Bishop, Doh Bro!
Thanks for sharing your approach to the teaching of African popular music and culture. My approach is strategically essentialist in recognition of the struggles towards African unity. As you know, the African Union has recognized the Diaspora as the sixth region of the African Union Commission. I believe that we scholars should catch up with developments on the ground by defying the fictional colonial boundaries and by keeping all of our people in mind when we theorize African culture. If we exclude the music of the Diaspora from the traditional and only feast on the stale left-overs of the colonial anthropologists who prefer to dwell on the supposedly lewd subtexts of songs celebrating the birth of twins (as Amutabi reported), then why would we include contemporary African musicians who swim in the currents of the Black Atlantic to and fro with the Diaspora families?
My startegic point is that there is no campus in North America where Asian Studies is forced to compete for scarece resources against Asian-American Studies (or Hispanic Studies against Hispanic American Studies; Women's Studies against American Women Studies; Labor Studies against American Labor Studies; Jewish Studies against Jewish American Studies) but it is common to have African Studies hijacked by those who see Africana Studies as rivals on some campuses with the support of some from Africa who seek to defend an imagined authenticity of the purely African as against the supposedly diluted Africanness of the Diaspora. Also in Africa, we have very many prominent programs in African Studies and I am advocating that we add the missing 'a' at the end to turn them all into Africana Studies Programs of the global African presence while also decolonizing the African Studies in North America by bringing them under the hegemony of Africana Studies.
But more specifically to answer your question: Yes, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, The Last Poets, Bessie Smith, Billy Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Paul Robeson, The Jacksons, The Mighty Sparrow, Black Stalin, Buju Banton, Akon, Alicia Keys, Destiny's Child, Queen Latifa, Tupac and Biggie are all traditionally African in every sense of the word. Tradition is always an invention, according to the African-Born Eric Hobsbawm. All the artists that I cited see themselves and are seen by everyone as people of African descent and their music is definitely rooted in African communities at home and abroad. I agree that Amutabi appears dated by the preference for colonial anthropological or musicological sources and I will check out your suggestion of Agawu as a post-colonial source. However, the point I am making about the Black Atlantic was also made broadly by Paul Gilroy - that it is counter-productive to separate African Diaspora culture from African culture given that they mix very well.
My approach also obviously goes beyond African musicians to recognize the fact that even Elvis Presley and Johny Cash have been said to have been tapping into the roots of African traditional music through the influences of the Black Baptist gospel performances on rock n roll music. The same has been said of the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Eminem. In other words, almost all genres of modern music emerged from the creative energy of people of African descent. Yet scholars continue to succumb to the old colonial tactics of divide and conquer by persuading some to dismiss as non-African, the creative work of many people of African descent.
Finally, I plead guilty to a bit of over-interpretation of Mama Africa's Malaika given that Bonny M lip-synced to the same tune without much revolutionary credibility. However, my approach is consistent with the view of Terry Eagleton that there is an ideology in every aesthetic. I did not sample the vibrant genre of gospel music in Afridca today but when you listen closely to the likes of Obi Igwe (Ndi Ochichi and his biblical interpretation of the story of Joseph) or to the other gospel singers like Chinyere Uduma, you will notice that they are almost always making direct political interventions in the City of men and not only craving the city of God even when the metaphors for oppressors are those of Satan. I confessed my preference in interpreting popular music as political statements to my students and encouraged them to find their own analytical voices and perspectives by, for example, looking for themes on gender relations, or motifs about the environment, songs about technology or songs about science. My approach may be a good example of The Single Story of Adichie in the sense that it is not bad to see politics in every aspect of popular culture.
Doh brother, but you did not answer my initial question: What are your top ten hits of all time and why? I bet that you will include Victor Uwaifo's Guitar Boy in that list.
Biko
From: Pablo Idahosa <pidahosa@yorku.ca>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, 22 February 2013, 9:28
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africanizing Knowledge
--
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Thanks for sharing your approach to the teaching of African popular music and culture. My approach is strategically essentialist in recognition of the struggles towards African unity. As you know, the African Union has recognized the Diaspora as the sixth region of the African Union Commission. I believe that we scholars should catch up with developments on the ground by defying the fictional colonial boundaries and by keeping all of our people in mind when we theorize African culture. If we exclude the music of the Diaspora from the traditional and only feast on the stale left-overs of the colonial anthropologists who prefer to dwell on the supposedly lewd subtexts of songs celebrating the birth of twins (as Amutabi reported), then why would we include contemporary African musicians who swim in the currents of the Black Atlantic to and fro with the Diaspora families?
My startegic point is that there is no campus in North America where Asian Studies is forced to compete for scarece resources against Asian-American Studies (or Hispanic Studies against Hispanic American Studies; Women's Studies against American Women Studies; Labor Studies against American Labor Studies; Jewish Studies against Jewish American Studies) but it is common to have African Studies hijacked by those who see Africana Studies as rivals on some campuses with the support of some from Africa who seek to defend an imagined authenticity of the purely African as against the supposedly diluted Africanness of the Diaspora. Also in Africa, we have very many prominent programs in African Studies and I am advocating that we add the missing 'a' at the end to turn them all into Africana Studies Programs of the global African presence while also decolonizing the African Studies in North America by bringing them under the hegemony of Africana Studies.
But more specifically to answer your question: Yes, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, The Last Poets, Bessie Smith, Billy Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Paul Robeson, The Jacksons, The Mighty Sparrow, Black Stalin, Buju Banton, Akon, Alicia Keys, Destiny's Child, Queen Latifa, Tupac and Biggie are all traditionally African in every sense of the word. Tradition is always an invention, according to the African-Born Eric Hobsbawm. All the artists that I cited see themselves and are seen by everyone as people of African descent and their music is definitely rooted in African communities at home and abroad. I agree that Amutabi appears dated by the preference for colonial anthropological or musicological sources and I will check out your suggestion of Agawu as a post-colonial source. However, the point I am making about the Black Atlantic was also made broadly by Paul Gilroy - that it is counter-productive to separate African Diaspora culture from African culture given that they mix very well.
My approach also obviously goes beyond African musicians to recognize the fact that even Elvis Presley and Johny Cash have been said to have been tapping into the roots of African traditional music through the influences of the Black Baptist gospel performances on rock n roll music. The same has been said of the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Eminem. In other words, almost all genres of modern music emerged from the creative energy of people of African descent. Yet scholars continue to succumb to the old colonial tactics of divide and conquer by persuading some to dismiss as non-African, the creative work of many people of African descent.
Finally, I plead guilty to a bit of over-interpretation of Mama Africa's Malaika given that Bonny M lip-synced to the same tune without much revolutionary credibility. However, my approach is consistent with the view of Terry Eagleton that there is an ideology in every aesthetic. I did not sample the vibrant genre of gospel music in Afridca today but when you listen closely to the likes of Obi Igwe (Ndi Ochichi and his biblical interpretation of the story of Joseph) or to the other gospel singers like Chinyere Uduma, you will notice that they are almost always making direct political interventions in the City of men and not only craving the city of God even when the metaphors for oppressors are those of Satan. I confessed my preference in interpreting popular music as political statements to my students and encouraged them to find their own analytical voices and perspectives by, for example, looking for themes on gender relations, or motifs about the environment, songs about technology or songs about science. My approach may be a good example of The Single Story of Adichie in the sense that it is not bad to see politics in every aspect of popular culture.
Doh brother, but you did not answer my initial question: What are your top ten hits of all time and why? I bet that you will include Victor Uwaifo's Guitar Boy in that list.
Biko
From: Pablo Idahosa <pidahosa@yorku.ca>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, 22 February 2013, 9:28
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africanizing Knowledge
Biko,
While I might not agree with you about your interpretation of the great Makeba's version (she has a number of them; and that's Blondy, BTW). I like the spirit of your intent. Having taught Africa popular culture for many years here at York, a key section of which is about music, I obviously think that expressive culture and musics in particular tells us a great deal about the past, and of course the various ways in which peoples adapted, choose (and rejected) forms of music from elsewhere, European or otherwise. They are essential elements to try to understand, as it were, the field of meaning that characterizes a great deal of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial "realities". However, none of the people whom you cite are "traditional", in any sense of that term, if by that you mean drawing upon a field of practice and meaning that are singularly rooted in their communities. Amutabi's piece, which while useful, is musicologically (or ethnomusicologically, for those who prefer this approach to African music) somewhat, dated piece. It needs additional sources, such Agawu (Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions: the most profound aspect of the impact of colonialism . . . [was] the transformation in terms of discourse about African music. . . . This discourse translates into imagined and real presentations and representations of African music, or music by Africans, that have been frozen and stereo-typed') and, amongst others, Jean Kidula's work on church music.
Music in the Life of the African Chu The main issue, through, is that music and performance (you sometimes cannot separate he two) are essential to Africanizing the curriculum.
Cheers,
Pablo
On 2013-02-20 2:54 PM, Biko Agozino wrote:
While I might not agree with you about your interpretation of the great Makeba's version (she has a number of them; and that's Blondy, BTW). I like the spirit of your intent. Having taught Africa popular culture for many years here at York, a key section of which is about music, I obviously think that expressive culture and musics in particular tells us a great deal about the past, and of course the various ways in which peoples adapted, choose (and rejected) forms of music from elsewhere, European or otherwise. They are essential elements to try to understand, as it were, the field of meaning that characterizes a great deal of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial "realities". However, none of the people whom you cite are "traditional", in any sense of that term, if by that you mean drawing upon a field of practice and meaning that are singularly rooted in their communities. Amutabi's piece, which while useful, is musicologically (or ethnomusicologically, for those who prefer this approach to African music) somewhat, dated piece. It needs additional sources, such Agawu (Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions: the most profound aspect of the impact of colonialism . . . [was] the transformation in terms of discourse about African music. . . . This discourse translates into imagined and real presentations and representations of African music, or music by Africans, that have been frozen and stereo-typed') and, amongst others, Jean Kidula's work on church music.
Cheers,
Pablo
On 2013-02-20 2:54 PM, Biko Agozino wrote:
--Using Toyin Falola's Africanization Knowledge for my Introduction to African Studies class, we are discussing chapter 8 by Amutabi on siansm often do not know their Traditional African Music as a source of cultural history. Here are my reflections, let me know what you think:
Biko
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