Keepin’ it in the Family: Cultural relatedness and hip hop constellations in Kampala, Uganda

Abstract

For hip hop activists in Kampala the notion of ‘family’ is a significant idea forming the basis of interaction and endeavors in a growing informal music economy. The constellation of hip hop as a family challenges conventional analytical approaches to hip hop as globalization, or glocalization, and empowerment, as it is this constellation itself that comes to designate particular places and times and the distance between them, as well as relations of power. Borrowing from kinship studies, I suggest to see the conceptualization and practice of hip hop as family in Kampala as forms of cultural relatedness that not only designates social relations between close and distant others, but also shapes endeavors of young Ugandan hip hop activists to age as valuable social persons.