Music Studies Colloquia: Tosin Gbogi
Advertisement
Guest lecture by Dr. Tosin Gbogi, Assistant Professor of English at UMN.
Nigerian Hip-Hop: Race, Knowledge, and the Poetics of Resistance
Nigerian Hip-Hop examines questions lying at the intersection of rap poetics, race, knowledge, and popular culture. Troubling the conventional paradigm of listening and reading in which hip- hop in Nigeria stands for imperial machinery, it directs attention to the culture’s provocative meditations on the afterlives of slavery and colonialism. The book tracks these meditations across a wide range of sources, including lyrics, music videos, cover arts, liner notes, photographs, social media, archival materials, and oral interviews with dozens of the key figures at the center of the culture. Placing these sources in conversation with one another, it examines them closely for what they reveal about the contemporary trajectories of African poetry, popular culture, transnational media flows, youth resistance, and pan-African solidarity. The first comprehensive and systematic account of Nigerian hip-hop—one of the world’s oldest and most vibrant of such scenes—this book attends to the literary forms, the density of ideas, historical encounters, ideological struggles, and the lively internal debates that have animated the culture for more than four decades.
Bio
Tosin Gbogi is an assistant professor of English at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. His research focuses on African and African diaspora literatures, popular culture and global hip-hop, poetry and poetics, and postcolonial and decolonial theories. His articles appear in the Journal of African Cultural Studies; Journal of Postcolonial Writing; and Folklore, among other journals.
Nigerian Hip-Hop: Race, Knowledge, and the Poetics of Resistance
Nigerian Hip-Hop examines questions lying at the intersection of rap poetics, race, knowledge, and popular culture. Troubling the conventional paradigm of listening and reading in which hip- hop in Nigeria stands for imperial machinery, it directs attention to the culture’s provocative meditations on the afterlives of slavery and colonialism. The book tracks these meditations across a wide range of sources, including lyrics, music videos, cover arts, liner notes, photographs, social media, archival materials, and oral interviews with dozens of the key figures at the center of the culture. Placing these sources in conversation with one another, it examines them closely for what they reveal about the contemporary trajectories of African poetry, popular culture, transnational media flows, youth resistance, and pan-African solidarity. The first comprehensive and systematic account of Nigerian hip-hop—one of the world’s oldest and most vibrant of such scenes—this book attends to the literary forms, the density of ideas, historical encounters, ideological struggles, and the lively internal debates that have animated the culture for more than four decades.
Bio
Tosin Gbogi is an assistant professor of English at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. His research focuses on African and African diaspora literatures, popular culture and global hip-hop, poetry and poetics, and postcolonial and decolonial theories. His articles appear in the Journal of African Cultural Studies; Journal of Postcolonial Writing; and Folklore, among other journals.
Advertisement
Where is it happening?
Room 280 Ferguson Hall, 2106 S 4th St, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0441, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherUniversity of Minnesota, School of Music
