Preface

Summary

When I won a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Birmingham in 2010, I thought of it as an extraordinary opportunity to revise my doctoral thesis for publication, hone my research skills, and prepare for a tenure-track position. I had no idea how profoundly impactful that opportunity would be on my career trajectory as an academic. The work I did at the University of Birmingham ten years ago continues to shape my current scholarship, including this edited volume. I am particularly grateful to Professor Karin Barber, my postdoc advisor, who not only gave me a free hand to explore whatever wild ideas I had but invited me to codirect a graduate seminar on Media and Popular Arts in Africa. The idea for this edited volume was inspired by that seminar. It was in that seminar that I was struck by the centrality of youth in the production, consumption, and circulation of popular arts and culture in Africa.

This volume examines some of the contemporary popular arts, media, and everyday signifying practices of marginalized African youth as well as how these expressive forms function as important social platforms for popular expressivity and consciousness. What the collection demonstrates is that not only are young people in Africa the key producers, promoters, and consumers of popular culture, they are the new drivers of everyday culture in general, functioning as the new mediators and gatekeepers of mainstream culture, as powerful purveyors of new cultural codes and tastes, as prescribers of new moral values and mentalities, as the mobilizers and agitators bringing about revolutionary social change, and as innovators and modernizers who excavate, refurbish, and reintegrate local expressive forms into the global popular cultural imagination.

Like most research projects, this one has been ongoing for a few years, and all the contributors have been extremely patient and committed the entire time. From the bottom of my heart, I thank all of you for trusting me with your precious research projects and for standing with me throughout the long and difficult journey of bringing the project to fruition. I am particularly proud of the graduate students and junior scholars in the collection who signed up at short notice to join the project and submitted incredibly insightful contributions.