Review: Breaking Rocks: Music, Ideology and Economic Collapse from Paris to Kinshasa, by Joe Trapido

Joe Trapido’s Breaking Rocks: Music, Ideology and Economic Collapse from Paris to Kinshasa undertakes a multi-sited study of musical patronage systems in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and their relationship with its economic collapse. As capitalist industries in the DRC began to falter during the 1970s, alternative economic networks emerged to replace them. Among the most central were those related to popular music patronage, which sustained celebrated musicians while maintaining the dominance of ruling classes. Trapido argues that in Kinshasa, popular music continues to be “an ideological element within wider political and economic forces” (13). Utilizing a broad range of ethnographic and archival materials, he delves deep into the social and political lives of musicians, politicians, and the urban poor in Kinshasa and the Congolese Diaspora. Throughout the book, Trapido argues that music patronage systems...