LAUSR

This article seeks to reassess the role of pan-Africanism within the national imagination of postcolonial Guinea under the presidency of Ahmed Sékou Touré. By focusing on the interplay between transnational and national dynamics within two cultural festivals – the First Pan-African Cultural Festival of Algiers in 1969 and the Guinean National Festival – pan-Africanism is recast as a constitutive component of Guinean nationalism, enduring long after independence. Through an analysis of political discourse, discourse about music and recorded music in the context of these festivals, and primarily about the participation of non-Guinean musicians, the essay identifies state-activated forms of pan-African cultural citizenship that serve the Guinean state in imagining itself as directed towards the broader political horizons of Africa. At the same time, it suggests that, under the nation-state, pan-Africanism was entangled with the nation-building project and national patriotism.