MATERIAL NARRATION OF NOSTALGIA AND MODALITY IN THE LYRICS OF SAGA’S KUMUNZI KUBOTU

  • Hambaba Jimaima University of Zambia
  • Gabriel Simungala University of Zambia
  • Trevor Mwansa University of Zambia
Keywords: Affect, Modality, Memory, Nostalgia, Reimaging, Self, Semiotics, Subjunctivity

Abstract

Conflating the theoretical ‘givings’ of modality, semiotics and memory studies, the article attempts to gain insights into how material narration of affect, nostalgia and subjunctivity are constructed and transacted in song. In scholarly works that focus on the interplay between linguistics and musicology, rarely do notions of affect, especially the ones attuned to nostalgia and modality, feature in the discussion. This article assumes that the lyrical affordances in most Zambian compositions discursively unravel high level cognitive regimes of which affect, nostalgia and modality are central. This treatment uses song as its discursive and analytical material, in which nostalgia, affect and modality are seen as recursive memory and linguistic regimes in the unfolding of the artist’s monologue of the sum total of self, and the double articulation of the ‘subjective self’ and ‘objective other,’ both of which are potentiated by the reimaging of self, while playing ‘the plural’ in the ‘concealment of the subjective self’ through the use of the plural ‘basa kumunzi nkubotu’ in Saga’s Kumunzi Kubotu.

Author Biographies

Hambaba Jimaima, University of Zambia
Hambaba Jimaima holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics. He is a senior lecturer in the Department of Arts, Languages and Literary Studies at the University of Zambia. His research interests revolve around semiotics, multilingual memory and multimodality, predicated on language production and consumption in the public spaces as expressed in the published works on: ORCID: 0000-0001-7535-2033.
Gabriel Simungala, University of Zambia
Gabriel Simungala is a special research fellow at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa and a lecturer of sociolinguistics in the Department of Arts, Languages and Literary Studies at the University of Zambia. He has published extensively in language education, youth and pop culture, critical and multimodal discourse analysis, globalisation and mobility, linguistic/semiotic landscapes, Bantu linguistics and the sociolinguistics of language contact. His recent publications include Legitimisation and Recontextualisation of Languages: The Imbalance of Powers in a Multilingual Landscape, among others.
Trevor Mwansa, University of Zambia
Trevor Mwansa is a lecturer in the Department of Arts, Languages and Literary Studies at the University of Zambia. His teaching and research interests include among others, literary theory, poetry, African literature, African-American literature, American literature, English literature, culture, education, leadership, eco-criticism, modernism and post-modernism. His recent publication is dubbed: ‘Coping with Racism: An Analysis of Defence Mechanisms Employed by Lubinda in Dominic Muliasho’s The Tongue of the Dumb’.
Published
2023-08-09
How to Cite
Jimaima, H., Simungala, G., & Mwansa, T. (2023). MATERIAL NARRATION OF NOSTALGIA AND MODALITY IN THE LYRICS OF SAGA’S KUMUNZI KUBOTU. ZANGO: Zambian Journal of Contemporary Issues, 36(1), 62-71. Retrieved from https://nscme.unza.zm/index.php/ZJOCI/article/view/1041