African music is more than Afrobeats!
Fuji Train stops by African Cultural Studies at UW Madison! From Ibadan, the city “running splash of rust and gold-flung and scattered among seven hills like broken China in the sun,” where the Fuji documentary was first premiered at the biannual celebration of the founder of the genre a few weeks ago, the Fuji train stops at my classroom which holds in one of the tallest building on UW Madison campus hopefully to reach the world like Afrobeat/Afrobeats. I am happy to bring fuji to my students for many reasons, but space suggests that only some things be aired. One primary reason is that I am trying to fight my unconscious complicity in Africa’s single story. Sometimes, as intellectuals, we assign a known name, text, and genre because we try to pander to the “comfort” of our host.
In this course, under the module on African soundscapes, we explore race, Identities, and music in South Africa—the role of Mcees and hip-hop artists in cultural politics. Then, in Angola, we focus on semba as a musical genre that emerged at a particular moment in late Angola. Coming to West Africa, the usual would be Afrobeat/Afrobeats, but I flip the script. How can we tell the West that Africa is not a country, but we only give a single genre of the multiplicities of unique African sounds?
African music is more than Afrobeat/Afrobeats. While we are appreciative that the genre is taking its rightful place in world music, even if Grammy does not see us. It nonetheless represents an African export that is loved. At least two of my students attended the Burnaboy concert in Chicago. But when I asked them about other genres like Hiplife, Fuji, wassoulou, and Waka, the usual response was what is that? So today na The Fuji Documentary.
I won’t be able to challenge the African single-genre story without the support of the winner of the Dan David Prize, the world’s largest history prize, and producer and director of The Fuji Documentary, Professor Saheed Aderinto of Florida International University.
Thank you for taking time out of your hectic schedule for me and my students and for your generosity in granting us access to the documentary before other institutions and film festivals. Thank you for helping us break the “translation impasse,” which has been another reason people don’t consider other African genres with your culturally sensitive translation of Yoruba to English.
Beyond my hard-earned money that enters Nigeria every now and then, I hope this is counted among the many diasporan remittances that Professor Aderinto told us to constitute his ingenious idea of “intellectual remittance.” Also, I am thankful that Prof. Aderinto brought one of the cast members, Elder Odeyemi. Prof.’s justification is that if they are good as “informants,” they qualify to be where we share the knowledge.
I am equally thankful to my department chair and every faculty for supporting this.
Posted on Facebook on February 28, 2024
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