Call for Panelists
Rethinking African Popular Music: A Critical Celebration of the 35th Anniversary of Christopher Waterman’s Jùjú
The 9th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference
Conference Theme: Continuities and Discontinuities in African Studies
Date: June 17-21, 2025
Format: Hybrid (In Person, University of Lagos/Zoom)
Abstract Deadline: November 15, 2024
Panel Organizer & Chair: Rosemary Popoola (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Email: rpopoola@wisc.edu
The scholarship on African popular music is growing expansively. In Nigeria, Christopher Waterman’s Jùjú: A Social History and Ethnography of an African popular music (1990) marks a watershed in music scholarship in Nigeria, becoming a springboard for researchers to explore other genres in Nigeria and Africa by extension. Waterman's book is significant for its historical insight into Juju and the groundbreaking ways it weaves music with Yoruba thought and practice, history, political economy, culture, and more.
Indeed, Waterman's groundbreaking work has since been followed by other significant works, including but not limited to scholarship on Nigerian artists like Fela Kuti, Yusuf Olatunji, Ebenezer Obey, and Sikiru Ayinde Barrister by scholars like Saheed Aderinto, Tejumola Olaniyan, and Micheal Veal, among others. Similarly, there is an efflorescence of work from Ghana and Eastern and Southern Africa by scholars like Adam Haupt, Iman Perry, Marisa Moorman, Kibona Clark, and Jesse Weaver Shipley. These works creatively blend autobiographical scholarship with deep historical insights about the genres created or popularized by the artists they study.
This panel is a critical celebration of 35 years since Jùjú was published. In addition to engaging with the unfinished business in Jùjú, it seeks contributions that map out the current trends in African popular music research in Africa. It transcends the traditional content and visual analysis of songs and other overused approaches. It welcomes works that reimagine genre, explore the fusion of genres, and investigate how old genres are reinvented and reimagined for new generations through various forms of artistic and creative processes and practices—including but not limited to the role of digital streaming platforms, influencers, and technology in composing, transcribing, adapting, and curating genres. The panel encourages works that weave multiple fields and disciplines, such as psychology, history, ethnomusicology and political economy, gender, and sexuality.
To learn more about the conference, see the general CFP: https://www.lagosstudies.org/lsa-2025
Abstracts to be submitted to: rpopoola@wisc.edu