The ironies of pop. Local music production and citizenship in a small Namibian town

Most analyses of contemporary popular music look at how local musicians adopt and adapt global musical forms and styles to produce “vernacular” variants of these global genres. This case study, in contrast, turns the tables, and emphasizes the close link between locality and musical production. The setting is that of Opuwo, a small city in northern Namibia, notorious for its bars and shebeens. Here, the music by a local band, Bullet ya Kaoko Concert Group, makes up the soundtrack to the quest for belonging and identity that takes place in the marginal space constituted by these bars and pubs, whenever people order a drink, play a game of pool, or place coins in the slot machine. Like these drinking places, the music and performances by Bullet ya Kaoko are characterized by the simultaneous articulation of paradoxical images and different models of identification: they use keyboards and synthesizers to reinterpret an old genre (omitandu, prase poems), fuse kwaito moves with the elders’ warrior dance, and weave Herero polyphony into a jive-like beat and structure. Lyrics, music, and dance address the challenges of (post)modern life and give voice to uncertainty and fragmentation. At the same time, though, they embed people in kinship and place, evoking a strong yet encrypted sense of belonging.status: publishe