1 Diana Mutono Mutuku, 2Solomon Waliaula, 3George O Nyandoro and 4Basil Okong’o
This paper explores creation of popular music in Kalambya band as symbolic resource to reveal attributes related to the making of identity. Popular music in Ukambani society is a useful unit of analysis that can explain how people respond to cultural change and can tell us much about cultural values. The origin of identity studied is both historical and social by nature. The main focus of this paper is to explore the sociocultural functions of the Kalambya songs are used to expand our understanding of both cultural and social realities of the Kamba society in which identity takes place. As such, this advances the argument that popular music as identity is not static and is always in flux. The assumption in this paper is that only through a historical, social, cultural, political and economic context is identity making fully realized. The functions of popular music are expressive behaviors which shape and are shaped by social, cultural, historical and economic experiences. Performance theory was used in examining the cultural antecedents of the songs, Performance theory has been developed as a way of explaining dimensions and significance of performance acts as an integral part of social experience of life. it was established that Kalambya songs that were composed in the late 1970‟s and the 1980‟s reflect on what was happening in Ukambani during this period. Kalambya music is seen as a medium through which the Kamba people expressed the contradictions in the society that time
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