Academic literature on the topic 'Zimbabwean popular songs'

This chapter interrogates political discourse in popular songs of Shona expression with a view to establish the nature of their evaluation of state performance in Zimbabwe in the period, 2000-2015. By analysing the themes and the language of the songs (verbal, nominal and other constructions and figurative language), we aim to demonstrate the extent to which the songs, composed and performed by pro-opposition artists, objectively assess the performance of the Zimbabwean state. We exclude songs of pro-state musicians for the reason that, their assessment of state functionality is pro-state and therefore explicitly biased. They largely function as a vehicle for state propaganda, employed for the political discursive domination of the citizenry. In doing so they ignore or even glorify state repression, political violence, electoral fraud, insecurity of citizens, lawlessness and human rights violations, as well as the general degradation of the state system. Our observation is that, anti-state songs' depiction of the Zimbabwean nation-state as a case of death-resurrection is a more or less objective evaluation of the state's functionality. In addition to that, we argue that a much more objective assessment of Zimbabwe's performance should have been ‘a collapsed-and-partially-resuscitated state.'