When I won a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Birmingham in 2010, I thought of it as an extraordinary opportunity to revise my doctoral thesis for publication, hone my research skills, and prepare for a tenure-track position. I had no idea how profoundly impactful that opportunity would be on my career trajectory as an academic. The work I did at the University of Birmingham ten years ago continues to shape my current scholarship, including this edited volume. I am particularly grateful to Professor Karin Barber, my postdoc advisor, who not only gave me a free hand to explore whatever wild ideas I had but invited me to codirect a graduate seminar on Media and Popular Arts in Africa. The idea for this edited volume was inspired by that seminar. It was in that seminar that I was struck by the centrality of youth in the production, consumption, and circulation of popular arts and culture in Africa.

This volume examines some of the contemporary popular arts, media, and everyday signifying practices of marginalized African youth as well as how these expressive forms function as important social platforms for popular expressivity and consciousness. What the collection demonstrates is that not only are young people in Africa the key producers, promoters, and consumers of popular culture, they are the new drivers of everyday culture in general, functioning as the new mediators and gatekeepers of mainstream culture, as powerful purveyors of new cultural codes and tastes, as prescribers of new moral values and mentalities, as the mobilizers and agitators bringing about revolutionary social change, and as innovators and modernizers who excavate, refurbish, and reintegrate local expressive forms into the global popular cultural imagination.

Like most research projects, this one has been ongoing for a few years, and all the contributors have been extremely patient and committed the entire time. From the bottom of my heart, I thank all of you for trusting me with your precious research projects and for standing with me throughout the long and difficult journey of bringing the project to fruition. I am particularly proud of the graduate students and junior scholars in the collection who signed up at short notice to join the project and submitted incredibly insightful contributions.

Introduction

In the introduction to Carlos Moore's book Fela: This Bitch of a Life, Margaret Bushy recalls that “on the day of [Fela Kuti’s] funeral, the streets of Lagos were brought to a standstill, with more than a million people defying the Nigerian government ban on public gatherings that had been imposed by the military dictator General Sani Abacha.” This statement epitomizes the contentious relationship that the popular Nigerian artist had vis-à-vis the political establishment that always viewed his art as subversive and, therefore, a threat to the Nigerian government. More importantly, the feud between Fela Kuti and the Nigerian government mirrors the disdain as well as the fear that African governments hold toward politically engaged artistic productions. In fact, for the longest time, popular music has functioned as a trenchant political site of social activism in Africa primarily because it is the most widely appreciated art form on the continent. From Fela Kuti to Franco Luambo via Miriam Makeba and, more recently, the Y en a marre movement, popular music on the continent has remained a major site for challenging the sociopolitical status quo. As Allen notes, “In many ways, and on different registers, artists are engaging their political circumstances through music”. This essay argues that African musicians have always used their art to challenge or influence the political status quo or specific cultural values. Following in the steps of previous generations, contemporary Francophone West African youth activists are fostering sociopolitical change through art, especially popular rap music, which in recent years has gained wide popularity and visibility among young people. In this regard, this chapter takes a retrospective analysis of the “politicization” of African popular music as a weapon of protest by young artists in Senegal. It examines how the Y en a marre movement has succeeded in occupying the political space in Senegal, especially through the intersection of rap music and sociopolitical activism. Finally, it accords attention to concepts of “musical diatribe” and “musical open letter” as well as the counternarratives emanating from the power structure to discredit and stall these radical artistic movements by youth.

Insurgent Music: Following in the Footsteps of the Previous Generations

Y en a marre was founded in 2011 to protest recurring electrical power outages in Senegal.

Introduction

A nation's historical narrative is a text, both literally as it is printed into history books and metaphorically as it shapes wider discourse and culture. This chapter interrogates the ways in which youth, through participation in the #FeesMustFall protests, are countering and rewriting a key tenet of the South African national text through the manifestation of a new generation's protest culture. We argue that in articulating their protests primarily as an expression of continuity, they challenge the premise of radical change between the apartheid and postapartheid eras, instead framing their protests as the latest iteration of a long struggle against injustice. This chapter examines youth counternarratives expressed in the #FeesMustFall protests through interviews with student participants at Pretoria universities and an analysis of online rhetoric under this hashtag. We focus on the ways in which this collaborative, participatory, and iterative movement engages in the process of rewriting South Africa's dominant national text.

Peterson contends that culture has two possible meanings; “culture as a way of life” and “culture as a range of creative and intellectual practices that are broadly called ‘the arts.’” In the South African context, protest continues to be a cultural practice that unites both meanings through practices such as protest dance (toyi toyi) and song. Within South African freedom songs Jolaosho argues, for example, that [f ]ormative elements of antiphony, repetition, and rhythm constitute a musical practice that organizes protest gatherings, allows for democratic leadership, and fosters collective participation.” Peterson notes that “if we accept that culture is the totality of a people's selfdefinition, development and independence, it then follows that the struggle for freedom will express itself through culture and its social, material and creative forms.” This framing of culture is intimately concerned with power and contextualized within the struggle for freedom and the formation of nations and their narratives. Peterson's framing consequently highlights the ways in which narratives hold cultural power and form systems of meaning that can be interpreted as texts. This perspective aligns closely with Geertz's view that “the culture of people is an ensemble of texts,” and that the real task of studying culture is to gain “access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can, in some extended sense of the term, converse with them.”

Introduction

The agency of youth in the numerous narratives surrounding the South African liberation struggles as well as the postapartheid attempts to keep racism and other forms of discrimination at bay has received considerable scholarly attention. In much of those critiques, the critical approach has often been to emphasize the multiple issues of history and memory and how they relate to questions of race among the different categories of people who make up the national entity now famously styled “the rainbow nation.” This thriving debate provides an opportunity for critical reflections on how much unity can be ascribed to the rainbow nation, which, on the surface, appears beautiful and exhibits peaceful coexistence. Such bourgeoning narratives of the awesomeness of the ‘peaceful’ transition from a segregated apartheid state to a supposedly democratic and inclusive ‘new’ South Africa are often not only popularized by the state, but by the global media, which often peddles the prevalent myth of a national euphoria surrounding the supposed reconciliation of the different races in the new South Africa. What these narratives of national cohesion mask, however, are the uncomfortable compromises and concessions made by both sides of the racial divide to arrive at the much-celebrated peaceful transition. Though much of the bitterness of the past became known through the innovative Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, it was this same body that provided the public with a moral gauge with which to measure the readiness for compromise and forgiveness going forward.

While history and memory cannot be disregarded in any discussion of the trajectory of the South African nation, a look at more recent examples of deep-seated disparities, especially at social and economic levels, suggests that there needs to be a bit more nuance in order to capture the lingering uneven positionality of the numerous layers of identity in the country. South African youth readily come to mind as one major disenfranchised group we need to further understand, as their experience of apartheid and the postliberation struggles related to it is quite different from that of the older generation of South Africans. While the older generation encountered apartheid firsthand and lived through its excruciating realities, the younger generation's understanding of it has been mainly through narratives of angst and the current dispossessions steeped in the systemic structures of inequality sustained by the racially contrived system of segregation.

The text above is an alleluia verse for St. Catherine of Alexandria, which appears in a series of small sixteenth-century printed graduals entitled Misse familiares. It refers to St. Catherine's martyrdom and her ability to intercede on behalf of her supplicants, themes that we have seen in confraternity rituals throughout this book. St. Catherine continued to thrive in popular devotional consciousness well into the sixteenth century; in the various editions of the Misse familiares, she appears paired with St. Nicholas, showing the continuing relationship that the two saints had to each other. Their connection was widely recognized in Western Europe and is neatly summed up by William Caxton in his 1483 edition of the Golden Legend translated into English, where he refers to St. Catherine's virtues and her relationship to other saints:

The advertisements on the title and colophon pages of the Misse familiares imply that they were produced for a very broad market, which likely included Parisian trade and devotional confraternities, students at the University of Paris, and other types of religious settings. This series of printed graduals, which contain five widespread votive masses and a full kyriale, were produced in Paris during the early decades of the sixteenth century, first by Geoffrey Marnef and later by François Regnault. They were associated with a number of other small liturgical books entitled Misse solenniores (which contain a dozen Mass ordinaries for major feast days), Communes prose (which contain fifteen popular sequences), and Passiones novissime (passions according to Matthew and John).

This antiphon text is one of many examples of intercessory prayers found in popular devotions meant to establish a direct connection between saint and supplicant. It appears as part of the Office for St. Barbara in Tournai, Archives et Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale MS A 12 (B-Tc A 12), a chant manuscript with additions from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries used by the Confraternity of the Notaries at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Tournai. Many of the chants for the Mass and Office in liturgical books used by confraternities are in first person narrative and end with the formula “Ora pro nobis,” or “pray for us,” and indeed, this text asks the saint to “make us to be rendered worthy of the laurel of heaven.” In addition to laudatory texts like the one above, devotional literature (Books of Hours, Miracles of the Virgin, the Golden Legend) and the liturgies that developed from it encouraged the laity to identify with the suffering of the saints by focusing on the details of their martyrdom. Music, text, and image all worked together to engage the “emotional imagination,” creating a personal experience of the saint's pain and salvation. New liturgical texts and music created for confraternities in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries were integral to this process.

In this chapter, I explore the material culture of the Confraternity of the Notaries at the Tournai cathedral—in particular, three manuscripts they owned—and what it can tell us about the development of liturgical practices in private devotional communities at this institution. In the absence of any archival documents recording the everyday acts of the confraternity (how they interacted with the diocese, payment of musicians, and all other sundry activities), these manuscripts are the only existing sources reflecting their rituals and place within the cathedral. Since the discovery of these books in the nineteenth century, scholars have investigated isolated parts of their contents but have not sought to view each one as a whole.

In the introduction to this book, I broadly explored how the movement of individuals (clerics and the laity) through different physical and social spaces could be related to the circulation of popular devotional practices cultivated by confraternities. In many cases there are no documents or confraternity registers recording the inner workings of these organizations, or informa-tion about those who were paid to compile and perform their services. Due to these limitations, I have relied on the contents of their existing liturgical books to investigate how the religious practices of these communities developed. As a result of my focus on the musical and textual contents of these sources, I have demonstrated how decentralized religious and spiritual authority was during the time period under study. As individuals, confraternity members were people who worked as merchants and artisans, clerics, and students. As communities, they had the power to develop their own corporate identities. I do not mean to imply that the laity directly challenged ecclesiastical authority. Instead, it is evident that lay authority and ecclesiastical authority were two different things, and that popular devotions, such as those promoted by confraternities, occupied a different space altogether from that of larger ecclesiastical and monastic institutions.

Confraternity liturgies were created and mediated by individuals and communities and were heavily influenced by contact between different networks. The various types of interactions between these entities could have been responsible for the dissemination of religious ideas, and particularly in times of plague, widespread beliefs concerning the healing attributes of certain saints. Those most commonly revered at the time were the fourteen holy helpers, which in northern France included St. Barbara, St. Catherine, and St. Nicholas. The popular devotional practices in this study did not travel in direct, easily traceable lines, but instead through constellations of individuals and communities, all of which were marked by movement—physical, social, and spiritual—resulting in the formation of different identities, with music playing a central role. While my interest has been northern France, looking at these types of movement would be a useful tool for investigations into other geographical areas further north in the Low Countries, east in the Hapsburg lands, and south in Italy. Below, I recap some of the examples from the present work that illustrate each type of movement.

This appendix records all the manuscript and printed liturgical books containing music that were used by confraternities at various institutions in Tournai through the end of the sixteenth century. Because musical sources from Tournai have not been the object of an in-depth study, sources used in the main sanctuary of the cathedral, as well as those used in other chapels at this institution, are included in the appendix with truncated descriptions. Within the inventories, all Mass ordinary chants are listed in the order in which they appear in the manuscript or printed book, along with a “C” number that has been assigned solely for the purposes of the present study. The appendix also takes special care to indicate sequences appearing outside of the Mass in these sources. The numbering system in this appendix corresponds to the numbers assigned to the sources in appendix 1, which are used for all comparison tables in the chapters and appendices throughout the present study.

Liturgical Books Used by Confraternities in Tournai

10. Archives et Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale de Tournai, Manuscript 12 (B-Tc A 12). 270 x 185 mm. Late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century binding (a date determined based on the index of the source's contents, discussed in chapter 1), consisting of brown leather over wooden boards, with evidence of missing clasps. 1 unnumbered parchment flyleaf + 216 numbered parchment folios. Foliation in a modern hand beginning on the second parchment folio in pencil, using Arabic numerals written only on the recto of each leaf in the lower right-hand margin. Penwork initials, and use of red, blue, and yellow throughout. No illuminations. The music notation, which appears on red four-lined staves, consists primarily of a hybrid form commonly found in the southern Low Countries, which mixes elements of French and German neumes. There is also square chant notation on four-lined red staves throughout.

Antiphoner and gradual used by the Confraternity of the Notaries at the Cathedral of Tournai, with original contents and later additions dating from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. There is a card glued to the front of the book in the nineteenth century indicating the source's place of origin, “Cathedral de Tournay” [sic].

This is a Mass offertory for St. Sebastian found in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 204 (F-Pa 204), a fifteenth-century Parisian liturgical book for the Confraternity of the Bourgeois Archers. This organization comprised men of different trades, who resided in neighborhoods throughout the city but came together to function as the citizen's guard of Paris. It is personal and urgent in nature, calling upon the saint directly with the plea, “Quick, soldier, help us.” This prayer to St. Sebastian alludes to his power as a plague saint and healer, which is based on his ability to deflect the anger of God. It is not unlike the other laudatory texts discussed in chapters 1 and 2 that made references to a saint's healing ability, martyrdom, and miracles. St. Sebastian was one of the most revered plague saints in northern France, along with others counted among the fourteen holy helpers in this geographical area. The contents of this confraternity manuscript reveal St. Sebastian to be the most important figure of veneration for the archers, for the saint himself was shot with arrows in an attempted execution at the hands of the Roman emperor Diocletian. This is the only source in the present study that is devoted exclusively to plague saints, as it also contains masses for St. Roche, St. Anthony the Abbot, and St. Genevieve. In this chapter I explore how Parisian confraternities in the fifteenth century refashioned St. Sebastian into a local protector through textual and melodic references to historical persons and places—and in particular, places that held relics.

In addition to the text's allusion to healing, it has a notable reference to place through the line “In this fatherland and in others which request your help.”