Performing symbolic protest: The representation of young masculine identities in Kenyan urban music
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Abstract
This study examines how young Kenyan male artists construct and perform masculine identities through urban music in the genres of Genge, Kapuka, Gengetone, and Kenyan Drill. Although existing scholarship has often dismissed these genres as vulgar, hedonistic, and misogynistic, this study argues that they function as significant cultural sites where young masculinities negotiate identity in response to systemic marginalisation. Through the lens of Masculinity Theory as articulated by Raewyn Connell, the article interrogates how Kenyan male urban artists represent young masculine identities through lyrical content and visual performances. The study adopts a qualitative research approach and combines thematic, semiotic, and discourse analyses of purposively selected songs by artists such as Jua Cali, Nonini, Mejja, Ethic Entertainment, Wakadinali, and Buruklyn Boyz. The findings reveal that the artists construct multiple masculine identities including protest masculinity, hustler masculinity, aspirational masculinity, vulnerable masculinity, collective masculinity, and toxic masculinity. These identities emerge as responses to economic precarity, unemployment, police brutality, and systemic neglect. Though these performances reflect genuine assertions of agency, they more often reproduce the patriarchal norms they purport to resist thereby remaining predominantly performative rather than transformative. Therefore, this study treats this contradiction with caution.
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