SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Sando Marteau is a Swahiliphone performing artist who lives in Lubumbashi, DRC. This article places the artist within the tradition of Swahili poetry, yet outside of what it calls ‘strung-pearl aesthetics’, on which much so-called traditional Swahili poetry is predicated. This aesthetics projects a rigid prosodic structure upon poetic speech, whereby the formal arrangement of language corresponds to an equally harmonious and pleasing ordering of tropes and ideas. Swahili poetry that does not form part of the classical canon challenges these poetic norms and the intellectual frameworks embedded in such poetry. Congolese Swahili poetry, in particular, invariably falls outside of its poetic and philosophical rhythms. Here, the subversive tendencies in the lyrics of Sando Marteau are exposed. The intellectual attitude that informs the subversive potential of artist Sando Marteau’s poetry is his existentialist orientation. Instrumental to subversion are the poet’s troubling depictions of suffering. Suffering is the force that opposes culture’s inherently totalizing tendencies. Suffering also reminds us to question dominant paradigms of thought and political organization. Conversely, the act of subversion keeps suffering raw and live, and prevents its easy subsumption under an essentialist notion that might render it tolerable, numbed or perhaps even commendable (heroic).