Breaking Rocks: Music, Ideology and Economic Collapse, from Paris to Kinshasa (Dislocations, 19)

Based on fieldwork in Kinshasa and Paris, Breaking Rocks examines patronage payments within Congolese popular music, where a love song dedication can cost 6,000 dollars and a simple name check can trade for 500 or 600 dollars. Tracing this system of prestige through networks of musicians and patrons – who include gangsters based in Europe, kleptocratic politicians in Congo, and lawless diamond dealers in northern Angola – this book offers insights into ideologies of power and value in central Africa’s troubled post-colonial political economy, as well as a glimpse into the economic flows that make up the hidden side of the globalization.

• | Author: Joe Trapido
• | Publisher: Berghahn Books
• | Publication Date: Dec 01, 2016
• | Number of Pages: 272 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 1785333984
• | ISBN-13: 9781785333989