Udhalilishaji wa Asasi Kuu za Kijamii katika Muziki wa Kisasa

Abstract

Pop music is one of the genres with the greatest appeal to the Kenyan youth, and it continues to impact them profoundly. Although this music is a form of entertainment for the youth, Contemporary Pop Music has been used as a platform for disseminating the youth's problems in society. From time immemorial, music has been used to highlight societal challenges. Therefore, this paper critically analysed how the youth has used Contemporary Pop Music to subvert entrenched customs, beliefs, and institutions in society. The study aligned itself with Jean-Francois Lyotard’s idea of postmodernism which is rooted in the subversion of institutions and ideological forms of knowledge as instruments of oppression in the society since they have failed to capture the local realities. Using purposively selected 5 contemporary popular songs in Kenya, this article provides a textual analysis of how postmodernism styles used in the songs serve to subvert entrenched customs, beliefs, institutions, education, language, and religion as instruments of oppression. Challenging these established norms allowed the youth to express themselves freely through music. This study will help shed light on issues of concern to the youth and hopefully help policymakers by offering reference material for the formulation of policies and strategies that will address these issues. More specifically, the findings of this study will contribute to the field of discourse analysis in Kiswahili, literary linguistics, and Oral literature and will help linguistics and literature scholars as reference material in understanding contemporary pop music. Finally, this study will bring a new perspective to understanding contemporary pop music in our society.