• Soundtracks in the Silicon Savannah: Digital Production, Aesthetic Entrepreneurship and the New Recording Industry in Nairobi, Kenya

    Author(s):
    Andrew Eisenberg (see profile)
    Date:
    2022
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/eg4m-4172
    Abstract:
    My core argument in this chapter is that Nairobi’s new recording industry has taken shape in large part through individual projects that are at once wholly musical and wholly entrepreneurial, involving moves and strategies in musical form geared as much toward generating new business models and organisations as they are toward particular aesthetic aims. I use the term aesthetic entrepreneurship to describe these sorts of projects. Notwithstanding the emergence of artists like Juliani, who have embraced an ‘aesthetic of the entrepreneur’ (Shipley 2009) and developed novel modes of entrepreneurship, aesthetic entrepreneurship in Nairobi’s new recording industry has primarily been the domain of producers. Following an overview of the new recording industry, I present three case studies of new-industry producers who have employed digital music technologies to simultaneously enact a new aesthetic formation (that is, a new style, genre or ‘sound’) along with a new organisation. All of the studies are based on ethnographic interviews and participant-observation carried out between July 2011 and August 2012.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Book chapter     Show details
    Publisher:
    UCL Press
    Pub. Date:
    2022
    Book Title:
    Music and Digital Media: A Planetary Anthropology
    Author/Editor:
    Born, Georgina
    Chapter:
    2
    Page Range:
    46 - 89
    ISBN:
    9781800082434
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    1 year ago
    License:
    Attribution
    Share this:

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf eisenberg-2022.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 59

    Back to Deposits