Peace and contemporary war in Mozambican rap performance

20 Oct 2023

Happening On 09/11/2023

Dr. Janne Rantala (UCC)

Music

9 Nov., 11am–1pm

Ó Riada Hall, Music Dept., Sundays Well

FUAIM Lecture/Research Seminar. This paper examines rap music addressing two separated contemporary wars in Mozambique both caused by neo-colonial greed for nature resources. Rantala focuses on one of them, which had its most intensive phase in 2013-2016 while an on-going jihadi war, which started in 2017 is kept on the background. The addressed music questions a celebration of post-civil war (1976-1992)/post-Cold War Mozambique as a success story of international aid and peace building. While never capturing whole story, this widely told narrative became especially problematic in 2013 when former civil war belligerents entered into a new armed conflict in central Sofala and Manica provinces. In a recent decade, a number of tracks are being released addressing different dynamics of these conflicts, performing histories of them or claiming for their end. In this talk, Rantala listens to this music in its wider context intending to use it as an alternative material to understand perceived international and local dynamics of these wars.