Gogo Breeze: Zambia's Radio Elder and the Voices of Free Speech
Harri Englund
Abstract
When Breeze FM Radio, in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired school teacher 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 by using idiomatic Chinyanja / Chichewa. 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 ... More
When Breeze FM Radio, in the provincial Zambian town of Chipata, hired an elderly retired school teacher 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 by using idiomatic Chinyanja / Chichewa. 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. This book is a detailed study of the popular radio personality that addresses broad questions of free speech in Zambia and beyond. By drawing on ethnographic insights into political communication, the book 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, the book focuses on the creativity and polyphony of Zambian radio while raising important questions about hierarchy, elderhood, and ethics in the public sphere.
Keywords:
free speech,
radio,
Zambia,
ethnography,
voice,
public sphere,
multivocal morality,
elderhood,
obligation,
Chinyanja / Chichewa
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226498768 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2018 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226499093.001.0001 |
