In the autumn of 2019 I did my Global Music Master project in Tanzania. The main focus of the project was the collaboration between myself and Dar Es Salaam based musician MAN Kifimbo, which resulted in a full-length album Mwana Mkala, two music videos, and a handful of live shows. This is a presentation about my project, an artistic research concentrating on the record and how it came to be. In this presentation I will open up our process by explaining what we did, how did we work together, and what aspects affected the musical outcome of our project, the Mwana Mkala record. Although the project contained many different aspects, I have focused my inquiry by asking the main research questions:
How did the core musical, social and intercultural factors of this project affect the musical outcomes and sound of the resulting record ‘Mwana Mkala’?
How did the bear and the lion make an album together?
The project was very practical, meaning that we were completely focused on making music and making the record in the four-month period that I spent in Tanzania. This presentation is an artistic research. It is about my experience as an artist and a person making music in another country with people from a cultural background unlike my own. It is also about my main project partner and our relationship. I spent most of my time in Tanzania with Kifimbo, we lived together in the same room, spent most of the time together, and did all the work together. Our collaboration is the core of the Mwana mkala record and also this presentation.
The aim of this research is to analyze and contemplate artistic collaboration in the globalized world, create insights about Tanzanian music and culture and create knowledge and understanding about intercultural relationships and most important of all: music. All this is done in the context of this particular project.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATION
This presentation consists of five main chapters. Chapter one introduces the project, presents the backgrounds of the author and main collaboration partner Kifimbo, analyzes the position of the artist-researcher as a white foreigner in Tanzania, and starts the story of the fieldwork situating it in Dar Es Salaam. In chapter two relevant literature is reviewed, first on the methods of artistic research and auto-ethnography, then on culture and globalization and finally on hybridity and intercultural artistic collaboration. The third chapter presents the musical roots of the music on the Mwana Mkala record. Insights are given on present-day Dar Es Salaam afro-fusion scene, afro-pop and Congolese rumba, reggae, and Rasta-culture in Africa and traditional Tanzanian music and dance, all very important influences of the music on the record. The third chapter goes through the process of the album-making, from the songwriting to the various phases of the studio work. In this chapter the musicians and the producer of the project are presented in more detail. The final fifth chapter presents the conclusions that were made through the research.
The record itself is an important part of this research as this presentation. Thus it is advisable to have Mwana Mkala album SoundCloud or Mwana Mkala Media Player in Research Catalogue open in another tab while exploring this presentation, so it is easy to listen to any song that is discussed at will. Nevertheless, embed SoundCloud audio links are provided when it is absolutely necessary to hear a certain track.
To open Mwana Mkala on SoundCloud, press HERE.
To open Mwana Mkala media player in Research Catalogue, press HERE.
