Author Description

<i>Performing Religion </i>considers issues related to Tanzanian <i>kwayas</i> [KiSwahili, “choirs”], musical communities most often affiliated with Christian churches, and the music they make, known as<i> nyimbo za kwaya </i>[choir songs] or <i>muziki wa kwaya </i>[choir music]. The analytical approach adopted in this text focusing on the communities of <i>kwaya </i>is one frequently used in the fields of ethnomusicology, religious studies, culture studies, and philosophy for understanding diversified social processes-consciousness. By invoking consciousness an attempt is made to represent the ways seemingly disparate traditions coexist, thrive, and continue within contemporary <i>kwaya </i>performance.<br> An East African <i>kwaya</i> is a community that gathers several times each week to define its spirituality musically. Members of <i>kwayas</i> come together to sing, to pray, to support individual members in times of need, and to both learn and pass along new and inherited faith traditions. <i>Kwayas</i> negotiate between multiple musical traditions or just as often they reject an inherited musical system while others may continue to engage musical repertoires from both Europe and Africa. Contemporary <i>kwayas </i>comfortably coexist in the urban musical soundscape of coastal Dar es Salaam along with jazz dance bands, <i>taarab </i>ensembles, ngoma performance groups, Hindi film music, rap, reggae, and the constant influx of recorded American and European popular musics.<br> This ethnography calls into question terms frequently used to draw tight boundaries around the study of the arts in African expressive religious cultures. Such divisions of the arts present well-defended boundaries and borders that are not sufficient for understanding the change, adaptation, preservation, and integration that occur within a Tanzanian <i>kwaya</i>. Boundaries break down within the everyday performance of East African <i>kwayas</i>, such as <i>Kwaya ya Upendo</i> [“The Love