Abstract
Scholarship on Nigerian musical spaces have tended towards preoccupation with wealth accumulation and romanticisation of female body generally. However, little scholarly attention has been directed at the engagement of Nigerian popular music with climate change its impact and how people create resilience about it in Niger Delta. The central thesis of this proposal is that people in the Niger Delta area have ideas, assumptions. and values about the environment – a form of indigenous ecological knowledge – that they express in music and that they bring to bear on socio-environmental problems. Musicians whose works reflect and form the dominant trends in the environmental humanities of Niger Delta oil include Felix Liberty, Nneka Egbonu, and Jebu Joe. The study employs ethnographic research, musical and textual analysis in the context of ecomusicology (Allen and Dawe 2016), and the idea of slow violence and environmentalism of the poor (Nixon 2011). The study concludes that music is a productive tool that connects people emotionally to their environment and helps advocate for urban sustainability.
Presenters
Olusegun TitusSenior Lecturer, Department of Music/ Ecomusicology/Climatic Musicology Unit, Obafemi Awolowo University, Osun, Nigeria
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Ecomusicology,Oil,Nigeria
