Indigenised Popular Songs for Oppositional Political Communication : Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba in Perspectives

This paper explores how Fela Anikulapo Kuti of Nigeria and Miriam Makeba of South Africa utilised their popular songs to communicate opposition against certain established political orders in their respective African societies. Popular songs have always been formidable instruments of political expression. They play serious roles in general socio-political engineering as well as have a great place in the expression of conflicts amongst classes in the society; especially given the Marxian position that history of all human societies is the history of class struggle. Taking popular songs generally as tools of political communication - that which can be used for electoral, endorsement, review, protest and other purposes; and qualitatively drawing a comparative analysis of selected songs of Fela and Makeba, the paper particularly asserts that indigenization and deforeignisation of popular songs are key to their effective use in communicating opposition to perceived political anomalies within a social formation, as could be seen in the cases of Fela and Makeba against colonial masters and apartheid lords during their times.