Cosmopolitanism and autochthony

Autochthony and cosmopolitanism are two different types of social commitments, which have both been at the heart of anthropological research on Southern African urban life. While cosmopolitanism is often described as an commitment of “reaching out across cultural differences through dialogue, aesthetic enjoyment, and respect; of living together with difference” (Werbner 2008b, 2), autochthony refers to ideological views that see a certain place as birth right for a particular human group and justify this connection in naturalized terms (Geschiere & Nyamnjoh 2000; Comaroff & Co-maroff 2001; Geschiere & Jackson 2006; Schumann 2009; Geschiere 2009). At first sight, these concepts appear to describe almost diametrically opposed processes, but Peter Geschiere and Francis Nyamnjoh (2000) argue that they can also be seen as closely related. They (Geschiere & Nyamnjoh 2000, 425) observe that “cosmopolitanism and autochthony are like conjoined twins: a fascination with globalization’s open hori-zons is accompanied by determined efforts toward boundary-making and closure, expressed in terms of belonging and exclusion.” Both of these phenomena have be-come highly visible in African states at postcolonial moments, as the movement of ideas, commodities and people across national borders has accelerated.

By drawing from Rebekah Lee’s (2009) work on migration and settlement in Cape Town, Leslie Bank (2011,17) points out how, in the South African township context,

“masculine identities are generally more closely associated with mobility than femi-nine ones and that men need to embrace mobility in order to successfully express masculinity in a way that women do not.” One of the ways, especially for men, to aspire to this mobility has been popular music. In the urban African contexts, the term

“musical cosmopolitanism” has been used in the research of different popular music genres that enable musicians and music enthusiasts to move across ethnic and national borders in search of new influences, experiences, audiences, and markets (Feld 2012;

Weaver Shipley 2009; Turino 2003).

In its analytical use, “musical cosmopolitanism” remains an ambiguous and

“messy” term, as Martin Stokes (2007, 9–10; see also Feld 2012, 222–232) points out, since the root concept of cosmopolitanism itself bears a wide genealogy with contra-dictory meanings. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (2002, 8–14) trace how differ-ent theoretical traditions have understood cosmopolitanism inversely either as “(a) a socio-cultural condition; (b) a kind of philosophy or worldview; (c) a political pro-ject towards building transnational institutions; (d) a political propro-ject for recognizing multiple identities; (e) an attitudinal or dispositional orientation; and/or (f) a mode of practice or competence.” Often, researchers using the concept of cosmopolitanism in the context of African popular music (such as Feld 2012; Weaver Shipley 2009; Turino 2003) have not been very thorough in their discussions on how their analysis is situ-ated in relation to these wider theorizations in social sciences.

In this dissertation, I use the term “cosmopolitanism” specifically in its musical context by following Martin Stokes (2007), who sees it as an ideological process that seeks to reify and legitimize an imagined community across sociocultural borders with musical means. In the musical context, the imagination of a community is in-separable from its bodily enactment, as described in the previous section 2.2.3. Stokes argues that it is the embodied qualities of music (relating to dance, fashion and style) that make music such a powerful medium for imagining intercultural connections and communities. As we have also seen in the previous section 2.2.3, the enactment of a musical community requires investment and performative competence from the

individuals that are involved in it. Thus, aspiring cosmopolitans need the “personal ability to make one’s way into other cultures, through listening, looking, intuiting and reflecting,” as Ulf Hannerz (quoted in Vertovec & Cohen 2002, 13) puts it in his description of cosmopolitan competence.

Martin Stokes’ formulation of musical cosmopolitanism refers simultaneously to the attempt to reify an imagined intercultural community and to the associated per-formative practices. When looked through Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen’s (2002, 8–14) taxonomy, Stokes’ discussion draws from two different academic traditions:

One that invokes cosmopolitanism as an ideological project for multicultural com-munities, and one that sees it as a form of cross-cultural competence. This formulation of cosmopolitanism, however, does not refer to an objective sociocultural condition of social diversity or a prescribed moral philosophy for cultural tolerance. In the context of the present dissertation, the above-describedformulation means that when using the label “cosmopolitan” for roots reggae musicians and communities, I am not mak-ing ethical evaluations about their actions for or against diversity, nor measurmak-ing their moral progress on a prescribed scale of modernity. As an ideological process, musi-cal cosmopolitanism nevertheless has significant politimusi-cal implications outside of the popular music scenes and for wider society. (On ideology and music see Green 1999.) In the Southern African context, popular music genres have indeed often tran-scended conventional sociocultural boundaries, and they have been instrumental in attempts to unite different ethnic groups for nationalist projects in Southern Africa (Turino 2003, 63–76), for example. In addition to national projects, which are often propagated by the elites of the society, cosmopolitan ideologies are also visible in pop-ular music practices that are perceived as directly opposed or dangerous to national unity (Stokes 2007). In the context of Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American music, this type of vernacular cosmopolitanism has emerged from the economically and socially marginalized urban communities, or “ghettoes” (Chude-Sokei 1994; Jaffe 2012; Jaffe

& Sanderse 2010). These musical identifications around the socio-spatial metaphor of the “ghetto” have forcefully acknowledged and celebrated the similarities of experi-ences of urban marginalization around the world and in different cultural contexts.

In addition to nationalist and vernacular musical cosmopolitanisms, the celebra-tion of a multicultural community is often claimed in internacelebra-tional music industries, where record labels fuse different musical elements, often in a heavily exoticizing manner, typically under the marketing label of “world music” (Brusila 2003). One can also identify musical cosmopolitanism, which is born out of a different type of movement across national borders. A number of music genres have been born as a result of immigrant and migrant experiences, and these genres come to articulate a variety of different musical practices, and form inter-ethnic communities in the host societies. This type of migrant cosmopolitanism is another form of “cosmopolitanism from below”, which rarely attracts national or commercial recognition, without the mediation of world music industries. (Stokes 2007.)

The diversity of cosmopolitan claims shows how the concept is subject to different types of political claims, which envision very different types of social communities.

Stokes (2007, 10) thus urges researchers to see how the claims to cosmopolitanism are contested in social situations and to “be sensitive to the subtle distinctions and discriminations that any concrete and historical situation of music world-making will generate.” As I will explore in detail in the next chapter, also Rastafarian reggae music has been in the middle of different forms of cosmopolitanisms throughout its history.

Already in its early stages, the roots reggae genre was accompanied by a vernacular

form of cosmopolitanism in the ghettoes of Kingston and developed mainly by musi-cians from rural migrant families. Their music was soon incorporated into the official nationalism of Jamaica and eventually to the world music marketing of international record companies, such as Island Records. In many ways these different levels of cos-mopolitanism continue to exist in reggae music today, as the genre has been adopted around the world by music industries, nationalist projects and disposed migrants and ghetto dwellers in their grass-roots music making. These contradictory forms of musical cosmopolitanism are also at the center of the current dissertation’s research.

(Stephens 1998; Alleyne 2000; King 2002, 89–150; Connell & Gibson 2003, 174–182.) In this dissertation, I follow theoretical views (Newell 2012; Bank 2011, 11–20;

Werbner 1999; 2006; 2008, 59–61; Englund 2004; Bilby 1999) where “belonging” and

“home-making” are central to cosmopolitan ideologies. Pnina Werbner (1999; 2006, 2008, 59–61) proposes that cosmopolitan aspirations coexist with locally bound iden-tifications, and that cosmopolitanism is not necessarily contradictory to the search for and claims of autochthonous roots. The relationship between autochthony and cosmopolitanism is a particularly relevant question in Cape Town, where claims to autochthony have become a dominant political strategy, as for example Jean and John Comaroff (2001) have documented.

The historical emergence of the South African autochthonous political discourses can most obviously be traced to the ethnic citizenship of the apartheid era, when the African population labor force was controlled by the state according to their perceived natural rootedness to certain regions. Conversely, Michael Neocosmos (2006, 122–135) argues that the genealogy and continuity of autochthonous rhetoric could also be attributed to the established ruling party of the post-apartheid era, the African Na-tional Congress (ANC), which, during the anti-apartheid struggle, initially had severe problems with building a rural support base. Eventually ANC supporters drifted into an open conflict with rural migrant laborers in the metropolitan areas. Neocosmos argues that after independence in 1994, when the ANC transformed itself from an anti-apartheid resistance organization to the leading political party of the country, it stabilized a political discourse of “South African exceptionalism,” where the influx of African immigrants and migrants to the urban areas continues to be seen as a major threat to the nation.

The post-apartheid nationalistic discourse on “South African exceptionalism” is essentially an exclusive conceptualization of citizenship, where the state is expected to provide economic empowerment primarily only for the formerly oppressed South Af-rican social groups. According to Neocosmos (2006, 122–135), this state discourse has in effect created new socioeconomic levels of citizenship, where some social groups are seen to belong to South Africa more than others, and the perceived or suspected foreigners are seen in economic terms as draining the state’s resources.

The political questions of legitimate citizenship and urban migration interrelate closely to the issues of musical cosmopolitanism and autochthony. This is demon-strated eloquently by Sasha Newell’s (2012) ethnography of fashion and consumption in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d’Ivoire. He effectively deconstructs the dichotomy between autochthony and cosmopolitanism by analyzing how the identification with American hip-hop culture was instrumental in creating inter-ethnic autochthonic be-longing to the city among the multiethnic urban youth of Abidjan. This urban identity was imagined against the so called “gao,” or new-comers from the rural north, who were seen as bound by their ethnic ways and not belonging to Abidjan. According to Newell, this cosmopolitanism eventually evolved into a highly exclusive national

identity among the youth, and led to waves of xenophobia against the perceived

“gao” in Abidjan. Ultimately this exclusive nationalism was a significant factor in Ivorian civil wars in 2002–2007 and 2011, where urban street gangs were militarized.

Newell’s case thus shows at the empirical level how claims to cosmopolitanism and autochthony can catalyze each other. Both of these political claims can create trans-ethnic alliances and unite otherwise heterogeneous groups together. In the worst case this unity is formed against the perceived aliens, who are seen as bound by their own cultural sphere – or in other words – as incapable of cosmopolitanism.

In Cape Town and other parts of South Africa, urban belonging is an underlined political issue, much in the similar way as in Abidjan. Urban belonging and legitimate citizenship are particularly relevant issues in the lives of those Rastafarian musicians who come from working-class African migrant families originating from the rural province of Eastern Cape. In the third case study (III), I argue that they assert indig-enous belonging to the Western Cape in roots reggae music as a counter-reaction to hegemonic state discourses and the perception of urban migration as a threat. In the final article of the dissertation (IV), I expand this analysis and examine how these claims both to urban permanency and cosmopolitanism work when Capetonian reg-gae musicians collaborate with Finnish musicians and organizers.

The intertwined claim to both musical cosmopolitanism and autochthonous iden-tity is not particular only to the Rastafarian reggae music of Gugulethu and Cape Town, but it is typical of reggae music in various locations around the world. Scholars have already suggested that the global popularity of reggae music can partly be at-tributed to its ability to combine local and naturalized belonging to universalist black identifications. For example, Kenneth Bilby (1999; see also Jaffe & Sanderse 2010) has discussed how Rastafarian reggae music in Suriname is linked to both claims of belonging to the Black Atlantic world and to the revitalization of indigenous Maroon subjectivity and its perceived connection to the natural environment. Here reggae music has strengthened the emotional ties to the traditional Maroon territories in the interior rainforest among the young urban reggae aficionados. This revitalization happens in the context where migrating Maroon populations face increasing margin-alization in Paramaribo, the capital metropolis of Suriname. Bilby (1999, 269) writes:

“Through Rasta reggae, Surinamers came to understand that by returning to their own specific Afro-Surinamese roots they were able to identify as well with Jamaicans and others in the African diaspora.”

Unlike cosmopolitanism, the concept of autochthony has been rarely used in the research of popular music, although one could read for example from Kenneth Bilby’s (1999) article that reggae artists in Suriname use naturalizing discourse regarding their belonging to the Maroon territory. On the basis of Africanist literature, the naturaliz-ing discourse of Surinamese reggae music could however be named as autochthonous, even though Bilby himself does not use this specific term. Anna Schumann’s (2009) comparative article on reggae and zouglou music in Côte d’Ivoire is one of the few texts where the term autochthony is theorized in the context of reggae. Schumann shows how both reggae and zouglou musicians have been active on both sides of the civil wars. Here, reggae musicians have propagated a variety of political ideas and causes, including autochthonous patriotism and xenophobia, which have become public state discourses in Côte d’Ivoire, in a similar manner to that in South Africa.

While Schumann’s (2009) article, as well as most of the research on autochthony in general, connects the term to patriotism and xenophobia, in the ethnographic part of the current dissertation, autochthonous rhetoric of reggae music emerges as a

coun-tering force to nationalist and hegemonic political discourses, as already mentioned above. By taking these different levels of autochthony into account, I follow Jean and John Comaroff (2001, 257), who note that the word autochthony can have etymologi-cally interconnected meanings either as a discursive process, which limits the natural order of things and renders some objects as unnatural, or as a discourse, where the natural order is expanded and certain objects and humans are assimilated to nature.

In hegemonic South African national discourses, immigrants and migrants are seen as alien to Cape Town, but in reggae music, Rastafarians from migrant backgrounds assimilate themselves as autochthonous inhabitants of the area. I argue that this latter form of autochthony co-exists at the same time with cosmopolitan ideology of reggae music, as Rastafarian musicians feel strong connection to the global and multicultural reggae nation. This co-existence of autochthony and cosmopolitanism is however a precarious tension that the artists have to balance actively in their musical work, as I demonstrate in the course of the research. With the separation of different empirical forms of autochthony, the dissertation focuses on the ways in which autochthony, like cosmopolitanism, is contested and is subject to different political interpretations.

3 Roots Reggae fRom JamaiCa to tHe woRlD

This chapter is a historical outline of the emergence of roots reggae as a musical genre and its transnational spread, with special reference to Finland and South Africa. Dur-ing the past forty years, a lot has been written about the emergence of the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica and its impact on the music industry of the country, as this process has had a profound impact not only on Jamaican music but also on contem-porary popular music at large. For example, Michael Veal (2007) has documented in detail how Rastafarian ideologies impacted on the development of dub music in the 1970s and how this music form had an effect on subsequent international forms of electronic music as well the development of modern audio technology in general.

It is then clear that the following brief historical overview on the relationship be-tween Rastafari and popular music in Jamaica cannot be very broad and it is not even in the scope of this dissertation to bring new historical knowledge on the subject. What this dissertation is however able to contribute to the existing literature, and what is rel-evant for the following case studies (Articles I–IV), is the developments of the genre in Northern Europe and Southern Africa. Before we get to these locations, it is necessary to sketch, albeit rudimentarily, the Caribbean historical and social experience, from where Rastafarian reggae was first articulated as a music genre. To do this, I will start with the historical backgrounds of the Rastafarian movement and from there move on to the golden age of roots reggae in the 1970s and the later renaissances of the genre.

In the historical description of the Rastafarian movement that runs parallel to my account of roots reggae, my focus is not on the general development of the whole movement, but rather on the emergence of the Nyahbinghi Order¹³, a loosely organ-ized international Rastafarian group. The Nyahbinghi Order has historically been a central force in the empirical fields of this study in Finland and in Cape Town. Because of this, I also anchor the historical narrative to the Dreadlocks movement, since this earlier movement had a major impact both on the formation of the Nyahbinghi Or-der and the formation of roots reggae as a musical genre (Chevannes 1994, 145–170;

Homiak 1995; 2013b). Thus, due to the focus of the empirical material of this disserta-tion, the other major branches of Rastafari, such as the Ethiopian World Federadisserta-tion, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and Bobo Ashanti, receive very little or no attention in the following account.

13 Historically, “Nyahbinghi” was a name for an anticolonial politicoreligious movement in Central Africa that was suppressed in the 1920s by the colonial authorities. Charles Price (2009, 62) traces the genealogy of the term “Nyahbinghi” among the Rastafarian movement to an article published in the Jamaican Times in 1935 during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936), written under the pseudonym “Frederico Philos”.

The article is a hoax and a propagandist piece that was probably written by an Italian author. The aim of the hoax was to turn the attitudes of the Jamaican bourgeois against Ethiopia. To this aim the article discusses a cultish secret society in East Africa named “Nyahbinghi”, which swears death to all whites and which is led by Haile Selassie, who the fanatic members of the society worship as their God. Instead of turning Jamaican feelings against Haile Selassie, the article had the opposite effect among the Rastafarians, who were further convinced that Selassie was the messiah for black people internationally.

3.1 the development of roots reggae and rastafari