The curi­ous phe­nom­e­non of Swahili film narration

In Tan­za­nia, for­eign films are pirat­ed on video and nar­rat­ed in Swahili by video jock­eys known as VJs in order to be intel­li­gi­ble to a local audi­ence. Pop­u­lar video nar­ra­tors are local celebri­ties in their own right, fad­ing the orig­i­nal sound­track in and out, reen­act­ing filmic dia­logue and adding their own com­men­tary to pro­ceed­ings. The super­im­pos­ing of one nar­ra­tive art form over anoth­er serves as a lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al trans­la­tion, and has been described by Lufu­fu – the orig­i­nal Tan­zan­ian video jock­ey – as ​“turn­ing rice into pilau”, equat­ing for­eign films as a raw mate­r­i­al that must be pre­pared accord­ing to cer­tain prin­ci­ples of local cui­sine in order to be turned into a palat­able dish.

Lufu­fu ini­tial­ly had the idea while watch­ing Chi­nese live inter­pre­ta­tion of Viet­namese pro­pa­gan­da films while based in Chi­na for mil­i­tary train­ing, and the prac­tice is either per­formed live in pub­lic video par­lours or record­ed and sold in shops. In its present form in East Africa its roots lay in Ugan­da, where Lufu­fu learnt the tech­ni­cal aspects of the job, and to this day Ugan­da is the coun­try lead­ing the way in this art form. Under­stand­ably, the craft has been inter­pret­ed as an amal­ga­ma­tion of film with the much old­er medi­um of oral sto­ry­telling, but despite this prece­dent video nar­ra­tion is an entire­ly mod­ern phenomenon.

One film that has been appro­pri­at­ed in this way is James Cameron’s 1997 epic Titan­ic, which has cer­tain themes that res­onate with African view­ers, such as the con­flict between col­lec­tive social norms and the por­tray­al of a soci­ety marked by social inequal­i­ty. Yet the for­eign con­tent must under­go a domes­ti­ca­tion, and that’s where the VJs come in. Their craft can be under­stood as one of repair, fill­ing the inevitable leaks in mean­ing that occur in the trans­fer­ral from one cul­tur­al con­text to another.

On such VJ star is DJ Mark, whose trendi­er, slang-filled com­men­tary is pop­u­lar with younger audi­ences. In par­tic­u­lar, his use of geo­graph­i­cal ref­er­ences is much clos­er to the every­day life of Tan­zan­ian spec­ta­tors than the social dif­fer­ences between the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry elite and work­ing classes:

“In poor neigh­bour­hoods like Tandi­ka and Manzese you will encounter chil­dren danc­ing many crazy dances, but if you go to Euro­pean neigh­bour­hoods like Masa­ki you can­not find this. Jack intends to throw Rose into a place where he can dance these crazy dances with her, some­thing I doubt she’s ever expe­ri­enced in her life.”

Tan­zan­ian VJs have con­sid­er­able agency in their appro­pri­a­tions, and the result is not a faith­ful inter­pre­ta­tion but rather sig­nif­i­cant reme­di­a­tions. The for­eign images lose their gov­ern­ing func­tion in telling the sto­ry, and instead the voice-over takes the upper hand in the nar­ra­tive. One sequence from Lufufu’s trans­la­tion of Titan­ic exhibits this well. The orig­i­nal film relies sole­ly on images to trans­mit Jack’s uneasi­ness and unfa­mil­iar­i­ty when he is invit­ed to dine in first class, as he imi­tates a lit­tle pan­tomime to get accus­tomed to the appro­pri­ate ges­tures. How­ev­er, Lufufu’s trans­la­tion nev­er stops, and he pro­vides an inter­nal mono­logue of Jack:

“Every­one here has his part­ner. And what about me? If only I had some­one else by my side… One hand must be held behind the back, and I should stand like this while I greet peo­ple, ​‘shikamo, shikamo’ [a tra­di­tion­al respect­ful greet­ing]. This is pover­ty! Indeed, pover­ty is some­thing bad. Even the girl I am wait­ing for is the fiancée of some­one else.”

The hier­ar­chy of the orig­i­nal and the copy is thus reversed, imbu­ing the com­men­tary with con­sid­er­able sub­ver­sive poten­tial. This is fur­ther demon­strat­ed in instances where the VJ dis­tracts the audi­ence com­plete­ly from the orig­i­nal in order to ful­fil per­son­al gain. In the scene where Jack is draw­ing Rose, DJ Mark uses the lapse in dia­logue as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for shame­less self-promotion:

“Slow­ly the young man begins to draw with intense con­cen­tra­tion so that he can depict her the way she is… Remem­ber this film goes by the name of Titan­ic and is brought to you by MGL Video Library which is found in Yombo Vigunguti by the bridge, and who can be reached on num­ber 0713381436. This film is announced by DJ Mark AKA Jogoo and I’m avail­able on my num­ber which is 0712532484.”

A Tan­zan­ian graph­ic nov­el sim­i­lar­ly reme­di­ates the Titan­ic myth for a local audi­ence, tak­ing the alle­gor­i­cal poten­tial of the sink­ing ship as an edu­ca­tion­al lead-in to a nation­al tragedy of sim­i­lar pro­por­tions. The sink­ing of the MV Buko­ba in Lake Vic­to­ria only a year before the film was released was a result of over­load­ing caused by neg­li­gence, relat­ing to the por­tray­al of the Titan­ic in Cameron’s film as seek­ing the glo­ry that comes with break­ing a speed record. This inter­pre­ta­tion of the tragedy as being caused by a naïve belief in tech­no­log­i­cal progress res­onates with an African audi­ence, and demon­strates the dif­fer­ent mean­ings the Titan­ic myth has acquired in its African versions.

In the case of Swahili nar­ra­tions of Hol­ly­wood films, it’s clear that VJs are cul­tur­al pro­duc­ers who rel­ish these cre­ative encoun­ters with transna­tion­al glob­al media. There is a wealth of mate­r­i­al to fuel this phe­nom­e­non, and it would be inter­est­ing to look at the Swahili nar­ra­tion of sci-fi films such as Star Wars, or fan­ta­sy films like The Lord of the Rings, to see how the VJs attempt to make these oth­er worlds – set in an imag­ined future and past respec­tive­ly – res­onate with East African audiences.