MUSIC AND URBAN YOUTH IDENTITIES, a study of ghetto youth identities in contemporary culture and politics in Zimbabwe

172pp., paperback, Makhanda, 2022

Doreen Rumbidzai Tivenga on how the Zimbabwean government imposing a 75% local content quota in 2001 - which coincided with the post-2000 political and economic crises in Zimbabwe - drove young people from low-income backgrounds to music to try to eke out a living, and as a way to construct and assert their identities.

"What is fascinating is that the book relies on a different theoretical paradigm from the dominant ethnomusicology of scholars … who have all written on some aspects of Zimbabwean music. There is a whole sub-genre hidden in journal articles, dissertations and media reports that is surfaced in this work. For this, I commend the author, in her ability to shift the narrative and grounding it in the voices of the makers of the music and scholars and writers in Zimbabwe and on the continent." Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand

Dr Doreen Rumbidzai Tivenga teaches in the English Department at the University of the Free State.