The Negotiation of Culture through Video Films and
Bongo Flava Music in Tanzania

left: Saidawk a.k.a. Ghetto King recording one of his Bongo Flava Songs at the Sei Records Studios in Dar es Salaam (2009, ©Uta Reuster-Jahn).

right, top down: Mawingu Studio, Dar es Salaam (2007, ©David Eschrich).
Backyard of a Video Cinema in Mkula, Tansania (2007, ©Claudia Böhme).
Shooting of the Film Village Pastor (2008, ©Claudia Böhme).

Project leader: Prof. Dr. Matthias Krings

Collaborators: Dr. Uta Reuster-Jahn, Gabriel Hacke, M.A., Claudia Böhme, M.A.

Duration: 15.1.2009–15.4.2011

Funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Deutsche Version

Starting from the 1980s, liberalization politics have caused a profound transformation of cultural production in Tanzania. The privatization of media along with new techniques of production and distribution have facilitated the emergence of a new music scene, called Bongo Flava, as well as a flourishing market of video films in Swahili. These two areas overlap in the genre of music videos.

The project sets out from the hypothesis that Swahili entertainment videos as well as Bongo Flava music can be understood as platforms where practices and discourses of different origin meet, and are synthesized anew. These forums are especially used by the young generation (in Swahili called kizazi kipya), in order to express their views on culture and society. Thereby, the youth themselves become stimulators of processes of cultural and social transformation. However, the youth have to compete with different professional groups for the domination of these platforms; for example, with musical artists, film actors and directors, producers, editors, radio promoters on the one hand, and agents of cultural politics and control on the other. All these groups and individuals have their own social, political and economic interests. The project analyzes these processes as forms of negotiation, which become also evident within the cultural products, i.e. the songs, the video films and the music clips. Focus is laid on the specific combination of local with global icons, sounds and texts, as well as on the motivation, strategies and practices of the actors involved in these processes.

Moreover, the project’s objective is to compare the two platforms, i.e. video films and Bongo Flava music with regard to the different media involved (i.e. radio, audio-cassettes, compact disc, live performance, video-cassettes, VCD, DVD, and TV) as well as their respective use of visual and aural modes of expression. Assuming that both forums constitute new audiovisual publics, the project shall examine the ways in which producers and recipients make use of the medial difference between texts and images, pointed to by the debates on the pictorial turn (Mitchell). Images and texts bear different potential to generate and decode meaning. The question is whether the visual media dimension is basically different from the textual and musical media dimension, not only with regard to their qualities but also with regard to the discourses they make possible. We assume that cultural conventions prohibit some subjects on the textual plane which are allowed on the visual one. From the comparison of the two platforms hypotheses on viewing and hearing as cultural practices in Tanzania will be developed.