PROJECT DESCRIPTION: For this project, we were focusing on the single stories that we as students held about Africa. We first did research about what a single story is and explored many that have been worked into our society and translated into a common belief. Then, we chose a single story that we ourselves held and did research around it in order to complexify our notion of the topic. I chose to look into music and pop culture in Africa. This lead me to looking into pop culture and hip hop in Senegal and how it has such strong impacts on their society. Along the way, I looked into famous artists of the region, songs written about certain political and social issues, and activist movements steaming from the artists. As my final product, I create a comprehensive playlist of hip hop music from Senegal and the surrounding regions from artists who use their music as activism.
Link to my playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0fWhtAgJTiT5hKf7BLKApe
REFLECTION: Before: What was the single story you held initially and why do you think you possessed that particular single story? Before I started my research, I was virtually unaware of pop culture in African countries. When I thought about music in Africa, I imagined ‘tribal’, for lack of a better word, music and dance. I had always learned about it as if it were a past tradition that had not carried well into modern times. I had rarely taken the time to look into musical genres in Africa, let alone in specific countries. I did know that some influences of African music made their way to places like the United States and there were some inverse influences as well. However this was pretty much the extent of my knowledge. One reason I think I held these beliefs is because, like I said, I had not had a lot of exposure to the music. When I did hear African music, I was pretty much unaware of the source or the cultural significance. Because of this, I started to just put all of it in the same box. As I started to expand my musical horizons, I became much more open and aware of different cultures’ music, but I still did not explore much African music. I think that another reason I believed in this single story is because of the other single stories I had heard about Africa. Even though it changed as I grew older, I still found myself seeing many African cultures through a very Western lens, this being that many are under developed or ‘behind modern America’. I have begun to dismantle these devastating single stories, and the story of music has been one of them. Since beginning to really look into the music of Africa, I have been introduced to the great diversity of genres, styles, and cultural music.
After: How did your research help you complexify the single story narrative you originally possessed? How did you develop a more complete story, in other words? Immediately after I began my research, I was overwhelmed with the sheer amount of different ways I could go about learning about music in Africa. Not only could I look into hundreds of different styles, but also different time periods and different countries and the cultures inside those. I finally narrowed my search down to looking at modern pop culture and found that it plays a very prominent role in many countries, including Senegal. Articles began surfacing, detailing how hip hop came to Africa and started to shape many aspects of pop culture. It originally was introduced from places like the US and France, but began to take on local tones as hip hop artists began to use it for their own messages. The platform created a space for young people for all different ethnicities, socioeconomic classes, and backgrounds to express themselves. Now, this is mainly used to speak out about social and political issues. Learning this greatly opened my eyes to how complex and developed pop culture all around Africa is. It shares some aspects with pop culture in America, but has also evolved into its own art. This completely shattered my belief in the single story and showed me just a glimpse of the complexity of modern music in Senegal. This is true for countries throughout Africa, but it is also true that each region has their own music, traditional and modern, and it all plays a big role in their societies and cultures.
Reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
We explored imperialism in Africa through the novel Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad about his conquests in the Congo.