Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POME-RAPMOZ (Performing Political Memory as Hip Hop Knowledge in Mozambican Rap)
Reporting period: 2022-02-01 to 2024-01-31
The aim of my project, as explained in the Annex 1, was to examine how rappers and hip hop producers are shaping public political memory through hip hop performance in three Mozambican cities using multi-layered listening methodologies. To do this, I expanded upon my PhD thesis (2017) and subsequent research on hip hop and public memory in Mozambique, thus widening my regional and thematic scope and further developing my community-engaged ethnographic research methodology. My project focused on local rap songs and their invocations of deceased, often controversial, heroes in the cities of Maputo, Chimoio and Beira as well as memorialising aspects of hip hop instrumentals (Conqui & Rantala 2023). I synergized with the ERC CIPHER: Hip Hop Interpellation interdisciplinary research team in University College Cork, led by professor J. Griffith Rollefson, who supervised my fellowship and trained me in CIPHER’s digital- ethnographic techniques.
Specific Objectives
To achieve my aims I intended to address the following specific questions. First, I aimed to understand how certain historical figures, who have gained a new political significance posthumously, are invoked in Mozambican tracks as a means to make various and contested claims about history; to comment on present-day society; and envision alternative futures. Second, by developing my original concept of ‘political ancestor’1, I aimed to further nuance understandings of the complicated ways in which people’s relationships with dead heroes are conceptualised. Third, I widened my analysis to include much less studied aspects of memory, deeply interlinked to visions of the future, in non-textual hip hop expressions such as sampling.
With these specific objectives I contributed to CIPHER’s general goal of creating theory for an emergent field of global hip hop studies through community-engaged research, postcolonial theory, rigorous ethnographic case studies around the world, stakeholder training and digital humanities. One of CIPHER’s objectives is to create a global interactive map of hip hop knowledge flows, which I have fed with Mozambican hip hop histories as ‘gems’ in collaboration with local hip hop artists, fans and organisations thus also working for major inclusion of these disadvantaged artists to global hip hop community. CIPHER’s general line of enquiry is to interrogate the relationship between globalisation and localisation by asking ‘why has this highly localized and authenticating African American music translated so easily to far-flung communities and contexts around the globe?’ In order to address this question at the global level, CIPHER asks this question in a diverse set of cultural and linguistic locations. Further, it raises another, normative, question about what globalisation ought to be? This is at the heat of all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), of which safe and sustainable cities (SDG 11), decent work and economic growth (8), reduced inequalities (10), gender equality (5) peaceful and inclusive societies (16), and global partnership (17), directly related to my project on hip hop histories in Mozambique. During the project, I received several trainings related to SDG:s and also submitted my project's engagement to SDG10 to the school's public site. Since the beginning of the project, because of ever more authoritarian courses that some countries’ memory politics have recently taken globally and in southern Africa, political memory has become even more topical and important issue, and research about these issues, which acknowledges and promotes a plurality of political memory might now have potentially life-saving impacts. The aim of the policy contribution of my project, published in IESE’s prestigious series as scheduled in Annex 1, was to recommend a fair, effective and inclusive ways to promote creative industries and related civic rights (e.g. liberty of expression), especially in developing countries, using local artists’ and stakeholders’ experiences as a starting point. The policy contribution attended this objective although in very experimental way because of some remarkable incidents in 2023 in Mozambican society such as rapper Azagaia's premature death and its aftermath.
Specific Objectives
To achieve my aims I intended to address the following specific questions. First, I aimed to understand how certain historical figures, who have gained a new political significance posthumously, are invoked in Mozambican tracks as a means to make various and contested claims about history; to comment on present-day society; and envision alternative futures. Second, by developing my original concept of ‘political ancestor’1, I aimed to further nuance understandings of the complicated ways in which people’s relationships with dead heroes are conceptualised. Third, I widened my analysis to include much less studied aspects of memory, deeply interlinked to visions of the future, in non-textual hip hop expressions such as sampling.
With these specific objectives I contributed to CIPHER’s general goal of creating theory for an emergent field of global hip hop studies through community-engaged research, postcolonial theory, rigorous ethnographic case studies around the world, stakeholder training and digital humanities. One of CIPHER’s objectives is to create a global interactive map of hip hop knowledge flows, which I have fed with Mozambican hip hop histories as ‘gems’ in collaboration with local hip hop artists, fans and organisations thus also working for major inclusion of these disadvantaged artists to global hip hop community. CIPHER’s general line of enquiry is to interrogate the relationship between globalisation and localisation by asking ‘why has this highly localized and authenticating African American music translated so easily to far-flung communities and contexts around the globe?’ In order to address this question at the global level, CIPHER asks this question in a diverse set of cultural and linguistic locations. Further, it raises another, normative, question about what globalisation ought to be? This is at the heat of all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), of which safe and sustainable cities (SDG 11), decent work and economic growth (8), reduced inequalities (10), gender equality (5) peaceful and inclusive societies (16), and global partnership (17), directly related to my project on hip hop histories in Mozambique. During the project, I received several trainings related to SDG:s and also submitted my project's engagement to SDG10 to the school's public site. Since the beginning of the project, because of ever more authoritarian courses that some countries’ memory politics have recently taken globally and in southern Africa, political memory has become even more topical and important issue, and research about these issues, which acknowledges and promotes a plurality of political memory might now have potentially life-saving impacts. The aim of the policy contribution of my project, published in IESE’s prestigious series as scheduled in Annex 1, was to recommend a fair, effective and inclusive ways to promote creative industries and related civic rights (e.g. liberty of expression), especially in developing countries, using local artists’ and stakeholders’ experiences as a starting point. The policy contribution attended this objective although in very experimental way because of some remarkable incidents in 2023 in Mozambican society such as rapper Azagaia's premature death and its aftermath.
These objectives were fulfilled and surpassed in my publications, organised conferences and workshops, and conference and seminar participations in Maputo, Beira, Cork, Minneapolis, Belfast and Porto (a part of them in a collaboration with the CIPHER team therefore promoting mutual learning and transfer of knowledge within the host institution, all activities acknowledging the required EU funding both in visual materials such as posters and Powerpoint presentations as also discourses of the organised events. The visibility of funder was also ensured in all communication activities and it provoked a lot of positive attention in my field in Mozambique, particularly. Principal conducted activities were publications and presented manuscripts, organised and participated conferences and workshops, career plans and funding applications. Three months long fieldwork in Beira, Chimoio and Maputo as well as community engagement also in Cork were also significant achievements, which will bear fruits for long time. In my field of inquiry, all results are obviously partial and therefore my research activities require further research. For this reason, I also developed new research plans and submitted funding applications, most importantly the ERC StG application, where I was fortunate to enter to the final stage and I am currently preparing for the interview.
Major empirical and methodological results of my project was a consolidation and reconsideration of my original concept of "political ancestors" in southern African studies on liberation memory and beyond. This was achieved in the publications (e.g. Rantala 2024a, b and c) and other dissemination activities. Community engaged methods of knowledge production applied and further developed in the project's publications (particularly Conqui & Rantala 2023) and workshops (UCC Transbordagem Hip Hop workshop, Cork, 2024; Workshops with rapper Phantom in Beira, 2023), conferences (I International and Interregional Conference of Mozambican Hip Hop, Maputo, 2023), and a number of seminars in a collaboration with Irish (UCC, Queen's) and Mozambican universities (Eduardo Mondlane University) have already made a social impact for instance through the above-mentioned events and their related media communications world-wide. The publications and further research projects with even more ambitious scheduled activities in southern Africa, Europe, and globally, will continue to expand the impact in following years. A good example of the extant and expected impact is that although rapper Azagaia's death in March 2023 started remarkable protests and social movements in Mozambique, e.g. first mass demonstrations since 2016, and also more negative consequences such as serious efforts of political and police repression of these memorial practices and activisms – and in a lesser extent also caused similar political earth waves in other former colonies of Portuguese empire – no any publications have been made except mine about this phenomenon, possibly because of a relative political sensitivity of the topic makes it very difficult for most otherwise competent researchers.