Readings in African Popular Culture (Readings in African Studies) [Paperback]

Karin Barber (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0253211409 | ISBN-13: 978-0253211408 | Edition: First Am edition

"This is an extraordinarily rich collection full of informative detail and excellent interpretative analysis. There is not a single piece that fails to fascinate... " —Leeds African Studies Bulletin

"... an impressive collection of inspiring and thought-provoking essays." —Media Development

"This is a book that should find its way into many syllabuses and onto the bookshelves of Africanist scholars in many disciplines. Its publication marks a key turning point in scholarlship on the cultures of contemporary Africa." —Africa Today

This book surveys the popular culture of contemporary Africa, including popular literature, oral narrative and poetry, dance, drama, music, and visual art, with special emphasis on the verbal arts. The essays cover six main areas: views of the field; oral tradition revisited; social history, social criticism and interpretation; women in popular culture; "little genres of everyday life"; the local and the global.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...likely to become the main source book for African culture studies during the next decade... the enormous value of Readings in African Popular Culture in bringing together such a heterogeneous selection of nuanced, well-researched, thought-provoking articles from the emerging field of African Cultural Studies. - David Kerr in AFRICAN THEATRE ... a critical testament of African popular culture. I strongly recommend it to readers and libraries.- Tanure Ojaide in AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW ... extraordinarily rich collection full of informative detail and excellent interpretative analysis. There is not a single piece that fails to fascinate; my own favourites include Olatunde Bayo Lawuyi on 'The World of the Yoruba Taxi Driver', Achille Mbembe on Cameroonian cartoons, and Alec J.C. Pongweni on 'The Chimurenga Songs of the Zimbabwean War of Revolution'. Broader contextualising essays include Barber's own scholarly Introduction and Johannes Fabian's 1978 essay 'Popular Culture in Africa'. The volume both reprints pieces that have previously been published (mainly in journals) and offers pieces specially commissioned for this publication. The bibliographical information brought together is worth the price of the volume alone.- Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies in the University of Leeds, in LEEDS AFRICAN STUDIES BULLETIN ... (one of) a rich diet of delicious scholarship on contemporary African culture... - Graham Furniss in AFRICAN AFFAIRS Readings in African Popular Culture is an important and welcome contribution to a field where standard textbooks are hard to find... Much in the volume points to the fact that although popular culture studies may still be in its formative stage as a field, it has already over the years, generated work of great insight and mature scholarship. ... an impressive collection of inspiring and thought-provoking essays. - Francis B. Nyamnjoh in MEDIA DEVELOPMENT --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Karin Barber is Senior Lecturer at the Centre of West African Studies, the University of Birmingham. She has published extensively on Yorùbá oral literature, religion, and popular culture and worked and traveled with a Yorùbá theatre group in the early 1980s. Barber is author of Yorùbá Dùn ún So: A Beginners Course in Yorùbá (Part I), I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oríkì, Women and the Past in a Yorùbá Town, and Yorùbá Popular Theatre: Three Plays by the Oyin Adéjobí Company, and editor (with P. F. de Moraes Farias) of Discourse and Its Disguises: The Interpretation of African Oral Texts and Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in West Africa.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press; First Am edition edition (September 22, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253211409
• ISBN-13: 978-0253211408
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 8.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,345,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars discussing pop fiction, May 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Readings in African Popular Culture (Readings in African Studies) (Paperback)

I can't say that I picked this book out myself... I'm reading for my anthropology class on pop fiction adn politics, nonetheless it has served as a wonderful resource. The articles span several subjects, countries, and view points. Particularly excelent is Karen Barber's introduction which serves as an excelent starting point for the study of pop-culture in the setting of any region.