Afrobeat,Fela and Beyond: Scenes, Style and Ideology

[摘要] Afrobeat first emerged in the late 1960s amid the rapidly changing postcolonial terrain of Lagos, Nigeria. Created by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1938-1997), the genre blends scathing anti-establishment lyrics with Yoruba traditional music and Western forms, particularly jazz. Fela's ideological dictum: Music is the Weapon of the Future, encapsulates his view of music as an oppositional tool, his enactment of which led to frequent violent confrontations with the Nigerian state. Throughout his lifetime, Fela held hegemonic sway over afrobeat's stylistic and ideological trajectories. However, following his death, the genre has witnessed a global upsurge with protégés emerging in New York City, San Francisco, Paris, London and other cultural capitals of the world.In my dissertation, I chronicle afrobeat's transnational networks and discuss processes of stylistic and ideological affiliation through which such networks have emerged. Using the conceptual tool of genre as social process, I combine archival and ethnographic data collected during several months of fieldwork in the United States and Nigeria, in order to argue the conditionality of genre definitions and boundaries.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh

[效力级别] Afrobeat