Mueda massacre: the musical archive
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Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
As in Pidjiguiti in Guin�-Bissau or Baixa de Cassanje in Angola, the massacre that occurred in
the northern Mozambican town of Mueda on 16 June 1960 has been inscribed in the
nationalist narrative as the breaking point of anti-colonial unrest and the trigger of the armed
liberation struggle. In the past 20 years several scholars have questioned the central tenets of
the nationalist interpretation, especially the idea that the aim of the demonstration was political
independence � a claim considered too lofty to be articulated by a mass of illiterate peasants
guided by leaders enmeshed in ethnic organisations. Caught between the rhetorics of resistance
and revisionism, the colonial archive and oral testimony, the event itself has been rendered
illegible. To rescue 16 June from such deadlock, this article turns towards a different kind of
historical material: song. Proceeding archaeologically, it moves from songs that reproduce
the official version; through more ancient songs, which express some direct experience of the
event, however layered and reformulated; to songs that were sung at the time of the massacre.
These songs and the echoes they elicit from other sources pave the way to a re-interpretation of
the event: from the point zero of a vanguardist history of national consciousness, to a utopian
moment in which independence appeared as a possibility, however unclearly understood, the
political imagination expanding beyond any consideration of objective constraint.
Description
Keywords
Mozambique, Mueda, Colonial violence, Song, Performance, Frelimo
Citation
Israel, P. (2017). Mueda massacre: the musical archive. Journal of Southern African Studies, 43(6): 1157-1179