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232 Chapter Ten ‘I am a Partial Person’ The urban experience of rural music Stephen Hill In July 1997, Rosy Margaret Ndunguru celebrated her confirmation into the Roman Catholic Church in Mwananyamala, Dar es Salaam. Her parents, well educated, middle-class urban migrants from Mbinga District, rented a hall and invited about 150 family and friends for this important event. Music featured prominently at the reception and came from two sources, a hired commercial band that performed Tanzanian, Congolese, and international hits interspersed with moderately successful covers of regional ngoma drumming styles. The other source of music was a lindeko drumming group, playing an episodic, commemorative, celebratory music from the Matengo1 ethnic group, to which Rosy Margaret’s parents and many guests belonged. The pop band was non-Matengo and entertained the guests; however, the reaction generated by the lindeko drummers was of a different order. Apart from the celebrant, who must remain aloof and look a little dour, lindeko dancing sparked passionate participation from the Matengo community and great interest and vicarious excitement from the non-Matengo guests. Although a small group of blue-collar musicians brought and played the instruments, the most energetic participants were the men and women with the highest education and social rank; the urban Matengo elite. ‘We in Dar es Salaam we are a group, almost a unique group. Almost (completely) white-collar and if you want to have your celebration, you need to organize some dance from home they (invited urban guests) can see as unique, you know? (Also) towards you yourselves.’ Simon Mahai (12 July 2003)2 Spending all or part of one’s life in an urban setting is a reality for increasing numbers of Africans. The statistics on African urbanization are staggering. By 2030, total population in the ‘less developed regions’ should reach four times the population in the ‘more developed regions’.3 Urbanization rates in ‘less Stephen Hill 233 developed regions’ outstrip those in ‘more developed regions’ by a factor of four.4 They are highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, hovering around 4-5 percent per annum due largely to post-colonial migrations.5 Between 1995 and 2005, Tanzania’s urban population rose from 8.3 million to 14.4 million.6 It is in this urban world, and not in rural villages, that the history of Tanzania is now being written. In this chapter, I will chart the history of one urban community, the Matengo of Dar es Salaam, from the pioneers from Mbinga District in the 1940s to the mature but fractured community of the early 21st century. In particular, I will identify the unifying role the rural music/dance lindeko plays as an emotional centre for ethnic identity construction and conduit for negotiating space on Dar es Salaam’s public stage. Lindeko is a participatory, processional dance accompanied by one or more drums and a kind of bell. The texts are either commentaries on social actions relevant to the community or formulaic greetings and praises. The musical meter is duple and song forms are episodic/ strophic with a strong call and response. Men and women dance together; both sexes act as song leader; however, men drum exclusively while women shake rattles. As Simon Mahai, former head of the secondary education sector in the Ministry of Education, points out in the second epigraph, through lindeko performance the Matengo tell themselves and the broader urban community where they came from, who they are, and what their aspirations are. A key question I will address is why Tanzanian urban society — relentlessly cosmopolitan, connected, forward-looking — values a resolutely rural identity as a portion of a person/community’s urban profile. Scholars have long charted the effects of urban migration on African society. Early work rested on the assumption that Africans were ill-suited for urban life;thatanurbanAfricanwassomehowanomalous.7 These studies and colonial policy assumed that African residence in urban settings was inherently problematic because Africans ‘naturally’ belonged in rural villages.8 Such work rested on the assumption that the urban landscape determines African response and opportunity through economic, housing, political and social limitations, not that Africans contribute, albeit without full command of resources, to modifying the urban environment for their benefit. I propose that Dar es Salaam residents with rural backgrounds use both rural and urban performative resources to negotiate a new identity and create new lives in cities and that in the Matengo case the lindekodance is critical to this community’s urban history. That is, I view...

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