Abstract:
African popular music, as an acculturative product of the African folk music, can be scrutinized along the lines of musical and social processes as inseparable pair in developing the various genres of this eclectic musical form. In Nigeria, it is the congruent collaboration of creativity and politico-socio-economic activities of the mid-1940s (the period following the World War II) that have evolved the various genres of popular music of the land—a process that is still in being! The social processes that span through the diverse fields of economics, politics, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, and religion make up a manifold agency of acculturation, commercialization, urbanization, and class stratifications. These processes then carried over into a parallel development of a neo-folk form that became popular. The popularity of this new form is due to a socio-musical interchange that is both structural and functional. The primary research process of survey method was backed-up with historical and descriptive methods to unearth the leaning on the rhythm of social life by pop musicians to develop the African popular musical genres and sub-genres—especially in Nigeria.
