A History of African Popular Culture

A journey through the history of African popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Karin Barber (Author)

9781107016897, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 January 2018

208 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.6 cm, 0.48 kg

'Barber's exploration of popular culture producers and the reservoirs they tap of local resonance and trans-local flows is magisterial. Extracting fresh insight from studies across Africa, she upends existing theoretical models by showing how publics produce meaning through the act of consumption, and how producers continually consume to create anew.' Kelly Askew, University of Michigan

Popular culture in Africa is the product of everyday life: the unofficial, the non-canonical. And it is the dynamism of this culture that makes Africa what it is. In this book, Karin Barber offers a journey through the history of music, theatre, fiction, song, dance, poetry, and film from the seventeenth century to the present day. From satires created by those living in West African coastal towns in the era of the slave trade, to the poetry and fiction of townships and mine compounds in South Africa, and from today's East African streets where Swahili hip hop artists gather to the juggernaut of the Nollywood film industry, this book weaves together a wealth of sites and scenes of cultural production. In doing so, it provides an ideal text for students and researchers seeking to learn more about the diversity, specificity and vibrancy of popular cultural forms in African history.

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Early popular culture: sources and silences
3. Mines, migrant labour and township culture
4. The city and the road
5. The crowd, the state … and songs
6. The media: globalisation and deregulation from the 1990s till today
7. Conceptualising change in African popular culture
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH]