Fourteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Scholarship on musical and poetry representation abounds. However, little has been directed at the narrative of oil exploration and honeybee displacement and endangerment in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. This paper examines musical and poetry narratives about honey deploying ethnographic, musical and textual analysis based on ecomusicology theory. Songs and poems of selected Nigerian artistes such as Niyi Adedokun, Akin Ogundokun, Nneka Egbuna, Ubrei-Joe Jeru, Ojaide Tanure and Idem Emmanuel Etop about honeybee displacement and environmental degradation in Niger Delta were utilised to represent issues of honeybee and oil degradation. I argue that Nigerian music, chants and poetry has the capacity to navigate the issue of honeybee and its fate which could help advocate for global and local efforts at preserving this insect through the reduction of fossil fuel exploitation and resultant pollution that has resulted in climate changes with its attendant consequence of annihilating the natural habitat of the honeybees.