Zamrock: Negotiating Masculine Urban Identity in Zambia and Music Success in a Postcolonial World

Abstract

This thesis analyzes, through predominately an ethnomusicologist approach and methodology, the lyricism, instrumentation, performance, and album art of the movement of Zamrock in Zambia from 1970 to the mid-1980s. I explore the agency and construction of urban youth masculinity by Zamrock artists in the context of Zambia’s colonial history of the Copperbelt, into its decades after independence. First, I look at the socio-political and economic context of colonized and independent Zambia, and how out of these conditions Zambian rock music was fused and forged. I break down the negotiations and desires of Zamrock artists in their identity construction via their music, and how their music grapples with postcolonial dichotomies of pure Zambian nationality and the ‘traditional,’ and modernity (encompassing westernization, and rapid urbanization and industrialization). I argue that Zamrock was a masculine practice and project of liberation which articulated the agency and experience of masculine youth in this period across urban Zambia. In further, I analyze the re-emergence of Zamrock in the United States post-2010, and its dispersal and discovery amongst vinyl collectors in the west. I additionally argue that late globalization via the internet has fulfilled a certain set of desires of Zamrock artists’; however, I also critique music streaming platforms and their fine line of perpetuating colonial power structures in music