Hip Hop as Civil Society: Activism and Escapism in Uganda’s Hip Hop Scene

Singh-Grewal, Simran ORCID: 0000-0002-3863-774X (2018) Hip Hop as Civil Society: Activism and Escapism in Uganda’s Hip Hop Scene. In: Songs of Social Protest International Perspectives. Protest, Media and Culture . Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 176-181. ISBN 978-1-78660-125-4, 1786601265

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Abstract

This chapter presents an analysis of the hip hop scene in contemporary Kampala, Uganda. I argue that popular music can function as a form of civil society with particular emphasis on the authoritarian state. I make this argument because hip hop in Uganda has first, emerged as a medium of activism, where issues are articulated on the basis of shared interests and collaborative action; and second, as a site for expressions of hedonism and escapism. This chapter will demonstrate how both enactments can be viewed as acts of resistance, and therefore, of protest against a specific backdrop of social, political and economic marginalisation. Furthermore, both enactments engage with concerns that encompass social and political issues. Through this, hip hop provides a discursive space for cultural expression, and facilitates the interaction and negotiation of these themes with a broader context through questions of identity, community and collective action, all concerns of civil society (Ramnarine 2011). The chapter is informed by data gathered from field research undertaken between November 2014 and January 2016. I include ethnographic details of prominent musical events, such as the Annual Ugandan Hip Hop Summit, Hip Hop Mondays at Deuces, Galaxy Breakdance and Ghetto to Ghetto, the details of which I provide in a subsequent section. In addition, I share supporting data from interviews with well-known figures in Uganda’s hip hop scene, supplemented with phenomenological narratives to critically analyze this music scene, in performance and in social life. Taking into consideration studies on the nature of associational life in Africa, where state-society-market relationships are overlapping, I first discuss hip hop as a medium of activism, and second, as a site of escapism, in order to reveal shared spaces that integrate both these qualities as acts of protest. My interrogation on the nature and forms of civil society includes discussions on civil society as analytical concept and critical tool, the dimensions of civil society in Africa and the oppositional in the contexts of marginalisation and authoritarianism. In this study, the state and its inadequacies can be implicated in the formation of both activism and escapism, making all such narratives, songs of protest. Building on this assertion is the nature of power and resistance in popular culture, where protest may be framed in terms of a diversity of social groups with a multiplicity of interests, each exercising a representation of difference within systems of domination (Fiske 2002). This will show how Ugandan hip hop, in musical and social life, is confrontational albeit in ways that do not seek to overtly defy but instead circumvent and transcend the inequities of everyday life in Uganda.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Social Science / Sociology / General, Music / Reference, Social Science / Social Movements
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	09 Jan 2020 09:27
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 00:13
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3065916