Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures

Abstract

Opening ParagraphOne effect of specialization in the field of African Studies has been to prevent or hinder the study of subjects which, by their very nature, demand interdisciplinary interests and competences. Emerging popular culture is such a field. Division of labor among various social sciences and between the social sciences and the humanities—late-comers to Anglo-American concerns with Africa—have long worked like a conjuring trick: making vast and vigorous expressions of African experiencede factoinvisible, especially to expatriate researchers. African scholars have been slow to denounce this state of affairs, perhaps out of an elitist need to set themselves apart from the loud and colorful bursts of creativity in music, oral lore, and the visual arts emerging from the masses.