When will the Daybreak Come?

WHEN WILL THE DAY BREAK COME???
WHEN WILL BE JUSTICE PREVAIL IN ETHIOPIA??????
Kristin Skare Orgeret
Abstract
Popular musical expressions are important for discourses of citizenship and belonging.
Focusing on popular music and political processes in Ethiopia today, this discussion uses
Tewodros Kassahun aka Teddy Afro’s music as an example. Teddy Afro is a popular voice
challenging the prevailing political discourse in Ethiopia. Several of Afro’s songs have been
banned by the government on radio and television in Ethiopia, but are found to provide
alternative sites of political and cultural resistance to the autocratic regime. Reasons for
censorship are discussed as well as how music can provide alternative sites of resistance.
The findings show that oppressing political expressions may not always kill the ideas, as
they may find alternative arenas in the face of obstacles.
Keywords: freedom of expression, popular culture, censorship, music, public sphere
Introduction
Popular culture may have a central role to play in societies where the mainstream media
do not allow for freedom of expression. The case in point here is Ethiopia, a country
that, throughout the past decades, has seen processes of politics and conflicts in which
individuals find themselves caught up, as they may have little or no say in these developments.
It is a common assumption that the present government – led by the Ethiopian
People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that seized power through an
armed struggle in 1991 – does not reflect the people’s will or pursue common rights to
any great degree. The current Constitution’s Article 29 protects freedom of expression
without interference, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information,
as well as freedom of artistic creation (in Gebremedhin Simon 2006). Despite these
promising tenets, Ethiopia was recently listed among the ten nations worldwide in
which press freedom has deteriorated the most over the past five years (CPJ 2007).
Restrictions of freedom of the press are also underlined in the US State Department’s
report on human rights practices in Ethiopia (2007). During the political elections in
2005, Ethiopia became the second country in the world (after Turkey) in a ranking of
countries by number of imprisoned journalists (Solomon Gashaw 2007). In 2006 alone,
18 journalists were jailed for their work – several of them faced the possibility of the
death penalty, two foreign journalists were expelled, and the authorities banned eight
newspapers and blocked a number of critical websites. Furthermore, Ethiopia is the
only country in the world where the government has disrupted the possibility to send
and receive SMS messages.
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The present discussion will be centred on how popular musical expressions are important
for discourses of citizenship and belonging in Ethiopia today. The main research
question is: What is the value of popular culture in general, and popular music in particular,
as a vehicle for political resistance? Other questions of interest for the discussion
will be: Who has the right to interpret contemporary Ethiopian society and its history?
Who has the right to define reality and impose meanings? What forms of resistance can
popular music offer? What are the locations of and the routes for popular music and
what spaces does it open for transformation and change? What paths can popular music
and the reception of it take in the face of obstacles?
The situation of popular music in contemporary Ethiopia is approached through a
case study of Tewodros Kassahun aka Teddy Afro’s music and the reception of it. The
research questions will be discussed from the perspective of DJs on national radio,
owners of small, independent music shops in Addis Ababa, and a selected number of
listeners through questionnaires, interviews and reception analysis. In an attempt to
understand the space that music occupies in the listeners’ daily lives, central topics are
questions of language, music as opposition, identity, negotiation of meaning and control.
To exemplify how popular music can provide alternative sites of resistance, the article
proposes a close reading of two of Teddy Afro’s songs.
Teddy Afro became an important voice in the national exchange of ideas during the
period around and after the 2005 elections. Whereas national Ethiopian television and
radio refuse to broadcast several of Teddy Afro’s songs and videos, his music nevertheless
plays a vital role in constructing patterns of belonging and in processes of negotiating
identity, as the songs find other ways to reach their public.
Popular Music as Resistance and Field of Repression
Popular music, like popular culture in general, is a concept with a double-layered
meaning owing to the word popular. The first and most commonly used meaning of
‘popular’ views music as part of the culture industry in which popular is defined in terms
of commercial success. In Ethiopia, local popular music has outperformed its imported
rivals in terms of popularity. Whereas newspapers or news talk shows reach mostly an
elite section of the population, popular culture is successful in reaching a wide variety
of viewers and listeners. Second, the word popular literally means ‘of the people’, and
popular music hence can be referred to as music that concerns itself with issues to do
with the existence and survival of ‘the people’. Its production is understood as a social
interactive process in which the musician on one level speaks to ‘the people’ and on
another level speaks of and on behalf of them (Kwaramba 1997).
According to Stuart Hall (1994: 461), the popular can be defined as those forms and
activities in society that have their roots in the social and material conditions of particular
classes, which have become embodied in popular traditions and practices. Popular
culture is defined in relation to the continuing tension, influence and antagonism of
‘the people’ in the dominant culture. The definition treats the domain of cultural forms
as a constantly changing field. Experiences from other countries have also shown how
popular music can be a central part of political struggles. For instance, popular music
played a particularly important role in the resistance movement during the Apartheid
period (1948-1991) of South African history (Shoup 1997).
It should be noted that music has always played an important role in Ethiopian
culture. It is as important as it is diverse. In Ethiopia, music is part of all significant