Urbanised soundtracks: youth popular culture in the African city

Abstract

This article interrogates the participation of youth in constructing and defining the African urban landscape. It seeks to examine youth popular culture and performance practices that combine indigenous sound aesthetics with enactments of cultural memory to construct the urban landscape of Botswana. Particularly, the article examines youth cultural and expressive forms such as hip-hop and Kwaito musical genres, popularised traditional music, and the satirical dramatic impersonations of radio personality Dignash Morapedi. These performances elaborate African syncretic formations that underscore the power of African popular culture to integrate, reinvigorate, and transform various social spaces and identities. Urban youths use these performance forms to demonstrate how innovative practices could be used to interrogate social realities such as unemployment, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Using the notion of “urban noise,” the article teases out a strategy of critique that articulates the various ways that the youth acoustically construct, produce, and navigate the African city.

Keywords:

• African popular culture
• urban noise
• urban landscapes
• Botswana

Acknowledgements

Sincere gratitude to the people who assisted with obtaining copyright permission for the materials used in this article. These include Michael Dignash Morapedi (actor and manager, Sirius Management), John Warner and Laona Segaetsho (public relations officer and communications professional, US Embassy, Gaborone), and Kabelo Mogwe (promoter, Culture Spears).