Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Social Change as Catalysts to Yoruba Popular Music

This paper interrogates how elements of African-American cultural practices that were imported to Lagos by returnee slaves influenced the social changes that heralded the emergence of a new form of popular music in Yoruba land. The paper also examines how this popular music of the Yoruba people made a stylistic return to the western shores and are now gaining recognition. The paper hinges on the intercultural theory by Akin Euba. Exploring ethnomusicological approach, the paper relies on archival and ethnographic sources to extrapolate data. Discussions in this paper are tailored towards establishing how the musical practices which were hitherto of African origin, were taken to America and Europe by captured slaves from Yoruba hinterlands, returned to Yoruba land and contributed in forming a musical identity that eventually shaped the history of popular music development in Yoruba land. The study samples genres of music like Highlife, Juju, Afro-beat, including recently introduced hip-pop in Yoruba land which owe a part of their birth to trans-Atlantic experiences of the slaves. Today, these particular genres of music fall into the category of World music in both the America and the Western world. This paper concludes that these genres of music, birthed in Yoruba tradition (African in general), transported to the America, later made a return to Yorubaland, historically, cannot be totally severe from slave of Yoruba extractions’ interactions with the Western world. The paper prolongs discussions on identity formation beyond African-American to how the American experience of slave returnees have shaped the Yoruba identity.