Mwenye? Muhindi? Mwafrika? Creative encounters with Afro-Asians in Tanzania, Zambia and Kenya

Many popular African performing artists use their music to create a sense of belonging in order to incorporate the largest number of listeners as audience members and therefore increase the community of listeners and fans that their music attracts. At the same time, however, there are also strategies employed to create cohesion through the exclusion of groups that can be identified as outsiders or even foreigners. One of the most fiercely contested aspects of this musical xenophobia has to do with interracial amorous and/or sexual relations, particularly those between African women and Afro-Asian men. What can an analysis of these popular works of xenophobic art—together with other less confrontational, indeed ameliorative, works—tell us about the functional value of discriminatory practices in these African communities? Additionally, what can a consideration of the semiotic practices (musical, verbal and visual) presented by such works tell us about the fluid and changing nature of these discriminatory practices? And, finally, how can attention to these works of performative art, together with literary works, illuminate the ebb and flow of such tendencies in the societies considered and the prospects for the future of interracial relations in these countries? In order to respond to these questions Rosenberg's essay focuses on the relations between the ‘indigenous’ African and ‘Afro-Asian’ communities of Eastern Africa

Aesthetics · Art · Ethnology · Indigenous · Media studies · Musical · Order (exchange · Performative utterance · Performing arts · Popular music · Racism · Sociology · Tanzania · The arts · Visual arts · Xenophobia · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · South African History and Culture