Kalenjin popular music and the contestation of national space in Kenya

Abstract

This paper addresses how Kalenjin popular music, played mainly on the Kalenjin language KASS FM Radio based in Nairobi and also broadcasting on the Internet, participates in the consolidation of Kalenjin identities by recasting the collective national space as governed by the nation-state as a sphere of influence potentially injurious to imagined Kalenjin cultural and economic interests. It becomes a music of identity that deploys history, mythology and narration as a means of reshaping Kalenjin self-definition and culture. But while paying attention to these forms of ethnic self-definition, and how they are used to counter the homogenizing and hegemonizing logic of the national space, this paper also addresses the contradictions that circumscribe the music’s gesture towards the pure ethnic while operating from a space that is already hybrid and multicultural, shaped by a confluence of non-Kalenjin ways of life, values and ideas. The conclusion shows how the emergence of new sites of power brokering has challenged the nation-state’s governance of the public domain.