Machini Kubwa. Group Dancing, Politics, and Modernity in Umatengo, Tanzania

Hill, Stephen Craig

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Description

Title

Machini Kubwa. Group Dancing, Politics, and Modernity in Umatengo, Tanzania

Author(s)

Hill, Stephen Craig

Issue Date

2002

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Thomas Turino

Department of Study

Music

Discipline

Music

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

History, African

Language

eng

Abstract

The primary purpose of this dissertation is to present a historical view of Matengo musical practices with the goal of understanding how these musical practices influenced, reflected, and interacted with broader social trends. A further goal is to present an ethnographic view of contemporary and historical musical practice. Challenging standing notions of static African culture, through an investigation of genre change this work shows the dynamic nature of rural musical life. It also investigates the complex relationship between local political action, local music, and the national stage. Finally, through the various processes initiated by two colonial governments, the Roman Catholic Church, and Tanganyikan nationalists, significantly, the shift toward a modern worldview, the Wamatengo learned a new way to understand themselves and their surroundings. Much of the Matengo story is lost to patchy, contingent, and inconsistent history keeping (oral and written), but traces of these processes, and how the Wamatengo reacted to and capitalized on them, are found in musical practice.

Graduation Semester

2002

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/85700

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