Call for Book Chapters – Ni Wakati: Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa
(ni wakati is Swahili for it’s time)
Editors: Msia Kibona Clark, PhD and Mickie Mwanzia Koster, PhD
The proposed book intends to examine social change in Africa through the lens of hip hop music and culture. The book will look at contemporary social movements and social change in Africa and the participation of African youth through the production and utilization of hip hop music and culture.
The book will explore the transformative impact that hip hop has had on African youth, who have in turn emerged to push for social change on the continent. Hip hop music has done more than serve as a soundtrack to social change, it has also galvanized youth participation and amplified youth voices. Hip hop artists are also participating in social movements and pushing social change. These artists and youth are using hip hop culture as a space within which they inform, discuss and develop challenges to societal institutions, expectations, and mores.
Needed are chapters that relate to the intersection of social change and hip hop in Africa. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

“Hip Hop Tuko Pamoja” (Hip hop we are together). A graffiti tag in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
*Legacies of independence struggles and African hip hop
*African hip hop artists in the veneration of African heroes and leaders (such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Steve Biko, etc)
*The role of hip hop in calls for political change in Africa
*The role of women in hip hop in Africa
*Hip hop’s challenge and/or maintenance of gender oppressions in Africa
*African female hip hop artists and gender activism
*Hip hop artists as agents of social change in Africa
*Hip hop responses to conflict in Africa
*Hip hop and social resistance in Africa
*Hip hop and confrontations with African social institutions
*The role of hip hop (artists, culture and/or music) in contemporary social movements in Africa
Abstract Submission Guidelines: Interested contributors should send a 200-300 word abstract for consideration to Dr. Mickie Mwanzia Koster at mickie@mwanzia.com, no later than March 1, 2013. Submissions should include the abstract of the proposed chapter and the CV(s) of the author(s).
Book Timeline: The deadline for submitting abstracts is March 1, 2013/The deadline for submitting book chapter drafts is June 3, 2013
Editors
Dr. Mickie Mwanzia Koster, Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas, Tyler. Mickie@mwanzia.com
Dr. Msia Kibona Clark, Assistant Professor of Pan African Studies, California State University, Los Angeles. Mclark7@calstatela.edu
Serendipitously, I recorded a song with a group of Congolese rappers, to the theme “Ni Wakati” Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGlD41XvJvU
Abstract submitted