More than Sound and Lyrics:
How Fuji Became an African Popular Culture
Saheed Aderinto
Western Carolina University
From a country on the verge of disintegration during the civil war between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria entered the 1970s with economic prosperity—thanks to the enormous wealth from crude oil. Many Nigerians had disposable income to organize private parties, go to the cinema, and patronize performing art. Record label ownership, a domain previously dominated by foreign multinational corporations, became popular among local entrepreneurs who capitalized on the new craze for art consumption to launch successful business. While Afrobeat was born, Juju finally toppled highlife, even as countless of other creative musical genres emerged and disappeared.
Were, a religious musical tradition of the Yoruba left its seasonal and Islamic domain to become a popular, secular, and everyday sound. The transformation of Were to Fuji took place within the context of mass consumption of electronic gadgets, and a flourishing economy that found new enthusiasm for nightlife and superfluous sociality. In this presentation, I engage with the history of Fuji, the most dominant Yoruba popular culture in the 21st century. I contextualize its emergence within the framework of endless search for unique sound and identity which defined popular culture before and after the 1970s. I pay close attention to the new socialization habit, fashion, and the print media to argue that sound and lyrics are just a fraction of what makes Fuji unique. The distinctiveness of Fuji found strong expression in its capacity to define normative notions of gender, sexuality, self-fashioning, and everything understanding of reality.