Moyo wa Mtauni: Imagining the City in Malawian Popular Music

Abstract Cities in Africa and beyond have been sites of conflicting and contradictory associations in human cultures from their very beginning. Some regard the African city as a place of hope and fulfilment, freedom and opportunity, while others view it as an emblem of cultural decay and a nexus of corruption, perversion, greed, destruction and death. In this article we explore these ambivalent attitudes towards the city and urban life by focusing on Malawian popular music. We examine ways in which the city and what it stands for is depicted in the music. We also analyse attitudes and associations that converge on the city as a place and how such attitudes reflect the heterogeneity and complexity of individual and collective human experience and emotions contained by the city. We address questions such as: What images of the city and city life emerge in Malawian popular music? What do these images tell us about notions of community, inequality, and poverty in postcolonial Malawi? How do the economic, structural, or material settings of Malawian cities shape perceptions of the city? In addressing these and related questions, we use concepts drawn from cultural studies and urban studies.