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Sunday, August 04, 2002

By Wallace Chuma

I received an e-mail from a friend in Harare, Zimbabwe, the other day. It was meant to be an update on the goings-on in that part of the world, given that I am 15,000 miles away.

As a parting shot, he told me he had hooked up with a musalad and was having a good time. But he decried that since the relationship started some three weeks ago, his finances have never been the same.

He told me the young woman was "demanding" more than what he could afford. As a MAN, though, he had to pretend all was within reach.

	Wallace Chuma, a news editor from Zimbabwe, is working at the Post-Gazette on a five-month Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship.

"I'm in trouble, man. I can't even figure out how I will afford next term's school fees for my sister," he wrote. I felt pity for my friend, who is a fund manager for an insurance firm.

Musalad is a new term in Zimbabwe. It is neither English nor Shona, the major languages in the country. The term, hardly 5 years old, describes the new breed of youths who have terribly fallen in love with American hip-hop culture, whose mode of expression is rap music.

In Zimbabwe, salads are not a common dish for every Tom, Dick and Harry. Only wealthy families can afford salads, which come along with expensive dishes. Musalad means "the salad person." And "salad people" are those stylish and restless youths from well-to-do families. Rap is the music of masalads, (the plural of musalad). They won't settle for sungura, a fast-beat local genre with close ties to East African rumba music.

One of the distinguishing features of a musalad in Zimbabwe is the typical African-American English accent (with occasional use of "it's like," "you guys," "I wanna do" this or that). There also is the issue of clothing. Male masalads dress in oversized pants, sleeveless shirts, big boots and the inevitable headband.

Females distinguish themselves in hipsters, skin-tight blouses, high-heeled shoes and their accent -- feigned or real. Dating a female musalad is one of the most daunting tasks for young Zimbabwean men.

These sophisticated young women will demand virtually everything from the prospective lover: cash, clothing, expensive takeout food, payment of cell-phone bills. In fact, the tacit minimum qualification to date a bona fide musalad is the so-called 3Cs: car, cell phone and cash.

Masalads take pride in designer labels -- Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, FUBU, Fila, Calvin Klein, you name it. Restless youths in this league also enjoy the Saturday Ritual. This involves cutting through the city center in posh cars (mostly two-door convertibles) at breakneck speed, with car-radio volumes on full blast and tires screeching, occasionally, to the annoyance of pedestrians and other motorists.

Social analysts and cultural activists in Zimbabwe link the emergence of this youth subculture to the global influence of rap music, a genre that was born of inner-city poverty and the struggles of African-Americans.

The music defies convention, as does every other aspect of hip-hop culture. It is a challenge to the status quo.

New communication technologies have enhanced the influence of American hip-hop culture in most parts of the world, especially in Africa. The youth there, perhaps sick and tired of established (often a crude mixture of traditional African and European) cultural norms, have this tendency to want their own "freedom."

Conventional African culture, for example, stresses that until they start their own families, youths will always have their freedom circumscribed. Even when they start their own families, they are still subject to the overarching influence of the extended family and other forms of authority.

When it is viewed in this context, it could be argued that youths in relatively "conservative" societies see in hip-hop an opportunity to express their individual tastes and freedom.

Most Zimbabwean masalads have never been in the United States. Their idea of rap music in particular and the United States in general is largely informed by Hollywood movies, videos and, of course, the lyrics of the music they listen to.

Rap music portrays a picture of the powerful individual with unbridled freedom, extols masculine values and glamorizes thug life. The ideal youth is depicted as aggressive, unconventional, self-sufficient, pleasure-seeking, irresponsible, careless. There also is the assumption that such youths have unlimited access to resources, especially cash and cars, and, consequently, attractive women or men.

I grew up in a relatively humble and rural environment, so there was no way I could have become a musalad. But I always thought the images in the media, depicting a totally decadent youth culture in the United States, were a true reflection of the situation.

Having been in this country for five weeks now, I am having problems reconciling the two pictures of the same country. I have yet to witness the noisy, movie-style incidents in Downtown Pittsburgh or surrounding neighborhoods, the rampant shootings, ever-sloshed and delinquent youths with a blatant disregard for life.

I would not consider my experiences in Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh a representative sample of the situation in the rest of the country, especially given that I have not been to Los Angeles or New York. But suffice it to say that rap music, as interpreted and consumed by youths in other parts of the world, is nothing more than just break dance, foul language and unconventional dress. The historic quest for social justice and other values that informed the origins of this genre seem to have drowned in the sea of global consumerism.

In this country, hip-hop falls into the category of popular culture, which is an expression of those who have not been recognized as part of the establishment. It is a culture of struggle and mirrors the joys and pains of underdogs.

Born in the early '70s, rap can be traced most directly to the Black Nationalist Last Poets, whose albums "The Last Poets," "Chastisements" and "This is Madness" became classics in the African-American community. Rapping was inherited from the West African poets, called griots.

In its early years, hip-hop culture mostly comprised graffiti, break dance and unconventional dress. The new culture also came to be associated with guns, dope, sexism and violence -- a feature that most among its legion of fans across the globe seem to admire most.

But hip-hop is not just about behavior and outward forms of expression. It emerged as a culture of survival within a hostile socio-political environment. After the black power movement, the Vietnam War and FBI hardball tactics regarding certain positive black community organizations, gangs became the most attractive option to many African-American youths. Needless to say, rap also carried the protest voice against the social injustices of the day.

However, in other parts of the world, Zimbabwe included, hip-hop comes across as a parochial, snobbish and pretentious culture based on mimicking. The rap lyrics do not strike particular resonance with the experiences of youths there. In fact, hip-hop culture in Zimbabwe is a culture of the emerging black "middle-class" youths, who cannot identify with either the secluded white upper class (this class is threatened with extinction, given President Mugabe's chaotic land reform program) or the predominantly black working class and peasants.

The salad generation in Zimbabwe does not appreciate the historical context against which hip-hop culture was born in this country. It will perhaps never understand it, given the rapid commercialization of mass culture.

Meanwhile, my friend remains ensnared between a rock and a hard place. He loves his musalad, but he's also bleeding on the finance side of it. They say "culture is dynamic." Whatever that means.