Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on three White musicians who perform African popular music. While their embodied difference has an exotic appeal, their linguistic ability signifies sameness. I argue that their un/doing of difference accounts for their popularity with African audiences.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I propose to discuss the work of three White musicians who appropriate African popular culture to differing degrees: Mzungu Kichaa ('The crazy white man'), a young man of Danish ancestry who grew up in East Africa, performs Tanzanian Bongo Flava music and raps in Kiswahili; the White Nigerian, a Nigeria-born Lebanese whose tag-line reads: 'arrogantly Nigerian', and who builds his career as both musician and comedian on his ability to speak Hausa and Pidgin English like a Nigerian; and finally Ees a.k.a Nam-boy, a German-Namibian who performs 'Nam-Flava',a Namibian version of South African Kwaito music. What sets their performances apart from the tradition of racist minstrelsy is not only the fact that these performers address African audiences but also the pastiche-like nature of their works. I read their performances as deliberate plays with both difference and sameness. While their embodied difference makes them stick out from the masses of fellow musicians in Africa, their linguistic ability of speaking an African language like a native speaker signifies just the opposite: sameness. Thus, they thrive on the un/doing of difference and I argue that it is exactly this feature that accounts for their popularity. Paying special attention to technologies of mediation is important here as I argue that their popularity is very much linked to visibility and thus to the emergence of digital visual media and the recent rise of the video clip in African music cultures.