In a continent remarkable for its receptivity to “creative potentiality,” a glimpse at its thriving universe of popular arts quickly reveals the limits of dogmatic, discipline-centered devotion to “genre” (Barber, 2000). And while the “open and incorporative” nature of West African popular production is certainly animated by the basic elements of genre, framing the concept as a finite product of ordered literary laws seems incongruous with practical and popular articulations on the continent. At the intersection of print and visual culture—another synthesis of genres—the Yorùbá Photoplay Series are borne from an array of literary and nonliterary sources, processes and contexts that resonated strongly with pseudo-literate, yet deeply engaged, co-creative audiences at the dawn of colonial independence.
