Negotiating Textuality and Aesthetic Tropes in Fújì Performance

Abstract

Fújì music, a Yorùbá popular art, has over the time been criticised as a local musical idiom devoid of any sophisticated aesthetic and functional values, and meant only for the illiterates. This study investigates the multiplicity of aesthetic performances in this Yorùbá art through close examination of a range of Fújì musical song texts in a bid to articulate Yorùbá socio-cultural realities. Engaging an aspect of Ackerman’s concept of hybridity, this study analyses selected works of two Nigerian Fújì musical artistes, Sikiru Ayinde Balogun (a.k.a. Barrister) and Rasaki Kolawole Ilori (a.k.a. Kollington Ayinla) who are representatives of the first generation of Fújì musical artistes. I argue that Fújì music possesses utilitarian relevance to Nigerian audiences as it is engaged in various ways to generate multiple meanings in linguistic, literary and musicological senses through syncretic complexities of postcolonial socio-cultural dialectical practices in Nigeria. The study concludes that Fújì song performance inherently possesses and articulates an array of social values and aesthetics.