Rap Music and the Youth in Malawi

Rap Music and the Youth in Malawi is one of the first book-length studies of Malawian hip hop. It studies the language and content of contemporary Malawian hip hop as a window onto the country's youth culture as Malawian young people negotiate what scholar Alcinda Honwana calls 'waithood,' or the condition, common among Malawian youth, of lacking opportunities to advance from a situation of dependence and being stuck in a state of relative childhood. The book argues that rap music made by Malawian youth music speaks of – and represents, through its very agency – their need to break out of this stagnant state. After situating Malawian hip hop with respect to both other musical genres in the country and to the nation's language in culture, Rap Music and the Youth in Malawi shows how Malawian youth use rap music to create a sense of community, which then becomes a foothold from which they can do activities that get them out of waithood and into the adult world, such as getting involved in the music industry, realizing electoral power, or participating in activism about issues such as violence against people with albinism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Hip hop has been a crucial tool for Malawian youth to build the skills, identity, and agency necessary to exercise their economic, cultural, and civic independence.

“Reading this book gave me enormous intellectual pleasure and powerfully reconnected me to the creative energies of Malawi’s youth. It is a pioneering survey of the country’s vibrant rap music scene, and a significant contribution to the study of African hip hop cultures, about the local specificities of production, consumption, and discourse. It presents an insightful exegesis on the domestication and development of this musical genre that has captivated the world since its emergence in the African diaspora in the United States several decades ago. Lipenga writes with the felicitous discernment, infectious delight, and intellectual sophistication of an aficionado of the music and a sharp literary and cultural critic. The book presents a remarkable contribution to the study of Malawian performance arts that scholars and the public will equally find stimulating and informative.” (Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Associate Provost and the North Star Distinguished Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, USA; formerly Vice Chancellor (President), United States International University-Africa, Kenya) 

“Rap Music and Youth in Malawi is a much-needed analysis of the role popular music plays in shaping our understanding of youth aspirations, imaginations, and practices in Malawi. It opens a new world of understanding youth identity through rap.” (Mwenda Ntarangwi, author of East African Hip Hop: Youth Culture and Globalization) 

“A sensitive and authoritative account of Malawi’s rap music, showing how it expresses the “waithood” in which many young people find themselves trapped. Lipenga offers a masterly analysis of the linguistic and cultural creativity that enables rap artists to assert agency in often adverse circumstances … original and compelling.” (Kenneth R. Ross, Professor of Theology and Dean of Postgraduate Studies, Zomba Theological University)

“The sudden death of a young Malawi rapper, Martse, exposed the gap between middleMalawi and its youth. Young people filled the Civo Stadium to mourn his passing, leaving significant sections of the elite wondering who the deceased person was. Ken Lipenga Jr, based on experiential and extensive academic research, fills this gap, explaining how social, economic, political, gender disadvantages, and inequalities have led to the development of rap music in Malawi. Lipenga explains some of the linguistic, cultural, marketing, social and political aspects. Rap music may still be a ‘marginal’ protest and entertainment voice that still mostly speaks within its own ‘alternative public sphere,’ but, it is a voice that is growing stronger. This ground-breaking and timely book demands the attention of general and academic reader alike. Its contents will give us an informed insight into the world of Malawi’s youth.” (John Chipembere Lwanda PhD, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of Social and Political Science, Glasgow University)

“With Rap Music and the Youth in Malawi, Ken Lipenga immerses us into the Malawian hip-hop wavelength, and turns up the volume on a lively scene of artistic creation and debate that has been largely bracketed off the national, continental and global soundscape, thanks to rigid assumptions about what ‘authentic’ Malawian music is. Lipenga invites us to attend to Malawian hip-hop artists’ innovative repurposing of the global genre to produce a distinct sonic vernacular that draws on indigenous verbal arts while remaining in communion with the global hip-hop movement. For the Malawian youth at the centre of this book, rap music and hip-hop cultures serve as a powerful resource for identity-formation, a mode of relation for community building in the face of uncertain futures; and a vehicle for voicing their linguistic, artistic and socio-political preoccupations, whose complexity is often flattened out by competing institutional interests that variously associate youth in Africa with crises. Rap Music and theYouth in Malawi is an eloquent addition to the growing library of work on the specificities of African popular cultural practices; and the multidisciplinary debates they convene.” (Grace A. Musila, Associate Professor, Department of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand)

Ken Lipenga, Jr. is an associate professor in Post-colonial literatures at the University of Malawi. He has published on Malawian music, African literature, disability studies and postcolonial literature; disability and folklore; children’s literature, oral literature, and African life writing.