Recreating Discourse and Performance in Kenyan Urban Space Through Mũgithi, Hip Hop And Gĩcandĩ

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dc.contributor.authorGithiora, Christopher k
dc.date.accessioned2025-07-03T12:46:17Z
dc.date.available2025-07-03T12:46:17Z
dc.date.issued2008-06-01
dc.descriptionArticle
dc.description.abstractThis paper examines the one-man guitar Mu˜githi music dance and performance popular inurban Kenyan urban space together with localized Kenyan Hip Hop. The music genres areseen as cultural practices that perform global socio-cultural discourses, and which can alsobe read for the ways in which they both indicate and formulate contexts. A closeexamination of the two popular genres shows how they continue to borrow from a varietyof cultures and poetic forms. Both Mu˜githi and Kenyan Hip Hop music also embody suchforms as Gı˜ku˜yu˜ poetic tradition known as Gı˜candı˜. The male-dominated tradition issomewhat comparable to such well known traditions as West African praise-singers andImbongi male Zulu biographers in terms of their praise-singing performances and poetry.Consequently the borrowing and fusion between Gı˜candı˜ on the one hand and Mu˜githi andHip Hop traditions on the other, help to display dynamic stylistic variations along withcreative dialogic inter-textuality (Bakhtin 1981). This paper suggests that, given thecreative and popular nature of the two musical genres, and the often controversialsociocultural discourses they embody, both Mu˜githi and Kenyan Hip Hop music enjoywide acclaim and ‘covert prestige’ (Trudgill 1972), irrespective of the perceptions that theyare both transgressive and subversive sociocultural and political representations of ‘thewretched of the earth’ (Fanon 1967).
dc.identifier.issn1369-6815
dc.identifier.issn1469-9346
dc.identifier.urihttps://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/30313
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherRoutelodge
dc.titleRecreating Discourse and Performance in Kenyan Urban Space Through Mũgithi, Hip Hop And Gĩcandĩ
dc.typeArticle
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