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.
