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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2366-2026
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Communication
Year Degree Awarded
2019
Month Degree Awarded
September
First Advisor
Sut Jhally
Second Advisor
Emily West
Third Advisor
Lisa Henderson
Fourth Advisor
Olabode Omojola
Subject Categories
Critical and Cultural Studies | Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication
Abstract
This research project examines the operation of development discourse in popular culture, how it is reproduced, contested and how alternatives are imagined. It is a post-development study of the production and consumption of Ghanaian hiplife music videos and culture. It explores how hiplife makers challenge development discourse and advance alternative ideas of social transformation. Considering the enduring (and damaging) legacies of colonialism, hiplife as a site of relative freedom of expression is fertile for the potential production of a decolonial vocabulary to heal colonial wounds— undoing colonial sensibilities imposed on the colonized. The project reveals that mainstream male hiplife stars serve as referents for how to successfully inhabit a postcolonial space. Constructing an entrepreneurial branded self through their performance of success, they circulate ideas about what it means to live a “modern” life. However, other artists turn to what I call hiphop praxes, as tools to cultivate new identities. These artists consciously claim their Ghanaianess—and hence blackness— by adopting new performance names; using their own language and accents; and reconfiguring their presentation of self. Channeling these elements through their performance personae they essentially become new beings, reflecting a shift in their consciousness about themselves and their society. The study also explores what the movement towards development has meant for constructions of modern Ghanaian femininity. I argue that the image of the jezebel – women who use their sexuality to exploit men – has become one of the mainstays of hiplife music and its representation of modern womanhood. In hiplife the jezebel image positions women as threats to male success. The study further explores how the articulation of race and gender shapes labor dynamics within the music video industry. I examine how, in the context of racialized beauty ideals, lighter skin increases women’s chances of securing employment as performers in the music video industry.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/14792936
Recommended Citation
Nikoi, Nii Kotei, "Hiplife Music in Ghana: Postcolonial Performances of Modernity" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1804.
https://doi.org/10.7275/14792936
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1804
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
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