mission of Spotlight on Kenyan Music has been consistent with the Department of Culture’s agenda to “promote, preserve, revitalize, and develop Kenya’s diverse cultural heritage.”115 The Spotlight on Kenyan Music committee required a government partner for the purposes of facilitating tryouts in various regions throughout the country. The Department of Culture helped Alliance Française locate rural musicians actively involved in the preservation of their ethnic groups’ musical traditions. The task of locating rural musicians skilled at performing “traditional” music was suitable for the Department of Culture given the involvement of the Permanent Presidential Music Commission (PPMC) with such musicians. The PPMC is a division of the Kenyan Department of Culture and overseas many projects related to Kenyan music culture, including the commissioning of artists to perform at state events as well as the Kenyan Music Festival, a multi-tiered music competition featuring student groups in the Kenyan public as well as private school systems. The PPMC has also produced a five-volume DVD set titled Ngoma za Kenya featuring the “traditional” music cultures of Kenya. Because of the PPMC’s experience locating “traditional” musicians, they played an important role in the fourth volume of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series by helping the Spotlight on Kenyan Music steering committee connect with musicians who may not have otherwise ventured to the tryouts. Peter Wanjohi, the Assistant Director of the PPMC, described why it is important for the Kenyan government to be supporting the diverse music cultures of the country stating, “The solution to Kenya’s struggle for a unified identity is to find strength in diversity… Without identity, we are lost, and if we are lost, we will not know who we are” (Wanjohi, Interview 2011). The PPMC’s mission to use music to stimulate social unity while maintaining cultural diversity was consistent with the goals of the 2008 Spotlight on Kenyan Music series, as indicated by the subtitle of Volume Four, Unity in Diversity (2008). Peter Wanjohi’s vision of the role of the Kenyan government in supporting Kenya’s musical traditions aligned well with the goals of the initiative. Osusa commented on the usefulness of working together with the PPMC for the Spotlight on Kenyan Music project stating, PPMC, actually I started working with them because I started working with 115 “Department of Culture,” Ministry of State for National Heritage Website (http://www.nationalheritage.go.ke, accessed 11.13.11). 227 Alliance Française… With Alliance Française we were going out to the rural areas and identifying marginalized communities. And PPMC had vans, trucks, and even some recording equipment. I work with them as far as using their knowledge in identifying talent because they always had people out in the communities (Osusa 2011b, Interview). Illustrating additional overlapping agendas between governmental and nongovernmental actors and their respective positions of influence, we turn now to the various funding sources of Spotlight on Kenyan Music. 8.6.5 Sponsors and Marketing: The French Embassy and Total Oil The most consistent funders throughout the duration of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music project have been the French Embassy and Total Oil, a multi-national energy corporation. These two sponsoring organizations occupy categorically separate private and public sectors but share overlapping histories and agendas that may point to their mutual collaboration in funding Spotlight on Kenyan Music. The converging cultures in a multi-partner NGO initiative, especially agendas that entice donors to support recipients, are rarely overtly stated on program literature or NGO websites. This section will suggest some possible motives for such funding and demonstrate how funding NGO music initiatives functions as a marketing opportunity for sponsors. However, the influence of Total Oil and the French Embassy is relatively minimal in comparison to the core administrators of the project, namely Waters and Osusa. The peripheral role of funders here further defies a top-down economic reading of the initiative. 8.6.5.1 French Embassy As stated above in the previous historical review of Alliance Française, the French Embassy mandated that their French Cultural Cooperation initiatives (activities to encourage cultural cooperation between France and Kenya) fall under the guise of Alliance Française’s programming in 2005. After this transition, the French Embassy in Kenya continued to fund cultural programs as it had before 2005, but outsourced the responsibilities of oversight to Alliance Française as opposed to using the internal French Cultural Cooperation office. With this merger, the French Embassy became a significant permanent sponsor of Alliance Française. 8.6.5.2 Total Oil The French government and Total Oil have also had an especially close historical relationship. The founding of Total Oil, initially titled the Compagnie Française des Petroles, was a French governmental initiative in which, in 1924 French Prime Minister Raymond Poincare encouraged its formation in order to avoid creating a partnership with the Royale Dutch 228 Shell Company.116 Although French Embassies support most Alliance Française offices throughout the world, Total Oil is selective in its sponsorship of Alliance Française offices. Alliance Française, Ghana and South Africa do not list Total Oil as a sponsor of their organization while Alliance Française, Nigeria and the Fondation Alliance Française located in Paris, report receiving support from the corporation.117 Total Oil’s support of select Alliance Française offices may be due to its economic interest in the region. Kenya is an important business partner in the East African region given its internal market of energy consumption as well as access to the Indian Ocean for exports. Additionally, in March 2011, Total Oil acquired significant land holdings in Uganda that the company intends to resource for oil. Kenya will be an essential partner in the export and containment of these resources. About the recent acquisition, Yves-Louis Darricarrère, President, Total Exploration & Production issued the following statement, It is a strategic move in line with our aim to be bolder in Exploration and Production. With this acquisition, we have entered a new oil province, giving us access to substantial proven resources and high-potential acreage. The size of the discoveries indicates that large-scale development may be possible. Plateau production could exceed 300,000 barrels per day, depending on the results of the future drilling program.118 By investing in culture, Total Oil may increase public approval and opportunities for business engagement, matters of particular interest for the company given its activity in the East African region. Reflecting the aims of Spotlight on Kenyan Music to verify Afro-fusion as a brand in the music market, marketing is also an important incentive for funders. 8.6.5.3 Sponsorship as Marketing The French government and Total Oil partially rely on positive public perception and reception of their activities in order to sustain successful global engagement. They are multinational organizational entities and their public promotion of Kenyan music helps enhance the perceived evaluation of their actions amongst the populations with whom they engage. For Total Oil, the need for such public image marketing strategies appears all the more relevant as the 116 “Group History” page on the Total Oil Website (http://www.total.com/en/about-total/group-presentation/grouphistory-940553.html, accessed 04.10.12). 117 Alliance Française offices list their funders’ logos on their respective websites at the following web addresses, accessed 11.13.11: Ghana (http://www.alliancefrancaiseghana.com/), South Africa (http://www.alliance.org.za/), Nigeria (http://www.alliancefrancaise-ng.org/), Fondation Alliance (http://www.fondation-alliancefr.org/). 229 petroleum corporation currently (at the time of this writing) struggles to stop a gas leak occurring at its Elgin platform located in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland.119 As discussed in Chapter 4, NGOs employ varying strategies to promote their sponsors. The presence of sponsor logos at NGO music events is common. Large banners representing Total Oil as well as the French Embassy’s French Cooperation hung behind the musicians on the stage at Spotlight on Kenyan Music concerts series. Sponsor and partner logos were also present on the Spotlight on Kenyan Music CDs and event posters. Total Oil and the French Embassy were commonly acknowledged for their contributions during Spotlight on Kenyan Music concerts’ opening ceremonies as well. Some examples of these marketing strategies employed by Total Oil and the French Embassy are pictured below. Figure 8.4: Tabu Osusa and Helene Bekker, Executive Director of Alliance Française, accepting a Total Oil donation to the 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music.120 118 “Uganda, Strategic Breakthrough for Total in East Africa,” Total Website (www.total.com/en/abouttotal/news/news-940500.html&Actu=2551, accessed 11.13.11). 119 “Elgin Gas leak in North Sea costing Total 1.5m a day,” BBC News, April 2, 2012, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-17581994, accessed 4.16.12) 120 Photo available in public domain on Total Oil’s main Webpage (http://www.total.bf/os/oskenya.nsf/VS_OPM/D67D89CAEEF2513DC12574BF004A92F9?OpenDocument, accessed 11.13.11). 230 Figure 8.5: Total Oil logo at the 12.10.10 Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert performance of Ben Kisinja and Chebin Band (photo by author). Figure 8.6: Logos for French Embassy and Total Oil on a flyer for the 12.10.10 Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert (photo by author). The examples above demonstrate ways in which the funders utilized the initiative as a platform for marketing. Despite the suggested power and influence of financial contributions the 231 French Embassy and Total Oil have primarily remained in the periphery of Spotlight on Kenyan Music. They advertised on stages, flyers, and through donation ceremonies but did not become heavily involved in the conceptual direction of the initiative. In the next example of organizational funding, Spotlight on Kenyan Music directors emphasized certain dimensions and curtailed others to be successful candidates in a 2010 grant issued by the European Union. 8.6.6 The 9th European Development Fund Grant Although the French Embassy and Total Oil have been the most consistent financial contributors to the Spotlight on Kenyan Music project, they have played a minimal role in influencing the project’s conceptual design. Exhibiting the potential for funding to impact the conceptual design, the European Union’s financial sponsorship through a 2010 grant for nonstate actors was especially instrumental in shaping recent developments of the initiative. In 2010, the European Development Fund (EDF), in coordination with the Kenyan Ministry of Justice, issued Alliance Française a significantly large grant that heavily expanded Alliance Française’s Arts and Cultural Cooperation programming. Alliance Française allocated a significant portion of this funding to the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative and added new foci to the direction of the project. The following discussion of Alliance Française’s procurement and incorporation of an EDF grant demonstrates how revenue in the international aid market influences NGO music initiatives. 8.6.6.1 Vital Voices and Culture The 2010 “Vital Voices and Culture: Increasing People’s Participation in Good Governance and Development” grant, one of the first significant major European Union “development” grants to offer funding for arts and culture in Kenya, signified a benchmark funding award for Alliance Française and also illustrated the increasing global prevalence of NGO supported music production. NGOs commonly seek grants that offer funding to carry out initiatives related to their respective missions. As organizations seek new funders, they may shift or adapt their programming concept to meet the requirements of those grants. As directors and participants apply for and receive grants available through international aid supply chains, the shifts within global philanthropic cultures winds up influencing the conceptual design and programming of initiatives in Kenya. Alliance Française’s pursuit and award of the 9th EDF Non-State Actors Support Programme grant resulted from simpatico elements embedded in much of Alliance Française, 232 Kenya’s cultural programming. In addition to preexisting compatibility, Alliance Française proposed new initiatives, including a renewed Spotlight on Kenyan Music focus on marginalized communities, tailored specifically to the grant requirements. Consequently, the award significantly contributed to the financial resources available for the organization’s 2011 programming. Waters described the proposed funding opportunity: It is a program by the European Union in partnership with the Ministry of Justice that began last year through the 9th European Development Fund. They put together a huge grant that has been made available to non-state actors who applied for it through the Ministry of Justice but it is funded by the European Union for the role of non-state actors in development and good governance. And there were two lots: one was for NSAs, non-state actors, working for democracy, good governance, or human rights. Another was for cultural actors in development. So Alliance Française was one of the four non-state actors that qualified for support from the European Union (Waters 2011, Interview). Waters’ statement above outlines the basic structure of the grant, presented in the Call for Proposals (CFP) issued by the EDF. 121 The award, titled “Vital Voices and Culture: Increasing People’s Participation in Good Governance and Development,” offered funding for two groups, or “lots” of applicants. The CFP refers to the first “lot,” to which EDF allocated EUR 2,890,000, as “Vital Voices and Participation in Development.” This lot provided funding to non-state actors working for democracy, good governance, or human rights. EDF allocated EUR 510,000 to the second “lot,” titled “Cultural Actors and Participation in Development,” intended to benefit cultural actors active in film, literature, music, visual art, and other realms of cultural production. Alliance Française applied to the pool of Cultural Actors and Participation. Illustrating the fluctuating nature of NGO funding culture, “development” funding has not commonly included arts and culture projects in its scope, a point that Harsita Waters illustrates below: I must say that it's fantastic that such government funding, if you like, has been opened up at the local level to cultural actors… because we’ve never had access to such funding. It's always been made available to civil society organizations working directly on human rights, democracy, good governance, etc. and it’s the first time that the cultural actors working on this have had an opportunity. We applied and we were granted this opportunity and we were one of four. The other one was GoDown, then there is the Media Focus for Africa through a program 121 9th European Development Fund. 2010, Vital Voices and Culture: Increasing People’s Participation in Good Governance and Development. Full version available in the Appendix. 233 that they are doing that is a radio series called “Search for Common Ground,” and there’s the Wajir Peace and Development Association (Waters 2011, Interview). The increased emphasis on culture as a component to “economic development” in northern Kenya is consistent with a growing trend in “development” policy. A European Union strategy set forth in the 2007 document, Committee on the Role of Culture in a Globalizing World122 was to increase attention to the role of culture in “development” resulting in a global trend in “development” funding by the EDF that also included grants for “third country,” (non-European Union) states such as Kenya. The EDF articulated the renewed culture-focused strategy for nonEU nations in a 2008 statement setting forth a work plan for culture in the EU’s “external relations:” A comprehensive European strategy should be created for incorporating culture in the EU’s external relations policies in a consistent and systematic manner. In addition, to clarify the aims and approaches of cultural cooperation, specific strategies should be set up with third countries and regions.123 In order to meet the requirements of the EDF grant as well as demonstrate competitive qualities among many applicants, Alliance Française’s proposal included projections for a 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music Series that reflected the “objective” and “priorities” of marginalization, human rights, and good governance present in the EDF grant. They did this by creating an umbrella initiative titled “Art Synergies for the Empowerment of Communities,” which included a 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music focus on pastoral communities of northern Kenya. Demonstrating the reasoning behind Alliance Française’s 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music focus on the marginalized pastoral communities of Northern Kenya, the CFP for “Vital Voices and Culture: Increasing People’s Participation in Good Governance and Development,” presented the following “objective” attributed to the entire EDF grant: The global objective of the programme is to improve the quality of life for the people of Kenya, especially the poor, marginalized and vulnerable, in enabling all sections of society to have a voice in national development policies, thus enhancing local ownership of development programmes. Waters described the resulting creation of several new initiatives included under the Art Synergies for the Empowerment of Communities umbrella program. These new activities 122 European Commission, 2007, European Agenda for Culture in a Globalizing World, http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52007DC0242:EN:NOT, accessed 11.16.11. 123 European Council, 2008, The Promotion of Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialog, http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:42008X1221(02):EN:NOT, accessed 11.16.11 234 included International Women’s Day festivals and the 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music’s focus on pastoralist communities of the Lake Turkana region of Northern Kenya the focus of the 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music program: Our program is called Art Synergies for the Empowerment of Communities. And through that we are running three programs: the International Women's Day Festivals which took place in March in Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, and in Kisumu. Now we are working on the Spotlight on Kenyan Music program. The focus this year is pastoralist communities from Northern Kenya. These have been the most marginalized communities in Kenya, from historical injustices during the colonial period up until now. What we're trying to do is give them a voice which they have not had through exhibiting their music and socio-cultural traditions through their music and dance (Waters 2011, Interview). 8.6.6.2 Lake Turkana Region and the Lake Turkana Festival The Lake Turkana region, which became the regional focus of the 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiatives, includes both Kenyan and Ethiopian territory. Continuing migratory pastoralist traditions that date before colonial times, the groups that live in the Turkana region largely do not recognize the Kenyan-Ethiopian border and migrate back and forth with very little state regulation. The area and its people are not only regionally marginalized at the borders of Kenya and Ethiopia but economically marginalized as well. The international and local news media have, in recent years, increased reports about the Lake Turkana region as unpoliced and ungoverned, including an almost unrecognized portion of the Kenyan border. For many years, drought and inter-ethnic conflict have troubled the inhabitants of the region. As these pastoralist groups search for arable land for themselves and their cattle, cross-border disputes arise over territory and resources. Retribution for past grievances also exacerbates conflict. A steady weapons trade in the region elevates the degree of violence caused by conflict. In response to these circumstances, the Lake Turkana region has experienced a growing intersection of “development” activity. National and international security concerns, humanitarian crises, and economic resources has drawn NGOs, corporations, and foreign and local government actors to the Turkana area in recent years. Since 2005, major “development” projects included a water dam project to build the area’s water resources and energy capabilities, the development of a sustainable wind and solar program, a disarmament initiative to rid the area of illegal weapons, and a living museum to showcase the cultural heritage of Turkana’s ethnic groups. Several governmental agencies and NGOs have also attempted to promote the Lake 235 Turkana region as a site of ecological and cultural tourism in order to draw revenue to the area. In concert with this vision, the German Embassy, accompanied by the National Museums of Kenya and the Kenyan Tourist Board, created the Lake Turkana Festival in 2007. Maximizing the power of the initiative, the 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music partnered with the Lake Turkana Festival. About the partnership, Waters stated, We are supporting five different groups from Northern Kenya at the Lake Turkana Festival which is organized through the German Embassy. This is the Lake Turkana Festival’s fourth year now. What happens is that there are warring communities in Northern Kenya. But through this festival they come together and through exhibiting their arts and crafts etc. they sort of meet with each other and there are platforms for exchange and they are able to learn from each other… Also, with Permanent Presidential Music Commission, Spotlight on Kenyan Music will invite identified pastoralist groups to Nairobi for performances which is a great opportunity for them because they don't feel that they are in Kenya. Like if they are from Northern Kenya and coming to Nairobi they would say that they're coming to Kenya. So we are going to have these pastoralist groups here and then at the end of it we will have a CD on Cushite music and a documentary on the pastoralist communities. So those are the three main activities under this NSA grant (Waters 2011, Interview). Ethnic groups in the region, which have participated in the Lake Turkana Festival, include the Rendille, El Molo, Pokot, Samburu, Turkana, Gabbra, Dassanech and Borana. Despite the marginalization of these groups, the Lake Turkana Festival has been and continues to be an important platform to recognize the rich cultural traditions, especially music and dance. Figure 8.7: Flyer for the Spotlight on Kenyan Music “Art Synergies for the Empowerment of Communities” Program (2011). 236 8.6.6.3 Call for Proposals (CFP) In addition to the general “objectives” stated in the CFP of the EDF grant, Alliance Française constructed a program that would meet the more specific criteria of the grant. The “priorities” of the grant catered specifically to each applicant “lot.” The EDF set separate priorities to the Vital Voices and Participation in Development “lot” compared with the Cultural Actors and Participation in Development “lot.” The “priorities” applied to the Cultural Actors and Participation in Development listed as follows: Priority will be given to actions that ensure the active participation of cultural actors in the promotion of good governance, human rights and democratic development, and to cultural actions that promote an inclusive and cohesive Kenyan society. Cultural actions will be supported at both local and national levels, and in the cinema, audio-visual, literary, publishing, music, visual arts and performing arts sectors.124 The CFP also called upon applicants to the Cultural Actors and Participation in Development “lot” to demonstrate that their initiatives would lead to the following results: Result 1: Enhanced Participation of Cultural Actors in Democratic Development: The programme will create the space and opportunity for innovative and creative cultural mechanisms of expression, dialogue, dissemination and information on governance issues and reforms, including promotion of human rights principles, and will allow cultural organisations to take part in the governance processes and play an increased role in engaging community participation in national and local development strategies, and at the same time develop cultural appreciation and potential. Result 2: Enhanced inclusiveness and national identity: The programme will support cultural expressions of national identity and social justice, particularly through initiatives that cultivate a sense of national belonging while fostering positive ethnic and cultural identity, initiatives that foster equity and fairness in society at local and national levels, and initiatives that effectively address exclusion on ethnic grounds, marginalisation and development imbalances.125 The focus of the first four volumes of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative directly intersected with many aspects of the “objectives,” “priorities,” and “results” of the EDF grant. Spotlight on Kenyan Music was, from its inception, overtly geared towards creating opportunities for “cultural mechanisms of expression” by providing a platform for Kenyan artists who otherwise had few avenues to find funding and distribution for their music. The Retracing Series 124 9th European Development Fund. 2010, Vital Voices and Culture: Increasing People’s Participation in Good Governance and Development. Full version available in Appendix. 125 Ibid. 237 demonstrated an interest in promoting “a sense of national belonging,” as well as fostering “positive ethnic and cultural identity,” by incorporating musicians from diverse Kenyan backgrounds. This approach advocated for Kenya’s cultural diversity as a strength as opposed to a weakness. As a result of this common ground with the EDF grant, Alliance Française was in an ideal position to qualify for the Cultural Actors and Participation in Development “lot” before developing their 2010-2011 proposal. The Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative also indirectly addressed “governance issues and reforms, including promotion of human rights principles” (result one) and “exclusion on ethnic grounds, marginalization and development imbalances” (result two). Marginalization, governance and human rights were not, however, until the award of the EDF grant, the explicitly stated aims of the project. After the EDF’s “Vital Voices and Culture” grant, the Spotlight on Kenyan Music shifted the focus of their project to emphasize marginalized communities. The 2011 Spotlight on Kenyan Music’s focus on pastoralist communities from Northern Kenya, communities that as Waters stated, “don’t feel that they are in Kenya,” reflected the EDF grant’s requirement that applicants “address exclusion on ethnic grounds, marginalization and development imbalances.” Supporting music groups from the Lake Turkana region, the project not only brought the positive cultural expressions of these marginalized populations into the popular Kenyan view but also, by facilitating performances in Nairobi by groups from Northern Kenya, attempted to foster a sense of belonging for the musicians involved with the project. Lack of resources and security concerns reflect the “Vital Voices and Culture” program’s proposal to support “governance issues and reforms, including promotion of human rights principles.” 8.7 Conclusion This chapter examined institutional and organizational partnerships within Nairobi's NGO music culture through the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative aimed at codifying the Afro-fusion genre. Bidirectional politics of influence characterize these partnerships and involve multiple parties negotiating varied interests under the umbrella of one initiative. Funding provided for Spotlight on Kenyan Music by international corporations and organizations such as Alliance Française, Total Oil, Ford Foundation, and the French Embassy appear, on the surface, to project a top-down flow of influence from international organizations based in the Global North to local contexts of music production in Nairobi. Ethnographic analysis through interviews with those most directly involved in creating and facilitating the initiative complicates this view 238 however. The central role of organizations such as Alliance Française cannot be easily reduced to foreign influence given that Kenyans, such as Harsita Waters, with long-standing ties to and a deep understanding of the needs within Kenya’s music industry, maintain administrative control over the initiative. Organizations, such as Ketebul Music are auxiliary within the revenue and administrative structure of the initiative and therefore may appear insignificant within the politics of influence marking the Spotlight on Kenyan Music. Ketebul Music emerges, however, as perhaps the most influential organizational constituency in this scenario given that they facilitate most aspects of music performance and production. Finally, illustrating the contradictory contingencies of NGO music culture, the participation of the Kenyan Department of Culture in the European Union in the initiative complicate the nongovernmental demarcation of nongovernmental organizations and channel additional varied interests into the construction of the initiative. 239 CHAPTER 9 STUDIO ETHNOGRAPHY: THE “SOUND” OF KETEBUL MUSIC PRODUCER JESSE BUKINDU 9.0 Conceptual Signpost In continuity with the process of layering contingent lenses, this chapter further exposes modes of influence marked by bottom-up (and Global South – Global North) politics through an ethnographic exploration of technology. In particular, the contemporary, digital and global technology of a music studio serves as a medium for assembling the agenda of the organization and the individuals who act within it. In contrast to Chapter 2’s illustration of how media technology amplified the agendas of the creators of the Live Aid concerts to stimulate a massive surge of NGO activity in Africa, the following case study provides an example of a producer in the Global South molding and mixing musical fragments into expressions of NGO culture that, although targeting an international market, arise out of sounds reflecting a “localized” soundscape. 9.1 Introduction The role of the producer in music industry settings worldwide continues to encompass an increasingly broad set of activities, including promotion, marketing, recruitment of talent, creative oversight, and studio engineering. In this chapter I expand the scope of “producer” from Tabu Osusa, who embodies the title of producer through management, promotion, and creative direction, to Jesse Bukindu’s function as Ketebul Music’s chief studio engineer. The previous chapter briefly discussed Bukindu's role in the production of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music CD series. This chapter presents Bukindu's work with the Somali female vocal group Gargar, which is featured prominently in the 2010 Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert series and CD issue. Like Makadem and Olith Ratego, Osusa signed Gargar to the Ketebul Music label after envisioning their potential success as an Afro-fusion group. Ketebul Music provided financial and promotional support for the production of Gargar’s first album, titled Garissa Express (2011). Bukindu collaboratively produced, engineered, and co-composed the songs on the album with the five women of Gargar. This chapter reveals Bukindu’s perspectives on the process of 240 producing “Halele,” on Gargar’s debut album and through an ethnographic narrative. Examining Bukindu’s studio production enables a nuanced window into the sound of Ketebul Music. Bukindu’s approach to responsibilities as chief studio engineer includes constructing song forms and arrangements, choosing instrumentation, and mastering recordings. Additionally, Bukindu performs and composes most of the digital instrumental parts on recordings. This makes him a co-composer for most of the organization’s music productions. Charged with the job of translating Osusa’s conceptual vision into musical products, Bukindu makes decisions in the studio during the recording process that reflect the mergers of culture that both Afro-fusion and Ketebul aim to promote. As a result, Bukindu influences Ketebul musical output as much as any other member of the organization. 9.1.1 Studio Ethnography Figure 9.1: Jesse Bukindu discussing his approach to music production in the Ketebul Music Studio (photo by Shino Saito). Given the prevalence of the music studio as a site for music production and activity, it is surprising that few ethnomusicological accounts of studio production exist. One notable exception is Louise Meintjes’ Sound of Africa!: Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio (2003). This chapter hopes to build on Meintjes’ study. In Sound of Africa!, she notes that ethnomusicologists have been slow to acknowledge the important role of the studio, and technology in general, as an operative contributor and molder of contemporary music culture: Despite their creative significance to twentieth century music, technological gear, 241 technological engagement, and studio production have rarely been addressed in music scholarship in any detail… Ethnomusicologists have been particularly slow to recognize the creative potential and semiotic nuance of technology in music making and to include its analysis within the field’s interpretive frameworks. This is in part an outcome of the fact that ethnomusicologists have privileged live performance, expected technology to take away from both creative processes and from the experience of music, and have focused historically on musics that have, or seem to have, a life of their own outside the music industry (Meintjes 2003: 280). Meintjes’ ethnography documents the production of one music album in a South African recording studio. In her account, she emphasizes the roles of studio engineers as central to twenty-first century global music production. She explores how engineers mediate processes of song composition, instrumentation, and choices about timbre and groove to express particular sentiments about ethnicity, race, politics, nationalism, and global culture. Meintjes depicts how these processes of cultural representation through music must also target specific music markets to achieve economic success. Meintjes highlights the important role of the studio as a place of technological, economical, and cultural mediation by bringing attention to engineers as gatekeepers of music production, whose manipulation of the symbolic ramifications of sound through technology characterize most late twentieth and twenty-first century popular music. Here, I draw influence from Meintjes’ research and ethnographic representation by emphasizing Bukindu’s perspective about the choices he makes in the studio regarding song construction. I hope to directly represent the perspective of the studio engineers by providing photographic images of the LogicPro computer program they use to produce musical recordings.126 Logic Pro is the software that Bukindu used to record and engineer Garissa Express (2011). During fieldwork with Bukindu, I captured digital still images of the Logic Pro files of “Halele” that will be the focus of this investigation. Although sound wave images, such as those that follow, do not convey the sort of sonic information ideal for analysis, I have included them here for three reasons: (1) they directly showcase Bukindu's visual perspective as he engineers music in multi-track, digital form; (2) this 126 For the use of screen captures from music production software, I have drawn influence from Trevor Harvey’s dissertation, “Virtual Garage Bands: Collaborative Cybercommunities of Internet Musicians,” (2010) that explores digital music production from an ethnographic perspective and provides visual supplements of several multi-track software interfaces. Like Harvey, I supplement computer generated studio program visuals with embedded Western notation and sound excerpts for purposes of providing more specific sonic information when relevant. 242 presents the most relevant ethnographic and emic representations of sound available as Bukindu and the musicians involved with the project are more familiar with the Logic Pro layouts than Western notation, which I rarely found utilized by performers or engineers during studio production; and (3) most music production software utilizes waveform representations of sound in multi-track form, which is similar to the ones incorporated in this chapter. Producers, sound-engineers, and composers the world over create and manipulate music utilizing these visually-rendered digital wave streams. So in spite of a general reluctance of musicologists to utilize wave form iconography, these commonly utilized visual signifiers reflect contemporary shifts in standard graphic representation and therefore present music cultural material usefully. 9.2 The Creation of Gargar and Somali Identity in Kenya After Gargar received noteworthy positive public attention through their participation in the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative, Osusa signed the group to Ketebul Music and invested in the production and promotion of their album titled Garissa Express (2011). Gargar’s four members, Bashir Muge, Anab Gure Ibrtahi, Amina Basher Elmoge, and Asha Ibrahim Yussuf, live in Garissa, which is a northeastern province of Kenya and an area that has become home to thousands of Somalis who have immigrated to the region for various reasons. Many have lived in the Garissa region for generations, while others arrived in recent decades fleeing civil war, drought, and political destabilization in Somalia. Figure 9.2: Album cover of Garissa Express (2011). 243 The Somali population in Kenya has recently received worldwide media attention because of the humanitarian crisis that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding into the Somali refugee camp that is located in Kenya’s border district of Mogadishu. Since 2010, Somalia has suffered extreme drought conditions that exacerbated multigenerational power struggles in the region. Today Somalia faces a combination of war and famine just as Ethiopia experienced in the 1980s, which spurred the formation of the Live Aid NGO discussed in Chapter 2. In contrast, Somalia has, at least at the time of writing this document, received less aid than Ethiopia did during the 1985-87 famine. As one BBC correspondent stated, “[if] a humanitarian crisis threatening hundreds of thousands of people [happened] anywhere else, there would be benefit rock concerts and emergency talks at the United Nations. But not here.”127 The presence of Al-Shabaab, an Al Qaeda-linked militant group that controls much of the southern half of the country, has prevented many aid organizations from working within Somalia. Al-Shabaab has been especially hostile to foreign humanitarian organizations that do not directly aid and fund AlShabaab loyalists. Additionally, the United States government has not provided extensive support to aid organizations that engage with Al-Shabaab in any fashion. Finally, the Kenyan government has warned that providing extensive support to Somalis within refugee camps in Kenya will create an unsustainable flow of refugees, thereby destabilizing the border, threatening national security, and increasing conditions of poverty in Kenya. Most, but not all, Kenyans with whom I spoke expressed frustration and suspicion at the large and increasing Somali population in Kenya. Many Kenyans expressed the view that the large population of Somalis in Nairobi’s Eastleigh district had caused this area to become a hotbed for money laundering and black-market activity that is fueled in part through the activities of Somali “oil pirates” and Al-Shabaab splinter groups. As a result of cultural tensions between Somalis and other members of the Kenyan community, incorporating a Somali group in the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series was a relevant contribution to Volume Four’s theme of “Unity in Diversity.” The Spotlight on Kenyan Music steering committee chose Gargar to record on Volume Four (2008) after witnessing them perform at the 2008 Spotlight on Kenyan Music tryouts, which took place throughout numerous districts in Kenya. The group’s tryout video featured a 127 Peter Greste. 2011 “Somalia's Starving Driven into Violent Mogadishu.” In BBC News, Somalia June 18th (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9515544.stm, accessed 06.28.11). 244 performance of the Somali performance style saar, an acoustic vocal performance genre performed by Somalis living in northeast Kenya. Over a dozen members comprised the group that performed at the tryouts, as is typical of the community-based saar performance practice. Due to the financial and logistical difficulties of bringing such a large group to Nairobi from Garissa to perform and record, Alliance Française and Ketebul Music required the women to elect four members to perform on the album. These four members currently remain the musical representatives of Gargar. The video caption below is of Gargar’s Spotlight on Kenyan Music audition in Garissa and shows the women singing in call-and-response style while providing rhythmic accompaniment by clapping and beating a slow pulse on a drum held under one of the woman’s arms. Musical Example 9.1: Video excerpt of Gargar’s Spotlight on Kenyan Music audition. The Spotlight on Kenyan Music steering committee chose Gargar to record their song, “AIDS Wadila” on Volume Four (2008) of the Spotlight on Kenyan Music CD. Like many of the groups commissioned to perform on the Spotlight on Kenyan Music series, Gargar’s performance experience had existed, up until the recording of the song at Ketebul Music, entirely outside of the realm of urban recording studios. The studio process involved adapting Gargar’s acoustic saar-based version of “AIDS Wadila” to the Afro-fusion genre and included digital and electric instrumental accompaniment as well as regulated tempos and a three-to-five minute song form, all of which were not present in their audition performance that was featured in the video above. On July 23rd, 2010, Gargar performed the newly reworked Afro-fusion version of “AIDS Wadila” with a live band of urban studio musicians at the first 2010 Spotlight on Kenyan Music concert on Alliance Française’s performance stage. After receiving a strong positive reception at the concert, the four women were commissioned by Osusa to produce an entire recorded album 245 with Ketebul Music. The publicity that Gargar received, both as a result of their appearance in Spotlight on Kenyan Music and because of their promotion by Ketebul, cause them to change their widely-known musical identity as an Afro-fusion group. The 2011 East African Music Awards nominated Gargar for “Best East African Afro-Fusion Group.” Their song, “AIDS Wadila” received positive publicity from fans, resulting in the demand for subsequent concerts by the group, including a performance at the 2011 Sauti za Busara festival in Zanzibar, Tanzania. 9.3 The Production of Garissa Express (2011) Like the Ketebul Music projects discussed in previous chapters, the Afro-fusion concept behind Garissa Express (2011) attempted to reconcile, fuse, and promote diverse spheres of Kenyan experiences while integrating identifiable elements of global popular music culture. Bukindu, as the producer/sound-engineer, was primarily responsible for arranging this marriage of cultures. I interviewed Bukindu about the process on several occasions in order to determine, from an ethnographic perspective, how he utilized the studio as a space to connect and fuse these disparate strains of culture through music. I was especially interested in how he approached creating a studio album with Gargar, given that the group had no experience performing and recording music in a studio prior to their participation in the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiative. Bukindu described his first encounter with the group, which occurred a year before the women began recording Garissa Express (2011): Before we recorded the album, we recorded one song called “AIDS Wadila,” it’s about HIV. It was recorded about a year before they came to record the album. They were one of the groups which were funded by Alliance Française for Spotlight on Kenyan Music. They came first to record their song, and then they came to do the whole album (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). The entire process of recording Garissa Express (2011) occurred over the course of one year. The vocalists in Gargar recorded for two days. Instrumentalists also came to the studio periodically to record for the album. Finally, Bukindu fused the components through the digital production process. About the production timeline, Bukindu stated, Author: Out of the album, how many hours did it take or how many days? Bukindu: We normally had sessions and one session goes for three hours. You would have two or three sessions each week and then you have another two sessions next week. It took like a year – when I say a year, maybe it means it takes two days this week then next week we meet another two days. It works like that for a whole year from the day they walked into the studio, they recorded, then I was working on the music to come up with a structure then after that, have a group of musicians come and play the instruments. It is quite a process (Bukindu 246 2011b, Interview). During Bukindu’s first meeting with Gargar, he utilized unique strategies to merge Gargar’s style with the culture of popular music studio production, in which uniformity of tempo and key are common. The Somali acoustic styles that Gargar were accustomed to singing at weddings, funerals and social events in their village close to Garissa contrasted significantly with the standard process of studio production that Bukindu employed. For example, saar is a calland-response, improvisatory style of performance that has various incarnations, depending on each region and each performance group. The style is usually unaccompanied by instruments, with the exception of a hand held drum. Bukindu’s process was one that required uniformity of tempo and a consistently identifiable key. In order to adapt the singing style of the women in Gargar to this process, Bukindu and other studio musicians added instrumental accompaniment. He described that Gargar was not accustomed to singing to metronomic tempos. Bukindu thus created a “simple pattern” to keep them “on the metronome” and to help the vocalists conform to norms of popular music style. Author: When did you first hear them actually sing? Bukindu: They walked into the studio – that was the first time I was meeting them. They sang first, and then I created a simple pattern… They had this music to keep them on key. You cannot record them without music. They had not recorded before and do not understand certain terms, so I didn’t want to create something too complicated. It was very basic – it was just one drum and a piano playing throughout, just to keep them on the metronome and to make sure they don’t go above or below the key. Author: You gave them like an instrumental click track? Bukindu: Exactly. I wanted them to be able to sing along with it without having any difficulties. Then they went into the studio, they recorded the songs [to the simple percussion and piano patterns]. Afterwards, I started to make arrangements, adding guitars, and creating interludes (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). Although Gargar had performed at many social events in Northern Kenya, they were not accustomed to the performance environment of the recording studio. Because the members of Gargar and Bukindu both speak Kiswahili, Bukindu was able to guide them through the technical and emotional process of studio production. Bukindu noticed that when they became nervous or excited, their voices modulated upwards. Bukindu incorporated aural and psychological strategies, as he states, “to keep them in the key.” These strategies included turning up the volume of the instrumental track in the women’s headphones and also creating a relaxed social environment to encourage confident and relaxed musical expression. 247 Bukindu: When we were recording, we would have to stop and start again from the top because I could hear when they would start to go up [in key]. You have to make sure the music is loud and they wear headphones so that they can hear and to keep them in the key. Author: Did you find that they would usually go up? Bukindu: Oh yes, they’d start to get excited and start climbing. We did many takes. We did the first take, and then we keep talking to them in a polite way so they won’t be nervous. You have to make sure they get used to the studio. The first take is always shaky-shaky because they are nervous, but after one, two, three takes, they catch up and get used to it. Then, you crack some jokes, they smile, then you can tell them to do this and that. Saito: It sounds like it helps to be personable also, and you know they can do what they need to do, it’s just the environment. You’re kind of like a mentor as well. Bukindu: Yeah, that’s true because if you can’t make them sing, then what’s your job. If you can’t make them feel comfortable, there’s no way you’re going to make them sing well. Bukindu: You can tell when someone is nervous when they’re singing. Saito: You’re very busy multi-tasking making the music but also telling them they’re doing well. Bukindu: Yeah, once the set up is done, what we do is just communicate with them. Record, stop, record, stop… like that (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). After Bukindu recorded the vocal tracks for Garissa Express (2011), he began the long two-year process of arranging the recorded vocals in the Afro-fusion format by incorporating verses, choruses, instrumental introductions, accompaniment, and interludes and limiting the long form of the saar style to three to five minutes per song. The Macintosh music studio software, Logic Pro, facilitated Bukindu's arranging of the raw vocal material captured from Gargar. The next section explores Bukindu’s digital arranging process on the Garissa Express (2011) song, “Halele.” I will convey Bukindu's perspective on the production process in “Halele” utilizing images from the Logic Pro interface that he engaged with throughout the production process. 9.4 Digital Production and (Ethno)Musicological Representation Figure 9.3: Jesse Bukindu operating the Logic pro software (photo by author). 248 Musical Example 9.2: Screen capture of the midi instruments from Bukindu’s Logic Pro file of the song “Halele.” Musical Example 9.3: Screen capture of microphone recorded instruments from Bukindu's Logic Pro file of the song “Halele.” 249 The three images above present Bukindu’s working visual perspective of the tracks of “Halele.” I have posted them here for ethnographic, not analytic, purposes, so understanding the intimate details of the program are secondary to gaining the experiential information of seeing what the producer sees when he works with the sound in the studio. Logic Pro, like most studio software, presents sonic material in wave form and enables the material to be cut, copied, altered, and segmented according to the studio engineer’s preference. Through video recorded interviews in the studio, Bukindu guided me through his process producing “Halele.” He utilized the open Logic Pro file on the computer screen as a visual reference during the interview. The following analysis explores Bukindu’s production approach for the song “Halele” by presenting portions of these screen captures with Western notation and audio excerpts. 9.4.1 Vocal Segmentation Musical Example 9.4: Screen capture of vocal parts from Bukindu's Logic Pro file of the song “Halele.” Bukindu recorded Gargar singing their songs before arranging the song forms, adding instrumentation, or mastering the finished song construction, so I begin the analysis of “Halele” with the raw recorded material of Gargar’s call-and-response style vocals. After Gargar sang to the simple piano and percussion pattern created by Bukindu to serve as a guide to preserve 250 metronome and key, Bukindu digitally segmented portions of the vocal recording. Within the segments, he omitted moments where one singer may have fallen off pitch and replaced them with segments that exhibited more uniformity. He accomplished this through a method of digitally copying and pasting. Below is a visual snapshot of Logic Pro’s sound wave representation of the vocal parts from the song “Halele” on Garissa Express (2011). The track displayed in the uppermost portion of the snapshot is the call “Halele iyo, halele iyo,” which is sung by the leader of the group. The four tracks represented beneath the call is the response in which all four members sing a reinforcing “ayeha!” This call-and-response format, one that also reflects the saar style that Gargar performs in villages around Garissa, can be found, to an extent, on all of the songs on the album. Musical Example 9.5: Audio excerpt of the call-and-response vocals featured on “Halele.” Musical Example 9.6: Logic Pro screen capture of the call-and-response vocals featured on “Halele.” Bukindu selected responses that he judged as most “in tune” and arranged them in four tracks to maintain the original chorus response style of Gargar’s music. Given the difficulties Gargar experienced in consistently following the tempo marked by a “click track,” Bukindu made slight adjustments to the rhythmic placement of the responses so as to adhere to the regulated tempo of the piece. Demonstrating how the process of digital production reformatted Gargar’s vocal 251 timeline, the snapshot below is of one member’s unedited “response line” before segmentation. Musical Example 9.7: Unedited “response line” before segmentation. Bukindu described the necessity of negotiating a language barrier while continuing to engage creatively with the material. Although he communicated with the members of Gargar in Kiswahili, he did not understand Somali, which was Gargar’s native language and the one featured on their songs. In order to preserve the narrative continuity of the song, Gargar advised Bukindu while he arranged the raw vocal recording of the group: Bukindu: I don’t understand their language, you know, you have to make sure the story flows so you can take out a part but you can’t erase whatever was there. You can introduce a chorus or something, but you have to make sure the story flows. I don’t understand their language so if I start messing around with the flow… Author: You can’t put one verse before the other. Bukindu: No, I can’t. I, at least, asked them, “what are you talking about here?” So they told me this song is about this and that, so at least, I understand. The whole concept – I cannot go in and tell you this verse is saying this, but I understand the main story… Remember, I am a musician. Language is not really the first thing I think about, so as long as it sounds good with proper arrangements (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). In the excerpt above, Bukindu made the distinction that, as a producer, his creative emphasis was on the music’s sound as opposed to its linguistic content. From this perspective, the voices of Gargar take on the quality of sampled instruments and appear so in the computer generated visual interface that he manipulated to organize the vocal content. 9.4.2 Instrumental Infusion Reflecting the strategic merging of culture in Afro-fusion, Bukindu incorporated instrumental accompaniment into Gargar’s vocal style to access a broad listenership: Bukindu: You know, their songs are all almost similar, so when you do the instrumentation, you have to make sure you provide variety. They sound similar in terms of vocal. Author: What is their structure? Bukindu: They just sing. When they start singing, they just sing. They have lead vocals then background just throughout (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). Bukindu perceived the linguistic barriers and the continuous call-and-response of the saar-style 252 vocal arrangements as limiting Gargar’s marketability to a trans-cultural Kenyan or global listening audience. To add variation and create contrasts between their songs, Bukindu incorporated digital and acoustic instrumental accompaniment and interludes. His method of arranging instrumental accompaniment aimed to fuse diverse and global sonic signifiers to dually access sentiments of Afro-fusion and World Music genres. Utilizing computer generated symphonic strings and Chinese erhu in the instrumental introduction and interludes to “Halele,” Bukindu fused digital sonic symbols of East and West. Although his choice of instrumentation stemmed first from aesthetic taste rather than geo-cultural symbolism, the presence of the digitally erhu and Western strings flag a particular computer-generated form of pan-global consciousness thrust upon producers such as Bukindu, whose operative genre encourages consideration of the full palette of digital studio production instrumentation. The audio excerpt below presents the first twelve measures of “Halele,” which feature the interplay between the erhu and symphonic strings. A notated transcription of the Logic Pro snapshots offers sonic representation from a musicological perspective. Musical Example 9.8: Audio excerpt of the “String Ensemble” and “Chinese Erhu” (mm. 112 of “Halele”). Musical Example 9.9: Notated excerpt of the “Erhu” and “String Ensemble” in “Halele” (mm. 1-12 of “Halele”). 253 The seemingly global signification inherent in the use of the computer-generated erhu and string ensemble parts also references the twentieth century compositional practice among contemporary Arabic and Arabic-influenced genres, including classical taarab and other contemporary Somali styles, to incorporate synthesized strings in their music. Indeed, Bukindu stated that, before working with Gargar, he had not listened extensively to Somali music, but during the production of Gargar’s album, he browsed the Internet for Somali music to find that inspiration for his instrumental arrangements. He explained that listening to this cross-representation of music provided him with a window into the type of instrumentation and rhythms that reflected Gargar's culture. To this point Bukindu stated, Yeah, I had to. I had not listened to any music from Somalia, but I had to because I was going to create their music. Since it needs to reflect their culture and their musical background, I needed to listen to it (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). In order to further ground his arrangement in the Somali sound, Bukindu based his instrumental melodies on those of Gargar’s vocal lines. Discussing this dimension of instrumental arrangement, Bukindu stated, I wanted something that would blend with their singing. Not necessarily to play the same melody as they were singing, but something to compliment... I just follow whatever they are singing – if it goes up, I try to follow (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). The erhu and string instrumental interludes additionally reflect Bukindu’s strategy to maintain the form and style, in that they loosely trace the melodic and rhythmic form of the call-andresponse vocals. Bukindu therefore grounded the instrumental accompaniment in the Somali sound by doubling the melodic line and the triplet rhythmic patterns of “Halele.” The erhu part traces the melodic contours of Gargar’s lead vocal, the call, while the Western String part parallels the melody and rhythm of the chorus, or response. The following notated excerpts compare the similar melodic trajectories of the erhu and string parts (top) with the call-andresponse vocals of “Halele:” Musical Example 9.10: Notated excerpt of the “Erhu” and “Western String” interludes in “Halele” (mm. 1-7 of the full transcription presented in Appendix A). 254 Musical Example 9.11: Notated excerpt of the call-and-response vocals to “Halele” (these begin on mm. 19 of the full transcription presented in Appendix A). The instrumental accompaniment mirrors the vocal chorus line in the figures above; this element is also a characteristic of benga, in which the guitar line derives its form from the vocal part. This approach contrasts with the type of counterpoint melody that is characteristic of Congolesebased rumba and soukous guitar parts and is held by Kenyan musicians, such as Bukindu, to be a key distinction between the Kenyan genre, benga, and the Congolese-based soukous and rumba genres. Bukindu’s instrumental introduction and interludes then operate on a number of levels of signification referencing Somali-Kenyan, Kenyan, and global cultural spheres. Bukindu’s production of “Halele” additionally embraced the sort of pan-African signification that Makadem also incorporated in “Nyaktiti,” through his use of Cameroonian makossa rhythms.128 Symbolically referencing West Africa, Bukindu incorporated sampled percussion parts labeled after the West African Ewe instruments atsimevu and axatse. Musical Example 9.12: Notated excerpt of four measures of the repeated African Lion Atsimevu (top) and African Lion Axatse (bottom). While the sampled axatse and atsimevu marked pan-Africanism through West African instrumentation, Bukindu additionally infused a pan-Kenyan percussive sound sample. The iron leg rattles pictured and analyzed below are common to the music traditions of at least ten Kenyan ethnic groups, including the Gikuyu, Akamba, Turkana, Maasai, Taita, Kabras, Iteso, Pokot, Digo, Luo, and Kipsigis. Each ethnic group refers to the rattles by a different name (e.g. Luogara, Pokot- kerukoris, Iteso- esimane). The sound of these leg rattles is familiar to the wider 128 See Chapter 7 for examples of pan-African signification in Afro-fusion. 255 East African musical sound-scape as well and locally grounds the fusion of cultural signs operating within “Halele.” Figure 9.4: Photo of iron leg rattles used by Akamba ethnic group (photo by author). Musical Example 9.13: Audio excerpt of the repeated pattern of the sampled iron leg rattle in “Halele.” Musical Example 9.14: Noted excerpt of twelve measures of the repeated Leg Rattles part. Additional references to a pan-African style emerged through Bukindu’s perspectives on “quantization.” Quantization is a function of the Logic Pro software that orders rhythmic material according to various numerical presets. If the producer sets quantization to “32nd note,” the sound production software will move every recorded rhythmic articulation to the nearest 32nd note. Bukindu associated quantization with applying “numbers” to music, an approach he considered incompatible with an “African” musical process. He suggested that applying numeric organization to music potentially does more to sacrifice the groove when he stated, Bukindu: It won’t work if you start thinking numbers – with African music, if you start thinking numbers, it won’t work at all. You have to keep it very authentic. We don’t quantize. If you quantize, you lose the groove. Some grooves are just not there in the computer. Author: The music is generally not quantized? Bukindu: It’s not. Author: Hardly ever? Bukindu: Sometimes, when necessary but we prefer playing or sequencing rather than quantizing because it sounds more natural (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). 256 In the interest of upholding what he viewed as “African” cultural style in the music production process, Bukindu chooses to refrain from utilizing the quantize function. Bukindu’s use of the words “authentic” and “natural” to describe the product of resisting quantization, in addition to the imposition of numeric values on music, mark frames of reference for this particular construction of musical “African-ness.” Bukindu’s statement that, “some grooves are just not there in the computer,” referenced a function of Logic Pro software that quantizes according to various grooves. The Logic Pro quantization functionality enables the producer to set musical selections to a pre-programmed groove or “swing” by shifting notes into various rhythmic subdivisions. These swing presets intermittently displace notes by miniscule degrees of time duration. Quantization aims to expand the expressive potential of the producer. Bukindu found, however, that Logic Pro’s attempt to “swing” altered the rhythmic phrasing in a noticeably contrived fashion. Bukindu’s explicit reference to quantization as a non-African process additionally highlighted elements of postcolonial consciousness embedded in his interpretation of the working Afro-fusion genre concept. 9.4.3 Signifying Foreign Locals and Parallel Otherness Gargar signifies marginal dimensions of local in that Kenyan-Somalis, despite their large and growing population and a long historical presence in the country, often find themselves socially categorized as non-Kenyans. In many ways, Somalis retain an immigrant social status in the country, regardless of where they were born or how many generations their family has lived in Kenya. Kenyans of Indian ethnicity endure a similar foreign local status. Commonly referred to as “Kenyan Asians,” communities of Indian cultural descent have resided in Kenya for hundreds of years and comprised the majority of Nairobi’s population under British colonial rule. Although the Indian and Somali communities in Kenya do not commonly find themselves aligned with one another in their plight for recognition and acceptance as Kenyans, the blend of Indian and Somali music in “Halele” implies the state of parallel Otherness which both groups occupy. The mutual incorporation of these sounds of marginalization thereby exemplify the reconciliatory aims of Afro-fusion, dually promoted through the Spotlight on Kenyan Music initiatives and Ketebul Music’s mission. Bukindu extended beyond digital samples by hiring Prasad Velankar, an Indian tabla player who lives in Kenya and frequently collaborates on intercultural music projects. Although Prasad Velankar received “traditional” Hindustani tabla training under Ustad 257 Allah Rakha Khan, intercultural collaboration characterizes many of his performance ventures, making him a highly relevant performer to incorporate on Gargar’s project. He is a permanent member of the world music collective, Kachumbari 7, which describes itself as the “new Nairobi meltdown of Africa, Asia, and Europe” and which consists of musicians with cultural and musical ties to each of these continents. 129 Velankar is also an integral contributor to the Samosa Festival, a yearly NGO-music festival that features performance collaborations between Kenyan Asians and other members of Kenyan society. Given Velankar's personal practice of using music to connect various segments of Kenyan culture as well as global society, his presence on the Garissa Express (2011) album is as much a statement of cross-cultural social collaboration as it is a function of cultural fusions of sound. 9.4.4 Fusing “Traditional” and “Modern” As seen in Chapter 7, Ketebul Music staff and musicians frequently juxtapose notions of “traditional” and “modern” music. “Traditional” elements, according to Osusa, Bukindu, and other members of the Ketebul Music community, tended to include rurally-based, acoustic, and ethnically exclusive musical practices and instrumentation. Notions of “modern” music tended to reference prominent musical elements of the globalized contemporary culture-scape, which project undeniable ties to Western European and North American cultural imperialism and production. The iconic instruments of American popular music - electric bass, electric guitars, and drum set - manifest a certain dimension of this “modern” influence. Reflecting Osusa’s strategic blueprint for Afro-fusion to blend “modern” and “traditional,” the song “Halele” featured an electric bass track, lead and rhythm guitar, and a digital bass drum kick. Utilizing the standard palette of Western popular music instruments, Bukindu equally referenced an historical lineage of hybridization in African popular music genrefication as well as the continued historical call-and-response between the music culture of Africa and the United States. Demonstrating the intersections of Afro-fusion with many other popular music styles to emerge out of Africa over the course of the twentieth century, African musicians have adapted Western drum sets, electric guitars, and electric basses to many locally rooted styles. The result has been the development of several globally popular African music genres, including highlife, hip-life, and Afro-beat in West Africa and rumba and benga music in East Africa. On the other hand, the Afro-diasporic roots of American popular music, that canonized the instruments above 129 Kachumbari7 main Webpage (http://www.composers-uk.com/jimpywell/kachumbari7.htm, accessed 07.17.12). 258 as the globalized sound of commercial music, echo transmigrations of music culture that have occurred across the Atlantic since at least the African slave trade. Somali popular musicians have also adopted these instruments into their musical repertoires. Separating Somali popular music from the Gargar initiative, however, is the fact that none of the instrumentalists involved in the project, including Bukindu, were Somali. The album therefore presents a social and aesthetic cross-cultural signifier through the pairing of Somali, Indian, and Nairobian studio musicians. 9.4.5 Post-Production Figure 9.5: Gargar performing at the 2011 Sauti za Busara Festival (photo by author). After the production of the CD, Gargar received several offers to perform in concerts and festivals. From their initial Spotlight on Kenyan Music audition, Gargar’s music had shifted performance practice and context from the acoustic long form, improvisatory, large chorus saar they performed in Northern Kenya, to the fixed tempos and key signatures of the urban studio recording studio and finally, into complete live arrangements of the studio productions in which they were accompanied by a band of urban studio musicians. Gargar began performing their music live to complete the final phase of re-inventing themselves as Afro-fusion artists. Performing the studio-produced music live required that the group re-learn their original songs in their newly reworked studio produced form. I discussed this process with Bukindu as well as the keyboardist who performed their music at most of their concerts. I asked Bukindu if he had 259 assisted Gargar in the transition to live performance: Author: Have you assisted them or worked with them with the process of performing the music live? Bukindu: No, that’s mostly the band. At least they have the CD. They listen to the song then practice according to how it sounds on the CD. Author: Is it hard for them (Gargar) to practice with the band? Bukindu: Actually, the band has really tried. Gargar has never done this before. The first time in the studio then after one year, they are on stage (Bukindu 2011b, Interview). The keyboardist for many of Gargar's performances, Shadrack Muithia Makau, who is also the first call keyboardist for Makadem's band, discussed his experiences performing and rehearsing with the women of Gargar. He stated, We usually rehearsed with Gargar for a week or two before a performance. I am still cautious when we perform though because I don't know if I will have to change keys or move to a different part of the song. We always have a plan B when we are playing with new artists like Gargar (Shadrack Muithia Makau 2011, Personal Correspondence). Observing Gargar’s performance at Sauti za Busara in Zanzibar, I witnessed their struggle to adapt to the new performance context. Gargar, perhaps also struggling with nervousness at the experience of performing in front of an audience of thousands for the first time, occasionally became lost in the form of songs or modulated out of the key during the performance. Indeed, the Sauti za Busara stage was a drastically different performance setting than the weddings in Garissa or smaller, intimate performances at Alliance Française in Nairobi. As a result, the group appeared less familiar with the Afro-fusion renditions of their songs than with the saar that were featured in their Spotlight on Kenyan Music audition. Possibly as a result of the band’s adaptive skills as well as Gargar’s core vocal attributes, however, the Sauti za Busara audience members did not take notice of musical mishaps and instead demonstrated significant enthusiasm for the performance. Several reviewers of the event singled out Gargar’s performance as one of the highlights of the 2011 Sauti za Busara. The audience was also tremendously supportive. Within the opening twenty seconds of their first song, an attendee close to where I was standing yelled, “that’s what a real woman's voice sounds like!” I attributed his passionate positive reaction to the unique timbre of Gargar’s voices, which reflect the aesthetics of their Somali culture as opposed to imitating any number of more globally popular vocal styles, such as commercialized and highly produced R&B-based genres. 260 9.5 Conclusion This chapter further emphasized the ironic threads of global cultural production inherent in Nairobi’s NGO music culture through an examination of studio production at Ketebul Music. Global music technologies here simultaneously influence the modes of local cultural production while amplifying the expressive capacity of individuals who operate them. In this case, Ketebul Music’s chief studio engineer, Jesse Bukindu, manifested the organization’s mission through music production by fusing sounds of a Somali women’s vocal group with a myriad of styles and instruments of the global sound-scape. Locating a central irony within this process is the fact that Ketebul Music strives to support, empower, and promote local Kenyan culture; yet, the use of global technologies and musical influences incorporated during the studio production process undeniably infuse very global sounds cultural manifestations into the final musical product. In this case, a “rural” vocal style sung by Somali women with little experience recording in studios was transformed into an urban studio genre marketed within international NGO and World Music circuits. Such fusions invite questions regarding control and agency. Does Ketebul Music’s intention to advocate for the cultural expressions of a marginalized group of Somali women wind up altering the group’s musical identity in ways that betray that advocacy? What degree of agency do the Somali women of Gargar have in the production of their identity? The resulting musical products ultimately reflect the ethics of hybridization that occurs in the adaptation of an imported culture of NGOs. Both exemplify mediations of global culture (NGOs and studio recording technologies) in Kenya and provide opportunities as well as impose restrictions on those who engage with them. 261 CHAPTER 10 DOCUMENTARY FILM PRODUCTION AT KETEBUL MUSIC: MOLDING POSTCOLONIAL HISTORICAL DISCOURSE The problem that concerns me here - the absence of the postcolonial text, its reader, and its referent from postcolonial theory- is the result of a radical disjunction between postcolonial theory and postcolonial narratives. -Simon Gikandi in “Reading the Referent: Postcolonialism and the Writing of Modernity” (2000) in Nyairo (2004a)130 10.0 Conceptual Signpost This chapter ties together the accumulating themes of Part 2 and also returns to Part 1’s initial emphasis on the power of discourse. In Part 1, Chapter 2 and 3 documented how discourses of the global NGO industry have imprinted civil society-oriented music activities in Kenya. This chapter presents a contrasting perspective on global cultural production by documenting NGO music culture initiatives that are explicitly aimed at recasting “Kenyan” historical discourse from an East African and Kenyan perspective. I portray how a network of individuals in Kenya have collaborated to pool the resources of several NGOs and how they have forwarded discourses that challenge the predominant colonial and postcolonial narratives in North American and Western European cultural dialects. I will also re-connect with the contingent thread of Osusa’s life story. The historical video documentaries featured below intersect with Osusa’s musical life journey from Western Kenya, his life in the musical capital of Kinshasa, and his rise to the top of the East African popular rumba and soukous bands in the 1980s. The multi-media texts demonstrate that global discourse is self-determining as well as shaped by macro-political and economic forces. 10.1 Introduction This chapter will examine Ketebul Music’s documentary films as texts of a sociohistorical movement aimed at re-assessing postcolonial Kenyan identity. From 2008 to 2012, Simon Gikandi. 2000 “Reading the Referent: Postcolonialism and the Writing of Modernity,” in Reading the New Literatures in a Postcolonial Era, ed. Nasta, Susheila: D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 87-105. Joyce Nyairo, who this chapter features, referenced this excerpt by Gikandi in her 2004 dissertation “‘Reading the Referents’: (Inter)Texuality in Contemporary Kenyan Popular Music.” University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. 130 262 Ketebul Music produced four music documentaries on the history of Kenyan popular music, which were all funded by the Eastern Africa office of the Ford Foundation. These documentaries which are titled Retracing the Benga Beat (2008), Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010), Retracing Kenya’s Funky Hits (2011), and Songs of Protest: The Social and Political Revolution in Kenya (2012), were produced through the contingently linked and collaborative efforts of a cross-generational lineage of Kenyan postcolonial historical text-makers operating in the fields of African Studies, literature, music, and film production. Through the work of James Ogude, Joyce Nyairo, Tabu Osusa, John Sibi-Okumu, Patrick Ondiek, Steve Kivutia, and others, the historical documentaries contributed to the continuing project of promoting an empowered Kenyan historical consciousness. The themes presented in the historical narratives, reflecting sentiments and agendas of the social fabric that created them, reflect Ketebul Music’s organizational mission “to identify, preserve, conserve, and promote the diverse music traditions of East Africa.” They aim to construct history and shape Kenyan identity. Due to the intertextual realms utilized in these forms of media, the DVD video documentary, narrative booklet, and music CD significantly impact a wide audience. Figure 10.1: Cover art for Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right) (photo by author). Literary theorists have expanded the notion of a text to include a variety of forms of orality/aurality (Vansina 1985; Bakhtin 1986; Barber 1987; 2007; Fabian 1997; Nyairo 2004a) and multi-media formats such as television and film (Graddol and Boyd-Barrett 1994; Ryan 2004; Matheson 2005). Contexts of production have also become increasingly relevant to 263 determining dimensions of meaning and intention for any text (Renza 1990; Fabian 1997; Gikandi 2000; Nyairo 2004a). By attempting to build upon these theoretical and methodological trajectories through textual analysis, I will investigate Ketebul Music’s documentaries as texts using two contrasting interpretive lenses. First, I will utilize fieldwork-based ethnography to examine the social processes through which Ketebul Music produces documentaries. In particular, I will investigate the processes of funding and constructing the media. Then I will shift the focus from process to product in the second half of the chapter. Here I will explore latent and overt themes present in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). Before turning to these assessments, however, I present two short précis of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) to provide a foundation for subsequent analyses. During the time of my fieldwork, Ketebul Music had completed both Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). Retracing Kenya’s Funky Hits (2011) and Weapons of Mass Reconciliation: The Spotlight on Kenyan Music Experience (2011) was in production at this point as well. The discussion that follows is limited to Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) because these two came up most frequently during fieldwork interviews. 10.1.1 Synopsis of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) is an illustrated booklet, audio CD, and documentary that depicts the origins and historical development of the Kenyan popular music genre, benga. Benga, through the music of iconic stars such as D.O. Misiani, George Ojijo, and Dr. Collela Mazee among others, is arguably the most identifiably “Kenyan” popular music. The film features interviews with some of benga’s most influential musicians and producers, including Oluoch Kanindo, David Amunga, Samuel Aketch Oyosi, and Ochieng Nelly Orwa. In addition to providing one of the first historical records of the genre, the documentary emphasizes cultural borrowing, adaptation, and fusion within the historical development of the genre to suggest an underlying commentary on the fluid nature of Kenyan identity and contemporary African culture. The film depicts a confluence of post-World War II global musical and local musical traditions of the Luo ethnic group. Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) places the mid-twentieth century origins of benga in the Western provinces of Kenya surrounding Lake Victoria and the film traces the development of benga through its popularity and influence throughout Kenya and East Africa. The historical narrative is rendered in a diverse array of languages and dialects 264 throughout central and eastern Kenya and it highlights the influence on benga n Kenya’s “vernacular” popular music. The cross-influences deriving from benga’s contact with Congolese and Tanzanian rumba dance bands is also a key issue in the documentary. 10.1.2 Synopsis of Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010), like Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), is an illustrated booklet, audio CD, and documentary that provides a historical account of one of Kenya's most iconic musical legacies, Kikuyu131 popular music. The Gikuyu132 comprise the largest ethnic group in Kenya and the various manifestations of Kikuyu popular music genres therefore have been especially influential in the music culture of Kenya. Like Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) provides a historical document for purposes of cultural retrieval. The documentary also characterizes Kikuyu popular music as shaped by patterns of fusion, adaptation, and borrowing and therefore advocates for a similar view of Kenyan cultural identity. The documentary depicts nineteenth-century Gikuyu oral traditions and the encounters with British colonialism both to be prevalent streams of influence in the development of Kikuyu popular music. The historical narrative features the first wave of mid-twentieth century musicians of Kikuyu popular music and explores early borrowing by Kikuyu musicians of instruments, performance practices, and fashion styles from American country musicians. The film showcases the guitarist, singer-songwriter, and producer Joseph Kamaru (1938-present), who is one of the most influential Kikuyu popular musicians. The film illustrates patterns of exchange, transition, and fusion with Kikuyu popular music. It explores collaborations between Luo and Gikuyu benga guitarists, it features live roadshows and online music. Mugithi, which is the type of Kikuyu guitar music often referred to as “one-man guitar,” is arguably the most prominent contemporary Kikuyu genre and it is featured extensively in the second half of Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). The documentary excavates the origins of the genre and presents it as a powerful vehicle of cultural memory and nostalgia by tracing its spread to the Gikuyu diaspora in the United States and Europe. 131 When referring to the popular music of the Gikuyu ethnic group as a genre represented in Ketebul Music’s Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music I use the spelling “Kikuyu.” In all other cases I use the common “Gikuyu” spelling that is preferred among most Gikuyus in contemporary Kenya. Joyce Nyairo’s preface to Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music discusses the social politics and logic behind this system, which I will discuss in more detail later in this chapter. 132 Ibid. 265 10.2 Social Processes of Historical Documentary Production 10.2.1 Funding During my first meeting with Osusa, I asked him how he began making documentary films. He responded, “I felt that someone should start making documentaries about the history of Kenyan music so that the younger generation could learn about their own history. I had no idea how to make a documentary but I bought a camera and started to conduct interviews. We learned as we went along.”133 Like most of Osusa’s projects throughout the years, his initial intent to create documentaries was based on a perception of need within society rather than monetary reward. Osusa was increasingly motivated by the reality that musicians who played an important role in benga’s early history were dying and he wanted to preserve their cultural history. Osusa bought a camera and, assisted by Ketebul Music’s videographer Patrick Ondiek, and program manager Steve Kivutia, he began conducting interviews to document the history of the genre. Financial support followed shortly after Osusa began the process of filming. Through the perceived relevance of the vision behind the documentaries, the Ford Foundation’s Eastern Africa office has provided grants to Ketebul Music for the production of historical music documentaries since 2008. Osusa began the process of registering Ketebul Music as an NGO and he applied to the Ford Foundation for funding for the film Retracing the Benga Rhythm in 2006, which was the same year he began interviewing people and collecting information for the documentary. Writing a proposal for funding was a new experience for him and he worked with a grant writer who specialized in what he referred to as “NGO speak.” The approach paid off and in 2008 Ketebul Music received its first grant from the Ford Foundation for the amount of U.S. $138,800.134 The Ford Foundation has awarded Ketebul Music grants totaling U.S. $447,368 between 2008 and 2011.135 With this funding, Osusa was able to create documentary productions on a globally competitive and technologically sophisticated level. He hired professional researchers and technical staff, and he procured archival historical footage and technical equipment, and he targeted a wide audience through mass production and distribution. Though the Ford Foundation is a multi-tiered corporate nonprofit entity with several 133 Osusa 2011, personal correspondence. Ford Foundation online grant database (http://www.fordfoundation.org/grants/search, accessed 04.13.12). 135 Ibid. 134 266 international offices transnationally, the social networks through which this foundation funded Ketebul Music’s documentaries mirror the sorts of local ties described in Chapter 8’s review of the ways Alliance Française's funds Spotlight on Kenyan Music. Joyce Nyairo, the former director of Civil Society and Media projects and acting Executive Director of Ford Foundation Eastern Africa, was the primary granting administrator who oversaw the funding of Ketebul Music’s historical documentaries. In response to an email in which I ask Nyairo about the Ford Foundation’s reasons for funding Ketebul Music, she wrote, “In a nutshell, we chose Ketebul because they understand the importance of memory in the evolution of cultural identity. You might even call Tabu a walking musical archive” (Nyairo 2011, Email correspondence). Before her employment at the Ford Foundation, Nyairo served as a professor of literature, theatre, and film studies at Kenya's Moi University then later completed her Ph.D. in Literature Studies at South Africa's University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Nyairo's dissertation, which is titled “‘Reading the Referents’: (Inter)Textuality in Contemporary Kenyan Popular Music” (2004), examines Kenyan popular music both as a text that opens windows to the postcolonial Kenyan context and as a viable realm of social empowerment. For the dissertation, Nyairo conducted several interviews with Osusa, whose extensive knowledge of and experience in various avenues of the Kenyan popular music industry, provided a wealth of primary source information. At the time of Nyairo’s research, Osusa was working with Nairobi City Ensemble.136 This group was the central case study of Nyairo’s dissertation. 10.2.2 Forging Lineages of African Discourse Looking more closely at the social and monetary networks that structure Ketebul Music’s Retracing Series places the documentaries within a lineage of postcolonial African discourse dedicated to the dialogic project of working through a historical consciousness and reflexive identity through texts. The advisor to Nyairo’s dissertation was James Ogude, who is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History (1999). Ogude and Nyairo conducted joint interviews with Osusa during the fieldwork stages of Nyairo’s dissertation. Ogude, like Nyairo, is a longtime friend and professional colleague of Osusa and continues to consult Osusa on current projects as well. The relationship between Ogude, Nyairo, and Osusa reveals an intersection of intellectual 136 Chapter 5 provides a brief overview of Osusa’s Nairobi City Ensemble. 267 collaboration aimed at assessing Kenyan identity explicitly from a Kenyan perspective. In Ngugi’s Novels and African History (1999), Ogude examined the novels of the seminal Kenyan author, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Ogude primarily focuses on how Ngũgĩ works through the conceptual, social, cultural, and political complexities of African identity within the context of the African postcolonial nation state. Ogude, through his critical analysis of Ngũgĩ’s writings, consciously placed himself within a dialogic lineage of postcolonial identity construction. Nyairo, in her dissertation, for which Ogude served as the primary advisor, continued this process of postcolonial critical discourse construction. In “‘Reading the Referents’: (Inter)Textuality in Contemporary Kenyan Popular Music” (2004a), Nyairo argues for an expansion of the conceptual territory of a text to include popular music and the contexts that surround its production. Her claim is that processes of adaptation, fusion renewal are central to discourses about Kenyan identity construction. By addressing Ngũgĩ, she also places herself within the same lineage of discursive postcolonial selfexamination as Ogude does. She responds explicitly to Ngũgĩ ‘s call for the loyalty of African authors to publish exclusively in “ethnic” languages as opposed to colonial languages. In Decolonizing the Mind (1986), Ngũgĩ suggests throwing off colonial languages in literary text production as a step towards creating locally derived re-constructions of African identity. For Ngũgĩ, this meant publishing in his mother tongue of Gikuyu. Nyairo rebuts Ngũgĩ’s position on the exclusive use of ethnic languages by arguing for the legitimacy of Sheng as a language that reflects locally constituted negotiations of postcolonial space. On this point, Nyairo wrote, Not only have the actors on the postcolonial state significantly changed, the circumstances too have shifted the paradigms of language so that what was prevailing in the 1950s no longer obtains, while what was perhaps only nascent in the 1960s may now have thrived into a full-blown commonplace reality. To expect that the language nurtured a particular reality then --- and even then only for some and from many varying dimensions --- can still be alive, pertinent and efficacious in the present is to underrate the natural pattern of human progression... Ngũgĩ fails to anticipate the power and capacity of the emergent forms as credible reconstructions of native aspirations and cultural bearing in the present (2004: 248). Nyairo’s rebuttal of Ngũgĩ serves her larger agenda of advocating for the legitimacy of emergent forms of cultural expression, which manifest not only in her appreciation for the social impact of Sheng but also in the discursive power of popular music and other contemporary forms of expressive media. These epistemological agendas intersect with the funding of Ketebul Music's 268 documentaries. Nyairo’s advocacy for expressive discourses of fusion and transformation reflect her support both for the multimedia platforms and for the historical tropes of cultural borrowing and adaptation that the documentaries’ narratives promote. Nyairo explicitly echoes this recognition of the temporal mutations of expressive platforms in her forward to Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) when she writes, This is a project in cultural retrieval. It brings forgotten sounds and images back into the public circulation in formats that are accessible to a new generation of listeners and viewers. Ketebul's work is indeed important for reminding us that audio and audiovisual formats change all the time. But content is everlasting. And we have a social responsibility to make that content available to future generations for their use and re-use (Nyairo 2010). By examining the connections between these three individuals, it becomes clear that Osusa also pursued the documentary projects with the explicit intention of providing emic perspectives regarding the fluid contemporary Kenyan project of identity construction. To this point, John Kariuki paraphrased Osusa in a November 29, 2008 Daily Nation article reviewing Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) stated, Retracing the Benga Rhythm is remarkably one of the very few music research projects in Africa by Africans. Most of the other studies on African music have been conducted by overseas journalists and researchers. Talking about the project, Tabu Osusa of Ketebul Studios said, “Using our own researchers helped to capture nuances in the story that a foreigner may not find. We looked at it from a social perspective and allowed the musicians, the fans and the producers to tell their story” (Kariuki 2008). Ogude and Nyairo are both academics who are situated within disciplines where non-Africans produce the majority of published content, even in the case of content on the subject of African culture. The widely acknowledged ironic outcome is that, in a global academic community, Westerners have had a heavier hand in the textual interpretation of African culture than Africans themselves. Osusa, Nyairo, and Ogude correct this imbalance within the global mediascape by forwarding a body of African-produced and globally-distributed media that privileges the voices of Africans over Western scholars. Similar political dynamics exist in the world of documentary film and make Ketebul Music’s documentary production equally relevant to the wider movement of documentarians in the global south. For instance, in 2011 the Hot Docs organizers of the International Canadian Documentary Festival partnered with Blue Ice Films in providing U.S. $1,000,000 to African documentarians to produce documentaries about Africa. About the need for an increased presence of African documentaries produced by Africans, a Blue Ice Film 269 representative stated, There are countless documentaries made about Africa but not enough are made by Africans. The goal of the Fund is to enable more Africans to tell their own stories and contribute to a new generation of African film makers (Renninger 2011, Indiewire Magazine). By producing the Ketebul Music documentaries, Osusa thus becomes a significant agent in the cause of promoting African-made cultural and historical media. Such initiatives privilege local cultural perspectives while negotiating the reality of shifting modes of media production. Nyairo, Ogude, and Osusa are postcolonial generators of historical consciousness. The professional and ideological ties that bind them together illuminate some of the social underpinnings that inspired the Ford Foundation to fund Ketebul Music documentaries. Turning now to the process of the documentary production, the following section assesses Nyairo, Ogude, and Osusa also involved the lives of a younger generation of Kenyans. Steve Kivutia, Ketebul’s project manager and Patrick Ondiek, the videographer, are both younger than Osusa and Nyairo yet they were intimately involved with the process of creating documentary films from conception to completion. The result was a process of mentorship in which Kivutia and Ondiek actively participated in the process of constructing historical texts of their own Kenyan cultural heritage. 10.2.3 Media Production and Self-Directed Mentorship Patrick Ondiek and Steve Kivutia were the Ketebul Music staff members most intimately involved with the process of film production for Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). Ondiek led the filming and editing of the documentaries while Kivutia served as project manager in charge of logistics such as scheduling and setting up interviews. Kivutia, a skilled graphic designer, created the design of the packaging and narrative booklets for the documentaries. Throughout my interviews with Ondiek and Kivutia, I began to consider the ways in which the process of making historical documentaries about Kenyan music might have also served to facilitate a situation whereby Osusa could mentor younger staff members to continue his legacy of promoting Kenyan cultural heritage. Kivutia, in his mid-twenties at the time of this writing, and Ondiek, currently in his mid-thirties, are younger than Osusa, who is now in his mid-sixties. Yet Ondiek and Kivutia comprise the inner circle of contributors to the documentary projects. 270 Figure 10.2: Steve Kivutia (left) and Patrick Ondiek (right) (photos by Shino Saito). Osusa tended to hire younger professionals like Ondiek and Kivutia as opposed to older and more experienced professionals. I questioned Ondiek, Kivutia, and Osusa about this issue on different occasions. Osusa commented that he preferred to surround himself with younger professionals because they were eager to learn and able to imbue an empowered Kenyan culture in their peers through their influence. Osusa viewed passing on a sense of cultural and historical consciousness to a younger generation of Kenyans to be a paramount objective. Ondiek and Kivutia articulated a similar supposition about Osusa’s motivations. When asked about this issue, both replied that they believed Osusa surrounded himself with a younger generation because it increased the impact and relevance of his influence for future generations. The methods of acquiring historical information and the processes of filming and editing the documentaries are essential steps what is both a professional and cultural apprenticeship for the younger staff members at Ketebul Music. The following two sections, “Research and Information Gathering” and “Post-Research and Editing” describes the process of creating documentaries from the perspectives of Kivutia and Ondiek. 10.2.4 Research and Information Gathering Ondiek, and Kivutia both described the process of creating the music documentaries as a learning process from its initial stages. Ondiek described the documentary process as chaotic but one from which they learned lessons that they employed in Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010): Ondiek: A few years ago, Osusa told me that because we are losing a lot of good content, if we don’t preserve it, who will? That is when we did our first project three years ago, called Retracing the Benga Rhythm. 271 Author: That first time out, was that a learning experience for everybody? Ondiek: It was. Even the format, how we shot it was from the end. We didn’t have a shooting script, we were doing the research at the same time, and everything was being done at the same time. It was the first time doing such a project. From this, the next one became better and better, and as we move on, it becomes easier and easier. We can coordinate it much better. Author: What were some of the differences between how you put the Benga video together and the Kikuyu video, in the plan for instance? Ondiek: In the Benga documentary, we would just leave and start shooting. The Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music, we never left the studio without a work plan. We had a work plan for the whole year where we would know when we would be covering what each month. In Benga, we were just leaving! For example, you talk to this artist three months ago, we would hear that he’s playing Friday, and then we’d just go. It was crazy! In Kikuyu, we had a proper work plan. We knew the time frame we had, and even the editing process, it was all well worked out (Ondiek 2011, Interview). Despite the lessons he learned from producing Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), new challenges emerged for Ondiek in Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). He discussed how the prior creation of a script created problems, particularly when making a documentary on the subject of Kikuyu popular music. These new challenges resulted from social networking difficulties. Many older Gikuyu musicians, whose music had been stolen and appropriated, were wary of parties with whom they had no prior connections. Ondiek: I can’t say the shooting for the Kikuyu documentary was perfect either. The Gikuyu artists come from River Road – they control River Road. Since there’s a lot of piracy, it has created a lot of mistrust amongst the artists, the people, the distributors, and the whole industry. When you tell them that you are doing this project and you want to talk to them, they tell you, “Ok, we’ll talk to you next week,” so you can chase an interview for two weeks. One guy would say, “Yeah, I’m in Thika.” We’d go to Thika then we call him and he’d say no, I’m in River Road. Author: Is it because of nervousness? Ondiek: Trust issues. Then they’re calling other artists and asking about this group called Ketebul and asking what are they doing and whether they have talked to so and so also? Slowly, slowly, we started to get the big interviews we wanted. We had already made a script, so there were certain individuals that we needed. Without them, this story could not come together. For example, Kamaru, because he’s a big part of Kikuyu music, we had to have him on board. There was no way around it. After we got him, artists started to volunteer to be interviewed and the picture came together slowly by slowly. We were able to eventually get what we wanted (Ondiek 2011, Interview). The “script” that Ondiek referred to in the interview excerpt above is the outline of the film that the documentarians created using information gathered by the Ketebul Music staff and 272 contracted researchers. John Sibi-Okumu, the narrator of the documentaries, assisted in the creation of the script for Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). Ondiek and Kivutia discussed their admiration for Sibi-Okumu is an established figure in Kenyan media and journalism and whose insights were forged from vast experience, contributed greatly to the production of the documentaries. To create a “script,” Ketebul Music outsourced “researchers” who were especially knowledgeable about the particular subjects of the films. The “researchers” led the Ketebul Music staff to key interview subjects and provided historical information that they incorporated in the documentary. As additional ideas and directions emerged throughout the review of the interview material, staff collectively made additions and alterations to the script. Kivutia described the pre-filming “script” production process as follows: Kivutia: The process first begins with an idea. Tabu has had quite a bit of insight into what he wants to do. We started out with benga and Tabu came up with an idea of what he would like to cover. We would probably write a proposal. The proposal will state what you want to do and how you want to go about doing it. Then, you approach a donor. We have been lucky enough to get support from the Ford Foundation. From then on, we identify researchers, people who will be able to get a story line with the exact type of story line that you want to get out of it. Author: How do you find the researchers? Kivutia: Just by talking to people. Like for benga music, we know people who do benga music or people who are into that kind of scene. When we talked to them, we were able to identify people who will be knowledgeable about it and were able to know about subject matter. Then, we got researchers who went into the field and interviewed the relevant people to get the information needed. Also, we get some fact-based opinions from newspapers, magazines. Author: Archives also? Kivutia: Yes. We use photographic archives, as well. After collecting the material, then we sit down with Tabu and put the story in an order that flows. The material is then edited (Kivutia 2011, Interview). The primary subcontracted “researchers” that Ketebul Music enlisted to assist in the compiling of information for Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) were Moussa Awounda and George “Jojo” Ouma. Moussa Awounda was a well-established Kenyan journalist who, up until his passing in 2009, was living in Denmark and continued to report on Kenyan politics and culture as well as immigration issues in Denmark. George “Jojo” Ouma is a music producer and the owner of the Nairobi record shop, “Jojo’s Records,” which is well-known in music industry 273 circles.137 Dr. Maina Mutonya, Mwaniki Wanjohi, Sam Kiru, and John Kariuki were employed to work on Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). Dr. Maina Mutonya was the primary researcher for the project. Mutonya is a Kenyan professor of African Studies at Mexico College whose dissertation was written on the topic of Kikuyu popular music. An article featuring Mutonya’s research was published in The Standard titled: “Mugithi: Scholar Unravels Popular Music Roots and Lewd Lyrics” (Kiundu 2011). The article focused on the irony of the Christian origins of a widely-known style of Kikuyu music known as mugithi. The author claims, “Maina Wa Muntoya, a research professor at the Center for Asian and African Studies in Mexico did not shy away from the genre, which featured lewd lyrics. Ironically, lewd as mugithi may seem, it was adopted from Christian night vigils (keshas) where the faithful link up to ‘join the train to heaven’ with Jesus as the driver” (Kiundu 2011). This use of lewd lyrics in mugithi music is of course also a topic examined in Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). Although all of the Ketebul Music documentaries give substantial credit to outside “researchers” such as Ouma, Awounda, and Mutonya for gathering the information found in the documentaries, both Ondiek and Kivutia attest to the fact that Osusa, who draws from his lifelong involvement with Kenyan music, also provided a significant amount of the historical data. Discussing Osusa’s contribution to the research portions of the documentary Ondiek states, Author: So your original script was more or less a product that came out of information provided by outside researchers? Ondiek: Yes. We worked together with them. Even Tabu, he’s a big part of that. Author: So he also did some of the research as well? Ondiek: Exactly, and he had lots of information. In fact, he’s a big part of all of the projects we are doing. I have done lots of interviews, but I have not met anyone who knows as much as Tabu. Even if somebody, for example, forgets and says something occurred in 1965, Tabu says, no, no, the person was called this and this. Even while we are getting the interviews, he’s aware of everything. That is a big part of the success behind the projects Ketebul is doing (Ondiek, Interview 2011). This was surprising to me given the relatively low profile maintained by Osusa in the Ketebul Music films. The films only feature brief footage of one of his interviews [with the filmmakers]. Osusa’s low profile, however, is consistent with his tendency to remain a behind-the-scenes facilitator as opposed to a spotlight attraction. 137 Ouma and his assistants at “Jojo’s Records” also helped me build a collection of seminal music recordings from a cross section of genres. 274 10.2.5 Post-Research The post-research process at Ketebul Music was completed at the time of this writing and has consisted of the following stages: (1) shooting and conducting interviews; (2) logging footage; (3) editing; (4) packaging; and (5) distribution. All of the documentaries have followed this general system except for Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), which was simultaneously researched, scripted, filmed, and edited by the Ketebul Music team. With the help of Ondiek and Kivutia, Osusa conducted many of the interviews himself. Ketebul Music also commissioned “reenactment performances” in which performers of Kenyan “folk” music demonstrated the early influences and ethnic “roots” of a popular music genre. Ketebul Music contracted performances by influential musicians in the historical development of the respective genre. After conducting interviews and recording the commissioned performances, Ondiek logged footage from DV tapes onto hard drives. For Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010), and Retracing Kenya’s Funky Hits (2011), Ketebul Music outsourced labor to video editors in order to complete the tedious process of logging footage in a timely fashion. Although the editors were not Ketebul Music staff, they worked in the Ketebul Studio under the oversight of Ondiek and Kivutia. Due to a shortage of hard drive storage, Ketebul Music did not digitize all the interview footage and instead logged only those portions of interviews that they viewed as most relevant to the documentary script. However, Ondiek mentioned that Ketebul Music was planning on obtaining cameras and hard drives in the coming years so that the studio could replace the old tape technology with a complete digital archive of all filmed material. Figure 10.3: Patrick Ondiek in the Ketebul Music editing room (photo by Shino Saito). 275 After logging interviews and footage of music performances, Ondiek chose relevant excerpts to alternate with Sibi-Okumu’s “script” narrative that Jesse Bukindu, Ketebul Music’s chief studio engineer, recorded in the sound studio. Ondiek mentioned that he would eventually like to curtail the voice-over in order to “allow the interviews and performance footage tell the story” (Ondiek 2011, personal correspondence). He noted that the cinema verité style of filming was more challenging to execute in a historical documentary due to the lack of a narrator to guide the viewers’ focus on the subject. Throughout the filming process, Ketebul Music staff obtained photographs and footage from archives and private collections to include within the film. Ondiek located some of this supplementary historical footage from the community of videographers in Nairobi. He explained that most of the professional cameramen in Nairobi know each other and in the spirit of collegiality and professionalism frequently exchange material. Editors added photographs and archival footage in post-production using the Adobe Flash digital media editing program to create graphics for the documentary. Ketebul Music staff produced the accompanying music CDs for the documentaries during the final stages of production. The CD features the music showcased in the documentary. Kivutia and Osusa sought copyright permissions for the selections remastered by Bukindu and Kivutia in the studio. Figure 10.4: Photos of the CD/DVD packages of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right) (photo by author). Kivutia also designed and compiled a “narrative” booklet derived from the documentary’s “script” to accompany the documentary and music CD. The “narrative” booklet (pictured below) outlines key points of the history presented in the documentary while providing additional commentary and pictures. 276 Figure 10.5: Photos of the informational booklets of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (left) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (right) (photo by author). After composing the separate multimedia components of the package, Ketebul Music typically electronically sends the material to the Pozzoli Printing Company in Italy for packaging. Kivutia suggested that Ketebul uses the Italian vendor because it is difficult to find a distribution company located in Kenya that could achieve the same sophisticated quality as the Pozzoli Company has. Figure 10.6: Steve Kivutia in the Ketebul project management room (photo by Shino Saito). The analysis above examines social processes that constitute the production of documentary media at Ketebul Music. Partnerships, exchange, self-directed learning, 277 mentorship, and innovation characterize the social action behind documentary production at Ketebul Music. These social processes inform sources of economic sponsorship, the production of a media “script,” and internal dimensions of mentorship reflected in the documentaries’ educational purposes. A uniquely utilitarian dimension of the Ketebul Music documentaries is their multi-textual components. By exploring the historical subjects in a variety of mediums, Ketebul Music maximizes their potential to promote a particular view of Kenyan music culture to audiences. By assessing Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) below, I will shift my analytical lens from social-ethnography to textual analysis and explore how overt and latent themes presented in the Ketebul Music documentaries feed back into the social processes discussed above as well as those reflected in Ketebul Music’s organizational mission. 10.3 From Process to Product: Textual Analyses of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) and Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) The main themes expressed in Ketebul documentaries address organizational culture and the social processes that create it. In the textual analysis that follows, I use these themes to present a more nuanced depiction of Ketebul Music’s mission. The mission, “To identify, preserve, conserve and to promote the diverse music traditions of East Africa” is realized through the creation of historical documentaries about Kenyan music; but like all historical texts, the films promote a specific version of history. They include stated and latent agendas of Ketebul Music’s organizational ethos, which certainly also reflects Osusa’s perspectives. Indeed, the three themes presented below echo many of the same themes presented in the previous chapters and they (the themes) reveal that the documentaries present a version of history that is consonant with Ketebul’s mission. The section titled “Subversion of Popular Discourse” promotes counterhistorical narratives about the origins and influences of benga music and advocates for marginalized voices that Osusa and other Ketebul Music staff attempt to manifest. This focus on music and media that brings about social change is in line with Osusa’s preferences and philosophy of Ketebul Music. The section titled “Polyvocality” illustrates Ketebul’s preference for producing diverse strains of creative expression and, by presenting various accounts of benga history, I attempt to retain a broad conceptual frame that synthesizes diverse perspectives on music, culture, identity, and history. The final section, “Cultural Fusion” projects the core tenants of Afro-fusion as a genre. This is perhaps Ketebul Music’s most imperative organizational agenda. The analysis of Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music’s (2010) in this final section shows 278 converging streams of cultural influence; the depiction of Kikuyu music in this film promotes a version of music history and identity in Kenya that is defined by adaptation, borrowing, and fusion. 10.3.1 Subversion of Popular Discourse in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) subverted dominant discourses and introduced new historical narratives that privileged previously marginalized musicians in several ways. By replacing D.O. Misiani with John Ogara as the central figure in the development of benga music, the Ketebul staff attempted to detract from the power of the commercial market to establish the primary of certain musicians in the development and creation of genre. Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) also bridged ethnic divides by demonstrating that, although benga was initially a Luo style, many other ethnic groups in Kenya freely borrowed from the genre. This aspect of benga’s development is widely acknowledged, yet the recent attention to cultural borrowing in Ketebul’s documentaries has subverted some of the ethnic tensions that have characterized the modern history of Kenya. This historical perspective is of particular relevance to the present Kenyan context of social unrest and ethnic tension that has been a persistent struggle throughout Kenya’s history. The documentary also makes an attempt to situate benga music as a Kenyan popular genre that had significant influence on Congolese music. By demonstrating that Kenyan music cultures like benga also influenced the development of rumba and soukous music in the Congo, this documentary also contests the established discourse about the history of Congolese popular music. 10.3.1.1 The King of Benga D.O. Misiani has widely been referred to by fans, musicians, and music journalists as “the grandfather of benga” and even the “king of Kenyan history.” Although he is featured in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) as an important figure who was responsible for popularizing benga, James Ogara is characterized as the true progenitor and most significant innovator in the early history of the genre in this documentary. The film features interviews with influential benga producers Oluoch Kanindo and A. P. Chandarana, who cite Ogara as the originator of the style, and includes extensive interviews with the original band members of Ogara’s band, Samuel Aketch Oyosi and Ochieng Nelly Orwa. 10.3.1.2 Historical Narratives of Ethnic Exchange Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) also promotes the idea that cultural exchange has 279 been vitally important in the history of benga. The film explores how many ethnic groups from the Nyanza province adopted this genre into their own practices despite its origins in the music of the Luo people. Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) was a direct response to the violence and politically-driven ethnic tensions that occurred in 2007. In the Western province, the Luhya shared early musical influences with Luo benga musicians. Like the benga musicians in Luo Nyanza, people from South Nyanza began to utilize performance opportunities in small-market towns, and the Kisi, who maintained large settlements in this area, began performing benga style music with Kisi lyrical content. Francis Danger, a guitarist of Akamba heritage, discussed how Akambas also borrowed freely from the benga genre. The influence of benga on Gikuyu musicians is of special significance to the historical narrative that is presented in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008). Despite the perceived tensions between the Luo and Gikuyu people in Kenya, benga has been an important expressive form shared by both groups. The documentary asserts that Daniel Kamau Mwai (D. K.), one of the most popular Gikuyu musicians in Kenya, utilized elements of benga in much of his music. In doing so, he was able to perform at the Luo Nyanza market and to cross over to this audience. In his voice-over narration, Sibi-Okumu cites D.K. as remarking, “Good music doesn’t have a tribe. It is the best tool to fight tribalism and stupidity which our politicians are good at using to divide Kenyans” (Sibi-Okumu 2008, voice-over narration Retracing the Benga Rhythm). 10.3.1.3 Kenyan Influences in East African Rumba In Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), the filmmakers also explore the influence of Kenyan styles of benga and the popular Congolese dance music variously titled rumba, soukous, and lingala. The film contains excerpts of interviews with significant figures in Congolese music, such as widely acclaimed guitarist and former member of Orchestra Virunga, Syran M’benza. M’benza identifies a typical musical feature of Congolese rumba in the 1960s; each tune would begin as slow dance and then move into faster sections later. Although he did not use specific terminology in the interview, M’benza was most likely describing rumba’s two-part structure that featured a slow dance section followed by an up-tempo seben. Franco Luambo popularized the seben in the 1950s and the bipartite format characterized much of the Congolese rumba in the following decades. A cavacha rhythm, faster tempo, and repeated shouts and witty phrases known as atalaku were hallmarks of these sections (White 2008: 56). In contrast with the slow and fast dance tempos of rumba, M’benza described benga as characterized by fast dance 280 sections that sustained throughout the entire duration of the song as opposed to alternating with slower sections. He stated that when Congolese musicians witnessed the effect of these fast tempos on Kenyan audiences, they began to copy the faster benga style, which eventually led to the faster paced dance music sometimes referred to as soukous that emerged in the 1970s and dominated for the following decades. The documentary also features an interview with perhaps the most influential benga producer, Oluoch Kanindo, about the power of the Kenyan music production industry to impact on Congolese rumba. Kanindo states that his production house, which at one time distributed the music of Collela Mazee and D.O. Misiani, became so powerful that Congolese musicians such as Tabu Ley, Franco, and Mbilia Bel came to visit him personally. Kanindo said this was because Kenyan benga record sales began to threaten the large market for Congolese music in Kenya. The aggressive production and marketing strategies of producers such as Kanindo, Chandarana, and others cultivated the vibrant music industry of River Road, which has remained active even after international record labels such as EMI and Polygram abandoned Kenya in the 1980s due to dwindling record sales. As discussed in Chapters 4 and 6, this void was primarily the result of rampant music piracy, the AIDS epidemic, and the globalization of music media, which privileged Western pop music over other genres.138 10.3.2 Polyvocality in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) does not impose an essentialist view on history. Instead, the interviews and narrative text in the documentary depict benga’s history as one that is constructed, even disputed, and therefore polyvocal as opposed to monochronic and orderly. Although Ogara was portrayed as one of the early pioneers of the genre in Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), the film shows that benga is also a product of various cultural contexts. These influences even compete with one another for primacy depending on the perspective of the musician, producer, or historian who is being interviewed at any given time during the film. 10.3.2.1 The Origins of the Word Benga There is much debate about the origin of the word benga. In Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), the influential guitarist Ochieng Nelly states that the word benga originated in Uganda when he and Ogara’s group were playing what at the time was referred to as “Ogara-style” or 138 See Chapter 4 for a more detailed account of the departure of the transnational music industry in Kenya. 281 “match.” Nelly goes on to recall that the way the Ugandan women danced to Ogara’s music was such that their clothes were being carried off by the wind. The musicians in Ogara's group began to shout out the words “obeng’ore” (“the clothes are loose” in Luo). “Obeng’ore” eventually developed into the word benga. A contrasting perspective on the origins of the word is D.O. Misiani's assertion that it came from his mother's name which was “Obengo.” JoJo and Osusa, two producers who were interviewed for Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) suggest that the word benga came from the Lingala word “bolingo” (“love” in Lingala). This word appeared in some of Ogara’s compositions, such as the song “Monica Ondego” (1963), which is also one of the first songs recorded in which the word benga is found. Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) presents history as socially constituted and consisting of multiple realities depending on the perspective of the historian. 10.3.2.2 Competing Early Influences John Sibi-Okumu, who is the narrator of Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), states in the beginning of the film that the roots of benga are in the sound of the “traditional” Luo nyatiti performance. Immediately following this assertion, benga guitarist Dr. Keffa Mak'anyengo contradicts Sibi-Okumu’s claim by stating authoritatively that oruto music had the most significant influence on benga’s early styles. Later, Peter F. Kenya, who is a musician and lecturer in the Community Development Program at Kenyatta University, suggests that benga emerged primarily through the spread and influence of Congolese popular music throughout East Africa. About the nyatiti influences in early benga, Sibi-Okumu states, The tempo of the nyatiti being played coupled with the rhythmic thumping of an iron bangle harnessed to the player’s toe are considered by many to be the crucial links to modern benga. The nyatiti first influenced single note picking style on the acoustic guitar before eventually formed the roots for the high and low pitched electric and bass guitar (Sibi-Okumu 2008, voice-over narration, Retracing the Benga Rhythm). During Sibi-Okumu’s statement excerpted above, the documentary features a video of a nyatiti musician, whose performance can be heard at a lower volume than the narrator’s voice. Immediately after this statement by Sibi-Okumu, the scene cuts to an interview with the benga guitarist Dr. Keffa Mak’anyengo who states, Benga came and it was a very unique kind of style that was based on the orutu. With the orutu's single string it allows you to play so much with it and there is a kind of undulating style that the people use. Now, this is what a lot of guitarists borrowed. They take advantage quite a lot of this... there is an effect that has on 282 the ear. It kind of wakes you up (Mak'anyengo 2008, Interview in Retracing the Benga Rhythm). To further complicate readings of early influences on benga, Peter F. Kenya suggests benga emerged mostly from Congolese influences. He asserts that early Luo guitarists were playing the guitar in a more typically European style. This style was “good for storytelling and having a good time,” but the musicians were not very concerned with having “a beat” for dancing. He adds that, when musicians such as Edward Masengo came to Kenya playing rumba, the Luo audiences and musicians thought the Congolese rumba style sounded more civilized. Then musicians such as Jose Kokeyo began copying it. Kenya goes on to state the youth of the 1960s found the slow rumba style to be a bit boring due the independence movement. Finally, he implies that a fusion occurred between Luo nyatiti-influenced guitar playing and dance tempos, rumba-influenced benga, and Luhya music, omutibo. The person whom he credits with creating this fusion and popularizing this style is John Ogara. Kenya faults Ogara, though, for later becoming overly influenced by rumba after teaming up with Ochieng Nelly Orwa, a Luo guitarist who performed in some of the most established rumba dance bands of the 1960s and 1970s. The perspectives on the origins of benga are left unreconciled in the documentary, suspended for the viewer to interpret these perspectives about the early origins of benga as either overlapping or divergent. The multitude of historical trajectories regarding early influences on benga, however, must not necessarily be read as oppositional. The viewer can reconcile them by construing benga to have been heavily influenced by Luo nyatiti and orutu styles as well as the popular Congolese rumba music that traveled to Nyanza from Zaire. 10.3.2.3 Varied Perspectives on Style In addition to presenting a multitude of perspectives on benga’s roots, Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) also explores the genre’s fundamental stylistic characteristics; that is, the core attributes that distinguish benga from other musics. The perspectives of those interviewed on this topic were as varied as the performances within a genre, which differ from musician to musician, region to region, and time period to time period. For instance, David Otieno states that the distinguishing characteristic of benga music is the fact that lead guitar mirrors the melody of the lead vocal line. He adds that the rhythm guitar and bass guitar do this as well but have more freedom to embellish than the lead guitar. Immediately following the statement by David Otieno, the Akamba benga guitarist, Francis Danger, claims that the primary difference between benga 283 and other popular music in East Africa is that the guitarist plays two chords and the drum has a more consistent beat than other styles. Although these accounts do not necessarily conflict with one another directly, they suggest that different artists emphasize different distinguishing characteristics of the genre. Their perspectives are necessarily valid given their central role as musicians intimately involved in performing the genre. In this way, the dimensions of benga’s key stylistic attributes become a matter of social debate as opposed to formally inscribed performance practices. 10.3.3 Reconciliation and Cultural Hybridization in Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) One element that distinguishes Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) from Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008) is that Osusa was not as knowledgeable about Kikuyu popular music history as he is about benga music. This discrepancy caused him to rely heavily on outside researchers for the creation of Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010). Given the perceived tensions between the Luo and Gikuyu ethnic groups in Kenya, Osusa’s choice to create a documentary on Kikuyu popular music after creating a documentary about benga, a genre with Luo roots, served also as a reconciliatory move by equally recognizing the important contributions of each ethnic group to Kenya’s cultural heritage. 10.3.3.1 Fluid Culture in Joyce Nyairo’s Preface to Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010), like Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), asserts the historical perspective that cultural expressions that are associated with one ethnic group, in this case the Gikuyu, are shaped by numerous influences and are forever changing. To this effect, Joyce Nyairo wrote in her foreword to Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010), Contemporary African culture [is] fluid, mutable, and aggregated from many years of borrowing and exchange. This project demonstrates those trajectories of borrowing. From the incorporation of Christian hymns, to the adaptation of the accordion, the mimicking of American country music, the entry of the guitar and the appropriation of Luo and Luhya rhythms, Kikuyu popular music is shown to be a rich site of cultural exchange and fusion (Nyairo 2010, foreword to Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music). This view forwards additional reconciliatory sentiments by demonstrating that flows of exchange within and between culture groups surmount the social divides that so often characterize conflict. In her foreword, Nyairo also defends the choice to use the anglicized spelling “Kikuyu” as opposed to the emic spelling “Gikuyu.” She writes that, although the producers of the 284 documentary engaged in many heated debates over which spelling to use, they chose “Kikuyu” in order to relay a more international and intercultural reference point for a diverse viewing audience. In this dissertation, I have also adopted the spelling “Kikuyu” when describing the popular music but employ the spelling “Gikuyu” when referring to a person or people belonging to that community. This compromise is meant to address the position of this text as a scholarly work and also to respect the perspectives of those who find the anglicized spelling offensive. Nyairo suggested that the varied spellings of Kikuyu/Gikuyu as well as the internal debates regarding its proper usage reflect the story of intercultural communication and adaptation that also characterizes Kikuyu popular music. 10.3.3.2 Colonial Suppression Each section of Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) presents Kikuyu music as undergoing cultural hybridization in response to social contexts of the time. The documentary describes the colonial periods of Kikuyu music culture during which musicians reacted to the constant onslaught of cultural censorship of British rule. The narrative describes how the British missionaries forbade the practice of “traditional” music, deeming it heathen and unchristian. The British forces recognized early on that song became a source of protest and subversion to colonial domination so much so that by the 1930s the British had banned all music performance by Gikuyus and other ethnic groups as well. All of these measures of cultural censorship by the colonial presence had a devastating effect on the music traditions of the Gikuyu. As a result, much of the instrumental traditions of the Gikuyu became obsolete. The documentary describes how during the colonial period, Nairobi became an urban center of cultural confusion that threatened the stability of ethnic systems of governance. It was this context of cultural chaos, so the documentary asserts, that set the stage for Kikuyu popular music that was characterized by constant evolution, exchange, and transformation. 10.3.3.3 Post-World War II Influences By examining an early generation of Gikuyu popular musicians, Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) illustrates that after World War II the accordion and the acoustic guitar became staple instruments within the Gikuyu community due to extensive contact with European culture through military operations. The documentary depicts a second generation of Gikuyu musicians who borrowed from American media. These musicians began emulating country musicians who were then popularized by the emergence of the Hollywood film industry. In 285 addition to employing an acoustic guitar singer-songwriter style, Stetson hats and cowboy boots had become commonplace in the wardrobes of Gikuyu musicians and their fans alike. 10.3.3.4 Rise to Popularity on the National Stage The documentary portrays a third generation who was catapulted into the national recording music industry as a result of Kikuyu music’s growing popularity. These musicians intermingled, borrowed, and exchanged with the already popular benga music genre, particularly at the site of the River Road recording studios. These intersections of cultural exchange also manifested also manifested when Gikuyu artists recorded at River Road and hired Luo musicians to play on these albums. Most of the musicians at this studio were indeed benga musicians of Luo ethnic heritage and therefore Kikuyu popular music recordings began to incorporate the rapidly proliferating benga rhythms, tempos, and lead guitar sound. Gikuyu politicians utilized the increasingly popular music to support their political campaigns, a tactic that Mwai Kibaki also used in his successful 2002 bid for presidency. During this period of popularization, musicians adopted new modalities for performance. Particularly notable among these were traveling “road shows” that are funded by companies or politicians. During these exhibitions, Gikuyu musicians performed from the back of trailers that traveled from neighborhood to neighborhood promoting the agendas of its sponsors. During my fieldwork, I came across these musical spectacles on many occasions, particularly at locales of heavy matatu traffic where many people often congregate. There was usually a large crowd of onlookers witnessing the performances of music and comical theater presented in the truck-trailers-turned-stages. 10.3.3.5 The Emergence of Mugithi Yet another music cultural transition featured in Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) occurred for Kikuyu popular music in the 1990s and continues presently. Kikuyu popular music became largely associated with “one-man guitarists” who play a style of Kikuyu popular music commonly referred to as mugithi. “One-man guitarists” rely primarily on “standards” from a now socially recognized Kikuyu popular music canon. The transition to “one-man guitarists” came about, in part, as a result of the fact that smaller groups were less expensive to hire than the larger groups. There were psychosocial factors as well. The popular songs of previous generations of Gikuyu stars had created a catalogue of music that evoked in audiences a sense of nostalgia on which artists could capitalize. The emergent Kikuyu zilizopendwa “one-man guitarist” style came to be known as mugithi. Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) asserts 286 that the word mugithi, meaning “train” in Gikuyu, derived from the popular Pentecostal Gikuyu hymn, “Mugithi wa Matu-ini,” which means “the train to the heavens” in Gikuyu. During performances, audiences would act out the lyrics of the song by creating a human train, resting their hands on the waste of the person in front of them and dancing the circumference of the club. Eventually this practice came to characterize the end of a one-man guitar evening. It was commonplace for “one-man guitarists” to borrow freely from other musicians and even create their own lyrics to others’ melodies. 10.3.3.6 “One-Man Guitarist” Controversies The frequent borrowing of musical material by “one-man guitarists” has become a matter of some controversy, especially by those who view the style to be a desecration to a tradition of Kikuyu popular music. Some interviewees featured in the documentary express the view that “one-man guitar” performances enact music theft without acknowledging copyright obligations. This claim has some validity as many “one-man guitarists” gain notoriety by performing and even recording songs written by other artists. Nonetheless, Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) presents these arguments objectively and makes the case that “mugithi nights,” the name of club nights featuring an entire night of mugithi music, certainly contributed to the popularization and preservation of Kikuyu popular music. As a result, Ketebul Music presents mugithi as yet another developmental node in the constantly shifting sociocultural and historical contexts for Kikuyu popular music. 10.3.3.7 Kikuyu Popular Music in Cyberspace Finally, Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) demonstrates the ways technology has influenced Kikuyu music and the film explores the spread of Kikuyu popular music on YouTube and Gikuyu radio stations (such as Kameme FM), which has made programming accessible to a global market through online streaming. These forms of technology have helped popularize Kikuyu music outside of Kenya and have provided opportunities for Gikuyus living outside of Kenya to remain participants in their tradition as well as for non-Gikuyus to become exposed to the genre. 10.4 Conclusion This chapter shifted the analytical lens from the previous chapter’s illustration of the power and politics of technology to the far reaching consciousness-shaping potential of discourse. I explored the processes and filmic products of Ketebul Music with an emphasis on 287 the voices and perspectives of the creators of the historical texts. I examined social processes behind the construction of the multi-media packages created by the studio, and I have attempted to demystify the media text as a static product. These video texts emerge as products of crossgenerational social networks that are bonded by shared interests and ideals. They construct historical discourses of Kenyan popular music from a Kenyan perspective with the explicit intention of promoting renewed historical consciousness. I also forwarded an analyst-imposed reading of two of these documentaries that emphasized latent and overt meanings within the texts as representative of the social and organizational milieu that created them. In exploring Retracing the Benga Rhythm (2008), I illuminated polyvocality in the discourse about the history of this genre. Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (2010) also projects themes of cultural hybridization and mutability that respond to perceived cultural divides within Kenya’s reconciliatory themes of exchange. 288 CHAPTER 11 CONCLUSION: LOCATING MEANING IN CONTINGENT REALMS OF GLOBAL CULTURE Our theories and units of analysis are themselves made in regional-to-global as well as global-to-regional histories. - Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2009: 12) 11.1 Introduction The foregoing assessment of the impact of NGO culture on music production in Kenya provides a model case study for conceptualizing globalization. Globalization, global civil society, and NGO music culture are not singular entities characterized by consonant themes or frameworks. Instead, the ethnographic project of locating reducible and static cultural norms and shared values gives way to a myriad of perspectives in constant motion and contention. Ultimately NGO music culture, and by extension global culture, emerges as hyper-relational and contingently bound. Earlier chapters demonstrated these contingent dimensions and emphasized funding sources in the Global North and the Western cultural history of NGOs as the primary influencing agents of NGO music culture. The Western cultural history of NGOs infused the neoliberal capitalist symbolic tropes of “development” and “nonprofit” into contemporary NGO discourses and the texts of its affiliated forms of musical performance. Concurrently, revenue streams flowing particularly from Europe and North America manifest foreign patronage for NGO music initiatives meant to address local issues. Despite these depictions of global shaping local, the analysis of the NGO music studio, Ketebul Music in Part 2 demonstrated that individuals and organizations in Kenya resourcefully have found ways to utilize NGO networks to reify their own pasts, promote local identity, and construct new forms of expression. The notion of local influences, however, appears contingently situated as the politics of institutional partnerships, the use of global technologies, and rendering of historical discourses unavoidably generate hierarchies of influence and power between Kenyan-based participants and organizations. Finally, manifestations of local also shape and overtake global influence as NGO sponsored artists such as Makadem, Kenyan producers such as Tabu Osusa, administrators such as Harsita Waters, and sound engineers such as Jesse Bukindu market Afro-fusion to the transnational 289 World Music industry. These agents of “global connection” (Tsing 2005) illustrate that the ideas and actions of those often typecasted as “marginal” in the demography and geopolitics of global economies play a substantial role in determining global ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes (Appadurai 1996). 11.2 Balancing Broad and Specific, Macro and Micro, Global and Local The contingently situated vantage points scanning relative scales of global to local reconcile two different methodological approaches common to the study of globalization within the humanities and social sciences. While broad comparative illustrations highlight trends and themes that mark larger cultural contexts often at the transnational level, they often fail to access nuanced subtleties of human interaction and exceptions to the norm. These variables are at the heart of cultural change and social development and are therefore highly relevant to assessing global trends in human behavior. Although the themes of neoliberalization and global capitalism that mark the broad historical and comparative examination of global civil society are relevant to one contingent frame, they do not completely define NGO music activity. Regional, national, and local contexts generate significant variances that deconstruct any general illustration. Conversely, the close range and socially involved dimensions of participant observation manage to unearth detailed accounts of why certain people in specific locales do what they do; yet these accounts risk imprinting the variances of individual informants with whom fieldworkers engage onto the wider communities that the informants represent. Such generalizations will always be problematic in the wide and diverse frame of global culture. Therefore more localized monographic account of Ketebul Music should not read as a representative sample of a larger whole; instead, it provides a case study of contingent possibility within broad and constantly shifting sociocultural circumstances. 11.2.1 Macro and Micro Contingencies: Making the Case for an Oppressive and Hopeful World Reconciling broad and specific, macro and micro, or global and local poles engenders the view that all variables have relevance in the production of culture. I am tempted here to romanticize this perspective by praising the value of agency. I have attempted to provide examples of global NGO music production in which the actions of a few individuals significantly influenced larger contexts. Although I have attempted to show that individual agency and the “micro-contingencies” of circumstantial consequence among individuals and groups have potentially impactful repercussions on global culture, I have also attempted to argue that “meta290 contingencies” (transnational politics and economics, for example) are persistently influential and relevant forces that are not easily subverted.. As such, the contingent stance of this dissertation provides two opposing depictions of global culture. The first of these is critical and suggests that the historical trajectories of colonization and global capitalism have left most individuals of the Global South at an unfair and unequal advantage when compared with opportunities provided in the Global North, particularly in Western Europe and North America. The second view is more positive and argues that global capitalism does not necessarily beget merciless oppression. Indeed, resourceful individuals in the Global South find great success pursuing creative approaches to capitalist enterprise. In doing so, they empower themselves and local communities. But these individuals do not rely on agency or skill alone. Their contingent surroundings present them with opportunities as well. The themes of agency and environmental conditioning hold equal weight in this ethnographic account of NGO music culture. These themes identify the dynamic nature of contingency to draw relations between rationally incompatible variables. Contingency’s acknowledgment of additional conditions, which may have bearing on resulting processes invites further consonant and contradictory entanglements into the project of mapping global culture. These layered contingencies forward a mosaic construction of globalization rather than monolithic culture. 11.3 Deconstructing Representation In the final analysis, attempting to capture the essence of globalization reveals more about latent ideologies of academic research than it does about global culture as an object of interrogation. The contradictory and ironic entanglements that characterize NGO music culture break down the persistent post-Enlightenment tradition of reduction, rationalization, and representation of “reality.” Moreover, the Western classical anthropological tradition of approaching culture as a study of the “Other” also becomes untenable, for the culture of globalization forces the researcher into its all-encompassing scope. These problematics remind us that culture is neither bound, nor static, nor rational. Researchers’ subjective engagement with certain units of analysis and not others necessarily limits any representations of culture. The contingent circumstances of encounter between researchers and their subjects also shapes this inescapable state of subjectivity. 291 11.3.1 Locating Meaning in the Contingent Realm of Global Culture If representations of globalization, or any other cultural construct are subjective, can there be any meaning in the project of cultural representation? Contingency provides a pragmatic response to this question. The rhetorical properties employed by Plato, Rorty, and many others free contingent depictions from the confines of necessity, logic, or rationality. This dissertation’s illustrations of the relational variables that comprise NGO music culture thus does not reach for “reality” in any absolute sense. Nor are the themes emphasized in each chapter (discourse, technology, semiotics, politics, etc.) the best, most logical the only way to order the cultural field of NGO-affiliated music contexts in Nairobi. Perpetually shifting contingencies that shape personal experience insist that even my own evaluations of the words within this document will change over time. Contingently linked processes rely on an audience to perceive their inherent meaning. By reaching out and forming communities of thought and interaction, it is an agent of reification and transformation. A contingent ethnography such as this aims to manifest meaning through the social connections and ruptures that it evokes amongst its readers. In short, the social reception of the preceding illustrations will determine the legitimacy of these texts more than any imagined objective “truth” or “reality.” 11.4 A Contingency-Induced Pragmatically Reflexive Statement Given the reception-based dimensions of contingent depiction, I sculpted this text with specific readerships in mind. Most immediate among these is the community of academics (ethnomusicologists, musicologists, anthropologists, and all other related fields) who determine the socially and institutionally generated culture through which further pursuit of a career in this field will be evaluated. I must be self-effacing about my reasons for producing this document. I seek a career in the aforementioned academic community and I must publish this work in order to qualify as an active member of this group. Those in Kenya who gave me their time and trust and with whom I hope to maintain relationships in the future are also of central importance to the construction of this text. My sense of obligation to these research partners in Kenya stems from a contingently situated value system that emphasizes responsibility. Finally, the document speaks to an audience that the contingencies of time and circumstance will determine. I cannot know who this audience will be, so I am left to write what I feel is important and valuable and hope that they will see its content as relevant and valuable to their lives and worldviews. 292 Because the audiences of this text are so enmeshed in its construction, they too become part of the subject. Contingent relationships link the creation of a text to its readers. Because ethnographers are keenly aware of this, the writing and research process is linked to both contemporary and future networks of ideas. The patterns of creation that give way to a contingent ethnography also reflect the ethos of civil society. And like the relevance of personal experience to the formation of the NGO music activities by individuals such as Tabu Osusa, my personal past predating the research process, marks the direction taken within this account. In particular, a search to combine a life connection to music with ethical participation in and contribution to our global community was the strongest motivation for my involvement in this project. 11.4.1 Locating True North: Humility and the Ethics of Contingency After my pursuit of a career as a jazz pianist came to an abrupt end in my early twenties as a result of chronic tendinitis, I began to realize the enormous personal value that music had served in my life. My interest in music and civic action is directly related to this heightened musical self-awareness. It motivated me to become involved in several music projects that intersected with human rights, social justice, and community development, including several years of activities at a nonprofit music organization that serves youth in a low income neighborhood of Boston. Eventually I became interested in music and civic engagement in places other than Boston. During this time I also became increasingly aware of the interconnectedness of the global community and I began researching music-based nonprofit organizations operating in Africa and Central America. After I was confronted with the complex ethical contradictions of the NGO sector that I have detailed in this dissertation, my initial enthusiasm to become a dedicated participant of ethical engagement in the NGO sector waned. I encountered case after case of ethical gridlock. Numerous well-intentioned NGO workers with whom I worked had begun projects to serve the needs of various communities but they all had encountered numerous unexpected challenges and failures along the way. These pitfalls resulted largely from the clashing of cultures, which results when “outsiders” enter into foreign communities with preconceived and often misguided notions about the specific needs of that community. The hurdles of ethical contribution seemed ever more difficult when these outsiders carried with them symbolic baggage wrought from years of colonization and an unequal global economy. I pursued the project of research and writing a 293 dissertation on this topic primarily to obtain some insight into ethical “best practices” of musical participation in civil society. Given this reflexive backstory, one may wonder why ethics have not been central to the discussion of global civil society presented here. One may infer that the contingent narrative I have proposed here avoids the problem of ethical evaluation entirely. Indeed, I have gone to great lengths to avoid taking a stance on the ethical legitimacy of any of the NGO music activities I have presented. Yet ethics are central to any discussion of NGOs because these organizations heavily advocate for civic missions that are couched within terms of “development,” “societal benefit,” and “empowerment,” among others. These projects achieve varying degrees of success. Some large organizations receive funding and resources for certain initiatives while other smaller grass-roots organizations sputter along as they tirelessly pursue social change in their local communities with few finances. This inequality calls into question the ethical legitimacy of such civic missions. This invites assessments of each organization’s ethical use and acquisition of resources. I propose that establishing general ethical guidelines for civil society activity requires an acknowledgement that all circumstances are unique and an understanding that all actions beget unpredictable actions. Taking sides on ethics in any absolute sense therefore depends upon infinite knowledge of the entirety of possibilities that may come from any given action. This, of course, is an impossible task. Accepting the contingent mode of assessment refines our ethical compass. A contingent mode of perception and action encourages choices based on pragmatic negotiations of known variables while remaining open to unforeseen possibilities. Because any contingent relationship forces a self-conscious acknowledgement of the existence of outlying variables that may have affected the past, the present, or the future, there is no absolute prescription for ethical participation in the world. A contingent consciousness nonetheless utilizes the shared assessment of social spheres to assume proximate and pragmatic legitimacy. However, ethical choices that are based on contingent relationships ultimately require an evaluation of the self. This is the self that we cannot entirely know. It is one which engages a world that is also not entirely accessible to us. It is from these unknowns that humility arises and from humility comes the courage to make imperfect ethical choices that strive for perfection and that are based on assessments of the broadest spectrum of contingent variables. From this ethical sentiment, I have presented an assessment of the music activities within Kenya’s NGO sector. By 294 drawing ethical conclusions from the contingent circumstances presented within this dissertation, I have modeled an active process of negotiation and renegotiation of the reality in which we live. 295 APPENDIX A EXTENDED TRANSCRIPTIONS OF ANALYZED RECORDINGS “Nyaktiti” by Makadem, mm 1-16, transcription by author. Transcribed from Ohanglaman (2005). Analysis provided in Chapter Seven. 296 297 298 299 “Halele” by Gargar and Jesse Bukindu, mm. 1-24, transcription by author. Recording transcribed from Garissa Express (2010). Analysis provided in Chapter Nine. 300 301 302 APPENDIX B RESEARCH APPROVAL 303 APPENDIX C 9th EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT FUND 2010 VITAL VOICES AND CULTURE: INCREASING PEOPLE’S PARTICIPATION IN GOOD GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT CALL FOR PROPOSALS (CFP) Non-State Actors Support Programme: NSA-NET “Vital Voices and Culture: Increasing People’s Participation in Good Governance and Development” Réf.: EuropeAid/129520/C/ACT/KE Guidelines for Grant Applicants Open Call for Proposals 9th European Development Fund Reference: 9 ACP KE 011 Deadline for receipt of applications: 21st April 2010 Objectives of the programme and priority issues The global objective of the Programme is to improve the quality of life for the people of Kenya, especially the poor, marginalized and vulnerable, in enabling all sections of society to have a voice in national development policies, thus enhancing local ownership of development programmes. The specific objective of the programme is to strengthen mechanisms, networks and capacity for deepening and broadening of NSA involvement in development processes. There are two lots under this call for proposals : Vital Voices and Participation in Development (Lot 1) andCultural Actors and Participation in Development (Lot 2). The two lots, though both contributing to the same objective and targeting non-state actors, are independent of each other and are to be treated separately. Lot 1: Vital Voices and Participation in Development Priority Issues The programme will invest in and strengthen structured non-state actor and citizen engagement and voice in national and local level development and reform processes. Particular areas that will be given priority are actions those that contribute to informed and effective citizen participation in policy and reform implementation, effective lobbying and monitoring of governance, human rights, justice and rule of law institutions and actors, and effective lobbying and monitoring of local level governance structures. 304 Four main results are expected: Result 1 – Improved democratic governance: The Programme provides an opportunity to contribute to the governance reforms identified herewith by allocating grants to NSA investing in these areas. The operating environment for NSAs (particularly CSOs), will be broadened and improved as illustrated by demonstrable NSA inputs in governmental policies and reforms at both national and local levels. Crosscutting issues like HIV/AIDS, gender, environment and other will be reflected in a larger number of governmental policies. The preparations and processes for the next elections will witness inclusion of NSAs and their views and be transparent and made public. Result 2 – Improved networking among NSAs: Participating Network organisations will be more representative and accountable and there will be improved networking and coordination amongst them. Through this they will more effectively impact on the development process. The programme aims to enhance these (in)formal structures in order to increase their capacity of representing views of (civil) society at large and of providing services that address the demands of individual organisations and their constituencies, which may lack capacity to engage optimally in the development process. The component also aims at supporting Networks to promote improved accountability and transparency amongst NSAs (CSOs). Result 3 – Enhanced institutional and technical capacity of NSAs: NSAs will have improved their capacity to advocate and lobby on issues affecting downward governmental accountability. Alongside technically more capable NSAs (with inclusion of enhanced management, financial, advocacy, strategic, M&E etc. skills) the programme will put an emphasis on proper NSA governance and accountability in the broadest sense. Empowered NSAs will work to influence Government and donor policies. One of the aims of this component is to strengthen the ability of NSAs to identify areas of interest and engage with decision-makers on key policy issues (constitutional, legal and electoral reform, trade policy, environment etc.). This component should contribute to increase the capacity of NSAs to be more effective in monitoring e.g. national and local budgets, electoral processes, changes in the law and to advocate on behalf of particular interest groups. Result 4 – Enhance institutional involvement of NSAs in the development process: Government is perceived as becoming increasingly effective in providing services to the general population, and donors are increasingly channelling funds for development activities through existing Government structures. It is therefore increasingly important that civic organisations are involved in policy design, reforms implementation, as well as monitoring of the implementation. A (national) framework to facilitate CSO involvement in the development process will be supported. Such regulation framework will guide the relations between Government and NSAs. The framework should also facilitate and improve the participation and involvement of NSAs in local government policy making, implementation and monitoring at the district level and below. The framework is not necessarily rigid or pre-defined, but should allow for different approaches at different levels and for different sectors. It should, however, offer substantial space for NSAs, as well as government, to go beyond mutual consultation towards policy formulation and implementation with a distinct and traceable input of NSAs and opportunities for monitoring and (sector review and) evaluation. Lot 2: Cultural Actors and Participation in Development Priority issues Priority will be given to actions that ensure the active participation of cultural actors in the promotion of good governance, human rights and democratic development, and to cultural actions that promote an inclusive and cohesive Kenyan society. Cultural actions will be supported at both local and national level, and in the cinema, audio-visual, literary, publishing, music, visual arts and performing arts sectors. 305 Two main results are expected: Result 1: Enhanced Participation of Cultural Actors in Democratic Development: The programme will create the space and opportunity for innovative and creative cultural mechanisms of expression, dialogue, dissemination and information on governance issues and reforms including promotion of human rights principles, and will allow cultural organisations to take part in the governance processes and play an increased role in engaging community participation in national and local development strategies, and at the same time develop cultural appreciation and potential. Result 2: Enhanced inclusiveness and national identity: The programme will support cultural expressions of national identity and social justice, particularly through initiatives that cultivate a sense of national belonging while fostering positive ethnic and cultural identity, initiatives that foster equity and fairness in society at local and national levels, and initiatives that effectively address exclusion on ethnic grounds, marginalisation and development imbalances. Financial allocation provided by the contracting authority The overall indicative amount made available under this call for proposals is EUR 3,400,000 subject to the approval of the financing agreement amendment with a proposed increase of €340,000 The Contracting Authority reserves the right not to award all available funds. Indicative allocation of funds by lot The overall indicative amounts made available by Lot are: Lot 1: EUR 2,890,000 Lot 2: EUR 510,000 In the case where the allocation foreseen for a specific lot cannot be used due to insufficient quality or number of proposals received, the Contracting Authority reserves the right to reallocate the remaining funds to another lot. Size of grants Any grant awarded under this programme must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts: Lot 1 • minimum amount: EUR 80,000 • maximum amount: EUR 400,000 Lot 2 • minimum amount: EUR 50 000 • maximum amount: EUR 150 000 - For proposals submitted by Non-State Actors from Kenya, grants may be awarded up to the maximum percentage of 90 % of the total eligible costs of the action (see also section 2.1.4). The balance must be financed from the applicant’s or partners’ own resources, or from sources other than the European Community budget or the European Development Fund. - For proposals submitted by European Non-State Actors, grants may be awarded up to the maximum percentage of 75 % of the total eligible costs of the action (see also section 2.1.4). The balance must be financed from the applicant’s or partners’ own resources, or from sources other than the European Community budget or the European Development Fund. 2.2.1 Application form Applications must be submitted in accordance with the instructions on the Concept Note and the Full application form included in the Grant Application Form annexes to these Guidelines (Annex A) 306 Applicants must apply in English. Any error or major discrepancy related to the points listed in the instructions on the Concept Note or any major inconsistency in the application form (e.g. the amounts mentioned in the budget are inconsistent with those mentioned in the application form) may lead to the rejection of the application. Clarifications will only be requested when information provided is unclear, thus preventing the Contracting Authority from conducting an objective assessment. Hand-written applications will not be accepted. Please note that only the application form and the published annexes which have to be filled in (budget, logical framework) will be evaluated. It is therefore of utmost importance that these documents contain ALL relevant information concerning the action. No additional annexes should be sent. 2.2.2 Where and how to send the Applications Applications must be submitted in one original and three (3) copies in A4 size, each bound. The complete application form (part A: concept note and part B: full application form), budget and logical framework must also be supplied in electronic format (CD-Rom) in a separate and unique file (e.g. the application form must not be split into several different files). The electronic format must contain exactly the same application as the paper version enclosed. The Checklist (Section V of part B the grant application form) and the Declaration by the applicant (Section VI of part B of the grant application form) must be stapled separately and enclosed in the envelope. Where an applicant sends several different applications each one has to be sent separately. The outer envelope must bear the reference number and the title of the call for proposals, together with the title and number of the lot, the full name and address of the applicant, and the words “Not to be opened before the opening session”. Applications must be submitted in a sealed envelope by registered mail, private courier service or by hand-delivery (a signed and dated certificate of receipt will be given to the deliverer) at the address below: The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs Co-operative Bank House, 7th Floor P.O. Box 56057-00200 Nairobi, Kenya Applications sent by any other means (e.g. by fax or by e-mail) or delivered to other addresses will be rejected. Applicants must verify that their application is complete using the checklist (section V of part B of the grant application form). Incomplete applications may be rejected. 2.2.3 Deadline for submission of Applications The deadline for the submission of applications is 21st April 2010 as evidenced by the date of dispatch, the postmark or the date of the deposit slip. In the case of hand-deliveries, the deadline for receipt is at 16.00 hoursEast African Standard Time as evidenced by the signed and dated receipt. Any application submitted after the deadline will automatically be rejected. However, for reasons of administrative efficiency, the Contracting Authority may reject any application received after the effective date of approval of the first evaluation step (i.e. Concept Note) (see indicative calendar under section 2.5.2) 307 2.2.4 Further information for the Application Information sessions on this call for proposals will be held as follows: • Nairobi- 2nd February 2010 at Panafric Hotel from 9.30 am to 12 noon • Mombasa- 4th February 2010 at Royal Court Hotel from 9.30 am to 12 noon • Kisumu- 8th February 2010 at Sunset Hotel from 9.30 am to 12 noon • Garissa- 11th February 2010 at Nomad Palace Hotel from 9.30 am to 12 noon Questions may in addition be sent by e-mail no later than 21 days before the deadline for the receipt of proposals to the below address, indicating clearly the reference of the call for proposals. The Contracting Authority has no obligation to provide further clarifications after this date. Replies will be given no later than 11 days before the deadline for the receipt of proposals. In the interest of equal treatment of applicants, the Contracting Authority cannot give a prior opinion on the eligibility of an applicant, a partner, an action or specific activities. Questions that may be relevant to other applicants, together with the answers, will be published on the internet at the Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs website, at the European Union delegation in Kenya website, and at the EuropeAid website. 308 APPENDIX D ORAL SOURCES Bukindu, Jesse (Ketebul Music’s chief studio engineer). 2011a February 11. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. ———. 2011b March 11. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. DJ Yusef (Director of Busara Promotions). 2011 February 09. 2011 Sauti Za Busara opening ceremony speech digitally recorded by author in Stone Town, Zanzibar. Drix, Frederick (Ketebul Music intern). 2011 February 3. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. Kivutia, Steve (Ketebul Music project manager). 2011 February 24. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. Koga, Walter (Alliance Française affiliated musician). 2011 April 27. Field-note recorded interview conducted with author at Alliance Française). Mapangala, Samba (musician and cultural icon). 2012 February 13. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author via Skype. Mapangala, Samba, Tabu Osusa, and CC Smith. 2011 March 3. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Alliance Française, Nairobi. Mahulo, Melvin (communications graduate student at Daystar University and Kenyan National Television graphic designer). 2010 September-2011 May. Recurrent cultural consultancy and research advisement. Makadem (Ketebul Music affiliated musician). 2011a March 17. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. ———. 2011b April 14. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. Mjomba, Leonard (Communications professor at Kenyatta University). 2010 September-2011 May. Recurrent cultural consultancy and research advisement. ———. 2011 February 13. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Mjomba’s home in Mombasa. Munga, James (Sarakasi Trust financial accountant and administrator). 2011 February 17. 309 Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Sarakasi Trust, Nairobi. Njeru, Asunta (Kiswahilli language instructor). 2010 October -2011 April. Recurrent Kiswahili lessons, translation services, and cultural consultancy. Nzokia, Mary (Kiswahili and Akamba language instructor and cultural consultant to foreigners conducting NGO and service projects). 2010 October -2011 April. Recurrent Kiswahili lessons, translation services, and cultural consultancy. ———. 2011 February 23. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at The Language Center LTD., Nairobi. Ondiek, Patrick (Ketebul Music’s chief videographer). 2011a February 24. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. ———. 2011b February 25. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. Osusa, Tabu (director of Ketebul Music). 2011a February 24. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. ———. 2011b March 16. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. ———. 2011c March 27. Speech, digitally recorded by author at Sippers Restaurant, Nairobi. ———. 2011d September 27. Email correspondence with author. Owango, Brian (Director of Mayeli). 2011a February 18. Email correspondence with author. ———. 2011b February 19. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author in Owango’s car in transit to the Huruma youth center and continued later in the evening at Java House, Nairobi. ———. 2011c April 26. Field-note recorded interview conducted with author at the Sarit Center in Westlands, Nairobi. Ratego, Olith (Ketebul Music affiliated musician). 2011a March 16. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. ———. 2011b March 17. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. ———. 2011c April 7. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Ketebul Studios, Nairobi. 310 Smith, CC (music manager and World Music industry mogul). 2012a January 27. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author via Skype. ———. 2012b March 31. Email correspondence with author. Wanjohi, Peter (Assistant Secretary of the Kenyan Permanent Presidential Music Commission). 2011 February 18. Field-note recorded interview conducted with author at the Permanent Presidential Music Commission office in Nairobi. Waters, Harsita (Director of Arts and Culture programing at Alliance Française). 2011a April 27. Digitally recorded interview conducted with author at Alliance Française. ———. 2011b August 2. Email correspondence with author. Wa Mberia, Kithaka (Internationally acclaimed international Kenyan poet and linguistics professor at University of Nairobi). 2011 November 18. Field-note recorded interview conducted with author at Wa Mberia’s office on the University of Nairobi campus, Nairobi. Wambua, John (musician and leader of the Tala Dancers). 2011 March 21. Digitally recorded interview and performance conducted with author in Tala, Kenya. Wambua, John and Mary Nzokia. 2011 April 16. Digitally recorded interview and music lesson conducted with author at the author’s apartment in Madaraka, Nairobi. Winyo (Ketebul Music affiliated musician). 2011 April 23. 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Maisha ni Matamu. Virunga Records. Nairobi City Ensemble. 2001. Ka Boum Boum. Tabu Osusa. Nairobi City Ensemble. 2003. Kalapapla. Tabu Osusa. Ratego, Olith. 2005. Osuga. Tabu Osusa and Ketebul Productions Ltd. Olsen, Paul Rovsing and Jean Jenkins. 1976. Music in the World of Islam. Tangent Records. The Kenyan Boys Choir. 2009. Spirit of Africa. Decca Records. Tim and Foty. 2007. Greatest Hits. Tim and Foty Records. Various Artists. 1975. Great Hits from Nairobi Vol. 2. Sungura SGL116. Various Artists. 2002. Luo Traditional Nyatiti. JoJo Records. Various Artists. 2006. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Vol. 1. Alliance Française de Nairobi. Various Artists. 2006. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Vol. 2. Alliance Française de Nairobi. Various Artists. 2007. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Vol. 3. Alliance Française de Nairobi. Various Artists. 2008. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Vol. 4: Unity in Diversity. Alliance Française de Nairobi. Various Artists. 2008. Retracing the Benga Rhythm (supplementary CD). Ketebul Music. Various Artists. 2010. Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music (supplementary CD). Ketebul Music. Various Artists. 2011. Festival Nuits D’Afrique 25eme. Nuits d’afrique. Various Artists. 2011. Retracing Kenya’s Funky Hits (supplementary CD). Ketebul Music. 327 Various Artists. 2011. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Five: Weapons of Mass Reconciliation. Alliance Française de Nairobi. Various Artists. 2012. Songs of Protest: The Social and Political Revolution in Kenya. Ketebul Music. Filmography In the Pay of the C.I.A.: An American Dilemma, A CBS Report. 1967. Columbia Broadcasting System. Ngoma za Kenya Vol. 1. 2007. Permanent Presidential Music Commission of Kenya. Ngoma za Kenya Vol. 2. 2007. Permanent Presidential Music Commission of Kenya. Ngoma za Kenya Vol. 3. 2008. Permanent Presidential Music Commission of Kenya. Ngoma za Kenya Vol. 4. 2008. Permanent Presidential Music Commission of Kenya. Ngoma za Kenya Vol. 5. 2008. Permanent Presidential Music Commission of Kenya. Retracing the Benga Rhythm. 2008. Ketebul Music. Retracing Kikuyu Popular Music. 2010. Ketebul Music. Retracing Kenya’s Funky Hits. 2011. Ketebul Music. Spotlight on Kenyan Music, Volume Five: Weapons of Mass Reconciliation (supplementary DVD). 2011. Alliance Française de Nairobi. Songs of Protest: The Social and Political Revolution in Kenya. 2012. Ketebul Music. 328 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Matthew M. Morin holds a B.A. in music with a minor in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a M.A. in ethnomusicology from Tufts University. At Florida State University between 2008 and 2010, he taught undergraduate courses on world music, modern popular music, and American roots music. His primary research focus is the global manifestations of music and civil society. Additional interests include applied ethnomusicology, globalization, politics, human rights, and music education pedagogy. Prior to the research presented in this dissertation on intersections of NGO culture and music culture in East Africa, Matthew wrote a Master’s thesis based on three years of fieldwork on urban youth music cultures in Boston’s non-profit sector. He also collected oral histories exploring Nadia Boulanger’s teaching pedagogy with several of her former students. Matthew currently lives in Kawagoe, Japan where he is continuing follow-up research with partners in Kenya and researching Japanese civil society music cultures with particular attention to forms of community-based music organizing and cultural festivals known as matsuri. 329