MUS 121
African Popular Music and Globalization Fall 2017
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

In this course, students will engage with a wide variety of African popular musics in different contexts of transformation. The main objective is for students to develop and nuance their understanding of what “popular music” means in Africa within histories of culture contact, the development of so-called “world music,” and ideologies of purity and hybridity. In the first part of the course, we will examine some of the foundational ethnographic studies on popular music such as South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Mali, and ask how globalization is represented in each of them. Students will explore popular music styles like mbaqanga, juju, Afrobeat, and Chimurenga music. This section of the course also considers the development of the music scene in France in the 1980s, using the examples of artists like Manu Dibango and Angelique Kidjo. We will then turn to more recent developments in African popular music, including African rap and hip hop, Ghanaian hiplife, and dance styles such as Ivorian coupe-decale and Ghanaian azonto. Students will come away from the course with a better understanding of the field of ethnomusicology and popular music studies broadly speaking, and particularly how African music has been impacted by globalization through its contact with the West.
The Class: Format: combination of lecture and discussion
Limit: 30
Expected: 25
Class#: 1966
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: attendance and participation, short response papers, a concert report, and a final paper or performance project
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: majors in Music, Africana Studies, and Anthropology/Sociology
Distributions: Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Attributes: MUS World Music/Ethnomusicology

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