‘Wetin dey happen?’: Wazobia, popular arts, and nationhood

Emerging mass culture in the popular arts, signposting Nigeria's entry into the postcolonial phase, has helped in creating a site of linguistic identity at variance from the one imposed by British rule. Such a reconstitution of the colonial/indigenous subject/psyche via the ‘vernacular’ medium of popular arts, which Karin Barber views as a hybridized cultural domain, is sometimes an unconscious, often a decanonical and, to follow Victor Turner, liminal phenomenon that displaces English as the language of ‘high’ culture and civilization, providing in the alternative a metissage of languages including English, Nigerian Pidgin English, and the so-called vernaculars whose ultimate outcome could be positive for the overall development of society. Framed within cultural studies and postcolonial theory, this article explores the nexus between nationhood and national identity implicit in the efflorescence of indigenous languages and dialects in contemporary popular music in Nigeria. Di new things people dey do with our art and culture dey show say our people no dey copy oyinbo style and language again. Na true say no be everybody sabi wetin dey happen when dem use wazobia1 do di things wey dem dey do for our new art and entertainment culture, di culture wey Karin Barber say na mixture of oyinbo and our local style and Victor Turner say make us be like person wey confuse; but di way people dey take yanga blow our local language dem and pidgin English for our art and entertainment culture, so tay dem no dey blow oyinbo grammar like before fit come take style-style do our society better. Di thing I do here na to use cultural studies and postcolonial theory explain di link wey dey between a country and di people way of life, and how our people dey blow our local language (wazobia) for music for Nigeria dis days.