BOOK: Playing With Identities In
Contemporary Music In Africa
Edited by Mai Palmberg and Annemette Kirkegaard
Published by Transaction
Oversized paperback, 182 pages
Reviewed by DJ Johnson


There are a few important things to know about this book right from the start. First, it's not a page-turner. This isn't a book you read for pure entertainment, curled up with a blanket for hours wondering how it'll end. The truth is it can be very, very dry reading because it's a collection of essays. We've all read our own essays, but have you ever read a stack of other people's essays? Understand that these are all terrific essays by experts that nail their points, leaving us informed and positively provoked, but essays nonetheless. You've been warned.

Another thing to know going in is that this is not going to teach you everything there is to know about African music. There are books out there that attempt to do that - and fail - but this book has other goals. Therefore, there are many genres of African music not mentioned, many musicians who are wildly popular within their countries not mentioned, and so on, and within the structure of this book, once you understand what that is, that's okay. I still would have liked a comprehensive index, as I found myself attempting to scan pages in hopes of running into words like JuJu and Soukous, and names like Loketo and Baaba Maal.

Playing With Identities In Contemporary Music In Africa is concerned with an extremely wide spectrum of sub-topics that sit, not always so neatly, under the main heading of... well, exactly what the title of the book says. In America, a kid listening to his favorite punk band, his hair cut just like the bass player's, his face pierced just like the singer's face is pierced, might say "this music is my identity," and for now he means it. Just like so many Madonnawannabes meant it in the early 80s. They did. Today they don't. They've meant it with five or six artists since. Right now, I don't know what my musical identity is, to be honest. I am moved by too many genres. In terms of identity as it is applied in Africa and where it involves music, the punk kid, the Madonnawannabes and me, we can't begin to understand what it really means. It's not who your favorite band is. It's styles of music with traditional lyrics that tell stories quite specific to the shared experience of your village or country, or it's music distinguishing between classes, declaring independence in a country where independence is either a new thing or only dreamed of, or it can cause or relieve tension between townships. Music is a powerful language anywhere. In Africa, it's a band of DNA.

The essays in this book cover a lot of ground. The Generational Factor in Ghanaian Music is one that floored me. We think we have an interesting go of it due to the generation gap? Ghanaian youth once used musical performance to ridicule the older generation. They formed warrior-like sects and overthrew the elder leadership. (Note: eat your young.) This was a fascinating essay, but a more immediately important message in several essays involves the "playing" part of the title. Who's playing with identities in contemporary music in Africa? America. Europe. What will happen in the long run when traditional African music is diluted more and more by other influences?

In Annamette Kirkegaard's excellent essay, "Tranzania - A Cross-Over from Norwegian techno to Tanzanian Taarab," questions are raised about the effects of an interesting event that occurred in 1998, when the Norwegian techno group, Acid Queen, visited Tanzania and made friends with two very different Taarab bands. Taarab is already a musical mutt, always in flux, not tied down to one place. It is popular up and down most of the African east coast and is a hybrid of African, European and Arab influences, so what consequence could there be from a Norwegian techno group recording two Taarab bands - one urban, one rural, with a big difference between their styles - and taking the tapes home and mixing them down Techno style? The consequences may be positive. What about the financial impact on the African players, who are traditionally quite poor? Acid Queen stated this was at least one of their hopes for the project, yet they kept the African musicians' names off the writer's credits in places they should have been. Kirkegaard doesn't indict, but she does shed light on the good and the bad of nearly every step in the chain of events that led to the hit album Tranzania. Yes, it's an essay and at times you wish she'd spice it up, but that's not what she's there for. She presents the facts in a much clearer way than a traditional writer would. You come away able to form your own opinion.

It's the same with all of the essays. If you're serious in your desire to learn about African music and what it really means, socially, politically and spiritually, and in other ways you never would have dreamed of, and if you're a person who can read an essay, Playing With Identities will inform you on the emergence of rap in Senegal, reggae in the Ivory Coast (though not South Africa... I wonder why), political resistance, social resistance, attitudes toward musicians and much more. It's an extremely informative book with which I only had one problem: I'm not a person who can sit down and read a stack of essays. I would have made a lousy teacher. My solution was to take it an essay at a time, sometimes even breaking down the essay into a point or two, studying what I learned on the Internet, then finding examples of the music online so I could hear what I was reading about. Most people wouldn't go that far, but if you're still reading this, you probably would. We're very curious about African music and want to understand as much as we can. There are things I want to know about that I didn't find here, but you can't have it all in 182 pages. If you're building a library of music books and there's room for scholarly works on those shelves, consider this strongly.

© 2003 - DJ Johnson