Wekesa, Peter Wafula2014-11-032014-11-032004Africa Development/Afrique et développement Vol.XXIX, No 4, 2004: 92-1120850-3907http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ad/article/view/22208http://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/11592This paper focuses specifically on the Kenyan context to contest the foregoing position. Its argument rests on the axiom that whereas it has become normal in the writings on civil society, democratization and so on, to emphasize forms of cultural expressions that are perceived to be avowedly more understood in political circles than others, the space of popular music cannot be under-estimated. It is beneath the dialectics of production and consumption of this popular music with all its contradictions that the fertile intellectual arena on its potent marginalization could be resuscitated. The paper, addressing popular music from a historical perspective, takes into account its dynamic interplay as an aural percept, experience, social practice, individual and cultural expression and as a means of creatively adapting to perceived material conditions to reveal the complex and vital role of popular music as a system for the enactment and negotiation of emergent patterns of identity under conditions of pervasive social, political and economic changefrArticle