Nigerian Popular Music: Social Mediation Amid Musicality

Music is a fundamental feature of the African society. One of its indispensable values is its entertainment function. Music has also been used overtime to engender positive social changes in the society. Using this popular medium, traditional African musicians and poets have used their composing ingenuity not only to please their audience but also to lampoon, satirize, moralize, preach and call for individual and collective changes or conformity to established social, religious, or cultural norms, as the circumstances dictate. In Nigeria’s recent past, the late Fela Anikulapo- Kuti, Sunny Okosun, Ebenezer Obey, and Osita Osadebe are examples of musicians who used their music to comment on the challenges of life in Nigeria and elsewhere. They also gained popularity from the entertainment value of their various kinds of music. However, commercialisation brought about by the realities of the socio-political and economic conditions of life seems to have made the music of emerging Nigerian musicians lose social relevance. This article studies via document analysis the thematic trends in some of the songs of Asa, a popular Nigerian musician who has received wide acclaim across the world. This paper concludes that social relevance and commercial success are two states which can be achieved simultaneously by emerging Nigerian musicians without apprehension, especially in a world which rates commercial success as a parameter for popularity.