Musical Figuring of Dar es Salaam Urban Marginality in Mbogo’s Swahili Novel Watoto wa Maman’tilie

What is it about?

Watoto wa Maman’tilie (lit. Children of a Woman Street Food Vendor), a Swahili novel by a Tanzanian writer Emmanuel Mbogo, narrates the horrendous experiences of children who are forced to drop out of school and become street children. The novel also narrates their survival strategies in the periphery of the city. This article discusses how the novel uses musical figures including songs by renowned African popular musicians, Swahili local dances and music genres as semiotic resources to represent and criticise the urban forms of marginality and the resulting experiences of the urban underclass. It shows how the novel creatively uses the musical figures to construct the novelistic world and to offer a critique of urban marginality.

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Why is it important?

Watoto wa Maman’tilie (lit. Children of a Woman Street Food Vendor), a Swahili novel by a Tanzanian writer Emmanuel Mbogo, narrates the horrendous experiences of children who are forced to drop out of school and become street children. The novel also narrates their survival strategies in the periphery of the city. This article discusses how the novel uses musical figures including songs by renowned African popular musicians, Swahili local dances and music genres as semiotic resources to represent and criticise the urban forms of marginality and the resulting experiences of the urban underclass. It shows how the novel creatively uses the musical figures to construct the novelistic world and to offer a critique of urban marginality.

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