Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T06:05:48.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“I am Maasai”: Interpreting ethnic parody in Bongo Flava

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2010

Katrina Daly Thompson
Katrina Daly Thompson
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Applied Linguistics, BOX 951531, 3320 Rolfe Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1531kdthompson@humnet.ucla.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the Tanzanian Bongo Flava youth music scene, Abel Motika is a popular artist who uses both verbal and visual markers of Kisongo Maasai ethnicity to style himself as “the Maasai rapper” with the stage name “Mr. Ebbo.” Through analysis of his 2002 song “Mi Mmasai” ‘I am Maasai’, this study investigates his ethnic stylizing in playful use of Maa pronunciation and an understudied Swahili language game known as kinyume ‘backwards style’. The study finds that while Ebbo strategically disrupts the sociolinguistic order that privileges Standard Swahili, the Maasai persona he projects is humorously stylized as unable both to speak Standard Swahili and to engage with the urban lifestyle associated with Tanzania's de-ethnicized Swahili modernity, thereby leaving dominant ideologies of language and ethnicity intact. Moreover, in arguing that Motika's stylization of ethnicity has a contradictory effect, both affirming a local ethnic identity and preserving the logic of ethnolinguistic stereotyping, the study critiques approaches to hip hop that privilige authorial intent and assume linguistic subversiveness. (Swahili, Maa, Bongo Flava, parody, ethnicity, rap, kinyume)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , September 2010 , pp. 493 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alim, H. Samy (2006). Roc the mic right: The language of hip hop culture. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Alim, H. Samy (2009). Straight outta Compton, straight aus Müchen: Global linguistic flows, identities and the politics of language in a Global Hip Hop Nation. In Alim, Ibrahim, & Pennycook, 1–22.Google Scholar
Alim, H. Samy; Ibrahim, Awad; & Pennycook, Alastair (eds.) (2009). Global linguistic flows: Hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Alim, H. Samy;Meghelli, Samir; & Spady, James G. (2006). Enter tha global cipha: The (trans)formation and narration of hip hop culture(s), identities, and histories. In Spady, James G., Alim, H. Samy, & Meghelli, Samir (eds.), Tha global cipha: Hip hop culture and consciousness, 2–38. Philadelphia: Black History Museum Publishers.Google Scholar
Askew, Kelly Michelle (2002). Performing the nation: Swahili music and cultural politics in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aunio, Lotta (2008). Bongo Flava – When global becomes local. Paper presented at the Globality, Locality and Contact – Language and Culture conference, November 17, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (1996). Language and nationalism: Comparing Flanders and Tanzania. Nations and Nationalism 2:235–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan, Tim (1994). Off the gangsta trip: A rap appreciation, or forgetting about Los Angeles. Critical Inquiry 20:663.Google Scholar
Busara Promotions (2009). Festival artist: Wagosi wa Kaya. Sauti za Busara: Festival Artists. Online: http://www.busaramusic.org.Google Scholar
Cutler, Cecilia (2009). ‘You shouldn't be rappin’, you should be skateboardin' the X-games': The coconstruction of Whiteness in an MC battle. In Alim, Ibrahim, & Pennycook, 79–94.Google Scholar
Drolc, Uschi (1999). Swahili among the Maasai: On the interlanguage Swahili by Maa speakers. Munich: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Englert, Birgit (2003). Bongo Flava (still) hidden: ‘Underground’ rap from Morogoro, Tanzania. Stichproben 3:73–93.Google Scholar
Englert, Birgit (2008a). Kuchanganyachanganya: Topic and language choices in Tanzanian youth culture. Journal of African Cultural Studies 20:45–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Englert, Birgit (2008b). Ambiguous relationships: Youth, popular music and politics in contemporary Tanzania. Stichproben 14:71–96.Google Scholar
Galaty, John G. (2002). How visual figures speak: Narrative inventions of ‘the pastoralist’ in East Africa. Visual Anthropology 15:347–67.Google Scholar
Githiora, Chege (2002). Sheng: Peer language, Swahili dialect or emerging Creole? Journal of African Cultural Studies 15:159–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goyvaerts, Didier L. (1996). Kibalele: Form and function of a secret language in Bukavu (Zaire). Journal of Pragmatics 25:123–43.Google Scholar
Hassan, Amour (2006). Mr Ebbo: Kamongo anayetamani maisha ya Mmsai. Lete Raha, August 20. Online: http://www.kurayangu.com/ipp/raha/2006/08/20/72753.html.Google Scholar
Hassan, Amour (2007). Wagosi: Sura mpya katika lugha ya ‘Kirengesa.’ Lete Raha, July 1. Online: http://216.69.164.44/ipp/raha/2007/07/01/93579.html.Google Scholar
Higgins, Christina (2007). Shifting tactics of intersubjectivity to align indexicalities: A case of joking around in Swahinglish. Language in Society 36:1–24.Google Scholar
Higgins, Christina (2009). From da bomb to bomba: Global Hip Hop Nation language in Tanzania. In Alim, Ibrahim, & Pennycook, 95–112.Google Scholar
Hkibari. (2004). Aione jaji mkuu, Barnabas Samata. Nipashe, June 13.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Dorothy L. (2003). Being maasai men: Modernity and the production of maasai masculinities. In Lindsay, Lisa A. & Miescher, Stephan F. (eds.), Men and masculinities in modern Africa, 211–29. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Ingrams, W. H. (1924). The dialects of the Zanzibar sultanate. Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London 3:533–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra (2000). Comic performance and the articulation of hybrid identity. Pragmatics 10:39.Google Scholar
John, George (2006). Wagosi wa Kaya; multipurpose group. Guardian, June 9.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara (1999). Uses of Southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3:505–22.Google Scholar
Karega, Victor (2006). Tanzania: Bongo Flava music marks decade. The Business Times—Tanzania, December 29, Sports section.Google Scholar
Künzler, Daniel (2006). The “lost generation”: African hip hop movements and the protest of the young (male) urban. World Society Foundation, Zurich, February 3. Online: http://www.suz.uzh.ch/kuenzler/grey/WSF_African_Hip_Hop.pdf.Google Scholar
Lefkowitz, Natalie J. (1989). Verlan: Talking backwards in French. The French Review 63:312–22.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Arthur C., & Mihalyi, Louis J. (1982). Aggression, bravery, endurance, and drugs: A radical re-evaluation and analysis of the Masai warrior complex. Ethnology 21:335–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Angel (2009). ‘Respect for da chopstick hip hop’: The politics, poetics, and pedagogy of Cantonese verbal art in Hong Kong. In Alim, Ibrahim, & Pennycook, 159–77.Google Scholar
Mazrui, Alamin M. (2007). Swahili beyond the boundaries: Literature, language, and identity. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Tony (2000). Doin' damage in my native language: The use of “resistance vernaculars” in hip hop in France, Italy, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Popular Music and Society 24:41–54.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Tony (2001). Another root—Hip-hop outside the USA. In Mitchell, Tony (ed.), Global noise: Rap and hip-hop outside the USA, 1–38. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Mol, Frans (1978). Maa: A dictionary of the Maasai language and folklore. Nairobi: Marketing & Publishing.Google Scholar
Mollel, Bahati (2006). Wagosi kunani pale, rudini tupumzike hizi nyimbo za mapenzi. Lete Raha, November 5.Google Scholar
Motika, Abel Loshilaa (2006). Interview conducted and translated by Katrina Daly Thompson. August 31.Google Scholar
Motika, Abel Loshilaa (n.d.). Ebbo's history. Interview by BBC World Service. Online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1526_passportplease/page6.shtml.Google Scholar
Musau, Paul Muthoka (1993). Aspects of interphonology: The study of Kenyan learners of Swahili. Bayreuth African studies series. Bayreuth: University of Bayreuth.Google Scholar
Nkwame, Valentine Marc (2002). Mr. Ebbo's Maasai crushing rap lyrics. Arusha Times, July 6. Online: http://www.arushatimes.co.tz/2002/27/dark_side.htm.Google Scholar
Omoniyi, Tope (2009). ‘So I choose to do am Naija style’: Hip hop, language, and postcolonial identities. In Alim, Ibrahim, & Pennycook, 113–35.Google Scholar
Ondaatje, Christopher (1998). Journey to the source of the Nile. Toronto: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Oumano, Elena (1999a). Local-language rap makes mark in Sweden. Billboard—The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home Entertainment 111 (6), February 2:30.Google Scholar
Oumano, Elena (1999b). Dubmatique's French-language hip-hop. Billboard—The International Newsweekly of Music, Video and Home Entertainment 111 (38), September 9:29, 32.Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair (2003). Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and performativity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7:513–33.Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alastair (2007). Global Englishes and transcultural flows. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Perullo, Alex (2003). ‘The life that I live’: Popular music, urban practices, and agency in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University dissertation.Google Scholar
Perullo, Alex (2005). Hooligans and heroes: Youth identity and hip-hop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Africa Today 51:75–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perullo, Alex (2007). ‘Here's a little something local:’ An early history of hip hop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 1984–1997. In James Brennan, Andrew Burton, & Lawi, Yusuf (eds.), Dar es Salaam: Histories from an emerging African metropolis, 250–72. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota.Google Scholar
Perullo, Alex, & Fenn, John (2003). Language ideologies, choices, and practices in Eastern African hip hop. In Berger, Harris M. & Carroll, Michael T. (eds.), Global pop, local language, 19–51. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben (1999). Styling the other: Introduction. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3:421–27.Google Scholar
Remes, P. W. (1998). ‘Karibu geto langu/Welcome in my ghetto’: Urban youth, popular culture, and language in 1990s Tanzania. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University dissertation.Google Scholar
Reuster-Jahn, Uta (2008). Bongo Flava and the electoral campaign 2005 in Tanzania. Stichproben 14:41–69.Google Scholar
Reuster-Jahn, Uta, & Kießling, Roland (2006). Lugha ya mitaani in Tanzania: The poetics and sociology of a young urban style of speaking, with a dictionary comprising 1100 words and phrases. Swahili Forum 13:1–196.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. (2001). Style and stylizing from the perspective of a non-autonomous sociolinguistics. In Eckert, Penelope & Rickford, John R (eds.), Style and sociolinguistic variation, 220–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roehl, K. (1930). The linguistic situation in East Africa. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 3:191–202.Google Scholar
Rose, Tricia (1994). Black noise: Rap music and black culture in contemporary America. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.Google Scholar
Saavedra Casco, Jose Arturo (2006). The language of the young people: Rap, urban culture and protest in Tanzania. Journal of Asian and African Languages 41:229–48.Google Scholar
Schneider, Leander (2006). The Maasai's new clothes: A developmentalist modernity and its exclusions. Africa Today 53:101–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stroeken, Koen (2005a). This is not a haircut: Neoliberalism and revolt in Kiswahili rap. Image & Narrative: Online Journal of the Visual Narrative 11, 13 September 2007.Google Scholar
Stroeken, Koen (2005b). Immunizing strategies: Hip-hop and critique in Tanzania. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 75:488–509.Google Scholar
Suriano, Maria (2006). ‘Mimi ni msanii, kioo cha jamii’: Urban youth culture in Tanzania as seen through Bongo Fleva and hip-hop. Swahili Forum 14:207–23.Google Scholar
Thompson, Katrina Daly (2006). The stereotype in Tanzania[n] comics: Swahili and the ethnic other. The International Journal of Comic Art 8:228–47.Google Scholar
Thompson, Katrina Daly (2008). Keeping it real: Reality and representation in Maasai hip-hop. Journal of African Cultural Studies 20:33–44.Google Scholar
Thompson, Katrina Daly (In press). Rap cartoon and rap cartoon: Representations of the Maasai in contemporary Tanzanian popular culture. In Falola, Toyin & Fleming, Tyler (eds.), Music, performance, and African identities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Trevor, J. C. (1955). ‘Backwards languages’ in Africa. Man 55:96.Google Scholar
Walker, Douglas C. (2006). Is the ‘word’ still a phonological unit in French? Evidence from verlan. In Gess, Randall S. & Arteaga, Deborah (eds.), Historical Romance linguistics: Retrospective and perspectives, 163–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Wanzala, P. (2006). Deciduous canine toothbud (DCBE) and traditional extractions in Maasai children. Paper presented at IADR meeting, Addis Abbaba.Google Scholar
Weinberger, Steven H., & Lefkowitz, Natalie (1991). Uncovering French syllable structure with verlan. In Laeufer, Christiane & Morgan, Terrell A. (eds.), Theoretical analyses in Romance linguistics: Selected papers from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages XIX, Ohio State University, April 21–23, 1989, 37–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werner, A. (1906). Notes on the Shambala and some allied languages of East Africa. Journal of the Royal African Society 5:154–66.Google Scholar
Werner, A. (1910). Review of With a prehistoric people by W. Scoresby. Folklore 21:252–58.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. (1998). Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8:3–29.Google Scholar
Yahya, Ayisha. (n.d.). Passport please: Tanzania. BBC World Service. Online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1526_passportplease/page6.shtml.Google Scholar