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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore how dissident music crafted to express, promote and assert multiple rights enable us to understand the present political moment in the Oromia region, Ethiopia, as well as how musicians perform and transform the future through protest music.

Paper long abstract:

The Oromo youth revolution which, in 2018, led to the implosion of the regime that ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades was spearheaded by protest music that are crafted to express, promote and assert multiple rights: the right to political representation, the right to culture and identity, and the right to space/city - Addis Ababa - which serves competing economic and geopolitical purposes. In this paper, I discuss how singers use multi-modal, multi-layered and multi-referential songs and music videos to highlight questions of identity, eviction and development-induced displacement in a political environment where dissenting voices are curtailed. Songs and music videos about the precaritization of life, displacement and dispossession demonstrate Oromo traditions of calling out social injustices in subtle, often poetic ways. Their mobilization also suggests their significance in resisting systemic exclusions, raising questions about the right to the city, urban revitalization, and equitable futures. Studying what I call 'miktivism' - music activism - reveals the embeddedness of the oral and auditory as modes of cultural expression, but also how young musicians deploy it as playful, revolutionary practices to highlight intersecting socio-economic, political/ideological, and epistemic injustices. In so far as miktivism is a subversive aesthetics of dissent, it can create political soundscapes that are in excess of the performers, musicians and songwriters, permeating spaces that are not easily controlled by the state. I reflect on how we might understand the present political moment through the work of young musicians who also imagine, perform and transform the future through protest music.