Songs and Politics in Eastern Africa

8. Song and Politics : the case of D. Owino Misiani

177 8 Song and Politics : the case of D. Owino Misiani Adams OLOO Department of Political Science, University of Nairobi Introduction Over the years, songs have been used as a means to communicate political messages that may not be palatable across the political divide in Kenya. Such songs have provided the means to transmit political messages that would otherwise not have been expressed in common political language or speech. Lyrics are phrased such that that the intended message escapes the literal understanding of the recipient. Therefore, to decipher the actual meaning requires an accurate and intelligent interpretation of both the language and the context. Likewise, the aesthetic form of song gives room for the performers’ personal creativityofevenifthedanceexpressionispre-determinedbyspecificsof the language used. Every speech community has particular indices that signify and transmit specific meaning as well as evoke specific reactions and responses in their listeners. The “goodness” of a performance may be judged in relation to one or more of these expectations in the use and manipulation of speech forms as they are re-organised into song. These practical features and expectations of musical performance suggest that redundancy does not necessarily follow from a dominant use of orality.110 Music is also a potent symbol of identity. Like language, it is one 110 Masolo, D.A., 2000, “Presencing the Past and Remembering the Present: Social Features of Popular Music in Kenya,” in R. Rodano and P. Bohlman, Music and Racial Imagination, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 366. 178 of those aspects of culture, which can readily serve the purpose of asserting “ethnic identity”. Its effectiveness may be two-fold; it is used to identify different ethnic or social groups, and secondly, it has potential emotional connotations and can be used powerfully to negotiate identity.111 To this end, African musicians remain both entertainers and the “eyes” or popular conscience in the articulation and interrogation of changes occurring at the various levels of public life and the problems they pose to society. Performers do not only entertain—they are also able, and frequently aim, to raise social awareness in their audience by arousing in them the imaginative and emotional experiences toward social re-engagement through collective identity. Performers thus provide the indices by which audiences generate their sense of group membership by participating in deciphering and internalizing the meanings generated by the performance. Music, both as a social performance and as a medium of communication, is more than a means for the reproduction of structural patterns of sound. According to Stokes,112 it is also “a practice in which meanings are generated, manipulated, even ironized, within certain limitations.” Therefore, the narrative of music is understood only through interpretation, by paying careful attention to the context that shapes its creation and to the worldview that informs it. Sometimes the truth in song pulls one away from complacent security as an interpreter outside the story and creates awareness that one’s interpretation of music defiones his place in the world. Music enjoys high-profile political visibility in the modern state system. At the traditional level, music and dance took a central role in both social sacred and secular events. Dancing, accompanied by either drumming or some other kind of instrumental performance, was frequently part of important ceremonies ranging from marriage celebrations to rituals to cure spirit possession. These traditional roles of African music continue today, where it has been not only incorporated into regular school curricula in some countries, but also into the retinue 111 Barth Fredrick (ed) 1969, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, 14. Bergen-Oslo: Universitets Forlaget. 112 Stokes, M., 1994, Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, Oxford: Berg, p. 4. 179 of official performance at high-level political gatherings.113 In this sense, African music enjoys a quasi-formal political recognition and occupies a central position in several national cultural policies. In some countries it enjoys state sponsorship as an important medium of its popular expression, representation, and legitimisation. At popular political level, music and dance have become an inseparable part of political visibility and dignity. Under guise of entertainment, it often serves as a form of social and political discourse, a statement of popular acceptance, enhancement, and legitimating of socially and politically coveted roles. Music and dance thus become signifiers of social and political hierarchisations. However, even within this modern state arena, there is an almost perfect continuity with...