Zimdancehall and Modes of Being in the City

The Zimdancehall genre arose from both the government policy to increase local music production and the hardships that Zimbabwe was facing in the 2000s. The genre serves the purpose of commenting on the politico-socioeconomic issues that affect urban youths mostly. Many musical styles have been linked to urban spaces. How music is produced and consumed define the way human beings interact with their place. To understand modalities of residing in the city, this chapter utilised four concepts, namely, urban intelligence, urban mythscapes, time-space compression and space and place dynamics to unpack the complex socially constructed relationships of urban dwellers and the city. A narrative literature review was used to identify literature already in existence and to identify any gaps in the literature. A Google scholar search was done that identified 395 articles using the search command “Zimdancehall + the city + mode”. Abstracts and reference lists of identified articles were used to further screen the articles. Twenty-two articles met the inclusion criteria basing on perceptions of the researchers. Six more articles were identified from the reference lists of the articles that met the inclusion criteria. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Themes identified include Zimdancehall as urban revolution, Zimdancehall building resilience in urban spaces and Zimdancehall encouraging social ills. The study concluded that Zimdancehall is a revolutionary force that shapes and is shaped by the interactions between environmental and social elements of residents to define the urban space and its activities. The revolution popularised both positive and negative aspects of urban city life. Since interactions are complex, the researchers recommend that more empirical studies be carried out to investigate the extent to which Zimdancehall has shaped urban modes of living and how this can further impact future developments in different urban spaces, since urban areas are not homogenous.