An onomastics survey of contemporary Zimbabwe’s Musical Arts Industry: Unpacking selected Dancehall, Urban Grooves and Afro-jazz musicians’ stage names.

Abstract

This study relies on broad semantic theory to understand names in the Zimbabwe music scene. The paper operates on Saussurean thinking that words are carriers of meaning. Another position the paper holds is that names and the naming ritual are never neutral affairs as names reflect ideas of who a person is thought or who they think themselves to be. The paper notes that names and naming practices in the Zimbabwean music industry are motivated and associated with a number of factors such as tradition (totemism), current developments in the cultural arts, body size and type; gender and there is are a lot of power dynamics at play in the naming process.