The Hybrid Aesthetics of the Underdog: A Postcolonial Reading of Wadagliz’s Viral Song, Anguka Nayo

Abstract

This paper seeks to characterise Gengetone popular music as a site for understanding the nature and function of postcolonial cultural productions. The study is largely inspired by Homi Bhabha’s proposition that the present is often a meeting place of the past and the present. A place of constantly changing, as opposed to perpetual, identities; a fluid space of what was and what is ensuing. The study is therefore founded on the premise that just like its unstable context, Gen-Z music—often coming through as non-conformism—may best represent the artistic value of popular art in an increasingly modernising context that is intensely shaped by the mass culture. The song that forms the basis of the present study, Anguka Nayo, was purposively sampled and subjected to close reading through the lenses of Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity. The main finding of the study is that, just like most other contemporary cultural artefacts, popular music can indeed provide interesting insights into the hybrid nature of contemporary cultural artefacts. The study, therefore, adds to existing perspectives on postcolonial discourses, especially hybridity.