Abstract Young people from the low-income settlements in Kenya's third-largest city, Kisumu, struggling with unemployment refer to their efforts to generate a livelihood as ‘hustling’. At the same time, many of them put art (dance, music, poetry) at the centre of their lives. This article attempts to account for the significant popularity of the arts among Kisumu's youth. It understands the ‘way of the artist’ as an alternative interpretation of work and a framework in which people situate their experiences of unemployment, waiting and insecure work. To examine this framework in action, the article follows Janabii, a poet who has been at the centre of attempts to establish a spoken word scene in Kisumu. Janabii has spent several years in limbo, oscillating between glittering performances and a more discreet daily life, marked by functional homelessness and a refusal to surrender to the violence of Kenya's informal world of work. The article contributes to recent studies about hustling by combining an ethnography of a week in Janabii's life with a literary analysis of excerpts from one of his poems, in order to elucidate how his struggles to get by are narrated and stylized through a spoken word, artistic imaginary that interrelates with his everyday life.

中文翻译：

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失业者的节奏：在肯尼亚基苏木通过口语创作和制作

摘要 来自肯尼亚第三大城市基苏木低收入定居点的年轻人在失业中苦苦挣扎，将他们谋生的努力称为“忙碌”。与此同时，他们中的许多人将艺术（舞蹈、音乐、诗歌）置于他们生活的中心。本文试图解释艺术在基苏木青年中的显着流行。它将“艺术家之道”理解为对工作的另一种解释，也是人们将失业、等待和不安全工作的经历置于其中的框架。为了在行动中检查这个框架，文章跟随 Janabii，一位一直处于基苏木口语场景尝试中心的诗人。Janabii 已经度过了几年的困境，在闪闪发光的表演和更加谨慎的日常生活之间摇摆不定，以功能性无家可归和拒绝屈服于肯尼亚非正式工作世界的暴力为特征。这篇文章将 Janabii 一周的民族志与对他一首诗节选的文学分析相结合，为最近关于喧嚣的研究做出贡献，以阐明他的挣扎如何通过口语、艺术与他的日常生活息息相关的想象。