Necessary Noise

Written by a scholar and activist in the center of the current public policy debate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Necessary Noise presents a compelling view on the uneasy balance of accomplishing change through art against the unsteady background of civil war.

Chérie Rivers Ndaliko is a socially engaged scholar-activist who researches radical arts interventions in conflict regions of Africa. She is a professor in the Music Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Yole!Africa cultural center in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. She holds a BM in filmscoring from the Berklee College of Music, an MA in Ethnomusicology from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in African Studies from Harvard University.

Contents
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Map of Congo
Historical Timeline
Introduction
Art on the FrontLine
On sound and the founding of Yole!Africa
On Image and the emergence of radical aesthetics
Intersections
Re-Membering Congo
Prologue
Act I: Léopold II
Act II: Belgium
Act III: Lumumba
Act IV: Mobutu
Act V: The Next Generation
Epilogue
Peace Mongers
Art v. Aid
Art v. Journalism
Art v. Activism
Jazz Mamas
On Truth and Myth
Twaomba Amani
Jazz Mama
Epilogue
Index
Bibliography
Filmography