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ABSTRACT
YORÙBÁ CULTURE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF
MODERN POPULAR MUSIC IN NIGERIA
This thesis focuses on the contributions of the Yorùbá culture to the development of modern Nigerian popular music. It traces the origin, conception and growth of popular music styles in Nigeria and highlights the underlying Yorùbá cultural cum linguis...
Citations
... Therefore, variations in forms and uses of Yoruba on social media may be reflections of the diversity of the language used by artists, song writers, whose linguistic practices push Yoruba dominance in the linguistic space of the Nigerian entertainment subculture. Yoruba language has always had a special place in the musical direction of Nigeria from the precolonial era to the post-independence present-day Nigeria (Adedeji, 2010). It is the indigenous language of Lagos which has always enjoyed being in powerful tactical spot; Lagos is the commercial and entertainment capital of Nigeria, and this has made it to continuously attract migrants from all over Nigeria and internationally including musicians. ...
... This variant is characterized by a blend of English and one or more indigenous languages. Adedeji (2010) suggests that the influence of Yoruba on juju and the growth of Nigeria's own hip hop have motivated artists who have different tribal affinities from Yoruba to now embrace the language in order to be accessible to the mainstream of artistic recognition. This claim may be supported with the fact that not only are Yoruba words used by artists of Yoruba descent in their music, but even popular artists of other tribal affinities have heavy presence of Yoruba in their lyrics. ...
In recent times, there is evidence of the emergence of new linguistic dynamics in the social media communication engagements in the Nigerian social media culture which have consequently impacted the visibility of the Yoruba language. The use of Yoruba has become part of a lot of users’ everyday social communication practices thereby promoting the language to be more visible in the arena of social media platforms. This study is interested in evaluating the nature of and the extent to which the language is used on social media, understanding its presence to the development of social media repertoire, and how it has become the dominant local medium through which many Nigerian social media users negotiate and express their identities. The motivation for this practice, and how it is employed as a discoursal means of language promotion will also be investigated. The data contain Instagram comments that exhibit pure Yoruba and code mixing between Yoruba and English/Nigerian Pidgin English; and from the data, it is evident that Yoruba is gaining more popularity on social media networks amidst the dense multilingualism of Nigeria. The findings reveal that social media provide a discursive platform for the users to be able to reinforce dominant representation of the language. The paper concludes that Yoruba is emerging as a popular language of the Nigerian internet culture.
... In her study of Accra Internet cafes in the 2000s, Jenna Burrell describes Ghanaian teenagers' hope to "leverage the barest thread of connection…to hook something from the vast sea of possibilities" (Burrell, 2012, p. 3). The early adoption of digital technology by Lagos youths and its transformative impact on the Nigerian music industry is also well established (Adedeji, 2010;Fry et al., 2018). Relegated to African studies or international development, or confined to local and regional journals, these engagements with digital media, however, rarely inform the broader theoretical frameworks of media studies. ...
Literature on the impact of the digital ecosystem on youth is largely grounded on Western case studies and Eurocentric in its working assumptions; yet African children and teenagers—who account for most of the continent’s population—have been early adopters of social media’s possibilities and are exposed to distinctive risks. This article shows how, in the absence of viable institutional structures for self-actualization in post-liberalization Nigeria, digital platforms turn children into central actors of economic flexibility. With transitional pathways disappearing, formal employment and traditional markers of adulthood are no longer on the horizon of African youths. Uncertainty, hustling, and extraordinary aspirations are part and parcel of their socialization process, with “survival” and “success” increasingly perceived as intertwined, requiring everyone, from the youngest age, to “perform.” From rags-to-riches stories of viral children groups to racist images and videos of children feeding China’s livestreaming boom and the meme culture across the world, commodified African childhood is projected into the flows of digital popular culture, enabled by legal and socioeconomic vulnerability and the internalization of visibility as an avenue of opportunity. Nigeria in particular, with the world’s largest population of out-of-school children on the one hand, and an internationally booming entertainment industry on the other, delineates a palpable, yet unsustainable mode of aspiration and wealth acquisition through engagement with social media. This article draws on a year-long ethnographic investigation in Lagos among (a) groups of teenage aspiring dancers seeking to “blow” online and (b) marketing professionals who use children in their commercial strategies.
... Adedeji opines that music has gone far beyond the confines of artistic representation because in it are strands of messages that represent the way the artiste wants to be seen or who he is representing or what he stands for [1]. In a sense, popular music are imbued with messages that propagate the holistic representation of what the artistes stands to show to the world and in most cases, always on the side of the masses as against the high and the mighty in the society. ...
... All these words describe a compendium of performances which encompasses various acts ranging from instrumental performance, oral poetry and singing to dancing". (Adedeji, 2010). This further establishes the seamless synergy between music and the totality of theatrical performance. ...
It has been established that the Nigerian music industry has grown tremendously in recent times through the popularity and dynamism of the Hip hop genre, which has positioned itself as the mainstream music presently. Likewise the Nigerian film industry now referred to as Nollywood is credited as the fastest growing film industry and rated the third largest film industry in the world after Hollywood and India’s Bollywood and currently accounts for an estimated N 853.9 billion ($7.2 billion) or 1.42 percent of Nigeria's GDP. This paper establishes the interface between popular music culture (hip hop) and Nollywood through the notion of documentation with a highlight of how Hip hop music is being documented in Nollywood formative years either consciously or un-consciously. The paper adopts a qualitative research method with an in-depth analysis of music in the movie-Campus Queen.
... The evolution of popular music culture in Nigeria can be traced to the 1970s especially after the civil war when Nigeria experienced the oil boom. The boom in oil led to the expansion of the Nigerian economy and the growth and development of the popular musical styles like jùjú, fújì and afro beat that had previously been developed in Lagos (Adedeji, 2010). According to Ojukwu, Obielozie and Esimone, 2016), popular music in Nigeria has moved from one phase to the other to fit into the latest trend. ...
... The introduction of the hip-hop culture into the Nigerian entertainment landscape dates back to the 1980s when the Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight' provoked the development of local groups and MCs. Ronnie (Ron Ekundayo) song 'The way I feel' in 1981 has been credited to be first rap album to be released in Nigeria (Adedeji, 2010). Though the origin of Hip-hop in Nigeria can be traced back to the late 80's, it grew in popularity during the 1990's (Joseph 2006). ...
... During the early stage of the spread of hip-hop music in Nigeria, the culture was not totally acceptable by the people because it was regarded as being too foreign and the lyrics too difficult to comprehend. The rejection of African-American brand of hip-hop music by most Nigerians and the need for social identification, informal bonding and solidarity propelled young Nigerian hiphop artists to change the style of hip-hop to what is now referred to as 'Afro hip-hop" by making use of languages that are easily understandable to the majority of the Nigerian people, while also incorporating elements from existing music genres like highlife, juju, fuji and afro beat (Adedeji, 2010). Though they maintained the fast strong rhythm, and fast talk (known as Rap) of American Hip-Hop brand, the Nigerian artists localized and changed the language from Black American English to Nigerian indigenous languages and Nigerian Pidgin English (Agbo, 2009 There are three major ethnic groups in Nigeria namely: Yorùbá, Hausa and Igbo, with over three hundred other minor languages because of the percentage of the people that speak the languages. ...
Music is a medium of expressive communication through which feelings, philosophies and
ideologies are conveyed. Music has become one of the techniques through which Nigerians
communicate with their audience. Hip-Hop music is one brand of music that has enjoyed global
popularity and patronage and has become one of the most popular genres of music in the Nigerian
entertainment landscape. Since the pre-colonial period, the Yoruba language has occupied an
important place in swaying the musical trend in Nigeria. Despite the attention that music studies
have received globally, multilingualism, particularly in the area of code-switching, is still one
aspect that that has not received sufficient scholarly attention. The paper therefore examines the
relationship between the Yoruba language and contemporary Nigerian Hip-Hop music. The
importance of the study lies in the fact that the Yoruba language is spoken by one of the major
ethnic groups in Nigeria and thus the study contributes to the growing body of academic literature
on indigenous Nigerian hip-hop culture and multilingualism. This study is based on the historical
approach drawing data from secondary sources gotten from books, journal articles, unpublished
materials, internet sources, music lyrics etc. The findings from the study reveal that Nigerian hip�hop artists use the Yoruba language in conveying their indigenous musical and cultural identities
while creating a community that comprehends the meaning of the messages expressed in the music.
The study concludes by stating that the Yoruba language has grown to become one of the central
languages through which contemporary Nigerian hip-hop artists express their cultural and artistic
identity.
Keywords: Hip-Hop Music, Popular Music, Code-Switching, Yoruba language, Youths
... The paper documents and describes isolated political songs performed by contemporary popular musicians in Nigeria, whose works have hitherto eluded scholarship. Recent studies into Nigerian hip-hop music culture have ensured that the field has become a dynamic and growing area of research: Fasan (2015) and to some extent Adedeji (2010), engage with how Nigerian popular musicians have gradually appropriated an 'indigenous' identity through the use of Nigerian languages and Pidgin English for their art, while English is slowly being relegated. Adedeji (2013), Okuyade (2011), andAkpan (2006) deal more with the political significance and 'national idiom' of the messages conveyed in some hip-hop texts than with the language of conveyance; while the work of Strong and Ossei-Owusu (2014) analyses the African Remix genre to highlight the resurgence of Nigeria as a cultural hub, indeed as the nucleus of African cultural production. ...
This paper attempts an intervention in contemporary popular music classification. It argues that popular musicians do not only choose the titles to their works, but go further to define the genres of these works. The dynamic at play is such that most popular musicians claim to produce works of different and new genres with each new work they create. By engaging with the works of a selection of Nigerian popular musicians, the paper shows a trend of opportunistic productions within the political music genre by artists not otherwise known for political songs. Through a discussion of the textual and contextual elements of the material, the paper argues that an increased number of popular musicians have started producing protest political music and unity political music, following Nigeria's democratization in 1999, as a way of alerting audiences of their political astuteness and in an attempt to court political relevance.
... When Africans began to be visually represented on the screens, they were portrayed as undignified and primitive. Post independence Nigeria through the capital city Lagos witnessed proliferation of Yoruba cultural art forms in terms of music like juju, fuji afrobeat and theatrical performances with plotlines from familiar television dramas .These were to later become the progenitors of the country's popular culture (Adedeji 2010: 67-69, Arthur 2014 among which is the present film industry. "Nollywood" as the Nigerian film industry is called now to a larger extent is an offshoot of the Yoruba popular theatre which evolved out of the Yoruba travelling theatre or alarinjo a quasi-professional group of performers whose roots has been traced to the Yoruba traditional ancestral worship egungun and later degenerated to mere court entertainers whose performance is mostly characterised by enactment of legendary heroic deeds of heroes or heroines. ...
The fundamental concern of the Arts disciplines (Humanities) is with man and his complex nature, cognizantly his multifaceted relationships with the world around him and beyond. It is in this context that each Arts discipline tries to investigate and explain those aspects of man’s nature that particularly concern or challenge him. In a more specific context, the study and practise of Performing Arts is saddled with the expressions of these realities offering opportunities to display cultures and traditions while “mirroring” the society. In recent times there has been a sudden rise in interest and attention given to the creative and cultural industries especially with the popularity of Nigerian popular music and video film across Africa and beyond. Further to this, a lot of young minds have been inspired to seek university education in this area in order to develop their artistic instinct and build their creative capacity towards economic self-reliance. This paper highlight the objectives of the Elizade University Performing and Film Arts degree programme as it experiments with the concept of ‘total theatre’ incorporating drama, music, dance and film. Furthermore, the idea to deviate from the traditional nomenclature of ‘theatre arts’ by incorporating ‘film studies’ into the programme is being stressed here to portend the ability to produce thorough bred professional in the field that would eventually be ‘job givers’ and not ‘job seekers’ The paper also traces the origin of the Nigerian film industry now called ‘Nollywood’ and asserts that in the nearest future the Elizade Performing and film arts graduate will be ready to fill the capacity requirements of Nollywood, and be part of the generation to take the industry to the next level. It is hoped that this paper will generate more interest in emphasising economic sustainability through university education using the Elizade Performing and Film arts degree programme as an impetus.
This study titled, "representation of African values in selected Nigerian popular music" was carried out to find out the dominant themes portrayed within Nigerian popular music, and the extent to which this music portrayed African values. The study adopted quantitative research design that employed content analysis as instrument for data collection. A total of 120 songs of 8 Nigerian popular musicians were selected from the annual lists of MTV Africa Music Awards. The investigation revealed that most of the values that distinguished African music culture from others are no longer intact because value in the music industry is understood primarily in market demand. Cultural theory re-echoes the fact that industrial treatment of popular music sacrifices important artistic qualities such as creativity, originality and integrity on the altar of economic gains. The study also found that most Nigerian popular music revolves around some unconventional themes such as disrespect for women, easy living and other forms of laziness, violence, and other antisocial activities. The study concluded that as an art, the processes of performing music should be value-laden, not commercial activities. Based on these findings, the study recommended censorship of the music industry, media education and proper mediation by parents/guardians.
This paper explores Fuji popular music as a tool for socialization within the current Yoruba cultural setting using the content exploration approach mode. Much of the traditional elements are embedded in the lyrics of Fuji musicians. Each Fuji musician digs experiments with the Yoruba culture to make the brand of Fuji music distinct from others. Saheed Osupa is a Fuji musician whose lyrics are laced with different sorts of Yoruba socio-cultural values. These values include proverbs, folktales, folklores, riddles, witty sayings, etc. The paper concludes that apart from being a vibrant art form in the popular literature sub-genre, the contents of the Fuji music can also serve pedagogical and other educational purposes in the present-day setup.
This chapter appraises the content of Yorùbá musical jingles on COVID-19, since music is an important aspect of the Yorùbá culture and effective tool for socialisation. This is aimed at establishing the roles of music in sensitising community members about the pandemic, especially in the Yorùbá context. Five jingles were accessed from the YouTube and purposively selected because of their indigeneity to the Yorùbá culture. The sociology of literature provides the theoretical orientation upon which the contents of the selected music jingles are appraised in relation to the ethos of the Yorùbá indigenous music. The selected jingles were transcribed and content-analysed. The findings revealed that the selected Yorùbá music jingles revolve around information about what COVID-19 is, its origin, symptoms, effects and preventive measures, prayers against COVID-19, tributes to medical practitioners/government, a call for trado-medical approach and jokes. These are in tandem with the socialisation purpose of music in the Yorùbá society. Songs are used in the Yorùbá culture to pass comments on current social issues, educate and entertain members of the society. The chapter, therefore, concludes that COVID-19 sensitisation jingles effectively educate listeners and entertain them without distorting the message.
