From Nation-Building to Popular Culture: The Modernization of Performance in Tanzania

This study focuses on Tanzania's efforts to use elements from ethnic expressive arts in political propaganda and in the creation of a national culture after Independence. It analyses why nationalized traditional dances failed to work as national symbols, and further shows how certain central aspects of traditional ritual performance - aspects lost with the "nationalization and modernization of the dances - are now being carried on in a genuinely new cultural form: commercial popular theatre to entertain the low-income masses in Dar es Salaam. Siri Lange (born 1966) completed her Cand. polit. degree in social anthropology in 1994. She is presently affiliated to Chr. Michelsen Institute as a Ph.D. student sponsored by the Research Council of Norway. The project is an extension of her earlier work on Tanzania, and bears the working title "Politics from below: Popular culture, political consciousness and nation in Tanzania"