As Plato Duly Warned
Music, Politics, and Social Change in Coastal East Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3020554 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kelly Askew (Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, corresponding author), Kelly Michelle Askew |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 76 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 609-637 |
| Publication date | 2003-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/anq.2003.0049 |
| OpenAlex | W2075719323 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 27 |
This essay explores the significance of art in political and social change by way of evidence from the Swahili coast of East Africa. Analysis of two musical genres, ngoma and dansi (typically glossed as "traditional dance" and "urban jazz"), exposes common aesthetic principles of innovation, inventive appropriation, competitive opposition, linguistic indirection, and intertextuality. Historical analysis further reveals that both genres have served as effective modes of political action in Swahili communities. I use this data to question prevailing assumptions about Swahili cosmopolitanism, challenge traditional/modern binarisms, and theorize the relationship between art and society
Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Linguistics · Literature · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Swahili · African history and culture studies · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy
Storytelling through Popular Music
Musical Figuring of Dar es Salaam Urban Marginality in Mbogo’s Swahili Novel Watoto wa Maman’tilie
Anthropology and Evocative Significance
Developmental Theories at a Glance
Making the Case for Popular Songs in East Africa
Wybrane aspekty społecznego krążenia dźwięku w Tanzanii i Malawi. Wybrzmienia etnograficzne
Ngoma in Tanzania and Goma in Gujarat
Being modern does not mean being western
The sport and fun of the countryside!’
Unmoored
Tanzanian newspaper poetry
Oliver Twist, popular music and electoral nostalgia in Nigeria
Musical figures and the figuring of Tanzania's social life in the poems of Kulikoyela K. Kahigi
The Ironies of Pop
The sacred meadows
Further selections from the prison notebooks
The Aesthetic Dimension
Feasts and riot
On the African waterfront
Worlds Apart
Understanding Disputes
Toward a Marxist Anthropology
A Modern History of Tanganyika
Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Art and Aesthetics in Primitive Societies
Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975
Brass bands and the beni phenomenon in urban east Africa
Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda
The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili)
Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of right
The Customs of the Swahili People. The Desturi za Waswahili of Mtoro Bin Mwinyi Bakari and Other Swahili Persons
Populare Musik in Afrika
Women in Nationalist Struggle
Female Circles and Male Lines
The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism
| Unique citing works | 14 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,78 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2026 (19) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 14 |