Thomas Turino Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDONIntroduction “We moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilisation, one which shall include all the talents of all the absorbed peoples—" “The Sefior will forgive me,” said the President. “May J ask the Sefior how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?” “| never catch a wild horse,” replied Barker, with dignity. “Precisely,” said the other; “and there ends your absorption of the talents. That is what I complain of your cosmopolitanism. When you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. If the Bedouin Arab does not know how to read, some English missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says, ‘This schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a Bedouin to teach him.’ You say your civilisation will include all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus? “I recur to the example I gave. In Nicaragua we had a way of catch- ing wild horses—by lassoing the fore feet—which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are going to include all the tal- ents, go and do it. If not, permit me to say what I have always said, that something went from the world when Nicaragua was civilised.” —G. K. Chesterton, 1904" Globalization begins at home. The question is, whose home? How many homes have to be involved with a computer, Michael Jackson, or an indigenous African instrument like the mbira before people begin to speak of them as “global?” How do people understand this term in re- lation to “the local?” Where is value placed? What ideological work does this terminology accomplish in the press, on the street, in the boardroom, and when elaborated and legitimated by academics? How is the conceptualization of the global and the local related to earlier de- scriptive categories such as “modern” and “traditional,” “Western” and “non-Western?” What are the concrete conduits that bring localized, indigenous musics into national and transnational markets, and what happens to the music and musicians in the process?‘The interaction of local cultural practices and “global” processes— the dynamics ofeltralheterogenization and homogenization (Appas dural 1996: 32; Erinn 1993: 5)—have become central concerns in ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural studies, and other disciplines. This book addrestes these dynamics through a socal and style history of urban-popular music in Farare, Zimbabwe, from the 1930s to the 1990s. It offers concrete se sues how AR AL In the chapters that follow, I trace the trajectories of black, middle~ clas, “one” performers who imitated the Mill Brothers, Carmen iranda, and Elvis (chapter 4), and itinerant acoustic guitarists playing everything from Jimmie Rodgers to indigenous ‘Shona music in bore. neck guitar style (chapter 7). [ am particularly interested in the devel- ‘opment of several urban-popular genres such as jit and “mbira-guitar” ‘music that are unique to Zimbabwe. As performed by Thomas Map- mo, Stella Chiweshe, the Bhundu Boys, and others, these genres em- body the processes of transnational-indigenous encounter, and for this very reason became linked to Zimbabwean nationalism in the 1970s and to transnational “worldbeat” markets in the 1980s (chapters 7-9}. Talso follow the trajectory by which indigenous Shona musicand dances became organized and professionalized by the colonial and, later, black- nationalist states for urban stage performance and, ultimately, for inter- national consumption (chapters 2, 5, and 9). The processes of musical nationalism receive special attention in chapters § and 6. My main theoretical goal is co clarify the continuities and parallel cultural effects of colonialism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. three phenomena often understood in opposition to each other. The Zimbabwe case suggests that the oppositions are, in important ways, ephemeral and that the linkages underwrite the accelerated neocotonial expansion of modernist-capitalist economics and ethics—what is cu- phemistically referred to as “global culture.” From the point of view of people in Zimbabwe who maintain a different ethos, or people like my self who view capitalism asa negative force in relation ro ecological and social health, itis important to look at how globalization progresses at the levels of values and lifeways, As a particularly direct medium of value, identity, and social relations, music making provides a useful window to the problem iwrropucTion s [As recently as the mid-1950s, very few black Zimbabweans conesived oof musical activities a a fulltime professional carcer—as acoustic la- bor within the stream of market forces (Araujo 1992). For indigenous people, musie and dance were aspects of participatory occasions that ‘were part of sociability and spirituality itself (see chapter 1). Ascolonial subjects, people still thought of themselves primarily in terms of their specific communities, regions, and sometimes religious afliations, or as ‘African’ ® when interacting with white people; most had not yet consid- ered the abstract possibility of belonging to a nation. While the radio constantly filled them in on happenings in London, Paris, and Washing ton, these names too were abstractions. Probably few Shona peasants seriously entertained the idea of ever visting such places or thought of distant events there as having much bearing on their daily lives. By 1995 things were quite different. Zimbabwe had been a nation- stare for fifteen years; a broad spectrum of people were at least aware of the international ranking of the national football team, the impact of government subsidies, and the words ‘national culture.” By the mid- {1990s the ranks of full-time professional musicians and dancers had welled considerably, and competition among them was, to quote a Zimbabwean arts administrator, “cutthroat.” Although there was not tnouigh work to support them at home, township and peasant youth dreamed of touring Europe, the United States, and Japan with their bands or dance groups. Professional aspirations brought them into di- rect relations with international markets, and thus aesthetics, in pow- erful new ways, Following on the heels of successful touring artists like Thomas Mapfumo, Stella Chiweshe, and the Bhundu Boys, oF state sponsored groups like the National Dance Company, foreign cities no longer seemed so distant and out of reach, In a country as small as Zim- babwe, many people knew, or knew somebody who knew; people who “had gone oti’; loca, face-to-face contacts took on new significance as windows to transnational ravel, experience, taste, and desires. This is a familiar story which could be retold in many places throughout the postcolonial world, but itis no less dramatic for that. The Zimbabwean case is particularly striking both because of the his- torical proximity and the rapid pace of these processes. How do you get people who did not use money or think of music making as acoustic labor one hundred years ago to shape their aesthetics, music, and dance 0 as to compete more effectively in mass-national and transnational ‘markets? Early in the colonial period the hut tax was a concrete device for forcing subsistence farmers into the wage labor system. What6 irropuction ‘complex of forces brings people to shape their musical styles and prac- tices for cosmopolitan consumption? Within the last fifty years, nationalism, musical professionalism, and other cosmopolitan perspectives have been added to deep-seated, radically different indigenous notions of self, of social relations and identity, of subsistence, and of the meaning of artistic practice. For ever- increasing numbers within the peasant majority and working class, this represents nothing short of a cultural revolution, and like all revolu- tions ie must be born in and diffused to real neighborhoods and il- lages—at home, ‘The Global and the Modern: Of Space and Time In what follows, I reserve the term global to describe phenomena such as the contemporary state system that literally or very nearly encom. ass the totality ofthe earth, Other phenomena, such asa modernist. capitalist ethos or the use of computers, may be widespread but have sot been incorporated by substantial portions ofthe populations even in capitalist countries like Peru or Zimbabwe, In my terms it is inaceu- rate to describe such phenomena as global, More important, the tot izing character of the term is part of a discourse that contributes to the ‘globalization (processes that contribute to making something global) of the phenomena itis used to deseribe he contemporary language of globalism rhetorically and ideologi call links a particular cultural aggregate (modernist capitalism) tthe totalized space of the globe, leaving people with alternative lifeways no place to be and no place to go. I believe that this spatially based discourse may well operate in a manner parallel to, and may ulti mately have effect similar to, the totalizing, temporally based discourse of modernity with its concomitant “traditional/modern” dichotomy and central ideas of progress, rationalism, and objectification [Weber 1958). As the Comaroffs suggest, modernity is not an analytical cate- gory. Rather itis a continuation of evolutionary discourse that posits European and American post-Enlightenment ethics and economics as the apex of universal development through the shetorical hijacking of contemporary time; it is an “ideology-in-the-making” (Comarof an. Comaroff 1993: xii. af a a Drawing on earlier social-evolutionist theory which defined the “made acaed counties cea) sete paren end en, icional” societies (the savage and barbarian stages) asthe past, the dis. course of modernity defines itself as the all-encompassing present and future, and all alternatives (“the traditional”) as an outmoded past (Fabian 1983), The discourse of globalism operates from similar prema- ises and, although using space rather than time, similarly argues forthe naturalness of the modernist-capitalist formation by equating it withthe all-encompassing space of the globe. ‘The Zimbabwean situation strongly suggests that the modern- traditional dichotomy, used and diffused by the white settlers as well as by members of the black middle class, had real cultural effects on the ground (chapters 4 and 5). Modernist ideology militated against the so- called traditional—that is, the various indigenous alternatives to mo- dernity and capitalism—precisely by redundantly projecting them as 4 primitive past. I prefer not to use the discourse of globalism because I believe it may well have similar effects in the Future. If we have learned anything from recent social theory, we should be able to begin to iden- tify such dangers in our own terminology before we help legitimate and generalize a discourse that furthers the very processes we are seeking to critique. Cosmopolitanism In place of the term global, which is often used in an unrestricted way nowadays, I use the term cosmopolitan to refer to objects, ideas, and cultural positions chat are widely diffused throughout the world and yet ‘re specif only to cerain portions oF the populations within given ‘countries. My usage is based on a common meaning of the word, “of the world": to be cosmopolitan, given ideas and features must be widely diffused among particular social groups in dispersed locales. Cosmo- politanism is a specific type of cultural formation and constitution of habitus that is translocal in purview. Because cosmopolicanism involves practices, material technologies, and conceptual frameworks, however, it has to bexealized in specific locations and in the lives of actual people, Ite thus always localized (Robbins 1992), and will be shaped by and somewhat distinct in each locale. Cosmopolitan cultural formations are therefore always simultaneously local and translocal. Cosmopolitan formations are largely like other cultural complexes in that they comprise aggregates of tendencies and resources for living and conceptualizing the world which are used variably by people en- aged with chat formation (“the culeure group”) to inform thought and practice. Cosmopolitanism, however, differs from other types of cul- tural formations in one important respect. Particular cosmopolitan life- ways, ideas, and technologies are not specific to a single or a few neigh- boring locales, but are situated in many sites which are not necessarily