Remmy Ongala: Capitalist Transition and Popular Music in Tanzania 1979-2002

Born in Zaïre, Remmy Ongala emigrated to Tanzania in 1979. He used his distinctive ubongo dance music to advocate a moral economy of affection in post-socialist Tanzania, and used an imaginatively reconstructed socialist past as a model for social responsibility. He diagnosed the hardening of social relationships that came with liberalization and commercialization as the root cause of Tanzania's problems in the 1980s and 1990s. Using music as a pedagogic tool, Remmy addressed the vital social issues for Tanzanians in this period; poverty, HIV/Aids, family life and urbanization, particularly in his adopted city of Dar es Salaam. Remmy styled himself as the Sauti ya Mnyonge (voice of the poor man) and I argue that his songs can be interpreted as a coherent response to the challenges brought up by the decline of the modernist state and the social crises of the 1980s and 1990s, and that his influence on music and social commentary continues to be pervasive in Tanzanian popular culture.