African Media Cultures: Transdisciplinary Perspectives/ Cultures de medias en Afrique: Perspectives Transdisciplinaires (review)

African Media Cultures offers perspectives on forms of media on the African continent that receive little critical attention outside—and sometimes even within—Africa: political and popular cartoons, murals in churches, traditional music, griots' stories, proverbs, tabloid newspapers, the Internet, horror films, and cell phones. The volume is truly transdisciplinary in its scope and is a welcome addition to the study of African societies as complex convergences of urban and rural cultures, advanced technology, and richly diverse spiritual and aesthetic practices. Many of these short essays, written in French and English, will have a wide appeal to a variety of scholars in African studies, media studies and communication, and postcolonial and cultural studies. Approaches to the material are generally historical and linear, with a penchant for statistical charts. A small criticism that might be levied against the volume is that it appears its editors were not concerned with English-as-a-second-language errors, even in their own introduction.

Readers interested in theoretical approaches will appreciate Jürg Schneider's application of Achille Mbembe's perspective on the "postcolonial banalization of authority" (78) to Cameroonian cartoons, while readers concerned with advanced data and field studies will be interested in Wisdom J. Tettey's and Andre-Jean Tudesq's documentation of audience demographics, government intervention, and African-wide political coverage in Ghanaian radio and Ivoirian television, respectively. Nana Grey-Johnson chronicles 133 years of newspapers in the Gambia, charting the seminal role of the press in presenting anticolonial and pan-Africanist voices, such as that of Edward Francis Small at the turn of the last century, and in the struggle for independence.

Although it is disappointing to turn to "Le Griot comme média" ("The Griot as Media") and find the first two pages missing (the only oversight of this kind), Sandra Bornand's essay is still a fascinating look at the griots, or jasare, of the Sonay-Zarma (or Djerma) of southern Niger. In her analysis of jasare as agents of communication in the domains of media, propaganda, entertainment, and history, she suggests that if, in their role as entertainers and singers, they are losing ground to radio and television, jasare still remain an indelible cultural presence as purveyors of "valeurs de la noblesse" (noble values) (163).

Two articles focus on music in East and central Africa, Swahili taarab music in Tanzania and political pop music in Congo. Werner Graebner's essay on the history of taarab and the recording industry will engage aficionados of African music and musicologists with its attention to detail. Fascinating to those unfamiliar with East African music is taraab's cultural hybridity: A twentieth-century form sung in Swahili from Mombasa to Zanzibar, it draws heavily on Swahili msondo, goma, and kumbwaya, as well as Indian and Egyptian popular film soundtracks, Western music, and Afro-Cuban inflections.

Jules Bagalwa-Mapatano's work on pop music as political propaganda and critique in Congo takes readers through a selection of one the continent's most beloved genres, known generically as zaïrois or sometimes as bachengue in Francophone central and West Africa. This chapter looks into music such as Adou Elenga's "Ata Ndele"of 1955 ("Ata Ndele, modele akobaluka," or "Sooner or later, the whites will be overthrown"); the triumphant hit of the new nation, "L'indépendence Cha Cha Cha" by Kabasele Tshamala and African Jazz; and the 2001 compilation "Les plus grandes stars de la musique chantent pou l'amour de leur cher Congo"("The Greatest Musical Stars Sing for the Love of Their Dear Congo"), which features greats such as Wendo, Tabuley Seigneur Rochereau, and Papa Wemba and many others. Bagalwa-Mapatano's subtle analysis traces the effects of terror and violence in postcolonial Congo, seeing music as an expression of solidarity and a vehicle for the mentalities of...