Music, musicians, and social advocacy: Environmental conservation, knowledge-sharing, and cultivating a culture of wisdom in northern Tanzania
type: CreativeWork
description: Popular music and musicians in Tanzania play an important role in identifying and confronting a variety of locally relevant concerns. Prior research in the region has focused especially on the relationship between hip hop and social problems such as poverty and drug-use among urban youth. While individual artists and groups of people brought together by their shared interest in music have both been included in this research, their engagement with local and global environmental issues and community-based education have not been exhaustively addressed. This thesis seeks to fill this gap by exploring the relationships of music-makers and their communities with environmental concerns and various forms of knowledge production and maintenance. Drawing on formal interviews, informal conversations, and my participation in the collaborative production of an album and music video, this thesis presents several case studies which demonstrate unique and innovative approaches to confronting environmental and educational issues. Environmental advocacy and activism are carried out by musicians in Tanzania both through their musical production itself and extra-musical efforts. Chaca na Nduguzee’s “Maji Uhai” (Water is life), explicitly addresses the crisis of clean water in Tanzania. Another artist, P-Culture, uses nostalgic language and visual depictions to simultaneously construct local indigenous identities and pan-African ones, united by their relationship to the land in her video for “Dream Land.” There are also a number of communities centered around musical production involved in local waste-cleanup efforts and creating sustainable forms of ecotourism. Many of these artists and their communities are also involved in the maintenance and production of diverse knowledges and the eventual naturalization of collective wisdom based in humane decision-making. The ways in which the communities and individuals I present in my case studies do the work of producing, sharing, and encoura…
abstract: Popular music and musicians in Tanzania play an important role in identifying and confronting a variety of locally relevant concerns. Prior research in the region has focused especially on the relationship between hip hop and social problems such as poverty and drug-use among urban youth. While individual artists and groups of people brought together by their shared interest in music have both been included in this research, their engagement with local and global environmental issues and community-based education have not been exhaustively addressed. This thesis seeks to fill this gap by exploring the relationships of music-makers and their communities with environmental concerns and various forms of knowledge production and maintenance. Drawing on formal interviews, informal conversations, and my participation in the collaborative production of an album and music video, this thesis presents several case studies which demonstrate unique and innovative approaches to confronting environmental and educational issues. Environmental advocacy and activism are carried out by musicians in Tanzania both through their musical production itself and extra-musical efforts. Chaca na Nduguzee’s “Maji Uhai” (Water is life), explicitly addresses the crisis of clean water in Tanzania. Another artist, P-Culture, uses nostalgic language and visual depictions to simultaneously construct local indigenous identities and pan-African ones, united by their relationship to the land in her video for “Dream Land.” There are also a number of communities centered around musical production involved in local waste-cleanup efforts and creating sustainable forms of ecotourism. Many of these artists and their communities are also involved in the maintenance and production of diverse knowledges and the eventual naturalization of collective wisdom based in humane decision-making. The ways in which the communities and individuals I present in my case studies do the work of producing, sharing, and encoura…
author: Hatfield, Tara
language: en
keywords: popular music, hip hop, reggae, dancehall, advocacy, activism, environment, wisdom, knowledge, community, Tanzania, Arusha, Hadzabe
date published: 2019-08-23T20:02:05Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:42Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/104917