Breaking Rocks

Based on fieldwork in Kinshasa and Paris, Breaking Rocks examines patronage payments within Congolese popular music, where a love song dedication can cost 6,000 dollars and a simple name check can trade for 500 or 600 dollars. Tracing this system of prestige through networks of musicians and patrons – who include gangsters based in Europe, kleptocratic politicians in Congo, and lawless diamond dealers in northern Angola – this book offers insights into ideologies of power and value in central Africa’s troubled post-colonial political economy, as well as a glimpse into the economic flows that make up the hidden side of the globalization.

Joe Trapido works in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. A fan of Congolese music, he is also a follower of Congolese society and politics more generally. His work has been published in the New Left Review and in Africa.