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Welcome to the Abstracts and Bios section!

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They’re Shocking! They’re New! Bekolo’s Pomo Saignantes

By
Kenneth Harrow

What would the postmodern African digital video look like? What would female power look like in the future where the hip, chic, empowered young Cameroonian women are called “Saignantes,” not because they bleed themselves but because they know how to bleed others. How much of the postmodern pastiche is possible in a film in which the critique of power, especially phallocentric despotism, takes the form of parody, of tongue-in-cheek, erotically charged scenes. Graphic novels. Virtual reality. MTV. Above all, film noir lighting—nighttime shadows in uncertain locations, with mysterious potions, martial arts moves in a narrative whose emplotment is never completely clear: this is the world in which the young women of tomorrow have come into their own, to lead the change in a country named “ce pays,” while we remain stuck in the position of considering its every move and mood in terms of contemporary postcolonialism.

 

 

The Antenna and the Mosque: Liberatory Mass Media in Moolaade”

By
Gerise Herndon

Mass media can empower women, as represented both within the fictional text of Ousmane Sembene’s Moolaade and by the form of the text itself as a feature film. Moolaade shows how radio broadcasts can enhance the villagers’ understanding of Islam, reaffirming certain traditions. Radio can also free women from misinterpretations of the Qu’ran and thus from socially accepted violence. Stations broadcast the imam’s words that enlighten the film’s protagonist, Colle. The patriarchal council of elders assumes that radios cause women’s resistance to genital cutting and that destroying the medium will destroy the resistance. The women, in their resourcefulness, dust off old
radios and then proceed to thwart the inside-traditional/outside-modern dichotomy. Colle’s resistance stems from her own experience and thus from first-hand knowledge; the radios simply provide religious authority for her acts of resistance. Sembene’s films demonstrate that new media and tradition need not be opposed in a dichotomy but can co-exist in a form of glocalization, where new media is adopted to deepen spiritual understanding and family bonds. Girls need not come of age through a violent and sexually disempowering rite. Some of the Moolaade’s final images depict the complexities of mass media in rural Africa, the piles of radios alight rivaling the height of a historic
anthill, the image of an ostrich egg atop a mosque competing with the last image of the television antenna, showing fertile possibilities for this new medium.


Pan-Africanism as EthnoCultural Heritage Transfer:
The African Adventures of Henry Sylvester Williams  (1869-1911)

By
Justin Marcus Johnston

This paper deals with the story of a young man Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams  (1869-1911) born in a sleepy village who wanted to change the world through his passion for Africa. At the time of his birth, there were people still alive who survived the Middle Passage and who remembered their African homeland. This experience prompted Williams, a school teacher and schoolmaster, to embark a journey across the Atlantic. His vision of Black republicanism and Black unity throughout the Diaspora - articulated in the historic 1900 London Conference that he organized to bring together Black leaders from across the Atlantic to discuss unity, education and put forward a   common force against colonialism. Although short- lived in its original form, the broader Pan-African movement gave rise to a hemispheric co-consciousness on part of persons of African descent, prompting them to turn to Africa as a source of empowerment. It was through identification with African heritage and popular culture that Williams sought to uplift the oppressed people of the Black Atlantic in the struggle against white European racism, oppression and colonialism. For nearly a decade, Williams was a crusader for Africa, becoming Cape Colony’s first Black lawyer and spokesman for racial equality and educational opportunities for Blacks, even to the dismay of colonial officialdom. He also represented various delegations from African nations before officials in Britain in demanding representative government and voicing their grievances.  Paper recounts William’s wanderings across the Black Atlantic - United States, Canada, and Britain but especially in Africa - the ancestral homeland he held close to his heart. Paper also deals with the impact of Williams’s life work and vision on longer-lived contemporaries in the Pan-Africanist movement (such as WEB DuBois), who often took credit for his work, and his impact down to the present day.


 

Stolen/Stealing Identity in Mwenze Ngagura’s "Les pièces d’identités”

By
Chantal Kalisa

In this paper, I examine how Ngagura adds another dimension to the discourse of Africa’s stolen identity by showing how young immigrants in Belgium, especially those who come of age during these globalized times ‘steal’ their way to identity reaffirmation. The film follows the mis/adventures of the main character, Manu Kongo. While he appears to be disillusioned by his idealized former ‘colonial power, Manu Kongo is otherwise a man whose identity remains intact.’ In my analysis, I focus on those characters who, contrary to
the hero, seem to have been thrown into deep identity crisis from which they attempt to recover by, for instance, surrounding themselves with elements of African popular cultures such as music, fashion and art. However, to reclaim one’s stolen identity requires some to resort to unorthodox means. The film presents multiple and subverted views of the idea of ‘identity’ theft as one of those extreme means. Ngagura also uses this theme to enhance the value for entertaining irony and comic potential. For my theoretical approach to this essay, I am influenced by postcolonial ideas of mimicry and hybridity as well as current views on identity and globalization.

 

 

Africa, Land of Investment Opportunities and Challenges for the African Diaspora:
Focus on the Energy and Cultural Industries

By
Kasala Kamara

The decision of the fifty-three (53) states of the African Union (AU) to formally include the African Diaspora as their Sixth Region has very significant implications for both the AU and the Diaspora. This paper seeks to explore the issue of investment opportunities with especial focus on the energy sector in relation to Trinidad and Tobago – a country which enjoys the reputation of being the home of Pan-Africanism, the home of the steelpan industry, and one of the oldest energy economies in the world. It also seeks to explore some of the investment opportunities for cultural industries, in this case – the steel pan industry. The second part of the paper will focus essentially on the investment opportunities in cultural industries which are possible if there is collaboration and partnership between Africa and the African Diaspora. Especial attention will be paid to the steelpan industry

 


Narrative Weave of Community in the ‘Tiseroman’

By
Gretchen Kellough

In the postcolonial female novel of development, one woman often weaves the tale of another woman’s story.  Female narrators must interpret or give meaning to another woman’s life based on fragmentary moments found through personal journals or stories told by other women.  We find this narrative quilt of story-weaving (or tiseroman as I will call it) in many postcolonial female novels: the female protagonist performs the creation of female solidarity by including the narratives of other women’s existences in her own story- telling.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the outcomes of this narrative strategy and discuss the possibilities/potentialities derived when
women tell each other’s stories. In the novels of this study, female characters are reliant upon each other for a subjecthood that is achieved by re-creating themselves as subjects in their own narratives.  They initiate each other into subjecthood though a dialogic experience that creates narrative communities. Similarly, the female authors constitute their own creative and generative tradition by drawing confidence from each other’s work and affirming their own voices by writing, while participating in a female collective that binds protagonist to author and author to author.


 

Whose Image of Whose Africa? Problems of Representation
in Ryszard Kapuscinski’s "The Shadow of the Sun"

By
Lena Khor

This paper addresses the problems of representation of Africa in "The Shadow of the Sun," a collection of travel narratives of Africa from the 1950s to 1990s, by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. Through an analysis of reviews and a close reading of the text, I consider whether Kapuscinski’s fact-defying stories succeed in its purpose of challenging the stereotypical image of Africa in the West.  The first part of this paper examines the debate surrounding the impact of Kapuscinski’s factual inaccuracies. The second part illustrates how Kapuscinski’s book challenges the stereotypes of Africa as a hopeless continent. Finally, I ask whether Kapuscinski’s method of fact-bending that occasionally borders on myth-making perpetuates yet more typecasting of Africa and Africans in the Western imagination.


 

Transgressing Reality: Yorùbá Artists Challenge the Momentum of Progress

By
Debra L. Klein, Ph.D

According to “Mr. Fuji Worldwide” Síkírù Àyìndé Bàrísítà’s Super Hit Double Album aptly titled “Reality,” reality is not a comforting picture.  Spinning proverb after proverb to the richly layered texture of fùjí instrumentals, Bàrísítà asks his audience to consider the plight of an olówó, someone who has money and good fortune in Yorùbá society.  Bàrísítà’s “reality” couldn’t be more real: maintaining one’s role as a patron is dangerous business in a Nigeria fraught with economic instability.  If clients are more and more at the mercy of their patrons for survival, to whom do the patrons turn in times of struggle?  While Bàrísítà addresses the patron’s plight, my paper looks at this dilemma from the perspective of master bàtá drummer, Làmídì Àyánkúnlé from È'rìn-Ò's'un, Nigeria.  Having lived out his 40 plus-year performance career as a client, teacher, and culture-broker engaged in collaborative relationships with overseas and Nigerian patrons, Àyánkúnlé offers us an alternative model.  Through ethnographic examples gathered in Nigeria in the late 1990’s, I examine Àyánkúnlé’s model for an alternative reality – a reality that challenges culturally defined rules, such as: who gets to be kin, receive chieftaincy titles, set the terms for collaboration, or define the trends.  Àyánkúnlé’s model, however, is desperately at odds with Bàrísítà’s portrayal of a reality defined by money and status.

 

 

Traditional yam festival amongst the Igbo people of South-eastern Nigeria
as a strategy for agricultural extension communication and identity preservation

By
O.D. Kolawole (PhD), V.O. Okorie and A.F. Agboola (PhD)

Culture is a way of life of the people. It comprises the philosophies, norms, mores, values, languages, dressing, etc. of a group of people. The immediate environment in which folks are situated is in itself a strong determinant of the peculiarity of the way of life of a certain people. The Igbo people of South-eastern Nigeria, for instance, are noted for the richness of their culture. This cuts across their music, festivals, religions, etc. Consequently, “It is the belief of some folks that if the gods are appeased through consultations and rituals, the earth would yield bumper harvest”. The Igbo people believe that “We honor our great goddess of the earth, without whose blessings our crops would not grow”. The specific objectives, therefore, are to document some aspects of the procedure used in appeasing the gods in seeking for yam bumper harvest; present the festival as a means of socialization and identity preservation; etc. The methodology employed in this paper is basically an assemblage of qualitative data derived from systematic and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and participant observations. It is quite interesting to note that nobody dares eat of the yam before the presentation of part of the new harvests to the earth goddess (Njoku ji). During the festival, all sons and daughters in the Diaspora are expected to converge to grace the occasion of the festival, which is a form of entrenching identity of the people. Farmers are wont to exhibit their produce at a designated marketplace to showcase the blessings of the goddess. This, in a way, has created a forum for traditional agricultural show from which agricultural extension programmes could borrow a leaf.


 

French image of Africa (or the shaping of the image of Africa in France)

By
Brigitte Kowalski, Ph.D

Narratives of travellers such as “le Tour du Monde”,  French artists such as Vlaminck, Picasso, ethnologists, and many exhibitions from the first half of the twentieth century have contributed to create a static image of a “black and magical Africa” and of a continent without writing scripts and so without history.

Since the independence of African States, the image of Africa in France, which could at best be described as ambiguous,  is a relic of colonialism and dependent on information from the media.

This ambiguity stems from two contradictory movements or sources. The first source owes African immigration, historians, artists, supported by a part of the French population, i.e. Salif Keita singing the powerful Mali empire. The second source of information include reporters, and politicians. This aspect is informed by the political and economical instability of most African states.

Between folklore and culture, African continent and its population remain relatively unknown to the majority of French people and much prejudices are still rife and alive.

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of colonialism in the shaping of the image of Africa as found France and to trace the  evolution of this image from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries.

 


A Historical Uunderstanding of Radio Drama in Kenya: The Case of Radio Theatre

By
Dina Ligaga

Radio Theatre is a programme that is produced for a state-controlled national broadcasting house, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC). The dictates of the Kenyan government on KBC are such that any programme produced within it must present a national image of progress and development. In this paper, we attempt to understand the ideological position of KBC and how this inevitably shaped the production of Radio Theatre, one of Kenya’s longest running radio drama programmes. We look at how the then President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi’s government influenced the dramatic/theatrical productions in Kenya that were often seen as existing at congruence with government policies. We conclude that Radio Theatre occupation with everyday life despite the political repression that citizens faced was unduly influenced by KBC’s positioning at the time and still continues to be. We also argue that this occupation with the everyday subsequently became a new way of tackling issues that required moral resolutions, the very answers that were required in the face of such repressive situations. Overall, we attempt to place radio drama within its historical context to validate its place within popular studies in Africa in which the popular has been identified as having didactic functions that address morality in the quarters of everyday life.

 

History, Memory, and Diaspora in contemporary South African popular music

By
Xavier Livermon

Contemporary forms of South African popular music have often been accused of being disconnected from historical forms of popular music and struggle politics in South Africa.  In this paper, I seek to address the ways in which kwaito musical practices, as a contemporary musical form, have drawn from imagery and music of 1950’s Sophiatown to create new visions of post-apartheid South Africa.  In this paper I will intersperse readings of music videos and songs from Mafikizolo, along with examinations of fashion, and ethnographic evidence from parties to explain the importance of Sophiatown imagery to contemporary cultural aesthetics.  As part of this examination, I will remark on the Afrodiasporic functions of these forms.

 

Drinking and Conviviality in Sorghum Beer (pito) Bars:
Popular Culture at the Rural-urban Interface in Contemporary Ghana

By
Isidore Lobnibe

This paper explores an emergent phenomenon in the urban landscape of contemporary Ghana, namely the widespread production and consumption of sorghum beer (pito) and the evolving culture. Originally a local brew of the rural savanna region to the north, pito drinking has witnessed a phenomenal increase outside its traditional production centers within the past few decades. The result is the proliferation of drinking bars popularly called “Bases” in the urban slums or city margins to which multi-ethnic youth are attracted for the drink, music, and the conviviality that characterizes the bars.

The paper will describe and analyze pito drinking in urban southern Ghana, focusing on the “hybridized” forms of entertainment, pattern of drinking modality and relations between the young girls who are employed to brew/ serve the drinks and the customers on the one hand, and the madams or proprietresses of the bars on the other. To promote sales in an increasing competitive business environment, pito girls are expected by their madams to “behave well” as part of the strategies they deploy to attract customers. The paper ethnographically unpacks the notion of behaving well drawing on situational analysis and oral interviews conducted in a few selected bars. It makes a case that urban pito bases by their nature, are not only ideal sites for the production of popular culture, but simultaneously reveal Ghanaian social life at the rural-urban interface.

 

 

 

Currently Untitled Paper

By
Francis F. Lukhele

South African writers across the literary and racial spectrums have traditionally been called upon to combat apartheid. Many artists have chaffed under this artistically inhibiting prescription. With the birth of democracy in South Africa, young spoken word poets, presently at the vanguard of that country’s literary turning point, are reveling at the opportunity to throw off, not only the responsibility of a narrowly defined partisan, so called constructive political engagement agenda, but to boldly carve out more personal spaces within which to locate their creativity. The result is a seamless fusion of rap and dub, “sloganist” anti-apartheid poetry, and disgust with neocolonialism. A case in point is Kgafela oa Magogodi’s poetry volume, “Thy Condom Come.” It is characterized by a fierce refusal to conform to poetic decorum, intoxicating experimentation with language, and the daring to address taboo issues. Magogodi’s poetry, composed for a live audience, illustrates elements that render it amenable to performance. These elements are various language devices that relentlessly shock the audience into a state of hyper-awareness. It rejects all the orthodoxies—the dictates of the struggle, the celebration of a new South Africa, the need to use proper English, and lastly, the necessity to be a polished poet. His is a fascinating syncretism that simultaneously appropriates multiple spaces for his artistry. It is poetry that brings together the high-browed intellectuals and the traditional rap and dub consumers to partake together around the table of the delights of the spoken word.

 

 

From the Mouths of Babes: Communicating a Cultural Renaissance
Through Music-The Rise of Urban Groves in Zimbabwe

By
Angeline M. Madongonda

Older Zimbabweans have generally been known to be conservative and have contributed immensely to the belief that today’s youth have been swept away by the wave of Western popular culture. Contrary to this, Zimbabwe’s young generation of singers have demonstrated how they have broken this vicious cycle of conservatism and coined their own identity in a world whose cultures are multifaceted. They have revealed a cultural diversity that seems to have eluded their older counterparts, particularly the generations of the 80s and 90s. A renaissance in the world of music has been born, particularly the creativity in language, rhythm, style and even the fusion of traditional instruments into an explosion a new genre of music- urban grooves- a music that has taken Zimbabwe by storm. The music commands a large following amongst the youth but even so, an older following is beginning to grow. The music epitomises a celebration of the Zimbabwean culture especially amongst the youth. This paper attempts to trace the roots of this renaissance and interrogates its contribution to the general fabric of society. On a serious note, the paper questions whether the content of the music is reflective of issues pertinent to society. For a country ravaged by the effects of the AIDS pandemic, abject poverty and ever declining economic fortunes, what gap do the urban groovers cover? What new avenues have they explored that can be contrasted to conventional musicians? The paper examines the lyrics of their famous songs and emphasises on the style and language that is used.

 

 

Currently Untitled

By
Daniel R. Magaziner

Faced with overt government repression in more 'traditional' political spheres, during the 1970s South African Black Consciousness activists countered by emphasizing the transformative potential of popular culture. They drew upon the work of Paulo Freire to study their own societies and advocate for new approaches to poetry, theatre, art and music that would both help the broader society awaken to its political situation and stimulate movements towards change. This paper, tentatively entitled "I Write What I Like: Popular Culture and the Politicization of the Personal" begins by considering the theories behind these activities, then proceeds to assess a variety of media that emerged in the wake of the push for popular culture politics. So doing, it also engages a growing discussion on the role of art in struggle in South Africa, and suggests that historical contingency of debates over black South Africa's appropriate aesthetic.

 

 

Women’s Songs in Sudan:
Negotiating Identity, Sexuality, Gender and Power Relations 

By
Saadia Malik, PhD

This paper explores the history and impact of a particular type of women’s song labeled as “aghani al-banat” that is usually performed at women’s gatherings in Central Sudan, specifically in Greater Khartoum. The study argues that because there are many discourses about “womanhood,” culture, and gender by the post-colonial state of Sudan, aghani al-banat could stand as another narrative or another discursive space for negotiating gender, sexuality, power relations and identity formation by the Sudanese women.

The postcolonial theoretical approach adopted in this paper attempts to provide an alternative understanding and an alternative ways of knowing, that challenges those provided by imperial and western discourses about the “realities” of the “Other” (the “third world”).  The paper also combines different methods of data collection and data analysis. It uses in-depth individual interviews with three women performers and group discussions with audience members, living in the reality of the Diaspora. The study also adopts historical-textual analysis to the lyrics of women’s songs and narrative analysis to the in-depth interviews with the performers.

The in-depth interviews with the three women performers in Greater Khartoum demonstrated the way the performers are negotiating their subject positions as performers and resisting norms of patriarchy, tradition, and gender discourses that all work toward controlling Sudanese women’s positions and agencies.  Moreover, the historical-textual analysis of the songs showed that, despite being labeled as “loose” and “bad” singing, aghani al-banat provided a discursive space through which the Sudanese women voiced their alternative narratives of social and gender relations. The songs offered both a framework of negotiating the existing relations as well as a dream of improvement. This paper concludes that Sudanese women, especially the pioneering performers of ex-slave descendent origin, created their own culture and popular literature in which they contextualize the past, the present, and the future of their varied realities and fantasies.

 

 

Advertising Healthy Babies and Marketing ‘Modernity’:
Baby Competitions and Public Health Weeks in Colonial Africa

By
Abigail Markoe

In colonial South Africa and Nigeria, medical missionaries teamed up with colonial public health officials to organize annual “Health Weeks” with events such as parades, films, and baby competitions teaching western ideas of ‘scientific motherhood.’ Importantly, these events not only promoted health, but they also promoted ‘modern’ consumerism. This paper will analyze the rhetoric of modernity and consumerism that practitioners of colonial and missionary medicine promoted during the annual Health Weeks and at African baby competitions. It will examine the Lagos Health and Baby Week of 1939, the Johannesburg Health Weeks of the 1930s, and the 1934 baby competition of the South African newspaper, Bantu World. This competition, geared toward the African middle class and sponsored by Nutrine, an infant formula company, offers historians the opportunity to study the relationship between advertising material goods and advertising ‘modernity’ in colonial public health. The author will use other sources of popular culture including films of Lagos Health Week, photographs of baby competition contestants, and newspaper advertisements. The paper will ask, what was the relationship between class and race during these public health events? To what degree did colonial officials influence African women to participate, and to what degree did their participation entail agency and choice? How did these events shape African ideas about healthy infancy? Baby competitions and Health Weeks advertised healthy childhood and in doing so, they advertised modernity—but, as this paper will argue, it was a modernity that was contested and created by African participation, not simply dictated by European actors.



The revealing dialogue between the transformations of the
Funaná musical genre and society in Cape Verde

By
Guy Massart

Funaná is a genre of popular capeverdean music linked with the history of the island of Santiago. Funaná has been long associated by capeverdean intellectuals with their continental African heritage as well as with the harsh experience of maroons and slaves living in the heart of the mountainous island, contrasting with modern musical genres from the islands of São Vicente and Brava such as coladeira and morna. Following independence from Portugal in 1975, the new political leaders (ex-freedom fighters) who formed the short-lived political union with Guinea Bissau valorized  the “African heritage” of the archipelago. In the 80’s, Funaná went through an “electrification “ and what was mainly a genre played live at social occasions became a very powerful locally distributed musical expression with its lead artists (Katchass, Bulimundo and later Finaçon) but still very much associated with Santiago, keeping its regional connotation. In the crucial late 80’s and early 90’s, during the transition from the one party regime of the PAICV in place since independence, to the new republic, funaná was incredibly present as a social critique. Fieldwork allowed me to observe how funaná informed youth retelling of their personal experience  and desires. Fifteen years later, years of “abertura política”(political opening) characterized by a strong neo-liberal flavor, funaná not only has transformed: lyrics, instruments, the music industry distributing it but it has also become the major musical genre in the islands, gaining recognition from all parts, inspiring (with akin telluric genres as finaçon and batuque also originary from Santiago) the tenants of the contemporary new capeverdean music (Tcheka, Princesito). The analysis of the changes that this paper will present show how a careful attention to popular music in Cape Verde supports the elaboration of a very convincing and refined folk sociology of the tremendous contemporary changes Cape Verde is going through.

 

 

Popular Culture and the Resolution of Boundary Disputes
in the Grasslands of Bamenda in Cameroon

By
Emmanuel Mbah

Migration into the grasslands of Bamenda is a recent phenomenon, taking place just before the advent of colonial rule. During the early years of migration, most of the ethnic groups and communities that occupy the Bamenda grasslands today got involved in frequent wars over control and ownership of land. As a result, neighborly co-existence was, for a long time, controlled by an unconscious fear which translated into a political calculation aimed at reducing disputes, especially boundary disputes between groups. These societies have been able to employ culture and tradition in resolving their numerous boundary and other disputes. The reduction of disputes and the promotion of peace became huge concerns for Bamenda grassland communities. 

Tradition and culture was employed in these societies as often as possible to preempt or delay wars, as well as appropriate cultural modalities to move from war to peace. War itself was canalized by many oral conventions of magical/religious character. The form of a declaration of war constitutes in itself a wish of appeasement: Room was always made for compromise and non-violence. The declaration of war was usually delayed for long periods, and was transferred using varying symbols, and the adversary had the choice of opting for peace. The adversary had the choice of a spear for war, or a traditional plant known as “Nkeng” for peace. Marriages, traditional celebrations, sporting events, sacrifices, traditional alliances, and the market were all cultural events which were employed by Bamenda grassland ethnic groups and communities to resolve boundary disputes between them. These events, which were usually symbolized with traditional and cultural alliances and blood pacts had the advantage of brandishing the prowess of a united people, and served as a deterrent to conflict because aggressors would be hesitant to engage any member of the alliance.

Thus, contrary to certain outmoded colonial literature, which considered the Bamenda grasslands as an area that was plagued with numerous and continuous warfare, which only came to an end with the introduction of colonial rule, traditional Bamenda grassland societies witnessed a culture that was manifested through dialogue, compromise, co-existence, and peace. The use of culture in conflict reduction/resolution, therefore, was, and still remains a veritable part of the culture of traditional Bamenda grassland societies

 

 

 

Reimagining Gender Spaces in Abbas Sadiq and Zainab Idris's video-film Albashi

By
Carmen McCain

In Hausa society, the realm of public political discourse has long been dominated by men, whereas interior domestic spaces have been considered the realm of women. Recent mass media technologies have complicated these boundaries between public and private sphere, as entertainment previously limited to outside spaces has been brought into the home. The recent explosion of self-published “romance” novels and independent video films across Northern Nigeria seems to be a manifestation of Arjun Appadurai’s notion of the collective imagination, which “can become the fuel for action.” 1 Appropriating Bollywood conventions and layering them on top of older oral structures, the creators of “romance” novels and films question the “rules” of the patriarchy, often using Islamic principles to bolster their critique.

In my paper, I examine how in the Hausa video-film Albashi (Salary), director Abbas Sadiq and his partner/producer Zainab Idris layer global influences onto older oral literary structures to explore the tensions of modernity on conventional gender relations. By structuring the film on the traditional “dilemma” tale, Sadiq and Idris open the story, beyond the sanctioned “moral,” to multiple interpretations. The appropriation of oral tatsuniya form is continued in the edgy Bollywood-style song and dance numbers, which function like the songs at crucial points of an oral tale, while at the same time challenging cultural conventions about the separation of men and women. However, unlike older oral forms, the use of new technologies expands the audience beyond the single family domestic sphere and into a large complex public discourse, blurring the boundaries between public and private.

 

 


 

Popular Culture in Transition: Law, Women and Social Cohesion
among the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria

By
Mrs. Bosede S. Mimiko, B.Sc. (Hons); LLB; BL

Women play a very crucial role in the average Yoruba society as agents of socialization, stability, and social cohesion. As the most basic unit of social organization, the family provides the Yoruba woman the critical platform for impacting on the lives of all other members of both the nuclear and the extended family. She, at different times in her life, is deeply involved in the family economy, the acculturation of children into prevailing family/societal values, the overall governance system in the family and the sustenance of the wider culture of the larger society. Such legitimized involvement is a factor in the cohesion and stability of the system. But this is as far as the traditional Yoruba society legal structure, on the Yoruba woman and her capacity to sustain the roles traditionally associated with her in the context of the  
overall stability of the modern Nigerian society. It concludes that a progressive departure from the role definition of the past is one principal factor for the emergent structural weakness of the Nigerian society and the growing frustration with the State and its instruments of governance, the legal system inclusive.



Between Symbolism and Substance in Africa:
The Culture-Poverty Nexus in a Changing Political Economy.

By
N.Oluwafemi Mimiko, Ph.D.

A preponderance of the literature on culture, especially in relation to Africa, has tended to conceive the concept in terms of both visible and non-visible symbolisms like dance and dress forms, artifacts and folkloric substances. An appreciation of culture in its substantive sense a s a holistic concept for a people’s total way of life, including the patterns and processes of social production, exchange and consumption is lost in this highly reductionist conceptualization. It also detracts from the explanatory role that culture must play in Africa’s extant crisis of development and governance, and its central place in the collective effort at the eradication of mass poverty and the attainment of good governance in the continent. This basically theoretical paper seeks a proper interpretation of culture as a social category. It therefore proposes a critical rethinking of the concept and its overall place in the social development agenda of the African peoples.

 

Prospects, Challenges, and the Pedagogy of Yoruba Language in a Global World

By
Fehintola Mosadomi

The world is constantly changing not only economically, politically, socially, but also in matters affecting language, its acquisition, and pedagogy. In centuries past, languages were taught in the countries where the languages were spoken. However, today, there is an extension of language pedagogy outside of their target (language) countries for various reasons including migration, forced or voluntary; individual’s pursuit of educational interests; shift in educational interests by institutions; national global policies regarding languages(socio-economic and political), and language attitudes by immediate communities; just to mention a few. Some of these reasons apply to why Yoruba language is taught today in very many countries outside of Nigeria. This proposal seeks to explore Yoruba language and pedagogical studies not only as an extension of popular culture in a global world but also as a discipline faced with prospects and challenges, particularly in the US.

 

Popular Culture in Africa: The Global century definition

By
Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah

It is often said that popular culture is that which, by definition, is available to the ordinary, and which assumes the most accessible forum through which its products represent a familiar, even most fondly, performance of the people or community, and often by them or the most notable of them and for them. Without mincing words, during the twentieth century, popular culture in Africa, except when qualified as ‘popular written culture’ (Lindfors) or ‘poplar literate culture’ (Obiechina) could always be found in the orality realm. Now, in the twenty-first century, West Africa popular culture is resoundingly showing its face not in primary orality but in secondary orality of electronic technology. This complex phenomenon of the film and the home video I dare to declare as the popular culture of twenty-first century Africa. While using materials mainly from Nigeria but also selected ones from across the West African region, this paper would discuss how electronic technology has provided the African community a new popular tradition, which the hither-to written technology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could not. In this paper, we will exam the reasons given by Nigerian writers such as Akinwumi Isola for embracing the home video and film technology with their literary writings. This paper will also look at the history and the continued development of Nigerian Nollywood as the new “Oil Boom” (Diawara) of the country’s Electronic Age!

 

From Aesthetic Creativity to Political Profundity:
Popular Music and Politics in Kenya and Argentina

By
Shadrack Nasong’o and Amy Risley

Popular culture, defined in terms of art, literature, music, and related intellectual products that appeal to the general public and that is thus embraced and propagated by ordinary members of society, is a characteristic feature of all societies across the space of time and place. The value of popular culture lies in its use for recreational entertainment, spiritual enlightenment, and socio-political information. Accordingly, it is a basis for the organization of people’s aesthetics, values, interests, and identities. As such, popular culture intersects with politics in ways that have significant implications both for the political process and for the production and dissemination of popular culture itself. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate, from a comparative perspective, the interface between popular music and politics in Kenya and Argentina. We argue that whereas under conditions of authoritarianism, incumbent regimes are wont to manipulate popular music to transmit propagandistic messages to the people, critical popular culturalists often subvert such intentions to aesthetically deliver creative critiques that inspire and empower resistance against the status quo. We delineate the implications of these activities for the political processes of Kenya and Argentina and contend that popular culture in the form of music is a critical site for political discourse and political mobilization for social change.

 

 

The Modernity Bluff: Mimesis and Metonymy in Ivoirian Street Style 

By
Sasha Newell

This paper describes the Ivoirian act of the bluff, in which urban male youth consume foreign goods (mostly American label clothing) in order to take on symbolic properties of ‘modernity,’ producing exclusive hierarchical social networks through competitive performance and potlatch style displays of wealth. They must wear the best quality, speak in the latest slang, drink until no one else can, and dance with wit and bravado.  I take the concept of le bluff to examine the collapse of surface and self in Ivoirian urban popular culture. Paradoxically, even while audiences understand the deception of the bluff, they act as though it has performative magical efficacy – actually transforming the identity of the actor and challenging both local elites and global symbolic hierarchies. Like drag queens, bluffeurs threaten the distinction between the mimetic and the real for their audience. I argue that the efficacy of mimesis is constructed around the principle of metonymy (contact and contiguity) rather than metaphor (appearance and similarity) and this is the source of the Ivoirian fascination of the authenticity of the labels and origins of their clothes. I use this example to reconsider theories of mimesis, globalization, and postcolonial identity.

 

Popular Culture in Senegal: Blending the Secular and the Religious

By
Fallou Ngom

Traditional Senegalese culture has undergone perpetual metamorphoses since the colonial era as the result of internal and external forces. The impact of the revered secular and religious figures (which has produced a strong sense of pride among Senegalese people) is often expressed through popular behavioral, linguistic and cultural practices. One of the most interesting cultural developments in Senegal is the secularization of the Murid Sufi order cultural artifacts through pop culture as more and more youngsters (from various ethnic and religious backgrounds) are the prime users of Murid-inspired clothing, music, patterns of speech etc. Besides, the geographical location of Senegal, the numerous Senegalese expatriates living in Europe and North America (regularly moving back and forth), and the continuing expansion of Cybercafés throughout the country have enabled global waves of popular music (such as Blues, Jazz, Salsa, Funk, Reggae, hip-hop, rap etc.) and the cultural artifacts that come along with them (clothing, hairstyle, speech patterns, mannerisms, graffiti) to blend with the traditional Senegalese culture and music. First, I describe the contemporary popular culture landscape in Senegal and examine the forces that have engendered and shaped it since the 1960s. Second, I discuss aspects of the Murid subculture and belief system that have appealed to Senegalese youngsters and artists, and how these people have facilitated the infusion of some Murid cultural practices into the mainstream popular culture. Finally, I discuss the socio-cultural and religious underpinnings of secular and religious icons often juxtaposed in popular graffiti and pictures throughout the country.

 

 

 

Storytellers of Morocco and the Mass Media, 1912-2006

By
Raphael Chijioke Njoku, PhD

Every human society has folklore, legends, and myths. These contain elements of cultural knowledge preserved in form of stories that are
transmitted to the younger generation. The Berber-Arabs of North Africa maintained this type of creative oral literature and popular culture long before the genesis of French colonialism and the introduction of western literacy and mass Medias like newspapers, and televisions. While the media industry expanded rapidly from 1950s onwards, first with the establishment of the first television stations, newspapers, and magazines, many aspects of the indigenous orature have endured to the present day despite the alien cultural and technological imperialism. Although oral literature is not as widespread as written work, storytelling remains one of the most common forms of entertainment in Morocco. As late as the 1970s, the professional storytellers frequented the open markets in Morocco, attracting audience by beating drums. I propose to examine the history of storytelling as a popular culture in Morocco and how this has changed over time since the era of European colonialism to present. I will also focus on the ways European colonial and technological influences have tried to negate the role of storytelling as a popular medium of information, education, and popular entertainment.

 

 

Our Time is Now: Hip-hop, Globalization, and Identity in East Africa

By
Mwenda Ntarangwi, PhD

Since its emergence in the 1980s in New York, hip-hop's identity and authenticity has been linked to urban Black America. In this age of heightened globalization, however, there is a need to discuss critically the current status of hip-hop’s practices and its mutations across the globe. Today hip-hop music has emerged in urban Africa among youth of various social and ethnic backgrounds and quite often giving voice and public presence to a socio-politically marginalized group.  On the one hand, hip-hop is a part of an emerging global cultural take-over following an overwhelming presence of Western (predominantly American) popular cultural material and expression mediated by
television, the internet, digital music, telephony, and video games.  On the other, hip-hop has become one of the few avenues through which African youth express and articulate their lived experiences and/or aspirations. We thus can no longer simply see hip-hop as an urban Black American phenomenon but rather as a global youth movement that allows youth to grapple with issues of identity and self-expression. This paper engages with this reality by focusing on East African hip-hop music as an emerging youth phenomenon in order to assess the diversity of relations between national, regional or international expressions of hip-hop and consequently the underlying contestations and discourses about African identity. I argue that youth in East Africa are using hip-hop as a new platform for socio-political critique in an environment where many social critics and thinkers have "sold out" to neo-liberal economic models that breed individualism and exploitation.

 

Things fall apart: Is the popularisation and growing consumption
of hip hop causing moral panic in Kenya?

By
George Nyabuga

The globalisation and popularisation of ‘Western’, particularly American music, film and other texts have caused significant consternation among African moralists, and ‘right thinking’ members of society. Although these ‘moralists’ and ‘right thinking’ members of the African society are themselves consumers of Western, and American texts, hip hop music is considered corrosive to “African ways of life”, and especially a threat to African morals because of its apparent influence on youth culture. The southward flow and subsequent (over) consumption of films, music, and information products have caused what moralist would term cultural imperialism, eroding the fabric that holds the African society together. This erosion is manifested in living, dressing, walking, talking styles, and behaviour some consider foreign and unAfrican. The rising popularity of hip hop in Kenya, and the production and consumption of local versions of this music genre have effectively ‘colonised’ the local music industry, and subsequently the hearts and minds of young impressionable consumers. Thus this music genre is seen as having a significant impact on the youth in Kenya. It is thought hip hop has contributed to growing gangsterism characterised by violence, and crime among young Kenyans. It is also attributed to the ‘deterioration’ of morals, rising promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies, rising cases of Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases among young Kenyans. This paper will examine whether, and how the growing popularity and consumption of hip hop, particularly among young people, is causing what can be described as a moral panic in this east African country.

 


Are immunization Advert campaigns an effective intervention
in increasing compliance with childhood immunizations in Ghana?

By
Cecilia Sem Obeng

The author examines immunization campaign adverts with the view to determining whether such ad campaigns constitute an effective intervention in increasing compliance with childhood immunizations in the Kade-Asuom district of Ghana. Based on interviews with hundred and five parents with children between zero and five and working within Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) narrative inquiry, the author demonstrates that mobile van and radio adverts motivated parents to immunize their children. The participants reported that words used to describe the importance of immunizations as well as pictures that depict children who got immunized and who are healthy as a result of the immunization motivated them to immunize their children The author demonstrates further that a majority of the parents indicated that the most effective motivating factor toward getting their children immunized was ‘word-of-mouth’ announcement done by their chiefs through the public announcer (gon-gon beater) cognizant of the fact that this was done a day before the public health nurses arrived and immediately after they arrived in the villages. The author recommends the integration of traditional rulers in such immunization campaigns given the fact that they are the most effective channel through which parents could be reminded about such public health issues and programs.



Speaking the Unspeakable Through Hip-Life Music:
A Discursive Construction of Ghanaian Political Discourse

By
Samuel Gyasi Obeng

Ghanaian political discourse is full of conflicts and synergy, contestations and acquiescence, praise and dispraise, as well as delicate criticism and unmitigated support. This study examines (in)directness (Obeng, 2004; 1997) in Ghanaian (Akan) Hip-life discourse. Working within the frameworks of indirectness and Grice’s (1976) cooperative principle and conversational maxims, the study subjects some Hip-life lyrics to empirical inspection and demonstrates that the Hip-life lyrics overtly and blatantly obey as well as flout these maxims. In particular, the actors’ message may be conversationally implicated but may or may not explicitly stated.  The study also shows that the Hip-life artists use language to commend, condemn, and lampoon political actors and that unlike traditional Ghanaian musicians who tend to resort to vagueness, avoidance, and indirectness in their criticism of political actors, Hip-life musicians employ directness and only rarely employ indirectness. The use of directness appears to be a paradox given the preponderance of indirectness that is embedded in the directness. This ‘new’ genre is motivated by a change in Ghana’s cultural mores on communication, on changes in politeness phenomena, on political survival, and on the will for the musicians to be successful economically and ‘politically.’   By making direct criticism, the Hip-life musicians besides being social commentators become pseudo political actors and act as catalysts for change in the polity. Finally, the study demonstrates that most Hip-life discourses have lean syntax, contain sociolinguistic phenomena like code switching and code mixing, slang, address and reference, power and solidarity and different gender-related communicative strategies.

 


The Cinematic Images of Africa in Western Films continue: An Analysis of Three Contemporary Movies, Hotel Rwanda (2005), Sahara(2005) and Tears of the Sun(2003)

By
Raphael Obotama

The colonial filmmakers portrayed Africans as savages, cannibals and jungle people, to justify the dehumanizing conditions they put Africans through during the slavery. African filmmakers responded by making movies that were destined to show the true images of Africans. Today these imprecise images of Africa still continue in some Western movies albeit covertly. Let me take you through some dialogues in  the movies randomly selected for this paper. In the movie Hotel Rwanda, the UN commander, Colonel Oliver, (Nick Nolte) tells Paul Rusesabangina (Don Cheadle), the manager of Mille Collines hotel, when he protests of the departure of the of the UN Peace keeping Force in Rwanda, “Paul, you are not White, you are not even a nigger, you are an African”.  General Kazim   ( Lennie James), says in the movie Sahara, “This is Africa, and no one cares for us”. Also Lieut. A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis), the US commander in Tears of the Sun, sent to rescue some American medical workers and missionaries trapped by a civil war in some parts of Nigeria  tells the old missionary priest who protested  their having to leave the people of Africa, “God has already left Africa”. In this paper I am going to look at not only the cinematic portrayals of  Africa in the above mentioned movies, but the influence these have in our popular cultures and how we define ourselves in response to these images. I shall not limit myself to these three movies only I shall make allusion to other depictions in either music or literature that relate to this theme.

 

Popular Culture and Political Discourse in Independent Kenya:
Kam
ĩĩrĩthũ and Redykyulass

By
Hannington Ochwada

I propose to analyze two drama groups, Kamĩĩrĩthũ and Redykyulass and their contributions political discourse to broaden the democratic space in Kenya. My argument is that Kamĩĩrĩthũ and Redykyulass took advantage of the freedom that political independence and the democratic dispensations ushered in 1963 and 1991 respectively to give meaning to citizenship and the language of rights. They translated their efforts into a forceful discourse of assessing social, political and economic developments in the country, providing a new meaning to the concepts of freedom and democracy based on indigenous historical developments. What were perceived as armchair entertainment drama translated into popular, if not activist theater. But while Kamĩĩrĩthũ was crushed, Redykyulass weathered the storm of political repression of the ruthless arm of the State. I shall borrow from Penina Muhando Mlama and concur with her assertion that popular theater is “a response to a history that has undermined people’s genuine participation in the development process.” And, of course, in Kenya, as in the case of most African countries, the managers of development have often disregarded the cultural expressions of the masses and contributions. However, some amateur and professional playwrights regarded attitudes such as these as an aberration of the rule of democracy and respect for human rights. Popular theater, therefore, has sought to shape political discourse drawing on people’s own life stories and experiences – an endeavor including their inputs in re-enacting recent memory of their struggles to survive. Playwrights, therefore, attempted to sensitize the masses to the pertinent issues in the lives of Kenyans. They argued that because the state generally overlooked the local people’s aspirations and their yearnings for quality life, they needed to sensitize people to their human rights. For the paper, I shall draw from VHS recordings and existing studies on the two groups.

Penina Muhando Mlama, Culture and Development: The Popular Theatre Approach in Africa (Uppsala: Norsika Afrikainstitutet, 1991), p. 5.

 

 

Lessons From Conflict and Conflict Resolution in Yoruba Popular Drama
for a Post-colonial Audience

By
Philip Adedotun Ogundeji

Taking into consideration the indirect, aesthetic, and ‘playful’ but very efficient methods by which the Yoruba and Africans in general inculcate morals and other necessary instructions into a child right from infancy and the fact that man learns little or nothing directly from history, this paper is premised on the opinion that literature in general and drama in particular is a veritable way of drawing attention to important issues and especially to issues in conflict and conflict resolution. The paper intends to examine conflict and conflict resolution in Yoruba (language) plays that deal with popular protest (hence popular drama) with the intention of drawing attention to lessons for the post-colonial Yoruba(and Nigerian/African) audience. The pre-colonial dramatic forms of ritual, diritualising and diritualised performances will be examined as background to determine the indigenous perspective on the issues of conflict and conflict resolution in popular protest and the role of dramatic performances. The post-colonial dramatic forms, mainly of the Ogunde dramatic tradition, the literary tradition and the electronic media, which have made use of the indigenous traditional forms, but are greatly influenced by colonial literary aesthetics, will be studied to determine the patterns of dramatic codification of conflict and conflict resolution in popular protest in order to discuss their conceptual and implicational relevance.


 

Tongues Mystified: Introduction to Rap and Hip Hop in Nigeria

By
Akinloye Ojo, Ph.D.

The life of the average Nigerian is dominated by melody. Music and musical performances surround daily activities from the mundane to the serious. Particular interest should actually be focused on Nigerian urban areas which serve as the paramount melting pots for the varied forms of music in Nigeria. The popular presence of music in the lives of the people makes it possible for numerous musical innovations to become tested and established. It is against the background of music’s pervasiveness in the lives of Nigerians and the continuous process of “socio-cultural weaving” that the growth and continued development of Nigerian Rap and Hip Hop can best be viewed. Rap is a global idiom and an international metropolitan hybrid (Baker, 1993). By its very origin, nature and popularity around the world, it is an innovative music style that expectedly has found a place in the Nigerian socialized ethnic maze. It is however astounding to consider the globular voyage that the music genre has made from Africa and back. This paper wishes to focus more on aspects of the return journey of the American innovation to the African continent and particularly, to Nigeria. It will also attempt to consider some of the linguistic concerns arising from the ‘homecoming of Rap and Hip hop.

 

 

A Historical Analysis of Ojude-Oba Festival in Ijebu-Ode in the Twentieth Century

By
Abiodun Akeem Oladiti

This paper attempts to trace the historical development of Ojude-Oba festival ceremony in Ijebu-Ode in the twentieth century. It intends to examine the social significance, trends and social change of the festival in Ijebu-ode community among the Yoruba groups in south-western Nigeria.

The problems identified in this study reveals that there is paucity of adequate historical information relating to the importance of the festival in the life of the community.

Descriptive method of analysis was employed in this study and the data was derived from oral information received from the elders of the community, Muslim clerics, participants and eye witnesses during the festival as well as other relevant literature that were accessible.

Our findings reveal that the Ojude-Oba festival is a popular and annual ceremony organized by the members of the Muslim communities in Ijebu-ode in front of the palace of the ruler of the town to celebrate the Ileya festival popularly known as Eid-El-kabir among the Muslims. It is a period of joy, merriment, show of fashion and national integration among the different Ijebu communities and other Yoruba groups in Yoruba land. Ultimately this paper adds to increase the existing literature on the Muslim festivals in Nigeria. Specifically it sheds more light on the historical processes of the development of the Ojude Oba festival in Ijebu-Ode.

 

How did the writer’s choice of language vividly portray the linguistics
features of English language variety, loan words, and pidgin?

By
Florence O. Olamijulo

The aim of this paper is to answer the above question by analyzing the writer and the characters choice of language in “Hot Days Long Nights” which were deliberate to make the story interesting and to make the work marketable world wide. The linguistics features of Nigerian variety of English, Nigerian pidgin, and loan words were to expose the multilingual situations in the country. The language choice in the story ranges from the English being a translation from vernacular to indigenized varieties of English spoken as a second language, use of loan words, Pidgin and facial expression. Kachru in his comment on Anglophone post colonialism literature said “English is acquiring various international identities and thus acquiring multiple ownerships” (  HYPERLINK "http://www.fask.uni-mainz.de/inst/iaa/anglophonie/second/postcol.htm" http://www.fask.uni-mainz.de/inst/iaa/anglophonie/second/postcol.htm  p2) Chinua Achebe said “African writers should use English in a way that brings his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out English which is universal and able to carry peculiar experience, by means of individual words from the Igbo language (which are understandable from their contexts), numerous proverbs, metaphors, and sayings that are literal translations from Igbo, the Igbonised English( HYPERLINK "http://www.fask.uni-mainz.de/inst/iaa/anglophonie/second/postcol.htm" http://www.fask.uni-mainz.de/inst/iaa/anglophonie/second/postcol.htm p 2).  Thus the writer of Hot Days Long Nights use Nigerian English to the fullest extent in his descriptions of the characters and their activities. He used, similes, metaphors, personifications which are common in Nigerian English and are called ‘meat’ that made language worth using.

 

 

 

Lu jot bot bi? (Wolof: What's wrong with the eye (I)?) Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambèty: African Cinema Rhetoric and the Search for Authenticity

By
Debbie Olson

Most African film critics consider Ousmane Sembène, who is from Senegal, the patriarch of African film with the release of Borom Sarret (1966) and Le Noire de… (1966) and he is the first African director whose films became internationally known. He is also a critically acclaimed writer.  The search for an "authentic" African cinema, a non-western visual rhetoric, is a much-debated theme among African film critics and Sembène's films are readily accepted as the precursor of, and therefore the model for, a truly authentic African cinematic voice. The question of what constitutes an "authentic" African visual rhetoric remains undefined and numerous film scholars, mostly European, continue the colonialist legacy of creating/validating the African image, i.e. identity, by attempting to characterize what an authentic African visual rhetoric is.  Sembène's cinematic style privileges a realist composition that documents the struggles of post-colonial Africans as well as attempting to define an African cinematic subjectivity through an authentic visual rhetoric that is set apart from the Western hegemony of African images in Hollywood films. 

Djibril Diop Mambèty is another Senegalese director and made films around the same time as Sembène. Mambety is also one of the pioneering directors in African cinema, though his visual style is very different from Sembène's. Most consider Mambèty to be avant-garde and ahead of his time with his postmodernist visual expression. In the search for an authentic African visual rhetoric, these two founding fathers present a unique challenge, as their differences are broad enough to make defining authenticity a challenge for film critics.  In the search for an authentic African cinematic voice, how do these two pioneering directors construct a visual rhetoric that is distinctly African? I would argue that, though not as prolific a filmmaker as Sembène, Djibirl Diop Mambety's films  (Contras' City (1969), Badou Boy (1970), Touki Bouki (1973), Hyenas (1992)) may represent a much more "authentic" African cinematic style because of his unique visual rhetoric that is more culturally rooted and uncorrupted by Western visual aesthetics.   Both Mambèty and Sembène began making films within a few years of each other, but Sembène was educated in, and influenced by, Russian filmmaking and the Eisenstien School of filmmakers. Mambèty, on the other hand, had no formal film training but was an actor in a theater in Senegal for a number of years. Does Mambèty's visual rhetoric present a more uniquely "authentic" African cinema than Sembène's film language? And, most importantly, should an authentic African aesthetic, a unique visual rhetoric, be defined?

 

 

Contemporary Home Preferences of Nigerian Elites

By
Akinola Olusola

Building or acquiring residential houses among Nigerian elites reflects a mix of cultures.  The conflicts between “new wealth”, western influences and residual traditional attitudes have become a major factor in shaping new homes in contemporary Nigerian cities. Houses primarily accommodate basic human activities within defined spaces.  The motivation for acquisition can however be for social, economic, political and religious purposes. This paper examines the emerging typologies in terms of size, forms, location .etc. in the context of these secondary functions as a reflection of contemporary Nigerian elite behavioral pattern within the urban milieu. In addition, ownership and transfer of titles, disputes in cases of polygamy and other difficulties arising from such typologies are further highlighted.


 

 

T’EBI B’ATI KURO NINU ISE, ISE BUSE: The Dilemma of
Conceptualizing Poverty among the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria
 

By
Akinpelu Olanrewaju Olutayo, Ph.D

Though societies all over the world have defined their existence based on the understanding of their environment, their contacts with other cultures have often redefined their existence. Such is the case with the conceptualization of poverty in the contemporary world. Central to the question of poverty among the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria was the necessity of food. Today, the definition of poverty has extended far beyond this point. Indeed, the ‘new’ definition seems to have become elusive as it is popularized through western images. As the concept of poverty becomes increasingly elusive, development continues to be a mirage. This paper shall attempt to show this dilemma as developing nations seek to redefine their existence. Except the people go back to the basics, underdevelopment and the perpetuation of poverty shall continue to be inevitable.

 

 

Popular Culture: A comparative study of selected
Rural and Urban communities in Oyo State, Nigeria

By
Anthony Olusegun Omoyajowo

This paper attempts a comparative investigation of Popular Culture from the perspective of urban and rural community divide, with systemic, functional and social action theoretical underpinnings.

Popular culture is a phenomenon, which refers to those cultural creations and activities that are subscribed to, valued and shared mostly by the masses of the citizenry.  They are those less serious, unsophisticated, more prevalent and intellectually less demanding aspects of a people’s way of life that are supported by and that appeal primarily to the larger populace who comprise the typical or average members of the society

T (Eddiefloyd, 2003). Popular culture contrasts to high culture, which refers to those aspects of a society’s way of life, which are subscribed to and valued mostly by the elite sections of society.  It is those cultural tastes, practices, observances, preferences, materials, and supported by the comparatively small and sophisticated elite group in society. 

Inferences are drawn from the results obtained form the responses of the purposive samples that are carefully selected for the study, across the sampling frames for both urban and rural communities in Oyo state, with a view to having a representative areas of differences and similarities in terms of mode, context, purpose and effect.  The interview responses of the selected population elements, that is the Yoruba speaking dwellers of both urban and rural communities are subjected to comparison, using the appropriate rating scale.

This investigation goes further to examine the dynamics of popular culture in the two domains under focus.  How best can popular cultural relativities be preserved in a dynamic and fast changing contemporary world?, How does a new entrant into either of the bifurcated communities cope with or come to terms with the apparent realities of culture lag or culture shock without prejudice of ethnocentrism?  These and other questions are meant to be answered.

The south western Yoruba speaking rural and urban community dwellers (Nigeria) are unique as far as rich cultural heritage is concerned However, the disparaging characteristics of the two cultural settings have interestingly made this investigation a worthwhile discourse.

 


"Radios Don't Kill, People Do":
The Paradox of Media Reports and the Emerging Culture of Violence in Africa

By
Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi

This paper examines the dysfunctional role of the media in conflict situations. Among other things, the media is regarded as vanguard for educating, informing, and entertaining, but given its reach, its power of advocacy, and its capacity to frame and influence socio-political and economic decisions, it has being described as the fourth estate of the realm. In socio-economic and political spheres, as in humanitarian crisis, the role of the media becomes even more influential in impacting on socio-economic and political decision makers. This was the case in Nigeria, Rwanda, and DR Congo etc where negative media reports have introduced a hitherto unanticipated paradox to the popular conception of the media as change agent. Negative media reports have incited violent conflicts in many African countries where millions of civilians were displaced, kidnapped, raped, tortured, or killed in ethno-political violence.

As this study shall show, the involvement of the media in any situation can yield both negative and positive results. In Kosovo, for instance, while media reports have helped in drawing world's attention to the humanitarian crisis of 1999, however, memories are still fresh of the famous 'Radio Machete' in Rwanda where hate-radio messages have led the Hutus to murder the Tutsis within a hundred day period while at the same time obscuring the crisis from the world. The Ife-Modakeke crisis of 1998, the Jos crisis of 2003 (all in Nigeria), and many more in different nations in Africa also resulted from a malignant media reports. From the Horn of Africa, the Great Lake Region, to the West African sub-region, Africa is lacerated by a dense area of conflict, most of which cannot be dissociated from negative or hate-reportage by the media.

The paper draws from oral, written and archival sources in Nigeria and Rwanda to examine the intersection between media reportage and the development of culture of violence among Africans. It examines the growth and development of the media from its colonial origin to the 21st century with special emphasis on conflict reportage. The study argues that media reports have contributed immensely to conflict escalation and conflict resurgence in Africa.

 

 

From America to Africa: Hip Hop's Influence in
Tess Onwueme's Shakara: Dance-Hall Queen

By
Juluette Bartlett-Pack

At one time hip hop appeared to be exclusively an American phenomenon started by African Americans on the east coast and later on the west coast. However, hip hop has permeated all cultures in America across all socioeconomic lines. No longer is hip hop relegated to the black underclass so to speak, but young white kids in surburbia have embraced the lyrics, dance moves, and clothing. Hip hop has an international presence including in Asian countries, Latin American countries, and in African countries. Hip hop can have negative and positive repercussions in youth culture. In Shakara:Dance-Hall Queen, Tess Onwueme illustrates the negative and rebellious aspects of hip hop when combined with poverty and other social ills.

 

Collections and Collectors of African Popular Culture:
Case Study of the Library of Congress

By
Laverne Page

Collections, such as those owned by the Library of Congress, provide a means for researchers, scholars and interested browsers to peruse Africana in all of its glory.  Traditionally, Africana collections in institutions of this caliber were for 'serious research' and the printed book was the source of all knowledge.  Since the 1960's, however, this particular library has expanded its collections to include material not previously accepted for serious research. A consequence is that the broad collecting policy of acquiring material in all languages and in all formats has expanded even further in terms of acceptable formats.  What would have been discarded previously is now collected and retained.  This expansion at the Library of Congress includes grey literature, graphic art/literature, posters, videos and other media, collections of memorabilia, such as electioneering material, t-shirts and other textiles.   The challenge today is to preserve this physical material in a media which also provides wide accessibility.  Often digitization is selected for this task.  Increasingly, also, libraries are challenged to collect born-digital material and to archive Internet resources.  These digital collections sometimes duplicate but always complement print resources.

The Library of Congress is a major collector of Africana and it has contributed much toward historical scholarship in African Studies in all subjects.  One of its major acquisitions resources is its overseas offices, one of which, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, covers four West African countries and 22 countries in Central, Southern and Eastern Africa.  Librarians and researchers come from far and wide to Washington, DC, to peruse and to assess the Library's vast collections. The Library's African Section's geographic area specialist librarians seek discussions on research trends and the importance of collecting today what will be eagerly sought in a few years time.  Collaborative web archiving projects with other libraries and research institutions are sought in order to increase the labor pool for digital projects and to decrease costs.  The Library contributes to collaborative microfilming projects which expands the usage and availability of elusive works.  Being in a position to acquire most of the titles brought to our attention, the African Section seeks assistance from its constituency-the general public, researchers and scholars-- on what it would value in the collections.

 

 

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Africa Conference 2007: Popular Cultures in Africa

Convened by Dr. Toyin Falola and Coordinated by Tyler Fleming for the Center for African and African American Studies

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