ONLINE: Africa at Noon

media release: Every Wednesday at noon — since 1973! — African Studies Program faculty, students, and community members have gathered for AFRICA AT NOON, a one-hour weekly lecture series bringing diverse African research from scholars around the world to a campus and community audience.

March 2: “Music in/as Afropolitan Tongue: The Ethics of Personhood in Wolof Islamic Hip Hop”

Samba Camara is a teaching assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he teaches courses in African popular culture and performance. He holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts and an MA in African Studies (Ohio University), and an MA in African American Studies (Cheikh Anta Dip University). Dr. Camara’s forthcoming monograph, entitled, A Muslim Afropolitanism: The Ethics of Personhood in Senegalese Music, draws on ethnography as well as aesthetic and content analysis of Wolof popular music and musical performance. The book documents how Senegalese urban artists mobilize Islam-infused popular music to create powerful analogies of interfaith dialog while foregrounding Wolof codes of nite, or ethical personhood. Dr. Camara’s research has appeared in journals such as Duke Research Africa Reviews, Journal of African Cultural Studies, and African Arts. He is currently the PI of a digitization project funded by the British Library in which a team of scholars work to collect and preserve endangered manuscripts of Pulaar language songs and poetry composed by 19th and 20th century West African Islamic authors. Dr. Camara is also co-editing a book, titled African Languages and Global Modernities, which features chapters selected from the proceedings of the South East African Languages and Literatures conference (SEALLF) that he co-hosted in November 2021. This volume presents case studies showcasing how African languages – in diverse forms and dynamics in Africa, the US, Latin America, and the Indian Ocean region – constitute resilient sites and vehicles of African cultural modernities as mediated through music, literature, and performance.

The Africa at Noon series will take place virtually this semester until further notice. All are welcome. This event will take place on Zoom. Spring semester info:

https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/91993903821?pwd=NElOU2Zza1QrZUFwUjhvNkxlazhNZz09

Webinar ID: 919 9390 3821; Passcode: 965483

Or One tap mobile : US: +13126266799,,91993903821#,,,,*965483# or +19292056099,,91993903821#,,,,*965483#

Or Telephone: Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):

US: +1 312 626 6799 or +1 929 205 6099 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 253 215 8782 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 669 900 6833

International numbers available: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/u/acmMd7jtpf

You can view available recordings of past Africa at Noon webinars using the link(s) on the event page.