Playing the backbeat in Conakry: Miriam Makeba and the cultural politics of Sékou Touré’s Guinea, 1968–1986

Abstract

This article revisits the cultural history of Guinea in the three decades following independence through focusing on the musical activity of Miriam Makeba, the exiled South African singer who resided in the country between the years 1968 and 1986. Recent scholarship has illuminated the vast investment of the Guinean state in developing modern national culture as part of the process of decolonisation as well as the limited freedom of expression, imposed by the state, that subjugated local cultural production. While these studies have concentrated primarily on Guinean cultural agents, this paper explores transnational dimensions within the cultural politics of Guinea. It highlights Makeba’s emplacement in Guinea in the context of nation building, Pan-Africanism, cold war politics and black transnational cultural exchanges. By focusing on the disparity between textual sources and musically embedded meanings extracted from Makeba’s music recorded in Guinea, this paper recasts Makeba as a conduit of African-American musical influences in the Guinean scene. By doing so, it uncovers cultural spaces that were not subordinated to official state ideology mediated through print culture, and thus have hitherto been unrecognised in mainstream historiography.

Keywords:

• Miriam Makeba
• Guinea
• Pan-Africanism
• African-American music
• cold war

This study focuses on a relatively unknown chapter in the musical career of the South African singer Miriam Makeba. I concentrate on her musical activity in the West African country of Guinea that became her home and where she worked between 1968 and 1986. Although Makeba has been the subject of academic scrutiny in recent years, research into her work has focused mainly on her time in the United States and has thus been limited to the North American context. Research has investigated, for example, her role in the US civil rights movement within a more encompassing framework of black cultural activism (Feldstein 2013; Fleming 2016); the manner in which she came to represent the African “other” in the United States (Sizemore-Barber 2012); as well as her role in promoting resistance to the apartheid regime (Weaver 2013). Makeba’s career in Guinea, however, has not yet been the focus of sustained research. On the other hand, scholarship on Guinean music has focused primarily on Guinean-born musicians and on the state cultural apparatus, and has not considered the role of Makeba’s position in Guinea in depth (Charry 2000; Counsel 2009; Dave 2014). In contrast to the existing scholarship, I will focus on Makeba’s role as a conduit of African-American musical influences that exemplifies the complex patterns of stereophonic flows between Africa and America – flows that are “audibly entangled” with national policies,¹ cold war politics and Pan-African orientations, as well as popular musical tastes. I will also consider Makeba’s own agency and her unique position in Guinea that plays on the tension between her positioning as both internal and external to Guinean culture, and that offers the potential for an illuminating reappraisal of black transnational solidarities.

Music is often viewed as a primary expressive form for the performance and maintenance of such black transnational solidarities, as was stated most forcefully by Paul Gilroy in his volume The Black Atlantic (1993). This is in part due to the fact that, unlike literature and theatre which require laborious work of translation in order to cross linguistic borders efficiently, music’s non-linguistic musical components allow it to retain its expressive power to some degree even in the absence of semantic intelligibility.² Focusing on performative and non-textual aspects of music, Gilroy viewed music as capable of expressing structures of feelings that slipped between existing political structures, constituting a “politics of transfiguration” in which “the formation of a community of needs and solidarity […] is magically made audible in the music itself” (37).³

On the basis of Gilroy’s work, scholars have continued to recognise the significance of music within the Black Atlantic, while criticising the marginal role Gilroy devotes to Africa (see Masilela 1996; Piot 2001). Such works highlight the central place of continental Africa within the transnational order, primarily along the US–Africa and the Caribbean–Africa axes (see Erlmann 1999; White 2002; Monson 2007; Muller and Benjamin 2011; Feld 2012; Kelley 2012; Shain 2012; Jaji 2014). Importantly, Gilroy’s Black Atlantic framework originally offered an alternative to what Schiller and Meinhof (2011, 21) termed “methodological nationalism,” contesting the seemingly pre-given status of the nation-state in cultural analysis. However, I argue that in the context of post-independent Guinea it is equally important to be attuned to nationalist and other ideological forces. These forces dictate interpretations which often stand in contrast to liberal understandings of black solidarity and which operate in opposition to popular tastes, sometimes impeding and disrupting black diasporic musical conversations.⁴

Focusing on Makeba’s role in Guinea allows us to revisit Guinean cultural history from a transnational perspective. The transnational historiographic heuristic of my analysis is derived from the paradigm of “apartheid’s global itinerary,” proposed by Louise Bethlehem, that underlies the research project within which this study was conducted. As Bethlehem claims in this special issue and elsewhere (2013) “the deterritorialisation of South African texts, images, works of performance culture, and social actors, particularly those associated with anti-apartheid resistance, affords the cultural theorist or historian strong historiographic purchase over conjunctures outside of South Africa.” Accordingly, I use Makeba to consider how the music of the exiled South African singer was “channeled through local paradigms of reception, in taut negotiation with aesthetic, institutional, linguistic and political considerations,” in accordance with Bethlehem’s overarching claims (2013, 6).

The second historiographic heuristic that underlies this study concerns forms of historical inquiry that are based upon meanings symbolically embedded in music and sound formations. In Interpreting Music (2011), Lawrence Kramer summarised the marginal position of music (and musicology as a discipline) with respect to broader interdisciplinary academic paradigms. In his view, these paradigms perpetuate the “the familiar, unreflective assumption that music has nothing to tell us about the historical and conceptual worlds it comes from” (96). In this article, I wish to argue for the added value that a music-based historiography, such as the kind Kramer envisages, might have over other modes of historical inquiry primarily rooted in the dominant medium of linguistic textuality. This goal intersects the one that Kramer forcefully sets out in the introduction to his analysis of Beethoven’s The Ruins of Athens: that is to say, the capacity “to learn something about a moment in history by thinking about a sample of its music” (98). Combining these two historiographic heuristics, the current paper offers a twofold historical defamiliarisation.

Cultural politics in Guinea

The case of post-independence Guinea has much to contribute to a renewed appraisal of the Black Atlantic as well as to the historiographical defamiliarisation of decolonisation through sonic formations.⁵ This is because of the unique path the country took to independence as the first nation to gain independence in Francophone Africa, as well as the specificity of its attempts to forge a modern national culture. In September 1958, Guinea voted against remaining in the Franco-African community in a referendum that offered the French colonial territories a choice between local government within this community and immediate independence (Schmidt 2007). Under the leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré, the newly independent Guinean state invested considerable effort in developing a modern national culture through a doctrine known as authenticité. Cultural interventions on the part of the state included the formation of artistic troupes, whose members were civil servants, which performed at regional and national level and the organisation of cultural competitions and annual national festival that exhibited selected groups (Counsel 2009). The vast involvement of the Guinean state in cultural life intensified following a Socialist Cultural Revolution that was officially initiated by Touré in August 1968.

Lansine Kaba (1976) points out that the explicit rationale behind the revolution was to diminish the power of intellectuals and “to return to the authentic African culture as it is lived by the masses, and foremost as it is understood by the party’s leadership” (208). As a matter of fact, the revolution concentrated even more power in Touré’s hands and the Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG) ruling party became synonymous with the revolution. Thus, freedom of expression was severely restricted so that any oppositional voice to the party or to Touré’s leadership was rendered as counter-revolutionary, and thus, as an attack on the Guinean people (Camara 2005, 71). Such accusations often resulted in imprisonment, torture and death without trial (Kaba 1976, 218). Consequently, artistic production has often been portrayed in the scholarly literature as completely subjugated to state policy and government agendas (Counsel 2009, 99).

The Guinean government’s most direct intervention with respect to music was conducted in 1959, only a few weeks after independence. A resolution led by the PDG disbanded all the existing music groups in Guinea. The rationale for this act was described as follows:

As African light music and dance music were banned by the colonial authorities, most music-lovers looking for something exotic turned to Cuban or Latin American music, whose rhythms and melodies were more or less remotely of African origin. In this situation, one of the first things the Party had to do once in power was to disband a plethora of dance orchestras and vocal groups, in vogue under the colonial regime, which confined their performances to slavish renditions of tangos, waltzes, fox-trots, swing music and other rhythms imported from Europe and the Caribbean. Musicians and other performers in these groups were asked to return to authentic African rhythms and tunes. (Cultural Policy in the Revolutionary People’s Republic of Guinea’s 1979, 80)

While this cultural policy document groups together European styles closely associated with colonial cultures (waltzes), American ballroom dancing (fox-trots and swing) as well as Carribean and Latin American music, all described as “more or less remotely of African origin,” in practice the status of these styles in the Guinean music scene was uneven.

By and large, Cuban music emerged as the most popular style in Guinea at the time. This popularity accrued from the distribution of LP records known as the GV series dating back to the 1930s (Counsel 2009, 64). In fact the “return” of Guinean musicians to indigenous tunes and rhythms was not done in a traditionalist fashion. Rather it rested on fusing traditional songs and melodies with contemporary musical arrangement. These styles saw Guinean musicians rely heavily on Cuban music as a musical lingua franca.⁶ Cuban rhythms were often used in original songs composed by Guinean artists and the names of the Cuban rhythms were often indicated in the subtitles. Not only were rhythms incorporated in new compositions, but popular Cuban songs such as “Guantanamera” and “Mi Corazon” were recorded by Guinean bands on Syliphone, the national recording label (Counsel 2009, 91). By way of contrast with Cuban influences, North American black diasporic genres such as Soul and R&B were far less audible in recordings by Guinean artists despite their eligibility for claiming shared roots in Africa. Significantly, this was not just a matter of musical taste.

Despite the fact the Soul and R&B were not prominent in recordings, African-American music was in fact popular among Guinean musicians and the Guinean youth at this time. Artists like James Brown and Willson Pickett were especially admired, as was explained to me personally by Papa Kouyaté and Nestor Sita Bangoura, two musicians who were active in that period (Papa Kouyaté, interview, 18 November 2016; Nestor Sita Bangoura, interview, 1 December 2016). This situation is comparable to that prevailing in other West African locales (Diawara 2000). Guinean musicians did play covers of African-American songs but only in night clubs that were frequented mostly by foreigners or late at night. Under these circumstances, Guinean musicians were allowed to play African-American music under the justification that foreign club goers wanted to hear music from their home countries and the latest international hits (Sékou “Bembeya” Diabaté, interview, 22 November 2016). This form of “musicking” (Small 1998), however, was restricted to these particular live settings. It was deemed unacceptable to play these tunes in front of state officials, not to mention recording them for Syliphone. Indeed, unlike Cuban music that served as a vital source of inspiration in the post-independent Guinean music scene, African-American music remained relatively inaudible in the recording repertoire of Syliphone.

These differing attitudes towards African-American music and Cuban music, despite the state intervention expressed by the cultural policy document cited above, should be understood in light of cold war affinities between Cuba, Guinea and the Guinean perception of Pan-Africanism. Graeme Counsel explains the disparity gap by suggesting that “Cuba [was] staunchly anti-imperialist […] and [that] Cuban music had its roots in Africa (as did jazz), via the slave trade” (2009, 91). This argument consists of two justifications – an ideological element (anti-imperialism) and a historical or racial component (the slave trade). While Counsel’s explanation regarding a shared anti-imperialist ideological orientation is convincing, caution is needed regarding the category of race, which was not understood in purely essentialist terms in Guinea at that time. Contemporary Guinean understandings of race emerge forcefully from the rhetorical questions posed in Guinea’s official statement to the Sixth Pan-African conference in Dar es Salaam in 1974:

Is it not true that our friend, the great revolutionary leader of Cuba, FIDEL CASTRO, is more hated by the imperialists, colonialists, segregationists and fascists than black leaders who have become the accomplices and devoted and servile agents of those who exploit their brothers and cynically scoff at the rights of African Peoples? […] Was not ALLENDE closer to the exploited blacks than certain Afro-Americans or African ‘leaders’. (PDG 1975, 64)

This and other statements by Touré and the Guinean government undermine the legitimacy of race and African origin as exclusive grounds for political solidarity. They instead seek to render anti-imperialist orientations as the common denominator of political struggle. This kind of cultural-ideological affinity was a continuation of an ideological line manifested, for example, in the First Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers in 1969, an event that endorsed a more radical version of Pan-Africanism tied to liberation struggles in Africa. Its radical orientation was pronounced in opposition to the First World Festival of Negro Arts and Culture that was held in Dakar 1966 (see Ratcliff 2009). The Algiers festival resonated in Guinean national culture long after it ended and was perceived as the desirable model for a kind of Pan-Africanism that rejects race as a valid ground for solidarity in favour of a history of colonial coercion centred more around the continent (including North Africa) than on the historic black diaspora engendered by the slave trade.⁷ Importantly, this understanding of Pan-Africanism was shaped by its antagonistic relationship with the négritude movement associated with Léopold Sédar Senghor that profoundly shaped Senegalese nationalism. In Guinea this was viewed as an invalid doctrine endorsing “racist anachronism” (Dave 2009, 14). This tense relationship was expressed through fierce attacks in lengthy articles in Horoya, the state-controlled newspaper (see Horoya, 25–31 May 1975); in Guinea’s withdrawal from the négritude-dominated Dakar festival in 1966 (PDG 1975, 43); in the ideological contestation over the Pan-African Festival in Algiers (Ratcliff 2009) where Guinea had a prominent role; and in the dispute over the participation of non-black North African delegations in FESTAC 1977, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (Apter 2005, 70). Given this anti-racialist thinking together with the identification of the US as an imperialist force⁸ – an accusation that was voiced repeatedly in Guinean media – African-American music could not pass as a completely legitimate form of expression in the Guinean music scene at that time.⁹ Bearing these dynamics in mind, we will now examine Miriam Makeba’s emplacement in the Guinean scene as a way of excavating occluded layers of historical knowledge based on her representations in Guinea media and on meanings embedded in her music recorded at that time.

Miriam Makeba’s positioning in Guinea

On the morning of September 18 1967, Makeba arrived in Conakry for the first time for a one-month visit. She was invited by Sékou Touré, whom she had first encountered at the founding summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa in 1963, to perform at the annual Guinean national festival (Makeba and Hall 1989, 145). Prior to her arrival in Guinea, the South African exile Makeba had already achieved significant fame internationally as well as in continental Africa. Her success in Africa was mediated by her popularity in the US and through her friendship with well-known public figures such as Harry Belafonte, who was her musical patron and who was associated with key figures in African politics.¹⁰ In 1962, Makeba returned to Africa for the first time since leaving South Africa to visit Kenya and Tanzania. Following this visit, she participated at major events on the continent such as the first OAU summits and the independence celebrations of Kenya. Additionally, she achieved prominence as an anti-apartheid activist due to her testimonies in front of the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid (1963 and 1964). Her political visibility won her considerable cultural capital not only in the West (see Sizemore-Barber 2012; Fleming 2016), but also in Africa where she gradually became known as a politically engaged musical persona.

In Guinea, Makeba was treated as a celebrity. Three reports that appeared on the front cover of Horoya, in a rubric that was usually reserved for important national events and diplomatic visits, covered Makeba’s first visit. In the report published upon her arrival in Guinea, Makeba was hailed as “the celebrated South African singer” and “the great African singer” (“Miriam Makeba Est Arrivée À Conakry,” Horoya, 19 September 1967).¹¹ Throughout her visit she was hosted by Touré and other leading figures in the Guinean government. Such was her renown she was awarded an honorary citizenship and land in the Dalaba region for her “great contribution to the liberation effort and the rehabilitation of the continent” (“Le Secrétaire Général Du Parti,” Horoya, 7 October 1967).¹²

During her first visit to Guinea Makeba also met her future husband Stokely Carmichael, a radical civil rights activist and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) member who arrived in Guinea after visiting Algeria and Syria (Joseph 2014, 213–218). Carmichael had established close relationships with Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah, who was at that time in Guinea after being overthrown in a military coup in Ghana in 1966. In 1968 Makeba and Carmichael came back to Guinea, this time as a married couple (Makeba and Hall 1989, 166). The two decided to move to Guinea after they were placed under surveillance by the FBI and because Makeba’s career was in decline following her marriage to Carmichael, who was perceived as a radical extremist by parts of the American public and by the mainstream music industry (Makeba and Hall 1989, 162; Fleming 2016).

Shortly after her relocation to Guinea, Makeba became active in the national music scene. She performed with a band known as Quintette Guinéenne, which comprised some of the top Guinean musicians recruited from the acclaimed national band Balla et se Balladins.¹³ Nestor Sita Bangoura, a singer with Balla et ses Balladins, was recruited as road manager and interpreter between Makeba and her Francophone musicians (Bangoura, interview, December 1 2016). Shortly thereafter, Makeba began a fruitful engagement with Syliphone, recording a variety of songs, with a substantial representation of Guinean songs in local languages such as Fulani, Maninka and Susu. These were in addition to her established repertoire in English, isiXhosa and isiZulu, as well as a number of other songs in Arabic and in European languages. She also performed extensively with her Guinean band in festivals around the world, including the Pan-African festivals in Algiers and Lagos and several national festivals. Although Makeba was integrated into the national cultural apparatus, her group in fact enjoyed a different status than other Guinean groups active at that time. While her group’s members continued to receive state salaries as members of a national orchestra, they also received an additional salary financed by Makeba herself, in what amounted to an exception to the fully state-funded nature of cultural production in Guinea (Bangoura, interview, 1 December 2016). In addition, Makeba’s group enjoyed the benefits of performing with a celebrated singer who remained in international circulation. They were thus exposed to global stages to a greater degree than any other Guinean group at that time.

Makeba’s position in Guinea oscillated constantly between her insider–outsider status in the country. While she was in Guinea she was domesticated as a representative of Guinean nationalism. At the same time, her international celebrity status was strategically capitalised upon. Her international renown helped to validate Guinean culture from the outside. Makeba’s assimilation within the cultural ethos of the Guinean revolution was expressed, for example, in a 1973 article on the front page of Horoya where her name appears alongside local Guinean artists who, in the discourse of the day, “will reflect the language of the revolution, the will and the direction of the people” (“Le Camarade Ahmed Sékou Touré,” Horoya, 15 March 1973).¹⁴ In other instances, Makeba’s position is reversed and her status as a celebrity is emphasised to validate Guinean culture for the outside world.¹⁵ In 1970, Makeba recorded her first four tracks for Syliphone that were released in two 45 rpm records (Horoya Hebdo, 7 August 1970). The first single included the songs “Milélé,” a Congolese song, and “Touré Barika” (Blessed Touré), a praise song for the Guinean president in the local Maninka language. The liner notes on the back cover of the single emplace Makeba in Guinean culture by indicating that Guinea is her adopted country and that she is an honorary citizen of Dalaba. At the same time, the relationship of adoption was mutual: “A passionate spectator in Conakry of great theater, dance and instrumental music, conquered by the melodic sound of the languages, the richness and the diversity of the folklore, Miriam Makeba has adopted Guinean music and Guinean musicians”¹⁶ (Miriam Makeba et son Quintette Guinéen 1970). This description depicts Makeba not merely as a guest (or a refugee), but as an active agent who absorbs Guinean music, based on its artistic quality, and incorporates it into her own. This positioning of Makeba in an album with worldwide distribution demonstrates how her cultural capital in the African music world and beyond was used to provide Guinean culture with external recognition of its merits.

“Touré Barika”: a musical analysis

In the discussion thus far, I have concentrated on how Makeba is portrayed in the written media. In what follows, I concentrate on Makeba’s music in order to expose meanings accessible solely through musical analysis. Makeba had a larger recorded repertoire than any other recorded Guinean artist (Counsel 2009, 107). Her repertoire contained many different categories of songs. The major portion of her songs were in Guinean languages, either praise songs for Sékou Touré (“Touré Barika”), the PDG ruling party (“Maobé Guinée”), or reflections on political events such as the Portuguese-backed invasion of Guinea in 1970 (“Djuiginira”). At the same time, Makeba did far more than merely imitate existing Guinean musical conventions. Rather, she creatively fused local elements with her own past musical influences, drawn both from South Africa and the US.

Makeba’s musical conversation with African-American music began in urban Johannesburg where she participated in the vibrant jazz scene as a member of the close-harmony groups the Manhattan Brothers and the Skylarks. This conversation continued with her nine-year-long career in the US, where she was exposed to contemporary African-American styles, primarily those associated with the Soul Power movement. Bearing this background in mind, I proceed to analyse Makeba’s version of the song “Touré Barika” (barika means “blessed” in Maninka) in order to uncover the cultural and political significance of musical style within the Guinean musical scene.

“Touré Barika,” a song by the teacher and playwright Emile Cissé, had previously been recorded by Balla et ses Balladins under the shortened name “Touré” (Balla et ses Balladins 2008). At the time, it was common for groups to record praise songs dedicated to Touré or to the PDG party.¹⁷ The existence of an earlier version of the song makes it possible to establish a comparative framework and to extract cultural meanings that stem from the differences between the two versions. As will be demonstrated, while these are two versions of the same song there are substantial differences on the levels of arrangement and musical stylisation. The lyrics differ slightly between the two versions but they do not alter its general meaning.¹⁸ Throughout the song Touré’s name is glorified by evoking his different familial relations: “Aminata kougnara dhéén” (the son of Aminata), “André kougnara kê” (the husband of André), “Mohamed kougnara fa” (the father of Mohamed), in addition to cosmological descriptions such as “san dani kanou lé ma” (the sky was created by love) and explicit expressions of admiration in “la guinè dén bê ka ikanou” (the Guinean people all admire you). The phrase “ah Touré ah Touré barika” (ah Touré ah blessed Touré) is the most frequently repeated phrase in the song and is the answer to most opening sentences.

In terms of musical form, the song consists of a verse and a chorus that share a harmonic progression (I – IV – V – I) that is played repeatedly throughout the song without change. The verses are comprised of two structural parts in the form of call and response, a typical feature of African music. The call is a melody with complex and dense rhythmic phrasing that occurs each time with slight melodic and rhythmic variations. The common feature of the verses is the descending movement of the melody. This kind of directionality is common to the songs of the Maninka (Knight 1973, 249). The response is a melody with a simpler rhythm compared to the call and is repeated without change.

The two versions differ in their instrumentation. That of Balla et ses Balladins includes a brass section, two guitars, bass guitar, a variety of Cuban percussion instruments (congas, guiro and timbales), a lead singer and backing vocals. The place of the brass section is minimal and reserved to unison melodic motives that are derived from the main melody. This is typical of Cuban music, as well as Ghanaian Highlife bands. In Makeba’s version the band is more compact and includes two guitars, bass guitar, percussion, and a drum set. This kind of instrumentation can be found in many popular music genres, including Soul, Rock and Blues, and is one of the most typical formats of popular music bands. The version by Balla et ses Balladins is played in the scale of B major, although it is probable that the original scale was the more common C major and that the change stems from the recording speed. The melodic calls are within the range of the third scale degree and the second scale degree an octave higher (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Balla et ses Balladins, “Touré,” melodic outline transposed to C major. Transcribed by the author.

Makeba’s version is in C major with the seventh tone of the scale lowered a half tone as a way to create a bluesy tonality. The third degree is lowered as well, albeit not consistently. Occasionally, the melody oscillates between the lowered third degree and the natural third. These alterations are particularly common in the blues and in other American popular genres that developed from it. While an alteration of the seventh degree is also common in the singing of the traditional jelis (hereditary praise-singers) of the Maninka, Makeba approaches the alteration in a way that is akin to the American styles and not the West African (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Miriam Makeba, “Touré Barika,” with lyrics. Transcribed by the author.

Despite the fact that the two versions share similar harmonic structure, they realise it in different ways. In the version of the song recorded by Balla ete ses Balladins, the bass guitar is the instrument that portrays the harmonic structure most clearly by playing a constant bass line that closely follows the chord notes. In Makeba’s version the bass guitar does not emphasise the harmony so tightly but plays a constant rhythmic pattern that follows the root of the chord whilst omitting some of the chord notes. Instead of the bass, the two guitars share the role of emphasising the harmony, which is distributed along pitch and dynamic range: one guitar is playing softly and in the lower range, while the other plays higher and louder. The latter plays in a more improvised manner and with greater degrees of freedom in terms of harmonic and rhythmic variations. Importantly, it occasionally adds tension notes (the lowered third and seventh degrees), resonating the alterations applied by Makeba’s singing. By playing the lowered third against the background of the basic three chords in the song, a more complex and tensioned harmonic background is created. The differences in the harmonic realisations are most pronounced in the two guitar solos. The guitar solo of Balla et ses Balladin is based on the major scale without even a slight deviation. In contrast, the guitar solo in Makeba’s version is based entirely on the minor blues scale (C-Eb-F-G-G#-A-Bb) and does not play the natural third degree of the scale that is the core of the major tonality. In that way, the bluesy sound is further strengthened.

A rhythmic analysis also reveals substantial differences. Rhythmic structure is an important feature that contributes to the formation of a song’s stylistic identity. Ingrid Monson (1999, 44), following Jocelyne Guilbault, has directed our attention to the symbolic meaning of rhythmic layers that are stacked in order to create distinct rhythmic wholes that index ethnic identities and styles in the African and African diasporic space. For Balla et ses Balladins, rhythmic style is mainly constituted by means of the percussion instruments, specifically the congas and the guiro. Not only do the instruments index the Cuban influence, they do so by virtue of musical features, playing common rhythms from the Cuban space. While other instruments contribute to the creation of a “Cuban” style, they are less significant. This is due to the ambiguous nature of their parts, which resist a clear-cut classification. The guitar, for example, plays a part that is typical of more traditional styles and reminiscent of local instruments such as the balafon and the kora, but it can also be played in Cuban contexts (Charry 2000, 295).

In Makeba’s version, the dominant stylistic identity constituted by the rhythm section is that of African-American Soul music popular at the time and associated with artists such as Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes. The groove of Makeba’s version conveys a more relaxed feeling by stretching the harmony over a doubled length of time compared to Balla et ses Balladins. The drums play the backbeat rhythm that is characterised by a snare drum emphasising the second and fourth beat. The bass guitar, which opens the song, joins the drums to create a distinct stylistic identity. In fact, except for the lyrics in Maninka and the cultural context of a praise song, the musical features conform almost fully to a 1970s African-American musical aesthetic.

From music to historical meaning

Against the backdrop of a highly Cubanised Guinean music, the inclusion of an African-American style in Makeba’s version renders it very distinctive. Thus, while Balla et ses Balladins’ version adheres to local musical conventions heard in many recordings from the period, Makeba’s version is highly marked (Hatten 2004). Her performance positions Makeba within hegemonic Guinean national culture, as is the case for other recorded versions of Guinean nationalist songs, primarily, “Maobe Guinée” and “Malouyame.” However, “Touré Barika” contains stylistic elements bound up with contemporary African-American influences that cannot be accommodated by the overt state ideology.

Researchers on Guinean culture have tended to stress the limited freedom of expression and strict censorship imposed by the Guinean government on cultural creation (Kaba 1976; Camara 2005; Counsel 2009). Accounting for these circumstances, Nomi Dave (2014) has coined the term “politics of silence” to describe Guinean musicians’ silence on local political issues. While Dave focuses on the contemporary music scene in Guinea, she draws a line between the present state and the political conditions under Sékou Touré’s regime, stating that the apparent apolitical climate stems “from long-standing norms of silence and guardedness in Guinea” (Dave 2014, 1). Her main focus, however, is on the lyrics of songs. While it is true that subversive political issues are practically non-existent in Guinean music on a verbal level, I claim that in a cultural context that is strictly regulated by the state, non-verbal channels, such as music, could themselves serve as sites of ideological negotiation. If we consider the ability of musical style to index broader cultural meanings, then the mere act of playing, listening to, or dancing to a Soul rhythm – even if played as background to an acceptable praise song to the president – can be seen as a form of expression that has slipped out of the state cultural apparatus’s control. At the same time, considering Makeba’s emplacement in Guinea, songs such as “Touré Barika” cannot be seen simply as acts of resistance. After all, she was part of the Guinean hegemony: she had close ties with Sékou Touré who served as her patron and host in Guinea; she represented Guinea in the UN and at numerous international festivals; and some of her songs conformed fully within national hegemony. On the other hand, her music contains stylistic elements that challenge the explicit state ideology. In fact, Makeba’s dual position in Guinea, viewed as part of the Guinean revolution while enjoying her agency as a celebrated globetrotting singer, is exactly what allowed her to incorporate African-American styles that otherwise would not have been recognised as acceptable.¹⁹

Discussions of cultural resistance often use James Scott’s (1990) concept of the “hidden transcript.” This concept has also recently been applied to the ideological work done by music. For example, Lara Allen (2003, 235) has shown how “cryptic lyrics” were used in South African songs in order to hide subversive messages against the apartheid regime. In the case of “Touré Barika,” the transcript is hidden not in the lyrics (which are fully compatible with hegemonic codes), but in the musical genre. The fact that Makeba acts from a subject position that is identified with the state does not prevent her from contributing new musical meanings to Guinean society. Within Guinea, Makeba brought a new spirit in the form of sonorities, hitherto not expressed in records. Interestingly, not only were her own songs influenced by African-American styles, but her backing band began to record instrumental musical pieces independently, drawing heavily on African-American music. The first piece, “Miriam’s Quintette Song,” is actually a cover version of the late 1960s American soul-jazz hit “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” by the pianist Joe Zawinul (Myriam Makeba 1971). The second is a track called “Solo Quintette,” a blues tune that is unique for its inclusion of the kora (21-stringed West African harp) (Discothèque 71 1972). The third is “Mansane Cisse,” a popular song from the traditional repertoire of the kora that was recorded over an American modern swing rhythm (Myriam Makeba 1973). It is plausible that the mere presence of Makeba as a kind of cultural signifier even just in the title of the song, the album, or the band’s name was sufficient to allow these creations to pass through the net of state ideological control.²⁰

We may speculate that for the Guinean public who listened to these recordings through the widely disseminated state radio service, these kinds of African-American influences were relatively emancipatory. They created spaces that were able to liberate the audience, even momentarily, from the constraints of ideology and to trigger a more expansive, possibly cosmopolitan identity engendering pleasure through musical means. This kind of ideological work undermines the totalistic conceptualisations that bind culture exclusively to the demands and objectives of the state and the Guinean revolution. It exemplifies a kind of political power that, as Allen (2004, 6) explains, “lies fundamentally not in protest anthems or praise songs, but in the space it creates for small personal pleasure and enjoyment.”

Through the examination of the meanings that are embedded in Makeba’s music, a new form of historical knowledge emerges with respect to Guinea: namely, the uncovering of cultural spaces that were not completely aligned with the official ideology. This disaggregation is not possible, or is at least tremendously limited; if cultural historians work with the available linguistic sources alone. Mainstream historiography, reliant mostly on linguistic sources, has thus failed to account for these dimensions of quotidian dissonance in Guinean culture. Makeba’s music offers a hermeneutic window through which historical dynamics, hitherto unrecognised, can be reconstructed. It serves as an example of how music-based analysis can contribute to the thickening of historical narratives and complement textually grounded historical inquiry.

Funding

The research leading to these results was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) [grant number 615564].

Notes on contributor

Yair Hashachar is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a doctoral researcher in the European Research Council project APARTHEID-STOPS. His current research investigates the history of musical transnationalism in Africa in relation to Pan-African ideology, sound technologies and musical aesthetics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to Louise Bethlehem, principal investigator of this project, for her insightful comments, guidance and support throughout the research and writing process. A previous version of this paper was presented at the “Cultures of Struggle – Song, Art and Performance in Popular Movements” conference (29–31 May 2015), hosted by the University of Johannesburg. I would like to acknowledge Liz Gunner and Tom Penfold for organising the conference. I also thank Kelly Askew who chaired the panel in which the paper was presented for her comments and engagement, the two anonymous reviewers, Cynthia Gabbay for mapping out references in Guinean newspapers and for translating from French, and Mohamed Sita Camara for his assistance and translations from Maninka.

Notes

1. The term “audible entanglement” was coined by Jocelyne Guilbault in the context of calypso competitions that “far from being ‘merely’ musical […] also assemble social relations, cultural expressions, and political formations” (2005, 42). Thinking about the Black Atlantic through the metaphor of the stereo appears in Gilroy (1993, 3) but was developed considerably by Jaji (2014, 8).

2. In Africa this is evident, for example, by the circulation of musical genres across linguistic and geographical spaces (see Perullo 2008; Gathigi 2012; Ndomondo 2012).

3. “Structures of Feeling” is a concept coined by Raymond Williams (1977) and utilised by Paul Gilroy (1993).

4. Andrew Ivaska’s book (2011) on the politics of culture in Nyerere’s Tanzania deals with similar tensions.

5. In her book on music and Pan-Africanism (2014), Tsitsi Jaji has explored similar transnational circuits in South Africa, Senegal and Ghana.

6. Note that the popularity of Cuban music, sung in Spanish, in Francophone countries serves as another indication that language competence is not a necessary condition for the popularity of a musical genre. For more on the popularisation of Cuban music in Africa, see White (2002); Shain (2012).

7. On the different variants of Pan-Africanism in respect to continental versus diasporic routes, see Mazrui (2005).

8. For a useful discussion on the centrality of racial thought within the works of African-American Pan-African intellectuals W.E.B. du Bois and Alexander Crummell, see Appiah (1993).

9. While it could be argued that African-American music and its agents are not equivalent to the US government, which was often attacked in the Guinean press as the foremost agent of imperialism, in Guinea these distinctions were often blurred. One can speculate that due to US State Department-sponsored tours that brought African-American jazz groups to many parts of the world, including Africa, as part of a diplomatic effort to counter Eastern Bloc influence (Monson 2007). In Guinea these tours were sometimes unsuccessful (von Eschen 2004, 78).

10. Belafonte was nominated by Kennedy as a cultural advisor to Africa and was sent to Guinea to mediate cultural cooperation between the two countries (Belafonte and Shnayerson 2012, 229). He initiated a programme to construct a national arts centre in Conakry, that was eventually blocked from the Guinean side that expressed a highly critical stand towards the US and its interventionist policies in Africa (305).

11. “La célèbre chanteuse sud-africaine” and “la grande chanteuse africaine”. I thank Cynthia Gabbay for translating these passages.

12. “grande contribution a l’effort de liberation et de rehabilitation du continent”.

13. Quintette Guinéenne was comprised of Sékou “Docteur” Diabaté (lead guitar), who was later replaced by Sékou “Kora” Kouyaté, Kémo Kouyaté (guitar), Famoro Kouyaté (bass guitar), Abdoulaye Camara (percussion), later replaced by Papa Kouyaté, and Amadou Thiam (percussion).

14. “traduiront le langage de la Revolution, la volonte et l’orientation de notre Peuple”.

15. Makeba’s involvement in Guinea was not confined solely to the cultural sphere and in 1975 she represented Guinea at the UN (Makeba and Hall 1989, 192).

16. “Spectatrice passionnée à Conakry des grands spectacles de théâtre, de danse et de musique instrumentale et vocale, conquise par la consonance mélodieuse des langues, la richesse et la diversité du folklore. Miriam Makéba a adopté et [sic] la musique guinéenne et les musiciens guinéens”.

17. See for example the following songs by selected Guinean groups: Kakandé Jazz (“Mangue Touré”), Koloum Jazz (“Hommage a Sékou Touré”), Fetoré Jazz (“Sékou Touré barika”), Bembeya Jazz National (“Touré”), Kébendo Jazz (“Président Sékou Touré djarama”), Les Ballets Africains (“Touré”).

18. Translation of the song from Maninka to French was done by Mohamed Sita Camara; translation from French to English by the author.

19. Note that when speaking about Makeba’s agency I am not implying that her group members were not involved in the creative process, including decisions on musical style and arrangement. However, since she was the leader of the group and her name was in front, her band members enjoyed her special position and the benefits it brought.

20. Makeba was also pivotal in the expression of African-American culture in Guinea through a dance club that she owned in Conakry called Zambezi. As is evident in a scene shot at the club, taken from a Swiss documentary that was filmed in the early 1980s, the music played in the club was contemporary African-American music (Dami 1981).