Native Tongues brings together critical and new writings on rap and hip-hop in Africa. It explores the influence of hip-hop on the continent and brings to light the pressing issues that are echoed in the lyrics and images displayed by youth from the townships of South Africa to the streets of Bamako. Readers will learn about hip-hop's ever-expanding reach as an art form and socio-cultural force that shapes youth culture and affects social change by providing African youth with alternative spaces to be creative, voice their opinions, and empower one another. Much of the book centers on issues of cultural imperialism, the integrity of local cultures, corporate culture, local economics, transnationalism, identity formation, and more.
Native Tongues is a central resource for understanding the evolution and influence of one of the most creative and enduring elements of global popular culture. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in hip-hop culture and has much to offer students of anthropology, history, cultural studies, sociology, media studies, and black studies.
Author(s): P. Khalil Saucier
Edition: 1st printing
Publisher: Africa World Press
Year: 2011
Language: English
Commentary: no OCR in majority of text; photo chapters at end are double-paged
Pages: xxiii,330
City: Trenton, New Jersey
Introduction / P. Khalil Saucier
Part One: African noise : mapping African hip-hop from the East, West, and South
Rappin' Griots : producing the local in Senegalese hip-hop / Catherine Appert
Rapping against the lack of change : rap music in Mali and Burkina Faso / Daniel Künzler
Hip-hop political production in West Africa : AURA and its extraordinary stories of Poto-Poto children / Jenny F. MBaye
Jua Cali-justice : navigating the 'Mainstream-underground' dichotomy in Kenyan hip-hop culture / Caroline Mose
Colouring the Cape problem space : a hip-hop identity of passions / Remi Warner
Part Two: 'We are Africans:' African hip-hop beyond the Motherland
Hip-hop speaks, hip-life answers : global African music / Harry Nii Koney Odamtten
Le Cauchemar de la France : Blackara's postcolonial hip-hop critique in the City of Light / J. Griffith Rollefson
Part Three: The rap-up : conversations and interviews
Putting two heads together : a cross-generational conversation about hip-hop in a changing South Africa / Shaheen Ariefdien and Marlon Burgess
Bongo flava, hip-hop and 'Local Maasai flavors' : interviews with X Plastaz / Katrina Daly Thompson
Part Four: 'Who shot ya?' African hip-hop in focus
Photos from South Africa / Noelle Theard
Photos from 'here' and 'there' / Magee McIlvaine
