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  • Gogo Breeze: Zambia's Radio Elder and the Voices of Free Speech by Harri Englund
  • Debra Vidali
Harri Englund, Gogo Breeze: Zambia's Radio Elder and the Voices of Free Speech. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. 288 pp.

The vibrancy and vitality of radio is beautifully conveyed in this careful ethnography about a single broadcaster whose news, advice, and cultural programs dominate the airwaves of Breeze FM, a communitybased commercial radio station headquartered in Chipata, Zambia. The book centers on the power of radio to build community, represent voices, and advocate for positive change in the context of distress, suffering, and injustice. Englund provides a close person-centered account of broadcaster Gogo Breeze's dedication to his work and his complex verbal art as advisor, journalist, cultural expert, and weaver of community voices. The book is a major contribution to the study of mediated publics, modernity, and the complicated landscape of press freedom in Africa. It is a rich and engaging read, one that offers a rare window into the work of an elder broadcaster who provides on-air settings for navigating everything from personal dilemmas over spousal infidelity to public crises over political corruption and economic collapse.

Known as Gogo Breeze (meaning "grandfather" in the Chinyanja language, combined with the name of the radio station), Peter Grayson Nyozani Mwale joined Breeze FM at its inception in 2003. In this book, we learn about his story and his remarkable presence across multiple programming genres, as sage and compassionate advisor responding to listeners' letters, host for call-in programs, vox populi "man on the street" interviewer, storyteller, and voice talent in advertisements. Indeed, Gogo Breeze's ubiquity across the airwaves led many (according to Englund) to believe that the Breeze FM station belonged to him. [End Page 1635]

Significantly, Breeze FM was created during the first decade of the liberalization of the Zambia airwaves. Since the colonial period, through independence (1964), and up to the mid-1990s, centralized, state-run radio was the only option for the Zambian domestic airwaves. In 1991, Zambia returned to a multi-party government after 18 years of one-party rule and 27 years of leadership under its first president, Kenneth Kaunda. Under Zambia's second president, Frederick Chiluba (1991–2001), a farreaching policy of media reform was pursued. In 1994, broadcast licenses were granted for the first time in the nation's history to both commercial and non-profit radio stations. Community-based stations, such as Breeze FM, began to proliferate. Across the country, listeners' loyalties shifted towards stations with more programming in their own regional languages and that addressed specific local concerns. Press freedom increasingly became a major issue in the national conversation, and in the workings of community stations such as Breeze FM.

Englund's study is based on 2012–2013 fieldwork at Breeze FM headquarters and in various contexts of public life in Chipata. The strength of Englund's expertise in the Chinyanja language and his deep rapport with broadcaster Mwale (predicated in large part on their mutual passion for the language) is evident throughout the work. This is Englund's second book about radio in the region, the first being a study of a popular news program in the Chichewa language on state radio in neighboring Malawi. Notably, Chichewa is a closely related dialect of Chinyanja. The ethnographic gaze is focused on processes of radio production involving Gogo Breeze, as well as the analysis of the form and content of selected Gogo Breeze radio programs. The book has a limited account of radio reception and media use more generally in this predominately rural region of Zambia. The social, political, and economic context within which Chipata residents find themselves is explained not through an ethnographic overview or introduction, but rather through the lens of the particular topics—e.g., agricultural policies, Chinese investment, nepotism, inheritance practices, and gender ideologies—brought forth in listeners' letters and Gogo Breeze's reporting. This makes for a very effective and compelling ethnography: contextual information and cultural analysis are presented through close exegesis of radio content and Gogo Breeze's work.

The textures of radio and Gogo Breeze's charisma are palpable throughout. The...

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