The Spirit is the Music: Osun's Aesthetic Manifestation in Reggae-Dancehall Music
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
Ogunbowale, Mopelola O.
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
Foster, Cecil
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
State University of New York at Buffalo
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2019
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
284 p.
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Body granting the degree
State University of New York at Buffalo
Text preceding or following the note
2019
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
The Spirit is the Music: Osun's Aesthetic Manifestation in Reggae-Dancehall Music examines the manifestations of Osun, a Black Goddess of West African ancestry in Konto music, a form of reggae-dancehall music produced in Ajegunle, an urban slum located in the Ajeromi-Ifelodun area of Lagos, Nigeria since the 1980s. Combining ethnographic field work (that includes oral and focus group interviewing) with a close and intertextual readings of sacred texts, oral traditions, song lyrics, song videos, journal articles and books; this dissertation makes two central arguments. The first is that Osun's cosmological manifestations as water, womb, goddess of fertility, malevolent and benevolent force, as documented in Yoruba and other African derived religions, represents Black cultural production as intercultural, resistant and feminist. Consequently, from Osun cosmologies, The Spirit is the Music derives three aesthetic manifestations of Osun: aesthetics of cyclicity, creative destruction, and female power and authority. These aesthetic manifestations are evident in Konto music as interculturality, creativity, resistance and (female) power and authority. The second argument is that these attributes of Osun manifest in Konto music through its aesthetic and rhythmic connections to Jamaican reggae and dancehall music, its critiques of the post-colonial Nigerian state, and also, through its inclusion of women as creative agents in music making and performance.