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This thesis is an ethnographic study of music and authoritarianism in Conakry, Guinea. Representations in the scholarly and popular literature often emphasize African music as a site for resistance and oppositional politics, while musicians who support the state are seen as tools of propaganda. In this thesis, I examine instead the choices and subjectivities of musicians who sing for an authoritarian state. As I show, musicians in Conakry, across genres and generations, rarely express dissent and overwhelmingly adopt cautious and conservative positions towards the state. I describe these stances as operating within a politics of silence that has emerged over the past half-century of authoritarian rule in Guinea, deriving from norms of ambiguity and secrecy in Mande culture. I begin in Chapter One by considering the foundational moment of the Guinean Cultural Revolution to examine how music became intertwined with a political culture of control under the regime of Guinea’s first president Sékou Touré. In Chapters Two, Three and Four I then investigate the legacy of the Revolution in shaping musical practice in Conakry today. My analysis is based on ethnographic research conducted in 2009, following a military coup d’état. I use the particular circumstances of the post-coup moment in 2009 as a lens through which to understand the ongoing legacy of authoritarianism on Conakry’s musical and political landscape. I consider the afterlife of musical nationalism as musicians from the Revolution seek to find a place in the post-nationalist state; anxieties about praise-singing and music professionalization that have sharpened since the Revolution’s end; and the politics of youth music as young people negotiate between ideals of protest and the quiet accommodation of power. As I argue, silence is a form of agency for musicians in Conakry as they attempt to negotiate the complexities of life in an authoritarian state.

Focusing on Mirpuris and music in Bradford, this doctoral thesis offers an ethnomusicological dimension to continuing debates on multiculturalism in Britain, within the fields of anthropology, sociology and political science. I engage ethnographically with three spaces of Mirpuri music making – the mehfil, the street, and the festival – in order to develop a ground-level perspective on what it means to live in an increasingly diverse society. By paying close attention to intra-communal generational discourses and practices of music, a synchronic picture of multiculturalism is developed that takes into account local, national and transnational histories. I argue that discursive senses of belonging, articulated through and by music, offer alternative and more broadly inclusive insights into what it means to migrate to Britain, what it means to be born in Britain, and, ultimately, what it means to ‘be’ British. Drawing on theories of multiculturalism, music and migration, nationalism and segregation, my broad argument is that an ethnographic map of Mirpuri music making in Bradford provides a more contemporarily relevant picture of multicultural society than one drawn along racial, or religious, lines alone.

This thesis is an ethnographic analysis of a collection of field recordings of music from sub-Saharan Africa: The Sound of Africa series made and published by Hugh Tracey between 1933 and 1973. I analyse the aims, methods, value and potential use of this collection, now held at the International Library of African Music (ILAM), in order to address a gap in the ethnomusicological literature and to begin to develop a critical framework for an evaluation of field recording and aural ethnography. An archival analysis of the collection enables me to trace the scope and intended uses of Tracey’s recordings. Identifying a primary intended audience that has not to date been engaged, I argue for the need to develop a new way to circulate recordings among a source community that has never before been reached through institutional archival practice. I use a small sample of Tracey’s archival Xhosa recordings and develop a method of sound elicitation designed to take the recordings back to urban Xhosa communities in the townships located near ILAM. By circulating archival recordings using local mechanisms in township communities, rather than institutional archival methods, I assess the potential relevance of historical recordings to an urban source community more than fifty years after the recordings were made. Having collected and analysed contemporary Xhosa responses, I consider the limitations and the potential for the recordings to connect with indigenous audiences and generate value. I argue that non-analytical responses to historical recordings may contribute to ethnographic understanding, to people’s own sense of Xhosa identity, and to archiving practice in future. Such responses may help increase our understanding of the relationships between music collectors in the field and the people recorded, whether fifty years ago, today or in future.