Imani Sanga, PhD
Professor of Music
University of Dar es Salaam
Born in 1972 in Makete, Tanzania
BA in Music and MA in Development Studies from the University of Dar es Salaam, PhD in Music from the University of KwaZulu-Natal
Project
Sonic Letters, Decolonial Acts: Musical Figures, Swahili Literature, and Anti-imperialist Struggles in Tanzania
Music is a ubiquitous feature of Tanzanian Swahili literary texts ranging from novels and poems to plays and biographies. This book project examines how Swahili literary texts use musical events, musical instruments, genres, musicians, and sounds as semiotic resources to enact people’s identities and relations and to critique various forms of imperial domination. Using the concept of musical figures, the project examines how these Swahili texts use sonic resources to represent various decolonial struggles against imperial forces that Tanzania has encountered throughout its history including the Arab slave trade and the European colonization of East Africa, nationalistic struggles and nation-building efforts, and neoliberal policies and practices.To unpack the relation between music, decolonial struggles, and literary imaginations in the Swahili literary texts, this project explores the multiple histories and meanings the musical figures have accumulated in their music-cultural contexts, such as religious rituals, traditional healing practices, initiation rites, or night club music-dance performances. Then, it demonstrates how these cultural histories and meanings of the musical figures are evoked and used to shape the representation of imperial domination and the decolonial struggles that Tanzanians have carried out over the years and to challenge various forms of imperial domination, as well as the colonial and racist mentality that sustains it.
Succinctly, the book discusses innovative ways through which Swahili literary texts deploy musical figures to represent and critique social relations of domination and inequality. It shows how these texts exploit Tanzanian music cultural contexts and creatively use them to shape musical figures and the imaginary worlds of literary text. It analyses the complex interweaving and interdependence of media and social life experiences in the texts analysed. It shows how, on the one hand, the imagination of musical phenomena (performance, song, musical style, or sounds) in literary texts is made possible through literary language and literary devices used to describe these musical phenomena and how, on the other hand, these musical phenomena themselves function as part of the web of figural devices that make up the literary language used to represent social life.
Recommended Reading
Sanga, Imani (2016). “The Archiving of Siti Binti Saad and Her Engagement with the Music Industry in Shaaban Robert’s Wasifu wa Siti Binti Saad.” Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies 2 (1–2): 34–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2016.1158550.
– (2019). “Sonic Figures of Heroism and the 1891 Hehe–German War in Mulokozi’s Novel Ngome ya Mianzi.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 55 (5): 698–709. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2019.1619618.
– (2020). “Musical Figures of Enslavement and Resistance in Semzaba’s Kiswahili Play Tendehogo.” African Studies 79 (3): 323–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2020.1825927.
Publications from the Fellows' Library
Sanga, Imani (London [u.a.], 2020)
Musical figures of enslavement and resistance in Semzaba’s Kiswahili play Tendehogo
Sanga, Imani ([Pretoria], 2020)
Musical figuring of Dar es Salaam urban marginality in Mbogo's Swahili novel Watoto wa Maman'tilie
Sanga, Imani (London [u.a.], 2020)
Musical figures of enslavement and resistance in Semzaba’s Kiswahili play Tendehogo
Sanga, Imani (Abingdon, Oxfordshire, 2019)
Sonic figures of heroism and the 1891 Hehe–German war in Mulokozi’s novel Ngome ya Mianzi
