Content and Reception of Eswatini’s Indigenous and Popular Music on Women Empowerment

Abstract

Swati indigenous and popular music has featured on Eswatini Broadcasting Service since the radio station’s establishment in 1966. Oftentimes, this music addresses political, economic and social issues including gender relations. Due to Eswatini’s cultural milieu, Swati women face numerous gendered problems such as high rates of gender-based violence (GBV): femicides, rape, physical and emotional abuse. GBV continues unabated despite the promulgation of the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence (SODV) Act of 2018. As a result, various stakeholders, including musicians, have taken the initiative to comment on Swati women’s empowerment or disempowerment. Eswatini’s traditional and popular musicians alike compose songs that discuss and debate female oppression. In this chapter, we investigate the relatedness of women empowerment or disempowerment to indigenous and popular music. We do this by comparatively analysing the content of Eswatini’s indigenous and popular music about women’s empowerment. We juxtapose siSwati indigenous songs with popular/modern songs in order to establish the similarity and dissimilarity of the songs’ lyrical content and its intimations. We discuss three indigenous songs titled “Sinikeni Lamajobo,” “Nansi Indvodz’ingshaya” and “Uboshiwe LaMkhize,” and three popular/modern songs titled “Inkunz’enjani?” by DJ 1D featuring Mozaik, Qibho Intalektual and KrTc; “Bahlukubetelwani?” by Thabiso and Colani featuring Mlingani Le Poet; and “Tinyembeti” by Zamo. The study employs a qualitative content analysis under the backdrop of Chikwenye Ogunyemi’s African Womanist approach. The chapter concludes that women empowerment is a popular subject in both indigenous and popular music composed by both males and females. However, indigenous songs vocalise women’s perspective more effectively than popular songs composed by young contemporary male artists.