CRISIS: THE POVERTY AND FUTILITY OF ZAMBIAN HIP-HOP - By Malama Katulwende
Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 06:10 Friday, 17 August 2007 02:29
I thought: This guy’s really good. He must come from the American West. “Who’s he, anyway?” I asked a friend at an internet café who was familiar with the latest trends on the Zambian music scene.
“That’s Crisis,” I was told. “He’s actually Zambian and not American! His real names are Chisenga Katongo. I doubt whether he’s ever been to the States. ”
I was totally speechless. What had prompted Katongo to create an artistic genre that was denuded of that cultural identity that was Zambian? Could this music be classified “Zambian” - or, if not, why? I was now grappling with aesthetic questions of what constituted Zambian music, and what was to be its basic criteria of acceptability and valuation.
Fortunately, however, I am not the first critic to raise some concerns over the direction some Zambian music has taken. For example, The Post newspaper of 21st March, 2006 reported that the veteran Zambian artiste, Maureen Lilanda, had advised upcoming artistes to look to their roots and culture for inspiration rather than the West.
In his POST newspaper article, “Is the death of busteele upon us?” the music critic and reviewer, Elvis Zuma, discussed the debacle of ‘Zambian hip-hop’ music in the context of contemporary American Black music. The columnist, Edem Djokotoe had observed in his recent article, “Luvale Jazz forever” - The POST, 3rd august, 2007 – that:
“Anyone who has had the opportunity to listen to African artistes who have carved a niche for themselves on the international musical landscape like Lokua Kanza , Baba Maal, Oliver Mtukudzi and Angelique Kidjo will agree with me that there is something distinctly un-European and un-American about what they have to offer. The distinctiveness of their sound is what makes their music so intriguing in a world in danger of losing its soul to globalisation, this Western conspiracy to model the world in its own image. If we sacrifice ourselves on the altar stone of globalisation, we run the risk of becoming zombies, culturally speaking.”
Put differently, the world of art is a battleground upon which the fragile artistic creations of the Third World Countries clash with the cultural interests of the West. However, it is impossible to become an internationally acclaimed artiste if your art, as an African, is not grounded in a distinct Africanness defined as such by Africans themselves. The Zambian artistes, therefore, have no choice but to define who they are without any excuses. They need to understand the ideological, pedagogical and material realms of their craft as a function of who they are (individually and collectively), in time and space. But why did CRISIS assume that imitating some American rappers constituted art?
The question of imitation in art, or the nature of art in general, has been debated by various artists or thinkers such as Philokles of Egypt (who might have invented painting), Aristotle, Kant, and so on. In African art, however, this question assumes a different, existential meaning. Whereas Western art may be so abstract as to detach itself completely from the exigencies of life, African art and aesthetics – whether that of the Dogon peoples of Mali, the Bambala of the Congo, the Makishi Dancers of Zambia, the Yoruba of Nigeria or the great sculptors of Benin – had generally interpreted itself within the dynamics of religious, social, economic and political discourses in time and space. Their art either alluded to, or represented the invisible and transcendental: the gods of the tribe, the ancestors, the community, birth, growth, initiation rites, death, rebirth, harvests, and so on. This is the point that is explicitly expressed by John Mbiti in his work, African Philosophy and Religions, and by K.C Anyanwu and E. A Ruch Omi in African Philosophy, respectively.
In short, the great master artists of our African past have looked inward and rooted their creations within the living conditions of their people. Although they absorbed certain external influences outside their tribal art forms, they nonetheless resisted the temptation of renouncing their cultural roots and engaging the ‘foreign’ and allow it to dominate their media and take over. They retained the many-valued-logics of their craft and clung to their artistic identities which defined their greatness on the basis of originality and inventiveness.
However, in the modern world of globalisation where the boundaries between art and every day life have shattered, mass artistic productions from industrialised nations have been unleashed upon the less developed world in order to alter their mental frameworks, mind-maps, attitudes and other categories of thought that mould their consciousnesses.
But granted that the Western world should use the arts to mould our emotional texture, languages, visual perceptions, thought shapes and ideologies as we try to understand who we have been, who we are and who we shall be, as Africans, then we have to face up to the dilemma of identity as we blindly continue to defend values that are not really ours but the Westerner’s.
On the other hand, the creative act as such consists in bringing forth into existence that which was previously non-existent or that which was not there in the first place. For to exist means, to be; to come forth into the realm of light so that something whose existence has been affirmed, only becomes because its identity is guaranteed.
But, on the contrary, a mere recital of the American rapper, Jay Z, or Mariah Carey, for example, is not doing very much. In as far as art is concerned, such a recitation is simply an exercise in futility because by merely imitating what is already there, the imitator is not introducing anything new into the world.
| Julius Chongo Award 2006 for Best Creative Writing | |
I raised the same objections in my novel, Bitterness, in a dialogue called “Idols of the Cave” (which I named after Francis Bacon). My arguments were thus: Some Zambian youths have imbibed the spirit and intent of American hip-hop and turned into rappers themselves without examining the intentionality and objectivity of their acts. For them, though, the mere act of imitation constitutes an achievement and an end. However, just as effects will always be inferior to causes, so will imitators to originators.
Yet the irony of life is that sometimes people are content with things of little value. Like prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” who argue over passing shadows and images and give each other prizes and rewards, we have allowed our sensibilities to be dulled by fake rappers who, like shadows which are a mere representation of reality, are nothing but a semblance, copy, and figment of that which is actual and real.
Unless some Zambian artistes probe deeply into who they are and break free from the shackles of Western conventions, I am afraid they will always remain in the shadows of others and never stamp their artistic genius and authority upon this world.
By Malama Katulwende
www.mondialbooks.com
Luapula Artland
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written by Nchindila , December 18, 2008
Malama
One of the major problems I still have with some of your works is the fact that you raise very important issues which become submerged in your inscrutable centrifugal intellectual feebleness. One would expect that your literary prowess, your extensive reading, your profound contact with the English language had given you enough tools to use the right words at the right time. But Malama, when you say:"It's foolish to suggest that Malama Katulwende is not a graduate of the University of Zambia", do you really mean these words which suggest that it is in fact an entitlement for you to be a graduate of the University of Zambia? How very clever of you, Malama! Or did you simply want to say: 'It's 'wrong' to suggest that Malama Katulwende is not a graduate of the University of Zambia'? Whichever way, you fail to account for the central theme depicted by the statue of the first Zambian graduate carried on your novel 'Bitterness'. You need not see this as an attack on your person Malama; you might not even be aware that exclusion from university education can be traumatising to a bright person like yourself but you have hardly made any indication to your avid readers if at all this is precluded. Instead, you assume an open critic is trying to achieve something by merely stating a fact that you were excluded from UNZA at some point. Contrary to your view that your character was attacked instead of real issues, Malama, you hardly paid attention to what Nisio raised in your analysis which I concurred with, inviting you to engage with the fallacy of Ad hominem. Your understanding of the singer CRISIS seemed flawed by the error of reasoning you portrayed in rejecting CRISIS' gift of hip-hop music just because he is a Zambian sounding like an American. Had you cared to look up the semantic properties of the fallacy of Ad hominem, you could have learnt from your error. You did not care and curiously, it has taken you a full year after these issues were brought to your attention in 2007 for you to respond to them. With no apology for exposing your lack of concentration on the works you put in public domain, you hurriedly opted to reduce an important treatise to street language: 'But please let’s debate issues..,'. No, Malama, not another Zambian empty political pun! Any ill prepared analyst can say this but Malama, this sort of academic indiscipline is intolerable on an international plane and cyberspace is one such platform.
Talking of music, see my article on a different genre, Kalela dance, in MUZIKI Journal Issue 2, 2007. I look forward to reading yours on music in Zambia in a reviewed journal.
On a different note, I found your analysis of the late Mwanawasa's legacy well researched and thought out. Please let me have your email address for a possibility of serious networking outside this platform.
You have made a lot of promise; you need to package it more appropriately for international consumption. You be strong!
written by Malama Katulwende , December 07, 2008
written by Nchindila , October 31, 2007
written by Nisio , October 01, 2007
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Thx for your interesting comment. About the statue on my book, it's a depiction of the central theme of the work - which is the brain drain; why are Zambians leaving the country? My publisher and I decided to use this statue of a 'graduate' because it is very representative of the book, on average. Secondly, my readers of "Bitterness" should not confuse the plot of the book with my personal life. In the book, the primary character, Besa, is excluded from Unza for his political activities; my critic seemed to suggest that I was, in my real life excluded from Unza, which is not correct.
Third, I know quite a lot about Crisis, the rapper, and I still stand stand by the article. Please read it again!
If you need contact, email me at: katu22@gmail.com