Construction of Babukusu National Identities in Selected Songs in Kenya

Abstract

This study is a reading of the construction of Babukusu nationalism as informed by social history through a reading of select Babukusu popular song texts. The study deployed qualitative approach and relied heavily on content and stylistic analysis. The study holds on the fact that every nation has its own music, which is used to express its identity. Both the artists and the music texts for analysis were arrived at through purposive sampling. The study employed play-stop-rewind-play technic to engage in ethnopoetic transcription then translation in order to facilitate self-interpellation and thick description in decoding nationalism as informed by social histories in the songs. The paper argues that metaphors of rebirth and patronage, greed and materialism and historiography are the key unique antecedents as forms of social history that inform the construction of the Babukusu subnation. Whereas Nations are identified by different aspects, such as their culture, folklore, history, ethnicity and religion among other antecedents, with the coming of colonialism and Christianity, some of these aspects have either been modified and or dropped altogether. This calls for historical revionism and further research in order to unravel present day identities not only in popular music but also in other cultural substrates.