Download or read book Yabbing and Wording written by Izuu Nwankwọ and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yabbing and Wording: The artistry of Nigerian stand-up comedy is a long-overdue academic interrogation of the novel stand-up practice in Nigeria as performance. 'Yabbing' comes from the Nigerian Pidgin English verb, 'yab', which means a satirical jibe thrown at individuals, groups or institutions. Nigeria's Fela Anikulapo-Kuti used this effectively in his recorded and live music performances against successive military regimes. 'Wording' derives from the English term 'word' and refers to a game in which parties exchange insults. It is a modern-day coinage for traditional forms of joking that existed across Nigeria and elsewhere in precolonial times. In this book, Nwankw? identifies 'yabbing' and 'wording' as outstanding indigenous elements within contemporary stand-up practice in Nigeria. On the one hand, these local joking patterns inform how comedians fashion their narratives. On the other, they mitigate offence and how the audience responds to ridicule in joke performance venues. The book's strength is its academic perspective and the inclusion of as many examples of stand-up and comedians as possible, to give a panoramic view of the practice. It also traces the historical path of the development of professional stand-up comedy in Nigeria. Its closing chapters detail the global outreach of Nigerian stand-up while also anticipating its future developments.
Download or read book Yabbing and Wording written by and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stand up Comedy in Africa written by Izuu Nwankwọ and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2022-03-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African cultural productions of humour have increased even in the face of myriad economic foibles and social upheavals. For instance, from the 1990s, stand-up comedy emerged across the continent and has maintained a pervasive presence since then. Its specificities are related to contemporary economic and political contexts and are also drawn from its pre-colonial history, that of joking forms and relationships, and orality. Izuu Nwankwọ's fascinating collected volume offers a transnational appraisal of this unique art form spanning different nations of the continent and its diasporas. The book engages variously with jokesters, their materials, the mediums of dissemination, and the cultural value(s) and relevance of their stage work, encompassing the form and content of the practice. Its ruling theoretical perspective comes from theatre and performance, cultural studies, linguistics, and literary studies.
Download or read book Humour and Politics in Africa written by Daniel Hammett and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2023-03-27 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyses of humour often focus primarily on the Global North, with little consideration for examples and practices from elsewhere. This book provides a vital contribution to humour theory by developing a Global South perspective. Taking a wide-ranging view across the whole of the continent, the book examines the relationship between humour and politics in Africa. It considers the context of the production and reception of humour in African contexts and argues that humour is more than just symbolic. Moving beyond the idea of humour as a mode of resistance, the book investigates the ‘political work’ that humour does and explores the complex entanglements in which the politics, practices and performances of humour are located.
Download or read book African Battle Traditions of Insult written by Tanure Ojaide and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-04-26 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the “battles” of words, songs, poetry, and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora. These are usually highly competitive, artistic contests in which rival parties duel for supremacy in poetry composition and/or its performance. This volume covers the history of this battle tradition, from its origins in Africa, especially the udje and halo of the Urhobo and Ewe respectively, to its transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean region during the Atlantic slave trade period, and its modern and contemporary manifestations as battle rap or other forms of popular music in Africa. Almost everywhere there are contemporary manifestations of the more traditional, older genres. The book is thus made up of studies of contests in which rivals duel for supremacy in verbal arts, song-poetry, and performance as they display their wit, sense of humor, and poetic expertise.
Download or read book Australian English The National Language written by Gerhard Leitner and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-02-06 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australia's English raises many questions among experts and the general public. What is it like? How has English changed by being transplanted to other parts of the world? Does the rise of AusE and other varieties endanger the role of English as a world language? Past studies have often been selective, focusing on the esoteric and non-typical, and ignoring the contact situation in which Australian English has developed. This book and its companion, Australia's Many Voices. Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages. Policy and Education, develop and apply a comprehensive and integrative approach that anchors English in the entire 'habitat' of Australia's languages that it both upset and transformed. Based on a wide range of data and on the assumption that all manifestations of Australian English must cohere as a system, this book retraces the social, psycholinguistic and linguistic history of the language. It locates the contact with indigenous and migrant languages and with American English in the appropriate sociohistorical context and shows how several layers of migration have shaped it. As it stratified, it was gradually accepted and developed into a fully-fledged national variety or epicentre of English that could be raised to the status of national language. Implications on educational policy and attempts to reach out into the Asia-Pacific region have followed logically from national status. The study is of interest for specialists of English and Australian Studies as well as a range of other disciplines. Its discursive, non-technical style and presentation makes it accessible to non-specialists with no background in linguistics.
Download or read book Australia s Many Voices written by Gerhard Leitner and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2004 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Develops a comprehensive, descriptive, and sociohistorical view of mainstream Australian English and of the social processes that have made it possible for it to become the national language of Australia reaching out into the Asia-Pacific region.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Africa Challenges for the 21st Century written by Nchoji Nkwi and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2015-02-02 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1999 (August 30 September 2) the Pan African Anthropological Association (PAAA) marked the 10th anniversary of its creation by holding its 9th Annual Conference in Yaounde, Cameroon the city and country of its birth. The conference, themed The Anthropology of Africa: Challenges for the 21st Century, was attended by some seventy participants, mostly African. Among the international participants was Dr Sydel Silverman, President of the Wenner Gren Foundation at the time a long term partner of the PAAA; she was present at the inaugural conference in 1988. The conference proceedings were initially published in 2000 with very limited circulation. Given the continued relevance of the papers presented, and in view of the call by the President of the PAAA for African anthropologists to reunite anthropological theory and practice in the teaching programmes of African universities, the PAAA is pleased to republish the proceedings of its landmark 9th Annual Conference. The book consists of forty three chapters divided into eight parts, namely: i) teaching anthropology in the decades ahead; ii) Health Challenges: HIV/AIDS Anthropological Perspectives; iii) NGOS: Use and Misuse of Anthropology; iv) Anthropological Focus on Environment; v) Some Applied Issues in Anthropology; vi) The African Family in Crisis; vii) Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts; and viii) Population issues and anthropology: Fertility Crisis. Paul Nkwi concludes his introduction to the volume with these words: The Anthropology of Africa will remain for a long time, fundamentally applied if it is to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
Download or read book Wrecking Ball written by Stu Woolman and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wrecking Ball explores, in an unprecedented manner, a decalogue of wicked problems that confronts humanity: Nuclear proliferation, climate change, pandemics, permanent technological unemployment, Orwellian public and private surveillance, social media that distorts reality, cyberwarfare, the fragmentation of democracies, the inability of nations to cabin private power, the failure of multinational institutions to promote collaboration and the deepening of autocratic rule in countries that have never known anything but extractive institutions. Collectively, or even severally, these wicked problems constitute crises that could end civilisation. Does this list frighten you, or do you blithely assume that tomorrow will be just like yesterday? Wrecking Ball shows that without an inclusive system of global governance, the collective action required to solve those wicked problems falls beyond the remit of the world's 20 inclusive democracies, 50 flawed democracies and 130 extractive, elitist autocracies. Flawed democracies and autocracies that already struggle to produce goods necessary for their own citizens to flourish, are simply incapable of committing to international arrangements that address the existential threats posed by the decalogue of wicked problems. This then is our children's inheritance: Dystopias far, far worse than the polities that we ourselves have known. What, if anything, can mitigate the harms that are our legacy? Wrecking Ball offers, as an answer, a ground-breaking analysis of South Africa's political economy. It demonstrates that this country's elitist and extractive political and economic institutions not only make resolution of ongoing domestic crises unattainable, likewise, they make meaningful responses to wicked problems impossible. Smart people think they have all the answers. Without laboring under any such illusions, Martin Luther King Jr eloquently opined: 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.' But what will happen, King would acidly ask, if we continue to dawdle, and simply run out of time? Wrecking Ball similalry operates under no such 'smart' pretenses, and undeterred and unmatched ventures into terrrains traversed by truly great political economists: Smith, Ricardo, Marx and Keynes. By knitting together what we all know to be the facts, with cutting edge theory in economics, sociology, history and political science, the book paints an unflinching portrait of where we are, and where we are headed. Are we ready to be honest with ourselves about the likely future of this overheated, overpopulated planet?
Download or read book Afrobeat written by Sola Olorunyomi and published by Institut français de recherche en Afrique. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IN AFROBEAT! A POPULAR ARTIST, a counter-hegemonic activist of the hardest grain, meets his most cerebral, disquisitional interpreter. – ODIA OFEIMUN, Leading African poet and former President, Association of Nigerian Authors. This is not just another addition to a growing Fela scholarship but a fascinating and frequently insightful study. It is both a celebration of Fela's uncommon virtuosity and an exploration of his mystique. – NIYI OSUNDARE, Poet and Professor of English, University of New Orleans. A Major contribution to Fela scholarship in particular, and African popular culture studies in general; it explores Afrobeat as musical practice and cultural politics. – TEJUMOLA OLANIYAN, Associate Professor of English, University of Virginia. An original effort. Like Fela's life, this account of it is not only a wild ride but a magical African musical mystery tour. – DAVID COPLAN, Professor of Social Anthropology University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Download or read book From Handmaiden of Colonialism to Esteemed Discipline written by Nchoji Nkwi and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents key features in the life of the father of anthropology in Cameroon, Professor Paul Nchoji Nkwi. The conversations within these pages chronicle, in his own words, how he came to anthropology and how the discipline shaped and still shapes his trajectory. One work does not suffice to elucidate all that Nkwi has contributed to the discipline of Anthropology in Cameroon and beyond; nevertheless, this book is a starting point. As the founding president of the Pan-African Association of Anthropologists (PAAA), Nkwi has been a trail blazer, sowing the seeds, nurturing the shoots, and grooming budding African anthropologists in their investigation of that great anthropological question: what it means to be human. In discussing the transformation of anthropology from the handmaiden of colonialism to the advocate of identity, voice, and a means for Africa to engage with and interact within contemporary society, Nkwi reveals insights regarding, among others, the birth and growth of the discipline in Cameroon, the founding of the PAAA, and the applicability of the subject to the changing and challenging landscape that characterizes today's globalized world. Likewise, blending theory and practice, he weaves a formidable tale of anthropological thought from an Africanist perspective through his notion of an African Pragmatic Socialism as a way of delving into, making sense of, and addressing the reality of the 21st century on the African continent and possibly beyond.
Download or read book Beyond the Political Spider written by Kwesi Yankah and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities by Kwesi Yankah is the first title in the newly established African Humanities Association (AHA) publication series. By integrating his own biography into a critique of the global politics of knowledge production, Yankah, through a collection of essays, interrogates critical issues confronting the Humanities that spawn intellectual hegemonies and muffle African voices. Using the example of Ghana, he brings under scrutiny, amongst others, endemic issues of academic freedom, gender inequities, the unequal global academic order, and linguistic imperialism in language policies in governance. In the face of these challenges, the author deftly navigates the complex terrain of indigenous knowledge and language in the context of democratic politics, demonstrating that agency can be liberatory when emphasising indigenous knowledge, especially expressed through the idiom of local languages and symbols, including Ananse, the protean spider, folk hero in Ghana and most parts of the pan-African world.
Download or read book Parley s Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fellow Nigerians I Wish You Good Luck written by Temitope O. Oyetomi and published by Baal Hamon Publishers. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a real connection between cleverness, good governance and good luck? The answer may not be so simple and direct. That is why the author of this book – an experienced editor – has painstakingly ploughed through anecdotes, news, history, and reasoning to blend a masterful piece that manages to be funny, witty, pragmatic and eye-opening all at once. The primary foci of the book are issues relating to the 2011 presidential elections in Nigeria but the book goes on to open up a typical Nigerian soul in an uncommonly down-to-earth manner. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, often touted as the “Giant of Africa” and “Heart of Africa”. The incumbent president goes by the first name Goodluck – a name which has seemingly always put him in the right places at the right times over the years. Would the Nigerian nation be electing a harbinger of good fortunes if they elect him as president in 2011? This “crazy” book broaches on that sensitive question whilst dwelling more on extant issues that perennially afflict the Heart of Africa and relentlessly taunt the Giant of Africa.
Download or read book Basi and Company written by Ken Saro-Wiwa and published by Three Continents. This book was released on 1987 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Basi and Company was the first book of the hugely successful Nigerian comedy television series, which at its peak was watched by an estimated 30 million Nigerians. The New York Times described the show as 'Nigeria's hottest comedy show, [that] seems to have struck a chord because it lampoons modern Nigeria's get-rich-quick mentality'. Basi is an exceptional man, in keeping with the best traditions of tricksters in Yoruba folklore, satirising the get-rich-quick mentality. The author translated the folktale into a contemporary idiom, believing that this format accorded better with African narrative methods.
Download or read book Young England s Little Library written by England and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
