Reggae is a Love-letter Sent from Jamaica down to Ajegunle for We to Mash Up”:
Sonic, Activist and Feminist Practices Among Reggae-Dancehall Practitioners in Ajegunle, Nigeria
with with Dr. Mopelolade Ogunbowale
Wednesday, December 1st, 2021
5.00pm – 6.30pm
Since its emergence in the 1970s and 80s, reggae-dancehall music has shaped global sonic, stylistic and discursive practices of “activist resistance”. Focusing on feminist practices of reggae-dancehall practitioners in Ajegunle, an urban slum located in the city of Lagos, South-Western Nigeria, this chapter examines music making and resistance politics articulated in Konto, a reggae-dancehall styled musical culture created in Ajegunle in the late 1980s. It argues that Konto attests to the continued aesthetic conversations between Jamaica and the rest of the Afro-Atlantic world, but also constitutes resistance to the worsening economic, political and social conditions that beset post-independence Nigeria in the late 1980s. The Afro-Atlantic music dialogue expressed in Konto occurs through sonic and stylistic revisions of the rhythm and aesthetics of Jamaican reggae-dancehall music, but also embodies Nigerian feminist lyrical, discursive, rhythmic and embodied resistance.
Dr. Mopelolade Ogunbowale is a Visiting Assistant Professor with the Department of Africana and American Studies, University at Buffalo. Her specializations are in Africana religious, gender, sexuality, popular music and urban studies.