Introduction: Indigenous African Popular Music

Abstract

Indigenous African popular music has long been an under-appreciated indigenous African media of communication in scholarship. At face value, the significance of indigenous African popular music genres is easily lost to its being seen as pandering to aesthetics and entertainment alone. However, understanding the nature and philosophies of indigenous African popular music will reveal its untapped diversity which can only be unravelled by the knowledge of myriad cultural backgrounds from which its genres originate. Indigenous African popular music is also as robust as the very many artistes who have pioneered, nurtured and succeeded and their protégés who are resiliently sustaining, recreating and popularising its various forms and genres in their respective African communities. Indigenous African popular music genres and artistes have been known to represent the individual African communities and at the same time propagate the communal views about African philosophies and the temporal and spiritual worlds in which they exist. During colonial period and post-independence dispensation, indigenous African music genres and their artistes were mainstreamed in order to tackle emerging issues, to sensitise Africans about the affairs of their respective nations and to conscientise African leaders who have failed and are failing African citizenry about the plight of the people. In fact, some of those emerging issues then have become full blown crises that have adversely affected basic things: food, shelter, health, education that should guarantee the comfortable existence of an average African. This debilitating situation equally has spurred indigenous African popular music artistes, and they have become champions of good governance, marginalised population and repositories of indigenous cultural traditions and cosmologies. After all, artistes, like their counterparts in literary world, can only reflect realities in which they themselves exist. At the same time, indigenous African popular music genres have also served as some beacon to the teeming African youths to express their dreams, frustrations about their environments and to represent themselves. The truth is that African youths are the hope of preserving indigenous African music in their integration of innovative ideas that will help refine African music generally. With the advent of the new media technology, indigenous African popular music and its artistes, the sustenance of indigenous African popular music genres and their artistes has become challenging. Without doubt, it is apparent that all these qualities and functions of indigenous African popular music genres and artistes have not been fully documented; hence, the need for this book: INDIGENOUS AFRICAN POPULAR MUSIC: THE ART AND ITS APPLICATIONS, which attempts to capture all these strands of scholarship in indigenous African popular music. Eighty-one contributors, who are from either academy or professional bodies from fields of knowledge such as Music, African Studies, Media and Journalism, Communication, Political Science, History, Gender Studies, Sociology, English, Indigenous Languages, or Theatre Arts, have submitted their abstracts and proposed topics. Below are summaries of their proposed topics and contents arranged in three sections.