Abstract
From its encouraged and sustained use during colonial times, through to the creation of the Tanzanian state, the Swahili language has been consistently constructed as one of the key facets of Tanzanian identity. After the emergence of hip-hop in Tanzania, the shift from English to Swahili was instrumental to its widespread adoption, with English gaining a symbolic meaning as a status marker as well as a language for international positioning. This article argues that recently, a rising number of hip-hop artists style themselves as purely English-speaking artists to construct a Tanzanian identity that challenges the dominant positioning of Swahili. To this end, I explore through selected texts how English is used to construct a cosmopolitan niche and urban identity that serves as a counternarrative to the dominance of Swahili in the popular imagination. Through hip-hop songs, groups and performance events, I show how English is used to evoke experiences of belonging that are positioned as authentic narratives that juxtapose rather than contradict a Tanzanian identity.
References
Alim, Samy H. 2009. Translocal style communities: Hip hop youth as cultural theorists of style, language, and globalization. Pragmatics 19(1). 103–127. https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/elanguage/pragmatics/article/view/805.html (accessed 15 May 2019).10.1075/prag.19.1.06aliSearch in Google Scholar
Askew, Kelly. 2002. Performing the nation: Swahili music and cultural policies in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Barasa, Sandra & Maarten Mous. 2017. Engsh, a Kenyan middle-class youth language parallel to Sheng. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 32(1). 48–74.10.1075/jpcl.32.1.02barSearch in Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary & Kira Hall. 2004. Language and identity. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology, 369–394. Malden: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470996522.ch16Search in Google Scholar
Charry, Eric (ed.). 2012. Hip-hop Africa: New African music in a globalizing world. Indiana: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style: Language variation and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511755064Search in Google Scholar
Edwards, Paul. 2009. How to rap: The art and science of the hip-hop MC. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.Search in Google Scholar
Englert Birgit. 2008. Kuchanganyachanganya: Topic and language choice in Tanzanian youth culture. Journal of African Cultural Studies 20. 45–55. DOI: 10.1080/13696810802159255 (accessed 10 April 2019).10.1080/13696810802159255Search in Google Scholar
Forman, Murray. 2012. ‘Represent’: Race, space and place in rap music. Popular Music 19(1). 65–90.10.4324/9780203642191-28Search in Google Scholar
Higgins, Christina. 2009. From da bomb to bomba: Global hip-hop nation language in Tanzania. In Samy H. Alim, Awad Ibrahim & Alistair Pennycook (eds.), Global linguistic flows: Hip-hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language, 95–112. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Hurst, Ellen. 2008. Style, structure and function in Cape Town Tsotsitaal. Cape Town: University of Cape Town dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith. 2001. “Style” as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In Penelope Eckert & John Rickford (eds.), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, 21–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511613258.002Search in Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1981. Linguistics and poetics. In Roman Jakobson and Stephen Rudy (eds.), Selected writings: Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry, vol. 3, 17–15. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110802122.3Search in Google Scholar
Kerr, David. 2014. Performing the self: Rappers, urban space and identity in Dar es Salaam. Birmingham: University of Birmingham dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Mitchell, Tony (ed.). 2001. Global noise: Rap and Hip-hop outside the USA. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Ochieng, Dunlop. 2015. The revival of the status of English in Tanzania. English Today 31(2). 25–31.10.1017/S0266078415000073Search in Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alistair. 2003. Global Englishes, Rip Slyme and performativity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4). 513–533.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2003.00240.xSearch in Google Scholar
Pennycook, Alistair. 2007. Global Englishes and transcultural flows. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203088807Search in Google Scholar
Perullo, Alex. 2008. Rumba in the city of peace: Migration and the cultural commodity of Congolese music in Dar es Salaam, 1968–1985. Ethnomusicology 52(2). 296–323.10.2307/20174590Search in Google Scholar
Perullo, Alex & John Fenn. 2003. Language ideologies, choices, and practices in Eastern African hip-hop. In Harris Berger & Michael Thomas Carroll (eds.), Global pop, local language, 19–51. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Search in Google Scholar
Ratering, Jörn. 2014. Don’t mess with an angel: The reception of a Mexican telenovela in Tanzania. In Matthias Krings and Uta Reuster-Jahn (eds.), Bongo media worlds: Producing and consuming popular culture in Dar es Salaam. 148–166. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.Search in Google Scholar
Reuster-Jahn, Uta. 2007. Let’s go party! Discourse and self-portrayal in the Bongo Flava song Mikasi. Swahili Forum 14. 225–244. http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/9117/14_13_Reuster-Jahn.pdf (accessed 12 January 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Reuster-Jahn, Uta. 2014. English versus Swahili: Language choice in Bongo Flava as expression of cultural and economic changes in Tanzania. Swahili Forum 21. 1–25. http://afrikanistik.gko.uni-leipzig.de/swafo/images/documents/SF_21_Reuster-Jahn_English%20vs%20Swahili_Bongo%20Flava_en.pdf (accessed 13 January 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Reuster-Jahn & Roland Kießling. 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. http://afrikanistik.gko.uni-leipzig.de/swafo/index.php/archives/18-swahili-forum-13-2006 (accessed 15 January 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Robertson, Roland. 1995. Time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash & Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities, 25–44. London: Sage.10.4135/9781446250563.n2Search in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication. 23. 193.229.10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Christopher Holmes. 1997. Method in the madness: Exploring the boundaries of identity in hip-hop performativity. Social Identities 3(3). 345–374.10.1080/13504639751952Search in Google Scholar
Tareto Mike, 2017. Personal interview. By Nikitta Adjirakor, Dar es Salaam, 13 May.Search in Google Scholar
Thompson, Katrina. 2010. I am Maasai: Interpreting ethnic parody in Bongo Flava. Language in Society 39. 493–520. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404510000424 (accessed 14 April 2019).10.1017/S0047404510000424Search in Google Scholar
Vierke, Clarissa. 2015. Comparing the incomparable? On the poetic use of language in Swahili hip hop and ‘classical’ Swahili poetry. In Lutz Diegner & Franz Schule-Engler (eds.), Habari ya English? What about Kiswahili?: East Africa as a literary and linguistic contact zone, 81–112. Amsterdam: Rodopi.10.1163/9789004298071_007Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston