Becoming famous: kuduro, politics and the performance of social visibility

Tomás, António

doi:10.1080/19301944.2014.938987

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Kuduro, therefore, offers a different social value: that of generational ritual. But whereas Jayna Brown (2010), as we have seen, locates a liberatory potential in kuduro, António Tomás (2014) insists that the art form—drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of a “body without organs,” empty of meaning—is more a medium or tool for the performance of social visibility than it is a message. Unlike Brown, in other words, he reads it as a nonsubversive genre whose value exists in its capacity to claim social visibility for the participants.…”

Section: Values and Value: Rebranding Kuduromentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The article’s third section analyzes recent moves by Da Banda and Semba Comunicações, companies owned by José Eduardo (“Coreon Dú”) Paulino dos Santos and Welwitchia (“Tchizé”) dos Santos, respectively, two of the president’s children, to rebrand kuduro in the international campaign “os Kuduristas,” and on Angolan National Television. I look at what Tomás (2014) calls their attempts at “curating” kuduro in the language of late capitalist spin. I want to think about what kuduro can tell us about the transition from war to peace in Angola, and specifically Luanda, where a twenty-seven-year civil war ended in 2002 and many Angolans still await the dividends of peace.…”

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Anatomy of Kuduro: Articulating the Angolan Body Politic after the War

Moorman¹

2014

Afr. stud. rev.

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Kuduro , meaning "hard-ass" or "in a hard place," is a contemporary genre of music and dance produced and consumed in Angola, especially in Luanda. This article maps kuduro historically and assesses it in its current moment. While the dance is full of invention and the genre has thrived in the informal economy, this alternative expression and the infrastructure it produces cannot be considered politically or economically liberatory. But the international "os Kuduristas" campaign promoted by two of the Angolan president's children and companies they own shows the dangers of a culturally conservative discourse that dismisses kuduro as a vulgar popular phenomenon while hegemonic political and commercial forces embrace it.Résumé: Kuduro, qui signifie "dur à cuire" ou "dans une passe difficile," est un genre contemporain de musique et de danse venant d'Angola, en particulier du Luanda. Cet article présente le Kuduro dans son évolution historique et évalue son impact actuel. Bien que la danse soit pleine d'invention et que le genre ait prospéré dans l'économie informelle, cette expression alternative et l'infrastructure qu'elle produit ne peut pas être considérée comme politiquement ou économiquement libéra-trice. En même temps, la campagne internationale "os Kuduristas" promue par deux des enfants du président angolais et les compagnies qu'ils possèdent, montre les dangers d'un discours culturellement conservateur qui rejette le Kuduro comme un vulgaire phénomène populaire tandis que des forces politiques et commerciales hégémoniques se l'approprient pour promouvoir leur discours.

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Section: Values and Value: Rebranding Kuduromentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Anatomy of Kuduro: Articulating the Angolan Body Politic after the War

Moorman¹

2014

Afr. stud. rev.

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“…Despite the growth of work on popular culture in Africa, relatively little has been written about various forms of African celebrity (for exceptions, see Pype 2009; Shipley 2013; Tomás 2014). In the Euro-American context, celebrity has traditionally been understood in terms of manufacture (the star as a ‘manufactured product of capitalism’) or exceptionality (a star possesses a special gift) (Holmes 2004: 155; drawing on Dyer 1998).…”

Section: The Making Of a Post-genocide Celebrity Subjectmentioning

confidence: 99%

The making of a ‘superstar’: the politics of playback and live performance in post-genocide Rwanda

Grant¹

2017

Africa

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This article considers the reconstruction of Rwanda's post-genocide music industry through the national music competition, Primus Guma Guma Super Star. It explores local ideas about ‘playback’ and ‘live’ music, and argues that these two performative categories can be understood as wider metaphors for the relationship between the Rwandan state and its citizens, particularly Rwandan youth. On the one hand, Guma Guma aims to create the ideal post-genocide celebrity subject who will ‘play back’ a unified, de-ethnicized Rwandan identity with body and words. On the other, during the first two seasons of the competition, audiences demanded ‘live’ performance and Guma Guma prompted heated debate about ‘taboo’ topics, revealing enduring differences along socio-economic, ethnic and regional lines. Rather than affirm an inclusive Rwandan identity, Guma Guma hinted at its fragility and underscored the multiple and conflicting ways in which young people identify themselves and evaluate ‘truth’ in the post-genocide era. The article contributes not only to literature on popular culture in Africa, but also to studies that focus on mediation and changes in recording technology. Although scholars have quite rightly attempted to dissolve the boundary between the live and the mediated, I suggest that the boundary continues to do cultural and political work, particularly in developmental states.

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“…During the time of research, countless young men in Luanda worked as taxi shouters, to announce destinations of minibus taxis over the noise of traffic and construction, usher patrons into their cars, and cultivate banter with rivalling taxi staffs. In fact, several kuduristas work in the minibus business, and taxis' staffs frequently overlap with kuduro networks (Tomás 2014).…”

Section: An Introduction To Kuduro Studiosmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘I opened the door to develop kuduro at JUPSON:’ Music Studios as Spaces of Collective Creativity in the Context of Electronic Dance Music in Angola

Alisch

2020

Contemporary Music Review

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In this paper, I demonstrate how studios producing the Angolan electronic dance music (EDM) kuduro ('hard arse') in the capital Luanda are usefully investigated as social spaces of collective creativity. I triangulate interviews, observations, close listening and ethnographic participation. Researchers often portray kuduro and other EDM styles in the Global South using what I name the 'scarcity-resilience narrative'. This narrative gives short shrift to the rich cultural resources that feed into EDM styles. It perpetuates problematic stereotypes about African people and occludes the deliberate labour that kuduro practitioners ('kuduristas') invest in their craft. As kuduristas routinely affirm that sociability drives their interpersonal creative processes I portray kuduro studios as social spaces and construe kuduro's collective creativity through Extended Mind Theory (EMT). In my analysis, I first introduce kuduro studios in Luanda broadly and then focus on two influential kuduro studios: JUPSON and Guetto Produções. I show how kuduristas mobilise their collective creativity inside the studio by tapping into aesthetic strategies and conventions of the rich popular culture that surrounds them. Via EMT, I portray aesthetic duelling, puto-kota ('elder-younger') relationships, call-andresponse and urban vocal strategies as collectively maintained social institutions. Inside the studio, kuduristas translate these rich resources into the sonic materiality of kuduro tracks which, in turn, are designed to achieve maximum audience response through mobilising the social institutions when radiating out into the world. This paper provides the first, fine-grained study of kuduro studios in Luanda. It de-centres the 'scarcity-resilience narrative' of Global South EDM by focusing on collective creativity and, as such, offers a fresh epistemological position on the study of music studios, Global South EDM and popular music in Angola.

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Becoming famous: kuduro, politics and the performance of social visibility

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

Anatomy of Kuduro: Articulating the Angolan Body Politic after the War

Anatomy of Kuduro: Articulating the Angolan Body Politic after the War

The making of a ‘superstar’: the politics of playback and live performance in post-genocide Rwanda

‘I opened the door to develop kuduro at JUPSON:’ Music Studios as Spaces of Collective Creativity in the Context of Electronic Dance Music in Angola

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