Music History and Politics in Contemporary Africa

Catalog description

The objective of the course is to analyze the social, political and cultural dynamics of post-independence African states through the musical archive. The course will analyze the role that music has played in the construction of national identities in post-colonial African states, but also in social, political and cultural dynamics of contemporary Africa. From High-life in Ghana to Congolese rumba, Afrobeat in Nigeria, reggae, Hip Hop and Raï, it will show how music has accompanied societal and political evolutions of African nations. The course will think of music as a landscape and analyze the musical circulation, as a space for the constitution of African societal modernities. In English.