Gogo Breeze

Zambia's Radio Elder and the Voices of Free Speech

Harri Englund

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English

University of Chicago Press
08 February 2018

Radio; Social & cultural anthropology; Freedom of information & freedom of speech

When Breeze FM, a radio station in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired schoolteacher in 2003, no one anticipated the skyrocketing success that would follow. A self-styled grandfather on air, Gogo Breeze seeks intimacy over the airwaves and dispenses advice on a wide variety of grievances and transgressions. Multiple voices are broadcast and juxtaposed through call-ins and dialogue, but free speech finds its ally in the radio elder who, by allowing people to be heard and supporting their claims, reminds authorities of their obligations toward the disaffected.

Harri Englund provides a masterfully detailed study of this popular radio personality that addresses broad questions of free speech in Zambia and beyond. By drawing on ethnographic insights into political communication, Englund presents multivocal morality as an alternative to dominant Euro-American perspectives, displacing the simplistic notion of voice as individual personal property—an idea common in both policy and activist rhetoric. Instead, Englund focuses on the creativity and polyphony of Zambian radio while raising important questions about hierarchy, elderhood, and ethics in the public sphere.

A lively, engaging portrait of an extraordinary personality, Gogo Breeze will interest Africanists, scholars of radio and mass media, and anyone interested in the history and future of free speech.

By: Harri Englund
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 23mm, Width: 16mm, Spine: 2mm
Weight: 397g
ISBN: 9780226498935
ISBN 10: 022649893X
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 08 February 2018
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Harri Englund is professor of social anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

Reviews for Gogo Breeze: Zambia's Radio Elder and the Voices of Free Speech

""Englund offers up an unusual ethnography of media that is deeply person-centered and filled with character study and life history. In doing so, he breaks new ground in media studies by delineating how radio can generate an intimate form of the public sphere. Bringing together an insightful reading of multivocality with a rethinking of the authority of elderhood--all but ignored of late in African studies--this book explores what happens when radio is configured through a relation of kinship, allowing for the democratic articulation of multiplicity under the frame of the people's grandfather.""-- ""Sasha Newell, author of The Modernity Bluff"" ""Gogo Breeze is a rich ethnography that gives a full picture of a host of issues confronting Zambians today. Written in an accessible style, full of many ethnographic anecdotes and theoretical insights, the book will be of interest to a range of scholars and students.""-- ""Laura Kunreuther, author of Voicing Subjects""