Musical figures and the figuring of Tanzania’s social life in the poems of Kulikoyela K. Kahigi

Abstract

Mugyabuso M. Mulokozi and Kulikoyela K. Kahigi’s collection Malenga wa Bara (Poets from the Inland), first published in 1976 and reprinted in 1995, includes a number of poems by Kahigi in which music instruments, musical styles and music-making are used as poetic devices to represent various experiences drawn from the social world. This article discusses the ways in which musical figures (i.e. sonic or musical objects) are used in these poems and the effect on their meaning and flavour. The analysis shows that such musical figures play an important role in shaping the way that the world – or realities outside the poem – are perceived sonically. These realities include work, rituals, festivals, love relationships and political struggles.

Keywords:

• Kulikoyela K. Kahigi
• Tanzanian poetry
• music
• ritual
• festivals
• politics
• Ujamaa

Notes

1. Tanzania was formed after the 1964 unification of Tanganyika, now referred to as Tanzania Bara (Mainland Tanzania), and the island of Zanzibar which is now called Tanzania Visiwani (Island Tanzania). Since, to a large extent, Zanzibar shares many cultural practices (including poetic traditions) with the coastal regions of Mainland Tanzania such as Dar es Salaam and Tanga, the term Bara is also used to refer to the interior of a country away from the coast. Although the title of Mulokozi and Kulikoyela’s book resonates with echoes of both usages of the term Bara, I find the second one to be a more relevant identifier of the two poets as originally coming from North West Tanzania.

2. Kulikoyela Kanalwanda Kahigi was born in 1950 in the Kagera region, North West Tanzania. He received his BA (Ed.) and MA (Linguistics) degrees from the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and his PhD from Michigan State University (USA). He has taught at the University of Dar es salaam since 1976 and he has served in various capacities including professor of Kiswahili at the Institute of Kiswahili Studies. He has also been an elected Member of Parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania, representing the constituency of Bukombe since 2010 to 2015.

3. All the poems analysed and quoted in this article are in Kiswahili, and all the English translations are mine.

4. Of the 23 poems by Kahigi in Malenga wa Bara, 11 employ musical figures. Malenga wa Bara was co-authored by Kahigi and the Tanzanian poet Mugyabuso M. Mulokozi, and a number of poems by Mulokozi in this collection also employ musical figures in various ways.