Paper short abstract:

Starting from a focus on the theme of love in videos clips from Tanzanian artists in collaboration with artists of other nationalities, this communication questions the relationship between utopias and music industries.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents a postdoctoral research project on the relationship between political utopias, Eastern African politics of representation, and transnational artistic collaborations in bongo fleva music in Tanzania. Preliminary fieldwork in November-December 2019 in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar brought to my attention growing criticism regarding the evolution of bongo fleva into commercial pop, supposedly indicating a loss of its "true identity" and political character. Inspired by my doctoral research on the worlds of rap and "arts engagés" ("politically-committed art") in Burkina Faso, this work in progress proposes to take seriously the imaginaries related to peaceful cohabitation, and considers love as a form of political utopia. I aim to deconstruct the idea that political art is always oppositional, that it always speaks against, or in reaction to, something. Furthermore, I will question the polarization between commercial music and political music in bongo fleva, by examining how music protagonists associate imaginaries of material success with the dismantling of different borders (between African countries, between tradition and modernity, between rural and urban worlds, etc.) in an utopian future. I am interested in the ways pan-African imaginaries and "Afro" aesthetics are tied to ideals of entrepreneurship and flourishing local economies. As this project is its still in its early stages, I will outline research directions, drawing on preliminary fieldwork but also on a careful examination of a corpus of bongo fleva texts and visuals (video clips, album covers, flyers) advocating love and success.