Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2006. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1944. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 635-648).

In this paper, I invoke a sociolinguistic approach to complement the historical record in order to examine the use of the word utumwa itself as it has changed to reveal distinct class and gender connotations especially in northem Swahili communities. To explore utumwa is difficult. There is no consensus with regard to what the word and its derivatives mean that applies consistently, yet it is clear that there has been a meaning shift since the nineteenth century. This paper examines the construction and transformation of a non-Westem-molded form of service in Africa. Oral traditions and terminological variation will be brought to bear on an analysis of utumwa `slavery, service` as an important concept of social change in East Africa and, in particular, on the northern Kenya coast What this term, its derivatives, and other terms associated with it have come to mean to Swahili speakers and culture bearers will be seen to mirror aspects of the history of Swahili-speaking people fi-om the 1Oth-11th century to the present.

This volume describes the records of a Protestant missionary society originally based in Schleswig-Holstein, which sent three missionaries to what is now northwestern Tanzania in 1912. They founded three mission stations in the Uha-Ujiji region and continued to work there – with relatively little success – until taken prisoner by Belgian troops in 1916.

A guide to Leipzig Mission material in Moshi (Tanzania), with a list of missionaries to East Africa and information on material in Leipzig not covered in Nos. 2-3 or 6-7.

This volume is a guide to archival material, almost exclusively on East Africa, held in Neuendettelsau (Bavaria). In addition to documents relating to the Hersbruck Mission's work among the Kamba in the 1880s it lists diaries, correspondence, reports, photographs etc., mainly from the first half of the twentieth century, and the personnel files for missionaries sent to Tanganyika / Tanzania after the mid-1950s, when Neuendettelsau took over this task on behalf of the Leipzig Mission.

Remarks on aspects of taarab such as its history, nature, definition, and change appear prominently and repeatedly in nearly every previous study of the subject. Some of these remarks, however, serve more to expose a clash of interests rather than provide untainted facts about its conceptualisation. This esseay aims at revisiting the notion of taarab in an attempt to concretise its conceptualisation on the basis of various variables that affect change in its structure. The relevant variables are convergence, divergence, linguistic constrains, formal conventions, spontaneity and preparedness in composition, actualisation and performance, instrumentation (i. e. number of instruments and how they are played), the art of vocalisation, the performer/ audience divide, stage organisation, setting, occasion, functions and media influences. For the purpose of avoiding much attention to every category of taarab, however, we prefer to take `group-styles`- hence our concentration on three phases: the period of the inception of taarab in Zanzibar, the period prior to 1905 through the 1920s up to the 1940s when the phonograph record and then the sound film was introduced, from the 1950s to the 1960s when the radio was introduced, and from the 1970s todate - the period of the impact of the tape-recorder, video-recorder, TV - and most recently the period of the influence of satellite television. Our analysis is based on theoretical conceptions of genres by Dubrow (1982), Fowler (1991), Finnegan (1976) and Okpewho (1992) in written literature and `orature`.

To refer to the origin of taarab as a direct importation of Egyptian music by the Arab upper class (Topp 1994:153) is a plausibility without solid evidence. To define it as a style of music played for entertainment at weddings and other festive occasions all along the Swahili Coast (153) is to exclude other styles of music, indeed played for entertainment at weddings and other festive occasions all along the Swahili Coast. To say that taarab contains all the features of a typical `Indian Ocean music`, combining influences from Egypt, the Arabian peninsula, India and the West with local musical practices (153) is apparently true but does not adequately capture the ambiguities and complexities of its protean nature. Refening to taarab as the Swahili popular `salon` music whose song may be recorded or, as often is the case, orally transmitted (King`ei 1992:29) is misleading, for taarab is not always `salon` music and the method and process of creating and transmitting a song in taarab is not the same as that of other forms of African music. To state that taarab has transcended its local Swahili boundaries to be consumed in other communities including other cities in East and Central Africa (Ntarangwi 1998: 150) is a valid statement from a point of view of media, change and spread, but still leaves out a lot to be said. Taarab, like so many complex living things, refuses to be thrust into neat bags or squeezed into terse all-embracing definitions. It is an ongoing process whose form(s) are amorphous, assuming different structures, roles, functions and epithets triggered by a number of factors. That notwithstanding - whatever forms, role and function taarab exhibits at different stages, its making consists of five major components or processes: the composition of the lyric, the composition of musical patterns, the extemporized performance of its song, instrumentation and audience.

As a subject of scientific interest `Western` comics (i.e. the European, American, Japanese comics) have after all achieved some recognition. From its beginnings in the 1890s the comic has been an economic success, and gradually gained importance in the contemporary cultural production of `Western´ societies. However, only with a development that finally met the tastes of a `Western´ intellectual readership, scientific treatment of comics became academically acceptable. Compared to the Western market, the production of comics in Africa is negligeable, and therefore its scientific reception almost nonexistent. This article, however preliminary, for the first time takes interest in an African comic, specifically the comics in Swahili, as a subject of its own right. Under the guise of discussing the question given in the title on two levels, I intend to present as much material as possible (without stretching copyrights too far), to give a short introduction to the theory of the comic, and to raise the reader´s interest for the Swahili comic. The first level of discussion focuses on a global perspective. Here I take a more theoretical stance, concentrating on the comic as a narrative medium, reflecting its inventory of representation and questions of reading. My main question is: What does the Swahili comic do that other comics do as well? The second level focuses on the local perspective. I look at the setting in which the comic occurs, i.e. Swahili- speaking, urban East Africa, and take into consideration the cultural embedding of the medium: What can the comic do in East Africa that other media or gemes of cultural expression (music, tv, literature, painting, theatre, etc.) do not or can not do? What is new about the comic in East Africa?

In the last two decades, Swahili chronicles have been thoroughly re-evaluated by historians of the East African coast, and their usefulness as historical sources subject to serious doubt and criticism. Typical of this new attitude were the words of Gill Shepherd: `Such chronicles are less objective histories than annotated pedigrees of a single ruling lineage`. Given such a perspective, the question may be asked whether the chronicles are a suitable guide to the search for historical identities of coastal societies.