Abstract:
This paper explores creation of popular music in Kalambya band as symbolic resource to reveal attributes
related to the making of identity. Popular music in Ukambani society is a useful unit of analysis that can
explain how people respond to cultural change and can tell us much about cultural values. The origin of
identity studied is both historical and social by nature. The main focus of this paper is to explore the sociocultural functions of the Kalambya songs are used to expand our understanding of both cultural and social
realities of the Kamba society in which identity takes place. As such, this advances the argument that
popular music as identity is not static and is always in flux. The assumption in this paper is that only
through a historical, social, cultural, political and economic context is identity making fully realized. The
functions of popular music are expressive behaviors which shape and are shaped by social, cultural,
historical and economic experiences. Performance theory was used in examining the cultural antecedents of
the songs, Performance theory has been developed as a way of explaining dimensions and significance of
performance acts as an integral part of social experience of life. it was established that Kalambya songs that
were composed in the late 1970‟s and the 1980‟s reflect on what was happening in Ukambani during this
period. Kalambya music is seen as a medium through which the Kamba people expressed the contradictions
in the society that time.
