
Title Details
288 Pages
22.8 x 15.2 cm
12 music exx. and 36 b/w illus.
Series: Eastman/Rochester Studies Ethnomusicology
Series Vol. Number:
14
Imprint: University of Rochester Press
Performing Arts and Gender in Postcolonial Western Uganda
- Description
- Contents
- Author
Focusing on runyege, the main traditional performance genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, this book explores the entanglement of traditional music, dance, and theater with gender and postcolonialism in Western Uganda.
Drawing on archival research and extensive fieldwork in the regions of Bunyoro and Tooro, Linda Cimardi examines the connection between traditional performing arts and gender in Western Uganda. The book focuses on runyege, the main genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, exploring its different components of singing, instrument playing, dancing, and acting and identifying their complex relationships to gender models and expressions. Today mainly performed at Ugandan school festivals and by semiprofessional ensembles, repertoires like runyege adhere to stage conventions that have developed over several decades. Some of these conventions are powerful devices allowing the actors involved (performers, teachers, students, adjudicators, and audiences) to collectively shape an image of local culture grounded in a gender notion that is perceived as traditional. At the same time, stage conventions are exploited by some performers to negotiate their gender identities and expressions in unconventional ways, thus challenging hegemonic gender models. Examining traditional arts as both the manifestation and the building blocks of local culture, the book vibrantly depicts the imbrication of Ugandan performing arts with gender and postcolonialism.
Drawing on archival research and extensive fieldwork in the regions of Bunyoro and Tooro, Linda Cimardi examines the connection between traditional performing arts and gender in Western Uganda. The book focuses on runyege, the main genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, exploring its different components of singing, instrument playing, dancing, and acting and identifying their complex relationships to gender models and expressions. Today mainly performed at Ugandan school festivals and by semiprofessional ensembles, repertoires like runyege adhere to stage conventions that have developed over several decades. Some of these conventions are powerful devices allowing the actors involved (performers, teachers, students, adjudicators, and audiences) to collectively shape an image of local culture grounded in a gender notion that is perceived as traditional. At the same time, stage conventions are exploited by some performers to negotiate their gender identities and expressions in unconventional ways, thus challenging hegemonic gender models. Examining traditional arts as both the manifestation and the building blocks of local culture, the book vibrantly depicts the imbrication of Ugandan performing arts with gender and postcolonialism.
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Samuel Kahunde
Acknowledgments
Note on Language
Note on the Musical Examples
Note on Online Audio and Video Material
Prelude: Encountering Local Culture in Western Uganda
Introduction: Approaching Gender and Performing Arts in Bunyoro and Tooro
1 "Traditional Dance Preserves Culture and Shows People How to Behave": Runyege, MDD, and Gender
2 Singing Marriage, Runyege, and Labor
3 "Women Aren't Supposed to": Instrument Playing in the Past and Today
4 Shaking the Hips, Stamping the Feet: The Runyege Dance
5 Narrating and Representing Local Culture: Theater in Songs and Dances
6 Trans-Performing and Morality in Cultural Groups
Postlude: Gendering Culture
Appendix I. Glossary of Terms in Runyoro-Rutooro
Appendix II. Historical Recordings from Bunyoro and Tooro
Author's Interviews
References
Index
Foreword by Samuel Kahunde
Acknowledgments
Note on Language
Note on the Musical Examples
Note on Online Audio and Video Material
Prelude: Encountering Local Culture in Western Uganda
Introduction: Approaching Gender and Performing Arts in Bunyoro and Tooro
1 "Traditional Dance Preserves Culture and Shows People How to Behave": Runyege, MDD, and Gender
2 Singing Marriage, Runyege, and Labor
3 "Women Aren't Supposed to": Instrument Playing in the Past and Today
4 Shaking the Hips, Stamping the Feet: The Runyege Dance
5 Narrating and Representing Local Culture: Theater in Songs and Dances
6 Trans-Performing and Morality in Cultural Groups
Postlude: Gendering Culture
Appendix I. Glossary of Terms in Runyoro-Rutooro
Appendix II. Historical Recordings from Bunyoro and Tooro
Author's Interviews
References
Index
Hardcover
9781648250323
August 2023
$125.00 / £105.00
Ebook (EPDF)
9781805430643
August 2023
$29.95 / £24.99
Title Details
288 Pages
2.28 x 1.52 cm
12 music exx. and 36 b/w illus.
Series: Eastman/Rochester Studies Ethnomusicology
Series Vol. Number:
14
Imprint: University of Rochester Press