INTRODUCTION- WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

WELCOME
Welcome to my blog. This space is about my research with women musicians involved in Zambia's popular music genre, Zed Beats. Zed Beats (colloquial for “Zambia’s Beats”), primarily popular among lower-middle-class youth, is an assemblage of both indigenous Zambia’s musical elements, and foreign musical influences drawn from R&B, reggae, rap, hip-hop, and other music styles from within Africa. Its production involves, as opposed to an ensemble, one person (the producer) performing, tracking, manipulating all or most of the instrumental parts of a piece of music. The producer usually makes use of samples from an electronic source or some music software. In Zed Beats, the man behind the computer is the production team, sound engineer, and the band. Sung mostly in local languages and interpolated with some English, the genre often makes use of recycled drum patterns, and sometimes rhythmic and melodic phrases from previously released songs. These creative processes have over time rendered Zed Beats a popular music genre unique to Zambia.

INTRODUCTION
Although women are at the center of music and dance performances in Zambia’s traditional settings, they historically have been greatly marginalized on the popular music scene. The marginalization of women on the scene can be attributed to at least two factors: First, traditionally, the role of providing what Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar (2010) call intimate labor is ascribed to women. As intimate laborers, women in Zambia, have been required to perform a range of duties including household up keeping, family maintenance in the form of cooking, cleaning, and bathing children. These duties have historically confined women to home spaces where they are mostly to be performed. Secondly, tradition and religion have allotted the role of provider to men. Such a gendered role has, while excluding women, given men more access to capital, technology and public spaces, all of which facilitate performances of popular music in modern Zambia. 

However, the shift to multiparty politics in 1991, a modern notion, encouraged participation at all levels and by both genders. On the music scene, the modern ideals of democratic politics including the liberalization of Zambia’s economy greatly impacted the involvement of women. For example, the economic liberalization policy that was introduced by Frederic Chiluba’s Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) government which took over power from Kenneth Kaunda’s United National Independence Party (UNIP) in 1991 facilitated accessibility to more affordable recording facilities. Also, Chiluba’s democratic government encouraged the participation of  individuals in the public sphere, including women. On the popular music scene, women, who in the pre-Zed Beats era had struggled to participate due to high recording fees and the stigma attached to the music career at the time, increasingly participated in the Zed Beats era as evidenced by the higher number of recordings which feature women’s voices on them as lead singers in Zed Beats. I hypothesize that since the mid-1990s when Zed Beats, a blend of indigenous Zambian rhythms and Western musical influences, debuted on Zambia’s popular music scene, women have increasingly participated as song writers, singers, and performers. Their increased participation has enabled them to engage with modernity as well as empowered them to participate in socio-economic conversations in Zambia’s public sphere.