Awards

• Winner of Co-winner of the 2018 Kwabena Nketia Book Award, awarded by the African Music Section Winner of the 2017 Alan Merriam Prize.
• Winner of Winner of the 2017 Alan Merriam Prize.

Overview

Since 1997, the war in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has taken more than 6 million lives and shapes the daily existence of the nation's residents. While the DRC is often portrayed in international media as an unproductive failed state, the Congolese have turned increasingly to art-making to express their experience to external eyes. Author Chérie Rivers Ndaliko argues that cultural activism and the enthusiasm to produce art exists in Congo as a remedy for the social ills of war and as a way to communicate a positive vision of the country. Ndaliko introduces a memorable cast of artists, activists, and ordinary people from the North-Kivu province, whose artistic and cultural interventions are routinely excluded from global debates that prioritize economics, politics, and development as the basis of policy decision about Congo. Rivers also shows how art has been mobilized by external humanitarian and charitable organizations, becoming the vehicle through which to inflict new kinds of imperial domination. Written by a scholar and activist in the center of the current public policy debate, Necessary Noise examines the uneasy balance of accomplishing change through art against the unsteady background of war. At the heart of this book is the Yole!Africa cultural center, which is the oldest independent cultural center in the east of Congo. Established in the aftermath of volcano Nyiragongo's 2002 eruption and sustained through a series of armed conflicts, the cultural activities organized by Yole!Africa have shaped a generation of Congolese youth into socially and politically engaged citizens. By juxtaposing intimate ethnographic, aesthetic, and theoretical analyses of this thriving local initiative with case studies that expose the often destructive underbelly of charitable action, Necessary Noise introduces into heated international debates on aid and sustainable development a compelling case for the necessity of arts and culture in negotiating sustained peace. Through vivid descriptions of a community of young people transforming their lives through art, Ndaliko humanizes a dire humanitarian disaster. In so doing, she invites readers to reflect on the urgent choices we must navigate as globally responsible citizens. The only study of music or film culture in the east of Congo, Necessary Noise raises an impassioned and vibrantly interdisciplinary voice that speaks to the theory and practice of socially engaged scholarship.

Full Product Details

9780190499587

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Reviews

This book is a necessary read for anyone interested in current politics and art in the DRC. It also is valuable in its analyses of the relationship between African NGOs and international organizations. Necessary Noise draws from a range of critical theoretical insights and skillfully presents them in forthright, clear prose-no mean feat. Upper division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers alike will learn a great deal from Rivers Ndaliko's methods and her presentation. * African Studies Quarterly *

This book is a necessary read for anyone interested in current politics and art in the DRC. It also is valuable in its analyses of the relationship between African NGOs and international organizations. Necessary Noise draws from a range of critical theoretical insights and skillfully presents them in forthright, clear prose no mean feat. Upper division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers alike will learn a great deal from Rivers Ndaliko s methods and her presentation. --African Studies Quarterly

"""Necessary Noise is a timely ethnographic work that brings the east of Congo into the scholarship on African music. As it engages music textual and filmic analysis for further insight into how art functions as a tool for social engagement and change, it would benefit music and film enthusiasts as well as those engaged in anthropological work, Development studies and African studies. The author leaves no stone unturned in fleshing out critical points relating to film, music, voice, social engagement and power among other aspects. The heavy critique of international NGOs may on the surface appear as one-sided; however, it should be lauded as the willingness of one scholar to tell the naked truth."" -- Mumbua Kioko, Volume! The French journal of popular music studies ""This book is a necessary read for anyone interested in current politics and art in the DRC. It also is valuable in its analyses of the relationship between African NGOs and international organizations. Necessary Noise draws from a range of critical theoretical insights and skillfully presents them in forthright, clear prose no mean feat. Upper division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers alike will learn a great deal from Rivers Ndaliko s methods and her presentation."" --African Studies Quarterly ""Necessary Noise by Chérie Rivers Ndaliko is a refreshing addition to the liter-ature on Eastern Congo for one particular reason. It does what no other study has done before, which is to focus on something besides the conflict minerals that have wreaked havoc in the Kivus ... Instead, this well-wrought study, while not eschewing Congo's mineral conflict altogether, shatters the single narrative of war and conflict that has eclipsed so many other topics, from cultural activism through art, to the imaginary, and the quotidian demand for celebration and empowerment."" -- Ch. Didier Gondola"

Author Information

Chérie Rivers Ndaliko is a socially engaged scholar-activist who researches radical arts interventions in conflict regions of Africa. She is a professor in the Music Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Yole!Africa cultural center in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. She holds a BM in filmscoring from the Berklee College of Music, an MA in Ethnomusicology from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in African Studies from Harvard University.

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