Music as Cultural Text

Babacar M’Baye is Professor of English at Kent State University, USA.Fallou Ngom is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University, USA.Khadimou Rassoul Thiam is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Université Gaston Berger, Senegal.Alioune Willane is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Université Gaston Berger, Senegal.

• 1. Introduction: Black Music in Contexts: Africa and the New Black Diasporas.- PART I: The Healing, Spiritual, Social, and Cultural Functions of African Music. 2. Between the Sacred and the Profane: Popular Music and the Dissemination and Policing of Islamic Knowledge in Senegal.- 3. Religious Songs and Nation-building in Postcolonial Ghana.- 4. Proverbs as Verbal Art Forms in Ghanaian Hiplife Songs.- PART II: Gender, Power, and Politics in African Music.- 5. Gendered Concerns: Subversion of Patriarchal Order and Women's Empowerment in Ngoyaan Songs.- 6. Playing with Class: Honor, Griotisme, and Professional Artists in the Tuareg Music Economy.- 7. The Past’s Haunting of the Present: Musical Memorializations of Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara in West African Popular Culture.- PART III: Cosmopolitan and Transnational Features of African Music.- 8.  In Search of Mahalia Jackson and Aminata Fall: A Comparative Study of Senegalese and African American Blues.- 9. From Zouk Lovers and Cabo Lovers to Mais Kizomba: Youth, Music, and Change in Urban Dakar, Senegal.- 10. Balafon Without Borders: The Case of Adamou Daou.- 11. “I am Only an African!”: The Image of West Africa in the Music of Afro-French Hip-Hop Collective Sexion d’Assaut.