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Abstract
This paper explores how Fela Anikulapo Kuti of Nigeria and Miriam Makeba of South Africa utilised their popular songs to communicate opposition against certain established political orders in their respective African societies. Popular songs have always been formidable instruments of political expression. They play serious roles in general socio-political engineering as well as have a great place in the expression of conflicts amongst classes in the society; especially given the Marxian position that history of all human societies is the history of class struggle. Taking popular songs generally as tools of political communication - that which can be used for electoral, endorsement, review, protest and other purposes; and qualitatively drawing a comparative analysis of selected songs of Fela and Makeba, the paper particularly asserts that indigenization and de-foreignisation of popular songs are key to their effective use in communicating opposition to perceived political anomalies within a social formation, as could be seen in the cases of Fela and Makeba against colonial masters and apartheid lords during their times.
Keywords: Popular Songs, Political Communication, Political Expression, Indigenization, De-foreignisation, Opposition, Human Societies
Introduction
All over the world, popular songs have always been a formidable instrument of political expressions. They are used generally as tools of political communication; that which can be elections, protest, endorsement, review, patriotism or others; and they play serious roles in general socio-political engineering too. In terms of class struggle, which Karl Marx has for long declared as the centrality of all human society, popular songs have a great place in the expression of conflicts amongst classes in society.
This is a qualitative and comparative analysis of how Fela and Makeba utilised some selected ones of their songs for effective communication of opposition in politics to the peoples in their immediate societies as well as beyond. In the course of this, the study first scrutinizes the various relationship that popular songs generally share with politics, and how the relationship devolves into political communication. Within this context, it is observed that whereas popular songs have been used for political communication in Nigeria and South Africa, no comparative assessment has been made of Makeba and Kuti in order to gauge the particular effect they have in specific communication effects, especially opposition. This constitutes the...