Re-narrating the Eastern Africa Coast through music on YouTube: Vitali Maembe's Little Town Bagamoyo.

The Eastern Africa coast has been a complex contact theatre between overseas peoples and the local population. These interconnections have over time produced mixed identities and cultural adaptation processes, expression, and transmission which are foundations of present-day Eastern Africa histories. The musician – historian's account reflects the coastal identities as not simply painful and isolated historical creations upon a place, but also a part of global processes of cultural productions and affirmation. Through YouTube video, the coastal musician retells the coast's history thereby preserving memory and lessons leant. The creative artist unveils the history – in an effort to gain inspiration from a cultural and commercial identity formation process. This paper, through Vitali Maembe's YouTube music video, Little Town Bagamoyo, seeks to highlight the narrative that music exposes in retelling East African coast story. It seeks to underscore that as forces of history continue to shape coastal civilization identities, the artist articulates a counter-hegemonic meaning to life, through music and narration in a global internet platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]