Date: September 4, 2019
Venue: BIEA
Time: 2-4 pm
As the process of globalization and digitalization intensifies, previously confidential music genres are now experiencing a heightened level of visibility. Access to new audiences, however, can also present challenges for these often peripheral cultures, related to their re-interpretation and the ethical, economic and cultural difficulties associated with their diffusion. As a genre often looked down on by elites in Kenya, Benga does not escape this logic.
With new practices aimed at hybridizing and pushing the genre beyond its national borders, benga is facing multiple dilemmas. Digital music production tools have rendered the composition and recording of music open to a growing number of artists. Using traditional music and other local sounds, emerging artists are re-inventing traditional music and disrupting conventional definitions of national heritage.
On 4 September 2019, the British Institute in Eastern Africa in collaboration with the Rift Valley Institute, will launch the book, Benga, a Kenyan Kaleidoscope, by the Flee Project.
