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Millions on the Margins: Music, Ethnicity, and Censorship among the Oromo of Ethiopia
Editor’s Note: Republished after acquiring the full dissertation from the author (document attached below).
Title: Millions on the Margins: Music, Ethnicity, and Censorship among the Oromo of Ethiopia
Author: Shawn Michael Mollenhauer (Music Department, University of California-Riverside, USA)
Published: Thesis Collection
Language: English
Keywords: Africa, Censorship, Ethiopia, Ethnicity, Ethnomusicology, Oromo
Abstract:
This dissertation will demonstrate how music among the Oromo people of present day Ethiopia functions as a system for the preservation and negotiation of a uniquely Oromo identity, as well as a vehicle for resistance against the hegemony long ago established by outside ethnic groups. I will demonstrate how a long history of censorship of Oromo music by various ruling elites has made censorship one of the major features of Oromo social and aesthetic processes. This dissertation will therefore investigate the dynamic of the processes and dialogues through which Oromo identity becomes manifested, and in which music plays a deep role. In Ethiopia, a nation officially “independent” of European colonialism, “Ethiopian” culture was always equated with that of an ethnic minority. Not until the fall of Haile Selassie were the voices of other histories and previously peripheral groups given a chance to participate in the dialogue of Ethiopian statehood. I will use my ethnographic research from the US to Ethiopia to explore the relationship between performance art and state power in Ethiopia. Marginalized under Selassie, embraced and then shunned under the Derg and the current regime of Meles Zenawi, Oromo music demonstrates these complicated relationships. Oromos use music to “remember” past histories, bolster a sense of community among Oromo speaking groups, and fuel anti-colonial nationalism directed not at a European invader, but a black African one. Oromo music is used by the current regime in Ethiopia to present a face of multiculturalism. Yet while the government selectively preserves Oromo culture, Oromo musicians continue to be imprisoned, intimidated, and disappeared for making certain kinds of music. Because of this, various forms of censorship (both external and internal) have become a part of the Oromo music making process. Ethnic identity in general, and Oromo identity in particular, is performative. Music, like the ethnic identity it is used to bolster, is a performative act that creates a space for a polyvocal and heterogeneous dialogue through which Oromo identity is constituted. What can the relationship between Oromo music and the Ethiopian state tell us about ethno-nationalism, censorship, and memory? What does the selective preservation on the part of both Oromo and the Ethiopian government tell us about the role of performance in maintaining history and ethnic identity?
Millions on the Margins: Music, Ethnicity, and Censorship among the Oromo of Ethiopia
Title: Millions on the Margins: Music, Ethnicity, and Censorship among the Oromo of Ethiopia
Author: Shawn Michael Mollenhauer (Music Department, University of California-Riverside, USA)
Published: Thesis Collection
Language: English
Keywords: Africa, Censorship, Ethiopia, Ethnicity, Ethnomusicology, Oromo
Abstract:
This dissertation will demonstrate how music among the Oromo people of present day Ethiopia functions as a system for the preservation and negotiation of a uniquely Oromo identity, as well as a vehicle for resistance against the hegemony long ago established by outside ethnic groups. I will demonstrate how a long history of censorship of Oromo music by various ruling elites has made censorship one of the major features of Oromo social and aesthetic processes. This dissertation will therefore investigate the dynamic of the processes and dialogues through which Oromo identity becomes manifested, and in which music plays a deep role. In Ethiopia, a nation officially “independent” of European colonialism, “Ethiopian” culture was always equated with that of an ethnic minority. Not until the fall of Haile Selassie were the voices of other histories and previously peripheral groups given a chance to participate in the dialogue of Ethiopian statehood. I will use my ethnographic research from the US to Ethiopia to explore the relationship between performance art and state power in Ethiopia. Marginalized under Selassie, embraced and then shunned under the Derg and the current regime of Meles Zenawi, Oromo music demonstrates these complicated relationships. Oromos use music to “remember” past histories, bolster a sense of community among Oromo speaking groups, and fuel anti-colonial nationalism directed not at a European invader, but a black African one. Oromo music is used by the current regime in Ethiopia to present a face of multiculturalism. Yet while the government selectively preserves Oromo culture, Oromo musicians continue to be imprisoned, intimidated, and disappeared for making certain kinds of music. Because of this, various forms of censorship (both external and internal) have become a part of the Oromo music making process. Ethnic identity in general, and Oromo identity in particular, is performative. Music, like the ethnic identity it is used to bolster, is a performative act that creates a space for a polyvocal and heterogeneous dialogue through which Oromo identity is constituted. What can the relationship between Oromo music and the Ethiopian state tell us about ethno-nationalism, censorship, and memory? What does the selective preservation on the part of both Oromo and the Ethiopian government tell us about the role of performance in maintaining history and ethnic identity?
Islam, the Orthodox Church and Oromo Nationalism
Title: Islam, the Orthodox Church and Oromo Nationalism
Author: Abbas Haji Gnamo
Published: Cahiers d’Études africaines XLII-1, No. 165, 2002, pp. 99-120
Language: English
Keywords: Ethiopia, Oromo, ethnonationalism, fundamentalism, identity politics, Islam, official nationalism, Orthodox Christianity
Abstract:
The Oromo, the largest single national group in Ethiopia, follow Islam and Christianity since the middle of the 19th Century particularly after the conquest of the Ethiopian State, which triggered, directly or indirectly, a massive conversion. This article highlights the relationship between the Orthodox Church and Islam vis-à-vis the nascent but rapidly developing Oromo nationalism. Based on the analysis of Oromo ethnography, history, the system of thought and their contemporary political movements, the paper argues that Oromo nationalism is the antithesis of the Ethiopian state/official nationalism supported by the Orthodox Church. It also demonstrates that Islam is not a driving ideological force of Oromo’s political struggle. On one the hand, it is in contradiction with many aspects of the pre-existing culture such as Gadaa-Qaaluu and other values from which the nationalists try to take inspiration to build their future. On the other hand, from the strategic perspective, the adoption of Islam or Christianity as an ideological tool of their nationalism would be a factor of more division and fragmentation. Thus Oromo mainstream nationalism is evolving on a secular political trajectory.
The Oromo in Exile: Creating Knowledge and Promoting Social Justice
Title: The Oromo in Exile: Creating Knowledge and Promoting Social Justice
Author: Asafa Jalata (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA)
Published: Societies Without Borders Vol. 6, No. 1, 2011, pp. 33-72 (40)
Language: English
Keywords: Oromo, Oromia, Indigenous Peoples, State Terrorism, Genocide, Colonization
Abstract:
This paper explains how some Oromos who were forced to leave their country, Oromia, by successive colonial Ethiopian governments and live in exile have been organized in foreign lands to liberate their people and country by supporting the Oromo national movement. By demonstrating how global and regional forces have collaborated in the colonization, continued subjugation and dehumanization of the Oromo people, the paper illustrates how the Oromo people have lost their cultural, political, and social rights that are enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration of human rights and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and how they are still facing state terrorism and genocidal massacres. The financial support from powerful Western countries as well as the support from China to the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government is threatening the survival of the Oromo people in the 21st century. In response to these gross human rights violations, Oromo activist intellectuals and other Oromos in the Diaspora are engaged in creating knowledge and promoting justice for their downtrodden people on global level.
A critical review of the political and stereotypical portrayals of the Oromo in the Ethiopian historiography
Title: A critical review of the political and stereotypical portrayals of the Oromo in the Ethiopian historiography
Author: Jeylan Wolyie Hussein (Haramaya University, Haramaya, Oromia)
Published: Nordic Journal of African Studies Vol. 15(3) 2006, pp. 256 – 276
Language: English
Keywords: Oromo, portrayals, Ethiopia, identity
Abstract:
This paper attempts to make a critical review of the political and stereotypical portrayals of the Oromo in the Ethiopian historiography. For the theoretical and analytical purposes, the paper draws on the Marxist theory of representation. The fact that there is no one particular, unified and uniform portrayal of the Oromo is as important politically as why a portrayal is required. Even the Oromo academics have differences in this respect. While the majority of them express their pain about Oromo great antiquity thrown in as red herrings, some consider this as simple exclusivism and discursive premordialism whose value is less important in contemporary socio-political context of nation building. The European writers are also equally divided among themselves in their narratives about the Oromo. Some point out the effects of the long years of Amhara tight grip on Oromo national identity, while others emphasize the political side of citizenship, applauding the 19th century conquest of the Oromo as a resolute political fulfillment and in doing so legitimizing the continual suppression of ethnic rights. A critical look at the literature also suggests that each writer’s or a group of writers’ personal and political attitudes towards Oromo history, nationalism and ethnicity, which in turn is the result of each individual writer’s subjective and ideological orientations within the wider historical and cultural context, affects the way they portray the Oromo. The paper shows the tensions of settling the Ethiopian historiography. It seems that the force of those who are condemning years of injustice are stronger than that of those who like to maintain the hegemonic relationships. My conclusion is that a better solution to the current ethnic problems of the Oromo of Ethiopia lies in breaking with explicit as well as implicit traditions of socio-political denigrations of the cultural and political identity of the conquered ethnic groups. This calls for the re examination of the traditional historiography of Ethiopia, which seals the history of the country as a completed project.
