Ugandan Music in the Marketing Era The Branded Arena

by Pier, David G.

• ISBN13: 9781137549396
• ISBN10: 1137549394
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-25
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In 2005, in Uganda, East African Breweries Limited (EABL) launched a traditional dance competition, the Senator National Cultural Extravaganza. Across the country, local groups were called upon to perform traditional-style song and dance advertisements for Senator Extra Lager, a brand of beer EABL designed specifically for poor rural markets. David G. Pier conducts an ethnographic study of this branded musical event, focusing on the rural performance groups, corporate marketers, and culture brokers who made it happen. He argues that an ascendant culture of promotion, shaped by overlapping, globalized discourses of marketing and sustainable development, is changing how Ugandans think about the power of performance. This is an illuminating and highly readable study of the shifting meanings of traditional African music and dance in the neoliberal era.

Author Biography

David G. Pier is Assistant Professor in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. An ethnomusicologist studying music and cultural politics in Africa and the United States, his work has been published in such leading journals as Africa.

Table of Contents

PART I: INTRODUCTION: DANCE PROMOTION IN THE MARKETING ERA
1. The Senator Extravaganza and the Moral Imagination of Marketing
PART II: INTERLUDE: WITNESSING THE EXTRAVAGANZA 
2. "Discover Our Land, Our Cultures": The Musical Imagination of a Rural-Ethnic Nation
3. Women's Groups and their Politics of Musical Promotion
4. The Music of a Senator Extravaganza Performance
5. Beyond the Senator Extravaganza: Marketing Ugandan Music to International Not-for-Profits
PART III: CONCLUSION: P'BITEK'S ARENA