CCC 73:3 / FEBRUARY 2022

Esther Milu

Hip-Hop and the Decolonial Possibilities

of Translingualism

Drawing on Kenyan hip-hop, this article: (1) illustrates the decolonial possibilities
of translingualism, including paths to linguistic decolonization; (2) showcases
how translingualism can facilitate the recovery of Indigenous hybrid languaging
practices; (3) highlights how global Western capitalism threatens translingualism’s
decolonial potential; and (4) offers further implications for rhetoric and writing
scholars and teachers.

S ummer 2013, Nairobi, Kenya—Jua Cali, a famous Kenyan hip-hop artist,

and one of my research participants, called me. The first thought that came
to my mind as I answered was that he wanted to connect me with other
hip-hop artists. I had shared with him that I was having difficulties finding
hip-hop artists to participate in my research, so as I answered the phone,
I hoped he was calling to connect me with a fellow artist. It turned out he
was calling me about something else.

“Niaje,” he greeted me.

“Poa,” I replied with a rather confused expression on my face.

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“Uko wapi?” he was wondering where I was.

“Kwa nyumba,” I told him I was at home.
“Come huku. Unafaa ukuwe hapa. You need to be here!” he said emphati-
cally.
“Wapi?” I wondered where he was saying I needed to be.
“Huku Kenya Cultural Centre?” he said.
“Kuna nini?” What is going on there?
“Wee kuja utajua!” “Get here as soon as you can. You will find out,” he
said.

Without giving me further details, Jua Cali shared that an important

event related to the language research I was conducting was taking place
at the Kenya Cultural Centre, and he was calling to invite me to attend. Jua
Cali was one of my participants in a research study that sought to investi-
gate how and why Kenya hip-hop artists practice translingualism in their
hip-hop compositions. Translingualism is a theory of multilingualism that
views language as a set of mobile, fluid, and hybrid practices that users
draw upon to communicate. Translingualism rejects structuralist theories
that view languages as discrete and separate. Instead, it acknowledges that
multilingual speakers move across various language systems and draw
resources from each to facilitate their communication. The end result is
a hybrid linguistic system with new words, grammars, and meanings. The
practice of using language this way is called translanguaging. This is what
Jua Cali practiced in his music. In Kenya, translingualism or translanguag-
ing has a name, Sheng, the term I use in this essay.
When I arrived at the Kenya Cultural Centre, the atmosphere felt very
formal, almost academic. Registration tables were decorated with name
tags, books, and other conference related paraphernalia. I wondered what
Jua Cali was doing in a place like that.

“What is going on?” I asked the woman handing me over a registration

packet.
“It’s a language workshop,” she replied as she directed me to a room
where a workshop was already in progress.

The event was a “Sheng and Media Workshop,” and was organized by
Twaweza Communications, a Kenyan-based organization that focuses on

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issues related to public policy, media, culture, and sustainable development

in the country. The workshop brought together language scholars (domestic
and international), media personalities, local celebrities, and hip-hop art-
ists to discuss the role of translanguaging in the Kenyan media and other
professional contexts like school.
Observing Jua Cali working with various language stakeholders at this
event to seek understanding on the role of translanguaging in Kenya con-
firmed what he had told me a week earlier when I interviewed him for my
research: that his use of Sheng in his music was tied to language activism
work. I had asked him why he uses multiple languages in his music, expect-
ing him to say, “because multilingualism is an everyday practice in Kenya,”
or “because my audience is multilingual.” However, his exigencies were far
more complex. Without the academese, he said his translanguaging was
aimed at: (1) challenging the dominant status of English in the country; (2)
raising awareness on why Kenya’s translingual culture needs to be preserved;
and (3) taking action to preserve the culture through his hip-hop music.
Jua Cali’s thinking illustrated an awareness of how Indigenous lan-
guages and translingual practices in Africa are marginalized by imperial
languages of Europe through the rhetoric of modernity and logic of colo-
niality—what Walter Mignolo calls the “Colonial Matrix of Power” (CMP),
or as earlier theorized by Anibal Quijano as the “coloniality of power.” As I
listened to Jua Cali talk about his three exigencies, I was struck by what can
be described as a decolonial consciousness, what Mignolo calls “decolonial
thinking”: a type of “thinking that de-links and opens . . . to the possibilities
hidden . . . by modern rationality that is mounted and enclosed by categories
of Greek, Latin, and the six modern imperial European languages” (“Epis-
temic” 46). Embedded in the “rhetoric of modernity,” Mignolo writes, is the
“logic of coloniality” that justified exploitation, dehumanization, and enslav-
ing of certain populations. The rhetoric of modernity claimed such actions
were intended to civilize and save the barbaric. CMP also introduced “global
linear thinking,” which, according to Mignolo, building on Carl Schmitt,
mapped and divided the world based on the interests of imperial nations,
laying the foundation of international law and Western epistemology. All
other knowledges were measured against Western epistemology, the “zero
epistemology,” which was “the ultimate grounding of knowledge” (The
Darker Side 79–80). Colonized communities were forced to begin afresh,
at zero epistemology, because their knowledges and ways of being did not
measure up to the standards of Western epistemology.

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Global linear thinking in the Americas started in the sixteenth century

and in Africa in the nineteenth century (although Europe had already es-
tablished contact with Africa and the New World by the fifteenth century).
At the 1884 Berlin conference, European powers officially mapped and
partitioned the African continent, allocating to each other what regions to
occupy. The structures put in place by CMP and global linear thinking to
control Africa’s economy, authority, power, subjectivity, knowledges, and lan-
guages continue to shape Africans’ ways of being and doing. Thankfully, colo-
niality engenders decoloniality, defined by Mignolo as a type of “energy that
does not allow the operation
of the logic of coloniality nor In general, however, people from former colonial
believes the fairy tales of the contexts are rejecting coloniality’s assumption that
rhetoric of modernity” (“Epis- Europe is the geographical center of all knowledge,
temic” 46). The end products and that all other knowledges, in the outskirts of
of decoloniality are decolonial Western epistemology, are invalid. Through their
projects that seek to de-link
decolonial thinking and actions, formerly colonized
and disobey imperial thinking
subjects are shifting the geography of enunciation.
and global designs intended
to colonize non-European/
non-Western knowledges and ways of being. Such projects also offer the
colonized pluriversal options to decoloniality or paths to liberation from
CMP, global linear thinking, Eurocentrism, and Westernization. The projects
and options take different forms or approaches depending on where one
is situated in the CMP, that is, where one “is located within the epistemic
and ontological racial coordinates of imperial knowledge” (The Darker 100).
This means because Europe practiced different forms of colonialism, each
formerly colonized community will adopt specific strategies to resist colo-
niality. The decolonial strategies will depend on the community’s colonial
experience, its postcolonial relationship with its colonial master(s), and
resources at its disposal to resist different forms of coloniality. For example,
continental Africans will adopt different approaches to decolonization as
compared with Indigenous people in the Americas who continue to deal
with implications of settler colonialism.
In general, however, people from former colonial contexts are reject-
ing coloniality’s assumption that Europe is the geographical center of all
knowledge, and that all other knowledges, in the outskirts of Western episte-
mology, are invalid. Through their decolonial thinking and actions, formerly
colonized subjects are shifting the geography of enunciation. In “Dreaming

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Charles Eastman,” Malea Powell shares an important decolonial strategy

that I think is useful in illustrating what Jua Cali, as a formerly colonized
subject, is practicing. Powell writes that when a person feels “written on”
they should “write back” (118). Similarly, my aim here, using Jua Cali as a
case, is to show that Africans, as formerly colonized subjects, are sick and
tired of feeling written on by Europe and its allies; now, they are writing
back. Jua Cali, for example, practices translingualism in his hip-hop music
as a way of writing back to the English language. Listening to Jua Cali talk
about translanguaging in relation to his work, I connected his thinking to
Mignolo’s theory of “decolonial options.” Jua Cali’s thinking and doing were
aimed at epistemic delinking; to disobey the production of local knowledge
in imperial languages. He straight up rejected the production of Kenyan
hip-hop knowledge in English only. Jua Cali practiced translingualism in
his hip-hop music to counter the rhetoric of modernity that promotes
superiority of English and standard language ideologies that marginalize
Indigenous languages and translingual practices in the country. He advo-
cated for the use of either Swahili or Kiswahili, Kenya’s Indigenous lingua
franca, or Sheng, a translingual practice that involves combining English,
Swahili, and other Kenyan Indigenous languages. Through community-
engaged language work (e.g., the Sheng workshop aforementioned), he
actively worked to resist linguistic colonization in Kenya, which is sustained
by neo-colonial institutions like the media and schools as I discuss later in
this paper. Translanguaging was his approach to linguistic decolonization.
Drawing from my research with Jua Cali, my goal in this essay is to
demonstrate the “decolonial possibilities of translingualism” (Cushman
236) by listening to him explain the theorizing behind his song Kuna Sheng.
I seek to demonstrate two decolonial possibilities of translingualism. The
first possibility is to make visible, with specific examples, how coloniality
suppressed translingual communication and Indigenous approaches to
preserving cultural knowledge in Africa. I do so to recover Africa’s translin-
gual practices suppressed by Europe’s introduction of racialized language
hierarchies and monolingual and standard language ideologies in the con-
tinent. In other words, to demonstrate the first possibility, I engage in what
Suresh Canagarajah calls “revisionist historiography,” which is “an attempt
by postcolonial scholars to retrieve practices and knowledge that are losing
their vibrancy under modernist and monolingual ideologies” (Translingual
Practice 34). The second possibility is using Jua Cali as a case to demonstrate
how African hip-hop artists are using imaginative and creative approaches

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to resist colonial language ideologies through their compositions. Through

this case, I also demonstrate how these artists are preserving Kenya’s trans-
lingual culture in ways that honor African Indigenous ways of being. Jua Cali,
for example, theorizes his Kuna Sheng song as a language documentation
project whose goal is to preserve Sheng language and culture. As such, the
song is an example of what Mignolo calls “the splendors of human imagina-
tion and creativity”; the kinds of decolonial projects that are possible when
other ways of being and doing are allowed to persevere (“Delinking” 498).
In the concluding sections of this essay, I briefly: (1) explore how global
Western capitalism and neoliberalism threaten the decolonial potential of
translingualism; (2) invite rhetoric and composition scholars to consider
why understanding historical and contemporary translingual practices in
Africa can potentially transform how we theorize and practice language
pedagogy; and (3) reflect on the implications of practicing what Andrea
Riley-Mukavetz calls “relational scholarly practice” (546), which I interpret
as writing this essay in conversation with various people, traditions, dis-
ciplines, languages, contexts and cultures. Throughout the essay, I reflect
on what it means to do “Indigenous language work” (Leonard), specifically
guided by an African Indigenous framework.

Theorizing and Practicing a

Decolonial-Indigenous-Translingual Methodology
To explore translingual possibilities using hip-hop, I theorize and practice
a decolonial-Indigenous-translingual methodology framed using two key
tenets of decoloniality: pluriversality and relationality. In On Decoloniality,
Mignolo and Walsh emphasize that decolonial scholarship is about build-
ing a “pluriversal world where many worlds exist” (1). In other words, it is
a search for a “pluriversal decoloniality or decolonial plurivesalities,” which
can be achieved through “relationality,” as people who have experienced
colonial difference in diverse geopolitical locations participate in a dialogue
aimed at seeking understanding, “balance and harmony of life on the planet”
(1). Throughout this essay, I practice pluriversality and relationality by put-
ting the African colonial language history in dialogue with scholarship from
other contexts that have experienced colonial difference or othering. I do
so to better understand the relationship between language and coloniality
in both local and global contexts, and to advance decolonial possibilities
of translingualism that have implications for various communities in and
beyond Africa.

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Relationality is a concept that emerges from Indigenous philosophy

and epistemology. It emphasizes that we are all related to each other, not
just as humans, but also with the natural environment and the spiritual
world. The concept has been well illustrated in rhetorical scholarship by
Indigenous scholars (see Riley-Mukavetz; Powell, “All Our Relations”). In this
essay, however, I employ an African Indigenous framework to relationality
through the concept, Ubuntu, a Nguni word meaning “humanity towards
others.” Nguni is one of the Bantu speech communities of Southern Africa.
Ubuntu expresses an African philosophical worldview that all humanity
shares a universal bond because we are all related and connected. Ubuntu
relationality is translated as “I am because we are,” which means “a person
is a person through other people.” As such, Ubuntu emphasizes that “I” and
“we” cannot be separated, because a person makes sense of who they are in
relation to others. To develop my argument guided by Ubuntu relationality,
this essay seeks to enter a relationality with other decolonial scholarship
from other communities; to show how Africans, particularly African youth,
are also participating in global struggles to end coloniality. Romeo García
and Damián Baca encourage more scholarship from contexts beyond the
Americas that reveal local histories and stories of decolonization with ex-
amples of how people are breaking away from the rhetorics and logics of
modernity/coloniality (“Hopes”).
Furthermore, translingualism provides an orientation to language
practice and difference that acknowledges the fluidity of language across
boundaries and fosters relationality between language systems and prac-
tices. Thus, to develop Africa’s decolonial language story in a way that has
broader implications for both Africa and global contexts, drawing from
language scholarship in the field of rhetoric and composition alone is not
enough. It is important to situate this story across disciplinary fields. Laura
Gonzales’ advice is instructive here; she reminds me that “for linguistically
and ethnically diverse researchers interested in studying language diversity,
transdisciplinary connections and conversations are critical in helping us
situate our work within and across the scholarship deemed foundational
to the field that remains largely white and presumptively monolingual”
(“Building” 460–61). To participate in an interdisciplinary relationality and
orientation to language guided by Ubuntu, then, I draw insights from various
fields—literature, hip-hop, Indigenous studies, sociolinguistics, Teachers of

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English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), linguistic anthropology,

rhetoric, and composition studies.
To begin, let me tell you about my relationality with Jua Cali.

Building a Relationality with Jua Cali

I started building my relationship with Jua Cali as early as 1998, when I be-
came his music fan. By the time I interviewed him in 2013 for my research,
I had been a fan for fifteen years. I was initially drawn to his hip-hop music
because of his message targeting the youth. Over the years, I continue to
be a fan, mostly because of how he uses language in his music, which has
now become my object of scholarly interest. My interviews with him, which
spanned a period of three weeks in the summer of 2013, allowed us to de-
velop an activist and researcher relationship because of our shared love for
language, particularly Sheng. This essay is therefore a story of a language
activist and a language researcher coming together to explore decolonial
possibilities of translingualism. We both believe translingualism offers
Africans an additional option to linguistic decolonization.
My relationship with Jua Cali is strengthened by our shared subject
position as Kenyans. We both “have lived—and live the colonial difference”
(Mignolo and Walsh 2); as such, our thinking is shaped by the history of colo-
nization in Kenya and Africa in general. As Mignolo writes, “we are where
we think”; Jua Cali and I think from Kenya. However, Jua Cali is thinking as
a Kenyan hip-hop artist and a language activist based in Kenya. I am also
thinking as a Kenyan scholar educated in both Kenya and the West, but now
based in the United States. While we represent diverse geo- and bio-politics,
we have a shared belief that translingualism offers youth from formerly
colonized nations like Africa an additional option to delink from colonial
languages. In making this argument, you will notice our perspectives on the
topic sometimes differ because of our different subject positions; however,
we patiently listen to each other, filling each other’s gaps in knowledge as
we seek understanding on how African languages, cultures, knowledge
bases, and histories have been suppressed, devalued, and disavowed by the
rhetoric of modernity and logic of coloniality. We also reason together on
how translingualism can help Africans delink from imperial languages. In
my data analysis and reporting of findings, I use “I/we” to signify our shared
subject position as formerly colonized Kenyan subjects. I move between
“I” and “we” to distinguish my voice from his. However, because Ubuntu

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relationality emphasizes an interdependent relationship between “I” and

“we,” sometimes I use “we” to signify our shared voice. I am because he is.
He is because I am. I am because we are. We are because I am. I am we. These
sentences express Ubuntu relationality.
To frame my discussion of Jua Cali’s decolonial work, in the next
section, I discuss the first decolonial possibility of translingualism. With
examples, I reveal how the colonial matrix of power suppressed translin-
gual communication and Indigenous approaches to preserving cultural
knowledge in Africa. I also show how translingual practice in Africa was
the norm before it was suppressed by Europe’s introduction of racialized
language hierarchies and monolingual and standard language ideologies
in the continent. The section also offers readers a brief overview of Africa’s
colonial language history, and Kenya’s sociolinguistic context.

Suppression of Translingual Practices in Africa: A Synopsis

Translanguaging was the norm in pre-colonial Africa. However, because
African cultures were mostly oral, researchers today rely on historical or
anthropological records written by European explorers, colonizers, and
researchers to understand how Africans practiced language, literacy, and
rhetoric before colonization. These records are mostly racist and written
from a Western perspective. African language scholars are beginning to
rely on memory, listen to surviving elders, or use archaeological evidence
to study Africans’ pre-colonial languaging practices. For example, Leketi
Makalela uses archaeological data and listens to surviving elders to dem-
onstrate how, before the seventeenth century, Africans engaged in language
practices that can be described as translingual. In “Ubuntu Translanguag-
ing,” Makalela uses the Bantu speaking people of Southern Africa to show
how before colonization, these groups, comprised of various ethnicities
and speaking different languages, had interdependent relationships, and
worked together to build the famous multilingual kingdom of Mapungubwe.
Makalela analyzes archaeological artifacts from the kingdom to show that
Bantu groups also had complex transnational trade relationships with dis-
tant countries like Egypt, India, and China. As Makalela explains, these rela-
tionships were made possible by a translingual orientation to language—an
orientation that assumes language systems are fluid, permeable, and open
to accommodating differences. In “Community elders Narrative Accounts of
Ubuntu Translanguaging,’’ Makalela listens to elders from his community,
who confirm a translingual orientation toward language in pre-colonial

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Africa. According to Makalela, since a person makes sense of who they are
in relation to others, a language theory guided by Ubuntu relationality re-
jects the idea that languages are discrete or separate because people must
rely on their own, as well as other peoples’ languages, to understand who
they are. As such, “no one language is complete without the other” (839).
In Senegal, West Africa, French colonialists were perplexed by Africans’
orientation to language and ethnicity. Abbé Boilat, for example, marveled
at how “such a variety of peoples, each with its own ‘physical type, tempera-
ment, customs, language and government’ could develop and live in such
close contact without fusing into a single people,” and how each African
language “had its own order, logic, and precision, despite there being no
Académie Française, no official grammarians, and no schools similar to
those he knew in France” (Janet Vaillant, Black, French and African 49).
Across the continent, European colonial powers were getting frus-
trated with these complex and overlapping ethnicities and languages, so
they designed approaches intended to homogenize them. One approach
was tribalization, whereby African natives were forced to choose one lan-
guage and one ethnicity and required to live in designated geographical
areas called “African reserves,” or “rural areas,” similar to American Indian
reserves in the United States. Each ethnic group, now “tribe,” was expected
to live separately within clearly defined geographical boundaries, with their
movement monitored by the colonial administrators. Bethwell Ogot explains
how ethnic and linguistic fluidity in Kenya, East Africa, was destabilized by
the colonizers’ introduction of the “tribe”:

By the end of the Nineteenth Century, the African communities in the future Ke-
nya were already all contaminated by each other in a complex, interdependent
world. There were no watertight ethnicities. Clans, and lineages expanded and
contracted, gaining and losing members across porous and cultural frontiers.
New communities and new languages emerged. Hence the colonial idea of a
“tribe” as an isolated and closed group of interrelated lineages is a myth and
ultimately a racist one. (Kenyans 20)

In addition to complex oral translanguaging practices, Africans had writ-

ing practices that can be described as translingual. One notable writing
system in pre-colonial Kenya among the Kikuyu ethnic community is the
Gĩchandĩ, also written as Gĩcandĩ. The writing system was characterized by
pictograms and symbols inscribed in a gourd to record the community’s
cultural knowledge and history, as shown in Figure 1. Only a trained and
experienced orator, Mwini wa Gĩchandĩ, was allowed to read and interpret

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the writing. He did this by presenting it as a multigenre composition, also

called Gĩchandĩ. A Gĩchandĩ performer would challenge another performer
on a topic related to the community’s history, cultural knowledge, or folk
wisdom. They would challenge each other on their expertise on the given
topic through a lengthy poetic exchange. Each Gĩchandĩ performer would
rely on their memory, creativity, and a reading of the mnemonic pictorial
writing system inscribed in the gourd to excel in their performance. Among
the Kikuyus, Mwini wa Gĩchandĩ was a master griot—an expert rhetori-
cian in combining various modes (linguistic, visual, tactile, aural, gestural,
and spatial) to communicate, teach, and make meaning. The colonizers,
however, refused to recognize the Gĩchandĩ writing system as a legitimate
form of literacy because it was non-alphabetic and did not align with their
Judeo-Christian religion.

Figure 1. Example of a G~ıchand~ı. Source, With a Prehistoric People: The Akikuyu of British East Africa,
Routledge and Routledge, 110.

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Figure 2. Sample interpretation and a reading of a G~ıchand~ı writing system by Routledge and Routledge.
Source, With a Prehistoric People: The Akikuyu of British East Africa, 110

In Unbowed, Nobel Peace Prize winner and member of the Kikuyu

tribe, Wangari Maathai, provides an emic perspective on the cultural and
educational value of the Gĩchandĩ writing system among the Kikuyus. She
also explains how the missionaries admired and described the Gĩchandĩ
writing system in detail, but also trivialized it, encouraging Kikuyus who
converted to Christianity to destroy their Gĩchandĩ (9). In documenting
this complex writing literacy practice, some European anthropologists and
researchers had colonial and racist attitudes toward Gĩchandĩ. For example,
in With a Prehistoric People: The Akikuyu of British East Africa, Anthropolo-
gists Routledge and Routledge, while taking time to record the Gĩchandĩ
in detail as shown in Figure 2, also describe it as “traditional,” “gibberish,”
“forgotten” and “convey[ing] nothing even to the performer” (109–112). This
attitude toward African knowledge systems confirms Mignolo’s observation
that “every way of knowing and sensing ( feeling) that [did] not conform to

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the epistemology and aesthesis of the zero point [was] cast behind in time
and/or in the order of myth, legend, folklore, local knowledge and the like”
(Mignolo, The Darker 80). Since the Gĩchandĩ falls under these categories,
it was disavowed, as were other forms of oral literacy in Africa. However,
Africa is not an isolated case; in other former colonized contexts in the
Americas, writing systems similar to Gĩchandĩ were also not recognized as
legitimate forms of literacy (see other examples in Rhetorics of the Americas).

Racialized Language Hierarchies and Standard Language

Ideologies
Colonization also introduced racialized language hierarchies that pro-
jected European languages as superior over Indigenous languages. Some
European colonizing powers, like Portugal and France, introduced assimila-
tion practices intended to assimilate Africans to become Europeans. Since
language was central to their civilizing and assimilation mission, in Angola,
for example, Portugal prohibited the teaching of African languages through
the Decreto de Norton de Matos or decree number 77 of 1927, named after
a Portuguese governor-general ruling Angola during this period. Portugal
also established a Native statute, a legislation aimed at keeping European
and African races separate. The categories of “citizen” and “native” were
established through the passing of a bill that distinguished the two races:

The bill defined the native as an individual of color and who did not fulfil three
specific conditions: a) of speaking Portuguese or one of its dialects, or some
other “civilised language”; b) of abandoning native uses and customs, and c)
of carrying on some profession, trade or industry, or having private means
sufficient to maintain himself. After fulfilling these conditions, he would be
regarded as a citizen of the republic, no longer subject to the laws and regu-
lations made specifically for those regarded as “natives.” (Soremekun 365)

For Africans to achieve legal status as citizens (in their own country!), they
had to pass a special exam, whose main requirement was the ability to
speak and write in Portuguese.
In Senegal, in 1902, a French lieutenant governor was quoted telling
students at a local school that “the French language is the language of the
entire world, and you are not an educated or distinguished person, whatever
your race, unless you know how to speak French” (qtd. in Black, French and
African 53). Similarly, in Kenya, the British introduced racialized language

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hierarchies by privileging English over Indigenous languages. Ngũgı̃ wa

Thiong’o, a decolonial language scholar, explains how colonial teachers
disciplined students for using Indigenous languages through caning, verbal
insults, or the wearing of a placard inscribed with the words “I am stupid”
and “I am an ass.” Wa Thiong’o further shares that “in some cases, our mouths
were stuffed with pieces of paper picked from the wastepaper basket, which
were then passed from one mouth to that of the latest offender” (Moving 33).
He also remembers one particular teacher, who urged them to use English
because in doing so, they were following the footsteps of Jesus Christ, who
also used English. These racialized language ideologies became deeply
entrenched in Africa’s psyche. For example, although colonization ended,
many African countries continue to define themselves based on European
languages: English, French, and Portuguese, which further shows coloniality
of power’s grip on Africans.
After independence, more than fifty African nations made ex-colonial
languages the official languages of instruction and administration, which for
Kenya was English. British colonization in Kenya also introduced standard
language ideologies for Swahili. Unlike other Indigenous languages, Swahili
was hard to suppress because it was widely spoken across East and Central
Africa. However, given the diverse Swahili dialects spoken in the region,
British governors appointed the Inter-Territorial Language Committee to
standardize it. After independence in 1963, Swahili was declared Kenya’s
national language, the Indigenous lingua franca, and taught as a subject
in K–12 education. Standard language ideologies for English and Swahili,
introduced by British colonialists, were enforced and sustained through
formal education. Similarly, both print and broadcast media emphasized
use of standard English and Swahili. This emphasis, however, did not reflect
the translanguaging that was happening outside school and other informal
contexts. The youth were engaging in complex translingual practices that
involved the mixing of English, Swahili and Indigenous languages, Sheng.
Sheng, Kenya’s translingual practice discussed in this paper, emerged
as a result of urbanization in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. After independence,
Indigenous communities that had been banished in the African reserves
started migrating to the capitol. Since they came from different speech com-
munities, they started combining their Indigenous languages with English
and Swahili to facilitate their communication, giving rise to the hybrid
language system. Over the years, Sheng has become the dominant language

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and the mother tongue of many Kenyan urban youth. Unfortunately, Sheng,
like other hybridized codes like Spanglish or Chinglish, has a history of
stigma. In his 2006 study, Chege Githiora identifies three definitions that
revealed Kenyans’ negative attitude towards Sheng: “a gangster language,”
“a dirty language,” and “a secret language.” These attitudes mostly emerged
from scholars and political elite who blamed Sheng for interfering with the
teaching of Standard English and Swahili grammar (see Momanyi). Conse-
quently, hip-hop artists who wrote or performed their music in Sheng were
stigmatized and marginalized.
While the perception of Sheng has continued to improve over the
years, old ghosts continue to resurface, especially towards hip-hop. It is
from this rhetorical exigence that Jua Cali felt compelled to act. Through his
song, Kuna Sheng, Jua Cali not only argued for the preservation of Kenya’s
translingual culture, Sheng, but preserved it through the song. In doing so,
I argue that Jua Cali practices decolonial possibilities of translingualism
in his role as a community-minded hip-hop artist. In the next section, I
discuss the second decolonial possibility of translingualism using hip-hop.
I demonstrate how Jua Cali uses imaginative and creative approaches to
resist colonial language ideologies, delink from English, and preserve Kenya’s
translingual culture in ways that honor African Indigenous ways of being.

Jua Cali’s Approach to Practicing Decolonial Possibilities of

Translingualism
While Jua Cali practices decolonial approaches to translingualism in many
aspects of his work, here, I present an analysis of one song, Kuna Sheng, to
more thoroughly illustrate the decolonial possibilities of Jua Calis’s music.
Like many hip-hop artists, Jua Cali composes his music to entertain. How-
ever, he composed Kuna Sheng to challenge the dominant status of English
in the country and standard ideologies emphasized by neo-colonial institu-
tions like the media and schools. He also wanted to use the song to raise
awareness about how and why Kenya’s translingual culture needed to be
preserved. Through the song, he took action to preserve the culture through
music. Focusing on Kuna Sheng and on my interviews with Jua Cali related
to this song, in this section, I report on three findings. I listen to him as he
shares how translingualism helps him (and other Genge artists, a subgenre of
Kenyan hip-hop) to delink from the English language. We develop this argu-
ment in conversation with each other, filling each other’s gaps in knowledge

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as we explore the decolonial possibilities of translingualism using Hip-Hop

culture. As the researcher, I use decolonial analytical frames to analyze,
support, and challenge his theorizing and thinking.
As a researcher who is also theorizing and practicing a decolonial-
Indigenous-translingual methodogy, I must tell this story in a way that
honors and sustains the languages of the Kenyan hip-hop community I
am researching and representing. Begele Chilisa, an African Indigenous
and decolonial scholar, reminds me that language plays several roles in
Indigenous research: “(1) as a medium of communication; (2) as a vehicle
through which Indigenous knowledge can be preserved during fieldwork;
and (3) as a symbol of objects, events, and experiences a community con-
siders worth naming” (60). Guided by these tenets, I use several languages
in my discussion of findings for various reasons. I use English to develop
an argument that makes sense to my fellow rhetoricians and composi-
tionists. I also use Swahili and Sheng for various reasons: to preserve the
authenticity of the fieldwork data; to support Jua Cali’s language activism
agenda of preserving Kenya’s translingual culture; and to offer the field of
rhetoric and composition a contemporary example of translingual practice
from Africa. I incorporate multiple languages in the essay using several
strategies: Instead of translating Jua Cali’s interview responses, I provide a
detailed interpretation of them, capturing both major and minor points.
I use italics to distinguish Jua Cali’s words and voice from mine. As you
read the interview excerpts, you will notice the interwovenness between
English and Swahili, the two main languages that form Sheng. Since Kenya’s
translingualism is shaped by the Ubuntu relationality discussed earlier, the
interweaving between English and Swahili allows Sheng to emerge naturally,
as a single hybrid linguistic system. This type of translingualism is similar
to one theorized in contemporary scholarship in the field of composition
studies (see Canagarajah; Horner et al.).

Raising Awareness about the Need to Preserve a Translingual

Culture
A day before my scheduled interview with Jua Cali, I listened to his music
to see if there were any additional questions that I needed to add to my
interview protocol. The song Kuna Sheng caught my attention; it was a song
he had just released, and it was about translanguaging or translingualism in
Kenya. I was curious to know why he wrote the song, so I asked him: “Why

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did you decide to write a song about Sheng?” I did not expect the response
that followed: “to preserve Sheng culture,” he said. He then explained the
exigence behind the song, arguing he felt obligated to take such an action
because, Waafrika, Africans, do not preserve their cultural knowledge and
history compared to, Wazungu, Europeans. Problem yetu sisi Waafrika, dif-
ference yetu si na Wazungu, sisi Waafrika, we don’t preserve history. We don’t
preserve history. We don’t kabisa. We don’t.
Jua Cali’s claim raised an important question for me: Is his assessment
accurate? If Africans do not preserve their cultural histories, why is this the
case? As a Kenyan, who thinks from
Jua Cali’s assessment of Africans’ apathy or where Jua Cali thinks, I agree with his
ambivalence in preserving their histories assessment. However, I am also think-
can be attributed to the rhetoric of moder- ing as a decolonial scholar. Jua Cali’s
nity and logic of coloniality. As shown in the claim forces me to ask: How might Eu-
previous section, the goal of Europe’s global ropean colonialism and imperialism
linear thinking was to make Africans forget have contributed to Africans’ apathy
their past, to begin at zero epistemology. in preserving their cultural knowledge
and histories? Linda Tuhiwai Smith
reminds us that “it is difficult to discuss research methodology and Indig-
enous peoples together, in the same breath, without having an analysis of
imperialism, without understanding the complex ways in which the pursuit
of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial and
colonial practices” (2). Here, I remind Jua Cali and others who think from
where he thinks, that we, Africans, did preserve our cultures through oral
literate practices and complex writing systems, like the Gĩchandĩ, discussed
in the previous section. The question I pose to challenge Jua Cali’s thinking
is: When and why did we stop preserving our cultural histories?
Jua Cali’s assessment of Africans’ apathy or ambivalence in preserving
their histories can be attributed to the rhetoric of modernity and logic of
coloniality. As shown in the previous section, the goal of Europe’s global
linear thinking was to make Africans forget their past, to begin at zero epis-
temology. Wa Thiong’o compares European imperialism and colonialism
with a “cultural bomb” intended to

annihilate a people’s belief in their names, their languages, in their environ-

ment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and
ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland

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of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from

that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest
removed from themselves; for instance, with other people’s languages rather
than their own. (3)

Jua Cali’s Kuna Sheng is motivated by the need to reverse the forgetting
and the distancing from our past. He feared that Africans cannot imagine
a decolonial future if they don’t know their past. Hatujui mahali tunaenda
kwasababu hatujui mahali tumetoka. As such, Kuna Sheng’s exigence, he
said, was to remind Kenyans who they are by first understanding the value
of their languages. Nilikuwa nataka kuonyesha wasee yaani hii Sheng is a
beautiful language, yaani ni culture yetu na kitu moja pia unique, ni unique
kwetu, us Kenyans. Ni fiti tukiembrace, tukiipenda. Jua Cali reminds Kenyans
that Sheng is an Indigenous language, a beautiful and unique culture that
Kenyans need to embrace and love. In a video for the song published on
YouTube, Jua Cali calls for the preservation of Sheng, as shown in Figure 3.
In the message, Jua Cali affirms that Sheng is one of the “sweetest languages
in the world” and urges Kenyans to protect and preserve the culture in
every way possible.
In the second finding discussed here, I demonstrate how Jua Cali
preserved the language through his song Kuna Sheng.

Figure 3. Screenshot Kuna Sheng video (Source YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urxhkjh45ck

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Taking Action to Preserve Kenya’s Translingual Culture

through Music
Jua Cali did not just think decolonially; he put his decolonial thinking into
action. He theorized his song as a language documentation project whose
goal was to preserve not only Sheng, but also Swahili. The three main
verses of the song document more than 50 Sheng words and phrases. He
also translates them to Swahili, or to a version of Sheng that most Kenyans
are familiar with. I offer an example of the key words and phrases from the
first verse in Table 1.

Table 1. Sheng Words and Phrases from the First Verse of Kuna Sheng
Key Sheng Word/Phrase Standard English Standard Swahili
Translation Translation
Wangondi, madingo teachers walimu

Kutoka chwa to run very fast kukimbia kasi

Ing’ang’a, soo moja one-hundred Kenya shillings mia moja

Kutegea wait ngoja

Kujitisha shocked; surprised kuogopa

Kutia blunder, kujiingiza to make a mistake kukosa

Nikiongea na wewe poa listen attentively Kusikiliza

Kuvaliwa beaten up by the police pigwa na polisi

Nangos cell phone simu ya rununu

kuchar to be broke bila pesa

Kubambwa kwa mbulu to be in trouble kuwa kwa shida

Sulu bin sulu to share Kugawanya

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From a decolonial perspective, Kuna Sheng can be interpreted as a

decolonial project, one that seeks to delink from Eurocentric and Western
approaches of preserving knowledge. Typically, a Western approach to
preserving a community’s linguistic culture would be through alphabetic
or written text like a dictionary or book. However, Jua Cali privileges music
and orality. This approach honors African Indigenous approaches of cultural
preservation. At the same time, since he is also a modern-day griot, or what
Adam Banks calls a “digital griot,” Jua Cali combines orality with digital
media technology to preserve the culture both orally and digitally through
YouTube. Curating Sheng words and phrases through song and sharing
them through YouTube also allows wider access to anyone with the internet.
In the following extended quote, Jua Cali explains that he felt compelled
to do this project for future generations who one hundred years later might
be interested in understanding how Kenyans in the 2000s languaged:

Kuna vitabu za Sheng zimetokea. Hiyo ni preservation ya history. So, mimi

nikasema siwenzi andika kitabu. The only thing naweza fanya kupreserve hii
history ni kuandika ngoma ya Sheng ndio hata after twenty years, mtoi wako
akija kusikia hii ngoma atasema, “oh wasee the year 2000 walikuwa wanaon-
gea hivi?” Kwasababu Sheng itakuwa imechange definitely. So, hii kitu, vile
tumeieka on record, the moment I recorded the song na nimeshoot video,
hii iko on record forever. So watoi wa fifty years, one-hundred years watakuja
kuona hii kitu. So, they will be like “kumbe watu walikuwa wanaongeanga hivi”?

Jua Cali understands the dynamic nature of language, and Sheng in particu-
lar, and wanted to record the current translingual culture. He acknowledges
a few books have been published on Sheng as part of preserving its linguistic
history, but notes that this is not enough. He argued that we need multiple
ways of language preservation. And since he cannot write a book, he uses
hip-hop to make his contribution.
Kuna Sheng is not the only song by Jua Cali that is dedicated to language
activism; his entire hip-hop career is about honoring and sustaining Swahili
and Sheng in his compositions. For example, Calif Records, a recording
company he co-founded, and the Genge hip-hop group, of which he is a
founding member, have a shared commitment to compose in Swahili and
Sheng only. Sisi kama Calif, sisi watu wa Genge, tutatry so much yaani, unajua
pia hatutaki kuachilia Kiswahili, yaani tunaipreserve, tukiimba tunaipreserve
kwa history. Hizi mangoma zetu in history. Jua Cali explained that it was not

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just Sheng that was threatened by English, but Swahili too. He emphasized
that hatutaki kuachilia Kiswahili. We don’t want to let Kiswahili go. This
statement shows that he senses an imminent threat to Swahili by English.
Some may wonder why the Genge hip-hop group cares about preserving
Swahili. While the British valued Swahili, like other Indigenous languages,
it was not on equal footing with English. English is still dominant, and his-
torically it has been constructed as the language of the elite, the educated
few. As Kenya’s national language
It is important to point out that Jua Cali and Indigenous lingua-franca, it is
does not entirely reject English; his only important for Jua Cali and other
condition is that if English must be used to Genge hip-hop artists to preserve
produce Kenyan hip-hop knowledge, it must Swahili through their music. To honor
submit to participate in a relationality with this commitment, Jua Cali told me
Indigenous African languages. he does not collaborate with artists
who compose in English only. Msanii
wa Kizungu akikuja, it is a big no. It is important to point out that Jua Cali
does not entirely reject English; his only condition is that if English must be
used to produce Kenyan hip-hop knowledge, it must submit to participate
in a relationality with Indigenous African languages.
After writing Kuna Sheng, another hip-hop group, Wazee wa Mji (Elders
of the City) remixed it and featured Jua Cali. Each artist wrote a verse docu-
menting more Sheng words and phrases from their respective communities
(see www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgoDLEttymc). Through Kuna Sheng, Jua
Cali shows leadership as a community-engaged language activist. His activ-
ism work is part of a larger effort by other Kenyan youth who continue to
document and preserve Kenya’s translingual culture in various ways.

Delinking from English and Resisting Language Standards

Beyond the general public, Jua Cali had a specific audience for the song: me-
dia practitioners and language scholars/educators. He was concerned that
the media and schools were privileging English over Indigenous languages.
He specifically criticized media practitioners for giving artists rapping in
English more airtime than those who rapped in Swahili or Sheng. Jua Cali
especially criticized radio hosts, arguing they lacked an understanding of
the “power of language.” Just because Kenyan music sounds good in English,
it does not mean it is right, he reasoned. Ile kitu kwanza iliniprompt, kwanza
ni media. Walianza kupatia artists wale wanaimba Kizungu airtime. They

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don’t know the power of language. Wanasikia muziki ya Kenya inasound poa
na hii Kizungu, he or she just plays. Hajui. Jua Cali suggested that the media
should promote music that showcases “who we are,” our Kenyanness. Simi-
larly, he was disappointed with his fellow artists who composed in English
only. Since music is a reflection of self, he argued, artists should compose
in Sheng, the language that is consistent with Kenyan hybrid identity. I am
mad at watu wale wanaimba na Kizungu coz unajua ile place mimi nimetoka,
muziki ni a reflection of oneself. Na mimi, my Kenyan society, and as far as I
know, si huongeanga Sheng.
Jua Cali’s concerns were not unfounded. Negative attitudes towards
artists composing in Sheng had started to resurface in print and broadcast
media. A 2013 news article titled, “Useless and Vile, Sheng Must Go,” by
Clay Muganda, is illustrative of negative attitude towards Sheng. Muganda,
a media practitioner, called for a total ban of Sheng in professional and
media spaces, specifically on national television. He opined that Sheng had
no cultural, political, commercial, or aesthetic value, and offered several
reasons why it should be banned on national media: (1) that, it is a “super-
ficial and indefinable gobbledegook” and a “vile, despicable, uncouth, [and]
impolite” language; (2) radio and TV programming in Sheng promotes and
encourages illiteracy; and (3) the Kenyan constitution does not recognize
it as one of the Kenyan languages. He further castigated its use in popular
music, arguing that: (1) it added no commercial value to the artists; (2) it
made them unpopular; and (3) revealed their cognitive inabilities. Muganda
also called out scholars and scholarship that promoted Sheng as a resource
for teaching language and literacy (“Daily Nation”).
It was such rhetoric that prompted Jua Cali to respond. He charged
that media practitioners, like Muganda, did not understand the relationship
between language and power. He used the word “naive” to describe their
uncritical privileging of English in their broadcasting. Similarly, in response
to this article, Clemo, a hip-hop practitioner and founding member of Calif
Records, and producer of the Genge music, said, this should probably be the
most useless article/opinion nimesoma in a while. Sheng is here to stay. Ukikuja
kwangu for an interview lazima pia ujue sheng kiasi. Clemo dismisses the
article and reminds Muganda that if he ever planned to interview Clemo in
the future, or any member of Calif or Genge for that matter, he must know
and speak Sheng (“Clemo Responds”). Jua Cali and the Genge hip-hop group’s
thinking aligns with wa Thiong’o’s, who in thinking decolonially, writes that

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language is not just a means of communication; it is also “a carrier of culture

. . . and the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves
and our place in the world” (15).
Jua Cali also targeted language scholars and educators who perpetuate
standard language ideologies and police translingual practices in Kenyan
schools. He noted that scholars were very opposed to Sheng. Scholars
wamekuwa wanaoppose hii language sana. According to Jua Cali, language
scholars and educators were worried that translingual practice affected
students’ learning of standard English and Swahili grammar. In 2011, for
example, the then education minister, blamed Sheng for poor performance
of English and Swahili in national exams:

Our suspicion is that adulteration of Kiswahili and English, where even senior
members of the society, including top politicians, have turned to talk Sheng
to endear themselves to the youths has affected performance in the two sub-
jects. . . . While this has short gains in terms of popularity, it seems to translate
itself into drop in quality of our children’s performance in both Kiswahili and
English. . . . I therefore urge everyone to take note of this damaging effect and
do something about it. (Orengo and Opiyo)

This national call “to do something about Sheng” was a directive by the
minister for teachers to stop translanguaging in schools. In response to
such calls, Jua Cali emphasized that Sheng is a product of multiple histories.
Besides Indigenous language history, Africa has other language histories
through encounters with Europe and the Arab world. He therefore argued
that teachers need to teach language in the context of these pluriversal
histories. Swahili, which forms Sheng’s base structure, is a hybrid of Arabic
and Bantu languages; it developed as a result of the mixing of Bantu speak-
ing groups with Arab traders along the East African coast dating back to the
sixth century. Over the years, Swahili creolized to become what it is today.
Using this reasoning, Jua Cali concluded that Sheng is a product of pluriv-
ersal histories of hybridity; therefore, it is a continuation of a translingual
tradition. The moment, Kenya Kizungu iliingia hapa na Waarabu wakakuja
na hizo Kiswahili, hizo mixture, for every action there is a reaction. Naturally,
hii kitu ingehappen. Hii ndio product. At this time during the interview, it
was Jua Cali’s turn to remind me how we translanguaged throughout our
K–12 education, but it never affected our learning experiences. Wajua pia
sisi tukienda shule kulikuwa na Sheng, lakini haikutuaffect. Ikikuja pale kwa
environment ya class, there is no way utaanza kuandika vitu za Sheng kwa

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insha. For Jua Cali, translingual communication in Africa is the future,

because it is also the history.
Jua Cali’s interest in how teachers and scholars teach, research, and re-
port on language is central to continued decolonial language work. Schools
are colonial institutions that have historically been used to perpetuate the
rhetoric of modernity and logic on coloniality. Wa Thiong’o explains that the
classroom was the main space of mental, cultural, and linguistic coloniza-
tion for Africans, noting that the “Berlin of 1884 was effected through the
sword and the bullet. But the night of the sword and the bullet was followed
by the morning of the chalk and blackboard. The physical violence of the
battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom”
(9). While wa Thiong’o is speaking about Africa, this is the story of many
other former colonial contexts. In “Rhetorical Sovereignty,” Lyons, writing
in contexts of American Indians, explains that colonial boarding schools
were the “the ultimate symbol of white domination,” as Indigenous students
were stripped of their names, languages, culture, and identity (449). Similarly,
Gloria Anzaldúa remembers how Anglo teachers emphasized the learning
of English through physical violence, which worked to rid Chicanos of their
languages and cultural identities (Borderlands). In Anglo-Caribbean con-
texts, British colonization marginalized and suppressed the creole language
identities, voices, and histories of those who descended from enslaved
peoples, specifically through pedagogical practices that emphasized the
use of British Standard English (see Creole Composition).
Jua Cali is thus joining other local and global struggles to decolonize
language. Other Indigenous hip-hop artists have similar commitments to
preserve, revitalize, and decolonize Indigenous languages, knowledge, and
histories (see Bell; Barrett; Wyman et al.). Such scholarship continues to
show us that hip-hop artists are public pedagogues with power to influence
communities’ and academics’ views about language and decolonization
through their rhetorical work. Jua Cali’s contribution has not been in vain.
Recently, Kenyan educators have begun agreeing with his thinking that
Sheng does not affect the teaching of Swahili and English. In fact, some
have called for Sheng to be central in the design of Kenyan language and
literacy curriculum (Oduor). This makes me wonder what hip-hop artists
can teach rhetoric and composition scholars about language theory and
pedagogy. Hip-hop scholars in the field have already shown us that hip-
hop artists are modern-day griots and technical communicators whose

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As Jua Cali demonstrates, hip-hop artists rhetorical practices can teach us a lot
are language practitioners who know how about language, literacy, rhetoric, and
language works in their communities, and technical writing (Banks, Green, Del
Hierro, Del Hierro, M., Richardson).
who also have interest and investment
Tessa Brown recently reminded us
in language pedagogy. Writing instruc-
that Hip-Hop culture continues to not
tors and scholars can thus look to hip-hop only contribute to knowledge creation
artists as language research partners and in various fields, including our own,
consultants to develop language pedago- but also that hip-hop artists continue
gies that have decolonial potential. to fight against the “oppression” and
“repression” of language rights in local
and global contexts. Yet, as Brown argues, hip-hop’s contribution in the
field is rarely accounted for (“What”). As rhetoric and composition scholars
continue developing strategies for serving the needs of linguistically mar-
ginalized students, they should also work with language practitioners from
the communities where these students are from. As Jua Cali demonstrates,
hip-hop artists are language practitioners who know how language works
in their communities, and who also have interest and investment in lan-
guage pedagogy. Writing instructors and scholars can thus look to hip-hop
artists as language research partners and consultants to develop language
pedagogies that have decolonial potential.

A Potential Darker Side of This Story

I want to stop this story here, focusing only on Jua Cali’s decolonial lan-
guage activism. But, I can’t. I must tell you another side. In summer 2014,
my daughter, who was then twelve years old, texted me a picture of Jua Cali
(Figure 4). She was visiting Kenya along with her brother and father. I had
been left behind in the United States to finish writing my dissertation. The
picture was a Coca-Cola billboard of Jua Cali holding a bottle of coke with
his characteristic big smile. There was a caption written in English from
Jua Cali’s perspective, saying: I recorded fifteen songs before my first hit and
Billion Reasons to Believe. My daughter was excited to send me the picture
because she knew I was writing something about him. She thought I would
be excited to see my favorite Kenyan hip-hop artist on a huge billboard in
the capitol. I was, but this also raised more questions for me, because it
threatened the foundation of the argument I was planning to make about
Jua Cali’s decolonial and language activism work. Had Jua Cali become com-

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plicit to neoliberal global capitalism by being featured on a Coca-Cola ad?

Was he being commodified by multinational corporations like Coca-Cola?
(How) does this undermine the value of his activism or decolonial work? And
why was the caption in English and not in Swahili or Sheng? Did it matter?
I want to explore these questions in depth in another essay, but it is
important to raise them here, because they remind us as we celebrate the
decolonial affordances of translingualism, that we must also continuously
address how they are being threatened by globalization, neoliberalism,
and Western capitalism. Ryuko Kubota and Nelson Flores remind us that
approaches like translingualism lose their critical edge when they get
complicit or intertwined with neoliberal capitalist agendas, ideologies, and

Figure 4. A Coca-Cola billboard of Jua Cali in Nairobi, Kenya (Milu 2014)

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power relations that seek to promote competitiveness, acquisition of mul-

tilingual competence for economic and symbolic capital, and for personal
socioeconomic mobility. I am not sure if Jua Cali has become complicit to
Western capitalism, because we did not talk about these issues directly
during the interview. Looking at this image, however, I could not help but
wonder if he has become what Flores calls a “neo-liberal subject,” someone
who can move between languages for big profit. The use of translingual-
ism in marketing and advertising is on the rise in Kenya. A recent article
on “The Growth and Use of Sheng in Advertisement in Selected Business
in Kenya,” shows that multinational companies, mostly mobile service
providers, insurance companies, and financial institutions are beginning
to create translingual content to market
When translingual communication their products. While some may see this
becomes susceptible to economic as a step towards ending Sheng stigma,
exploitation, appropriation, and or acknowledging translingualism is the
commodification by global Western norm in professional contexts, these prac-
capitalism, this threatens decolonial tices focus on profit and can threaten the
language work that seeks to recover decolonial possibilities I discussed earlier.
Many multinational companies are driven
and revitalize language practices of
by Western capitalism and neoliberal in-
marginalized communities. This is the terests, which encourage competitiveness
darker side of Western modernity that and seek to benefit individual persons,
we must continuously highlight and not communities. The Coca-Cola ad sym-
work to counter as we theorize and bolizes Jua Cali’s individual success, not
teach translingualism. Kenyan or the Genge hip-hop community
he represents. When translingual commu-
nication becomes susceptible to economic exploitation, appropriation, and
commodification by global Western capitalism, this threatens decolonial
language work that seeks to recover and revitalize language practices of
marginalized communities. This is the darker side of Western modernity
that we must continuously highlight and work to counter as we theorize
and teach translingualism.

Final Thoughts
In 1962, African literary writers and scholars convened the Conference of
African Writers of English Expression at Makerere University, Uganda, to
deliberate the role of language in defining and decolonizing African literary

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 MILU / HIP-HOP AND THE DECOLONIAL POSSIBILITIES

discourse. The outcome of this conference was split into two camps: one led
by Ngũgı̃ wa Thiong’o and another by Chinua Achebe. Wa Thiong’o’s camp
argued for the use of African Indigenous languages, while Achebe’s camp
proposed Africanized Englishes. These options have always been viewed as
the only paths to language decoloniza-
tion in Anglophone Africa. In this essay, Capitalist-orientated translingualism
I showed that translingualism should dehumanizes already marginalized and
be considered as an additional option disenfranchised populations, and hinders
to language decolonization, especially their process of recovering, rebuilding, and
because it is consistent with African restoring Indigenous knowledge systems
Indigenous ways of being and doing destroyed by coloniality.
language. This option is particularly
relevant for many youths who, for various reasons, are unable to speak
or use Indigenous languages, which I assume, is the case for many Indig-
enous youth in former colonial contexts. However, for translingualism
to have decolonial power, its users must understand not only the history
and implications of European colonialism and imperialism on Indigenous
knowledges and languages, but also how new logics of coloniality and
rhetorics of modernity are being perpetuated through appropriation and
the commodification of Indigenous people’s translingual practices. If not
checked, this type of translingualism, driven by Western neoliberal global
capitalist interests and exploitation, will pave the way for a second wave
of colonization for Indigenous communities, if it hasn’t already. Capitalist-
orientated translingualism dehumanizes already marginalized and disen-
franchised populations, and hinders their process of recovering, rebuilding,
and restoring Indigenous knowledge systems destroyed by coloniality. Most
importantly, this orientation to translingualism suppresses communities’
pursuit of what Scott Lyons calls “rhetorical sovereignty,” “the inherent right
and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and
desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles,
and languages of public discourse” (449–50).
Exploring the decolonial possibilities of translingualism guided by
Ubuntu relationality helped me see how a recovery of African Indigenous
languaging and literate practices compares to similar research from other
former colonial contexts. Edited collections and special issues like Rhetorics
Elsewhere and Otherwise: Contested Modernities, Decolonial Visions, Decolo-
nizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies: New Latinx Keywords, Rhetorics of

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 CCC 73:3 / FEBRUARY 2022

the Americas: 3114 BCE to 2012 CE, Creole Composition: Academic Writing
and Rhetoric in the Anglophone Caribbean and “Decolonizing Projects: Cre-
ating Pluriversal Possibilities in Rhetoric,” just to mention a few, show the
effectiveness of decolonial approaches in revealing Indigenous knowledges
and languages suppressed by rhetoric of modernity and logic of coloniality.
As those in the field continue to think about how to internationalize the
teaching of rhetoric and composition, such knowledge can help language
and literacy instructors and scholars in particular better understand how
to design language pedagogies for students from communities that have
and continue to experience colonial difference. For example, as this essay
shows, a translingual pedagogy for continental, transnational and immi-
grant African students needs to be taught in the contexts of Africa’s racial-
ized colonial histories. It should also take into account how new tactics
of coloniality, like appropriation and commodification of translingualism
through Western capitalism and globalization, might limit these students’
agency in their language choice and use.
Practicing a decolonial-Indigenous- translingual methodology in this
essay meant using language in a way that meets the needs of my two main
audiences: my fellow rhetoric and composition scholars, and the Kenya
hip-hop community, particularly Jua Cali and Genge hip-hop artists. English
still dominates. However, practicing translingualism in several parts of the
essay allowed me to preserve the fieldwork data and my research partici-
pant’s voice. It also allowed me to honor and support his language activist
goals of preserving Sheng culture. However, the extent to which I practice
translingualism in this essay is a start, but it does not go far enough. The
field still needs to do more to support multilingual scholarship and allow
other languages besides English to persevere. This can be accomplished by
creating opportunities to translate research articles in multiple languages
and requiring or recommending researchers to report their research in
ways that honor and sustain language practices of the communities they
research. On the other hand, rhetoric and composition must be open to
reading scholarship written in multiple languages. What I am proposing is
not easy; I know so firsthand. English is my third language, so reading texts
written in English is not only hard, but also a physically and emotionally
draining activity. Sometimes, I don’t understand everything. It also takes
a lot of work to write and speak with “fluency.” But a positive and open at-
titude goes a long way. Similarly, rhetoric and composition scholars need

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 MILU / HIP-HOP AND THE DECOLONIAL POSSIBILITIES

to develop translingual dispositions that require “reading with patience,

respect for perceived differences within and across languages, and an at-
titude of deliberative inquiry (Horner et al. 304).
And lastly, practicing a decolonial-Indigenous-translingual methodol-
ogy guided by Ubuntu relationality helped me better understand who I am
as a language scholar. While I already knew I embodied translingual identity
because I move across and mix English, Swahili, and my mother tongue,
Kikamba, in my everyday language use, I did not know these practices are
rooted in African Indigenous ways of being and doing language. Writing this
essay helped me recover my language history and to affirm my identity as an
African Indigenous Black language scholar. It is my hope that this story also
illustrates the diversity of Black language identities, histories, subjectivities,
and voices in the field. As I argue in “Diversity of Raciolinguistic Experiences
in the Writing Classroom,” there are immigrant and transnational African
students with similar language histories and identities in our classrooms.
Their experiences should be acknowledged and included in our curricular
design. Africa is now part of rhetoric and composition studies’ relational-
ity. As such, given Africa’s translingual heritage, I argue that a translingual
approach to writing should be considered a pedagogical option for transna-
tional and immigrant African students (see a similar argument by Kigamwa
and Ndemanu). This argument aligns with that of other Black scholars who
argue for pedagogies that take into consideration the translingual histories
and translanguaging literacies of immigrant Black students particularly
from the Afro-Caribbean (see for example Milson-Whyte et al; Mitchell;
Smith). At the same time, it is important to note that some Black language
scholars have argued that a translingual approach to language and literacy
education might not be effective in addressing language needs of Black
students, particularly descendants of enslaved people given their unique
language history and experiences with race-based language discrimina-
tion in the United States (see Baker-Bell et al.). This is well acknowledged.
However, I invite Black language scholars who resist translingual pedagogies
to also consider the implications of pre-slavery and pre-colonial African
Indigenous language practices being translingual. How might awareness
of Africa’s translingual history change how we theorize Black rhetorics
and Black language pedagogies? I raise this question because: (1) Black
language scholars always theorize and historicize Black language and
rhetoric by drawing on African languages, communicative practices, and

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 CCC 73:3 / FEBRUARY 2022

epistemologies; and (2) Afro-Caribbean scholars are beginning to bring to

our attention the translingual character of Afro-diasporic Englishes, which
are also rooted in slave history and experiences (see for example Creole
Composition). Acknowledging that all African and Black languages and
Englishes are translingual, can move us closer to theorizing Black language
pedagogies that are inclusive for all Black students. It can also strengthen
our relationality as Black people, and our relationality with others.

Acknowledgment
Jua Cali, asante sana, for agreeing to tell this story with me. I also want to thank
the two anonymous College Composition and Communication reviewers for
their thoughtful comments and efforts towards improving this essay. Thank you,
Trixie Smith, Victor Del Hierro, Laura Gonzales, Ronisha Browdy, and Angela
Rounsaville for your feedback, support, and love.

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Esther Milu
Esther Milu is an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida. Her
scholarship centers on multilingual pedagogies, translingual writing, African
immigrant literacies, transnational Black rhetorics, and decolonial rhetorics.
Previous work has appeared in Research in the Teaching of English, College
English, Composition Studies, International Multilingual Research Journal, and
several edited collections.

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