What is it about?
Fújì music, a Yorùbá popular art, has over time been criticised as a local musical idiom devoid of any sophisticated aesthetic and functional values and meant only for the illiterates. This study investigates the diversity of aesthetic performances in this Yorùbá art through a close examination of a range of Fújì musical song texts in a bid to articulate Yorùbá socio-cultural realities. Engaging an aspect of Ackerman’s concept of hybridity, this study analyses selected works of two Nigerian Fújì musical artistes, Sikiru Ayinde Balogun (a.k.a. Barrister) and Rasaki Kolawole Ilori (a.k.a. Kollington Ayinla) who are representatives of the first generation of Fújì musical artistes. I argue that Fújì music possesses utilitarian relevance to Nigerian audiences as it is engaged in various ways to generate multiple meanings in linguistic, literary, and musicological senses through syncretic complexities of postcolonial socio-cultural dialectical practices in Nigeria. The study concludes that Fújì song performance inherently possesses and articulates an array of social values and aesthetics.
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Why is it important?
This study foregrounds the significance of Fújì performance to the Yorùbá lifeworld and unveils the utilitarian dynamics and relevance of the idiom to the Nigerian socio-cultural quotidian realities as it is engaged in various ways to generate multiple meanings in linguistic, literary, and musicological senses through syncretic complexities of postcolonial socio-cultural dialectical practices. The study concludes that Fújì song performance inherently possesses and articulates an array of social values and aesthetics.
Perspectives
It is interesting how the article ruptures and dismantles the perception of Fújì music as an ingenuous, artless, or unsophisticated musical configuration. It is hopeful that Fújì song-poets would be seen as organic intellectuals not only because they theorise new social experiences in cultural politics but also because they deploy artistic agency to challenge the norms and reproduce unconventional knowledge with translocal dynamics that project Black authentic expression.
Dr Stephen Boluwaduro
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Negotiating Textuality and Aesthetic Tropes in Fújì Performance, Matatu, October 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/18757421-05202003.
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