A sonic biography of an afterlife: The expelled liberation leader Uria Simango in Mozambican rap

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Date
2024-08-19
Authors
Rantala, Janne
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Taylor & Francis
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https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2024.2372556
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Abstract
This article focuses on two interlinked trends in public memory in Mozambique: the rise of alternative heroes and parallel invocations of seemingly incompatible heroes, particularly as they relate to invocations of Frelimo’s ousted Vice President, Uria Simango, in Mozambican rap. The empirical material was produced by listening to rap music, attending shows, and through interviews and conversations with hip hop musicians in Beira, Chimoio and Maputo. This material is examined in relation to historical documents and situated alongside other types of public and private remembering. I argue that critical rap music allows insightful examinations of the links between young peoples’ perspectives on liberation history, present experiences and visions of the future. Rap performances also help to examine how the hegemony of official memory is weakening in Mozambique. These performances are a potentially generative source of alternative history; because they are deeply intertwined in public discussions as well as social activism, I argue that they potentially disrupt and transcend state-sanctioned historiographical frameworks. Taking an ambiguous stance towards historical figures, rap also differs from the opposition meta-narrative, which tends to simply reverse the official canon of heroes and traitors. I find that rappers use a variety of techniques to intervene in disputes around history in creative ways. Regional variations in performed histories draw upon both the local and global wisdoms of hip hop communities, improving their accessibility to the public.
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Memory , Rap , Politics , Mozambique , Uria Simango , Dissidence
Citation
Rantala, J. (2024) 'A sonic biography of an afterlife: The expelled liberation leader Uria Simango in Mozambican rap', Journal of Southern African Studies, 50(1), pp. 153-177. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2024.2372556
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/16224
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Music - Journal Articles
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© 2024, the Author. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited,and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author or with their consent.