Transnational Music Collaborations, Affective Networks and Everyday Practices of Convivial Solidarity in Ujamaa Dar es Salaam

Independent Tanzania became a prominent frontline state in the struggle against white minority regimes in the early 1960s and remained committed to the total liberation of Africa until South African repatriations in the early 1990s. For three decades the country was a hub of Pan-Africanism and saw an extraordinarily high involvement of Tanzanians in supporting the southern African liberation movements in ways that went beyond TANU/CCM’s primary directions. While some research has been done on the daily interactions, relationships and tensions in the ANC/MK and SWAPO settlements and military training camps as well as in the nearby towns and villages that hosted them, this article shifts the focus from the camps and their surroundings to the forging of solidarity and transnational connections in urban leisure spaces, particularly the music scene. It seeks to bring to light both the enduring and fleeting intimate relations and everyday forms of conviviality between South Africans and Tanzanians which were produced in Dar es Salaam’s nightclubs. The central argument is that artistic collaborations with South Africans outside the camps not only amplified and solidified Tanzanians’ ability to transcend the idea of the national, but were key to the shaping of a specific form of grassroots pan-Africanism that I will call ‘convivial transnational solidarity’. The latter is intended as a practice rather than as an ideology. As I will show, the urban soundscape was central to its emergence. The article first charts how national politics – a key aspect of which was the duty to embrace transnational solidarity – extended into the lower echelons of Tanzanian society through the airwaves, the press and liberation songs. Following the trajectory of the Tanzanian band Afro-70 and its leader Patrick Balidisya, it then examines the everyday acts of welcoming that unfolded in Dar es Salaam’s music scene during the brief historical juncture between 1969 and 1977, which coincided with ujamaa and with Afro-70’s rise and demise. The last part of the article problematises the process of total liberation and the idea of transnational solidarity by exposing their fragility.