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Performing Arts and Gender in Postcolonial Western Uganda
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2023
About this book
Focusing on runyege, this book explores the entanglement of traditional music, dance, and theater with gender and postcolonialism in Western Uganda.
Drawing on archival research and extensive fieldwork in the regions of Bunyoro and Tooro, Linda Cimardi examines the connection between traditional performing arts and gender in western Uganda. The book focuses on runyege, the main genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, exploring its different components of singing, instrument playing, dancing, and acting and identifying their complex relationships to gender models and expressions. Today mainly performed at Ugandan school festivals and by semiprofessional ensembles, repertoires like runyege adhere to stage conventions that have developed over several decades. Some of these conventions are powerful devices allowing the actors involved (performers, teachers, students, adjudicators, and audiences) to collectively shape an image of local culture grounded in a gender binary that is perceived as traditional. At the same time, stage conventions are exploited by some performers to negotiate their gender identities and expressions in unconventional ways, thus challenging hegemonic gender models. Moving between analysis of historical recordings, oral accounts, and present-day fieldwork data and experiences, the book engages in a comprehensive analysis of the postcolonial entanglement of arts and gender.
Audio and video recordings presented in the book can be accessed on the book's companion website, http://hdl.handle.net/1802/37373.
Drawing on archival research and extensive fieldwork in the regions of Bunyoro and Tooro, Linda Cimardi examines the connection between traditional performing arts and gender in western Uganda. The book focuses on runyege, the main genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, exploring its different components of singing, instrument playing, dancing, and acting and identifying their complex relationships to gender models and expressions. Today mainly performed at Ugandan school festivals and by semiprofessional ensembles, repertoires like runyege adhere to stage conventions that have developed over several decades. Some of these conventions are powerful devices allowing the actors involved (performers, teachers, students, adjudicators, and audiences) to collectively shape an image of local culture grounded in a gender binary that is perceived as traditional. At the same time, stage conventions are exploited by some performers to negotiate their gender identities and expressions in unconventional ways, thus challenging hegemonic gender models. Moving between analysis of historical recordings, oral accounts, and present-day fieldwork data and experiences, the book engages in a comprehensive analysis of the postcolonial entanglement of arts and gender.
Audio and video recordings presented in the book can be accessed on the book's companion website, http://hdl.handle.net/1802/37373.
Author / Editor information
Contributor: Linda Cimardi
LINDA CIMARDI is Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded research project "Black Musics in the (Former) Yugoslav Region" based at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg (Germany)
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
v -
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List of Illustrations
vii -
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Foreword by Samuel Kahunde
ix -
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Acknowledgments
xi -
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Note on Language
xiii -
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Note on the Musical Examples
xv -
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Note on Online Audio and Video Material
xvii -
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Prelude: Encountering Local Culture in Western Uganda
xix -
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Introduction: Approaching Gender and Performing Arts in Bunyoro and Tooro
1 -
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1. “Traditional Dance Preserves Culture and Shows People How to Behave”: Runyege, MDD, and Gender
32 -
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2. Singing Marriage, Runyege, and Labor
64 -
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3. “Women Aren’t Supposed To”: Instrument Playing in the Past and Today
101 -
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4. Shaking the Hips, Stamping the Feet: The Runyege Dance
132 -
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5. Narrating and Representing Local Culture: Theater in Songs and Dances
164 -
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6. Trans-Performing and Morality in Cultural Groups
190 -
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Postlude: Gendering Culture
221 -
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Appendix I. Glossary of Terms in Runyoro-Rutooro
227 -
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Appendix II. Historical Recordings from Bunyoro and Tooro
235 -
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Author’s Interviews
245 -
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References
251 -
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Index
269
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 11, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781805430643
Original publisher:
University of Rochester Press
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781805430643
Keywords for this book
Bunyoro; Tooro; runyege; Ugandan school festivals; local culture; hegemonic gender models; Ugandan performing arts; postcolonialism; Batooro; gender models
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
