"Popular Imperialism" & Malagasy Music

Stuart Hall's "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular'" brought me back to Madagascar and my inquiry there into the meaning of "traditional" in a post-colonial* society. I was working with people who called themselves traditional musicians--players and makers of indigenous instruments and forms. Those who spoke with me and gave me music lessons often defined tradition in the "anthropological" way Hall discusses: tradition is what we do and have done; it's the everyday (234). Still, in a post-colonial setting, anything traditional was often also self-consciously named Malagasy as opposed to French. During French rule, to sing in the Malagasy language was a subversive act; to do so freely in a time of independent rule was a recognition of the shifting tensions of dominance--it was to engage in the continuous dialectic of cultural struggle (233).

The thing I found a little confusing was that many of my musician contacts made a living by performing traditional music on traditional instruments in traditional dress at tourist hotels. While clubs and radio stations geared toward Malagasy audiences played lots of reggae and Soukous and European and North American pop music, the main venues for traditional sounds during the time of my visit were tourist establishments. I was curious about this. Did it change the music to perform it for outsiders and formerly dominant groups? Were musicians bitter that to make a living performing the music they wanted to make, that they had to go to Europe to record and tour, or perform for hotel audiences with their own complicated expectations of what was pure and traditional?

The musicians responded differently, of course: some were angry, some were proud for the current recognition, some just wanted to make music without being interrupted by political questions, some worried that they were selling out. What really struck me about Hall's article was the list of kinds of cultural struggle: "incorporation, distortion, resistance, negotiation, recuperation" (236). I saw all of these responses, and more. Incorporation was evident in the blending of musical styles, and the flexibility of performance spaces. Distortion occurred literally, for some musicians, as they amplified traditional instruments and included electric instruments and distorted sounds in the mix. Resistance could be exemplified by Rakoto Frah, a famous flute player--so nationally renowned and highly regarded that his face appears on Malagasy currency--who despite his fame insisted on living in an impoverished part of the capital and performing for free at community celebrations and famadihanas (exhumations).

I initially encountered Malagasy music as a clash between old and new, Malagasy and French, and "what we do" vs. "what we've been forced to do." But I've learned to see Malagasy music as an articulation of a process that is beyond dichotomy. Hall writes, "Tradition is a vital element in culture; but it has little to do with mere persistence of old forms. It has much more to do with the way elements have been linked together or articulated" (236). While I had been tempted to think of tradition as the pure, pre-colonial Malagasy forms, I learned to see that tradition is the ever-changing and ever-adapting expressions from within struggles for power and autonomy. As Hall reminds me, tradition is the conversation itself.

- Esme

*I say "post-" because Madagascar officially achieved independence from France about half a century ago. I don't mean to suggest that Madagascar in the present no longer bears the effects of past colonization or shows the influences of neo-colonialism.