University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2019 Hiplife Music in Ghana: Postcolonial Performances of Modernity Nii Kotei Nikoi University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, and the Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons 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 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HIPLIFE MUSIC IN GHANA: POSTCOLONIAL PERFORMANCES OF MODERNITY A Dissertation Presented By NII KOTEI NIKOI Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2019 Department of Communication © Copyright by Nii Kotei Nikoi 2019 All Rights Reserved HIPLIFE MUSIC IN GHANA: POSTCOLONIAL PERFORMANCES OF MODERNITY A Dissertation Presented By NII KOTEI NIKOI Approved as to style and content by: ________________________________________________ Sut Jhally, Chair ________________________________________________ Emily West, Member _________________________________________________ Lisa Henderson, Member _________________________________________________ Olabode Omojola, Member _________________________________ Sut Jhally, Department Head Department of Communication ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The pages of this dissertation reflect the efforts of a community. They capture many engagements with a generous and nurturing network of support. I am thankful for the many people who believed in me and shared their precious time with me. I deeply indebted to the artists, fans and many cultural producers who interacted with me during my research work. Thank you for your generosity and allowing me into your world. I want to thank the folks at Brazil house for allowing me to participate in Chale Wote and the YoyoTinz crew for connecting me with various artists. I am especially grateful to Moshood Balogun for his friendship, thoughtfulness and kindness. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Sut Jhally, a generous mentor who consistently embodies the political effectivity of intellectual work to make the world better. I am grateful for his constant reminders to be attentive to the political stakes of my work. To my committee members: Emily West, I am very grateful for your feedback and your willingness to engage me every time I stopped by your office; Lisa Henderson, I very grateful for the kindness with which you pushed me to be a better and more engaged scholar; and Olabode Omojola, I am thankful for your patience and the invaluable insights you shared with me about music making. I also want to say thank you to my professors for actively engaging my ideas and interests: Mari Castañeda, Kevin Anderson, Leda Cooks, Seyram Avle, Anne Ciecko, Claudio Moreira, Kimberlee Pérez, Gonen Dori-Hacohen, Shawn Shimpach, and Erica Scharrer. I am also grateful for the staff of the Department of Communication; you have iv all been patient and generous while assisting me to navigate this doctoral journey. Thank you, Kathleen Ready, Susan Dreyer, Omadelle A. Nelson Bowser, Donna Berg, Guy- Marius Kpodjedo and Ruben Garcia. Many thanks to my department colleagues who have consistently showed up to support me: Katty Alhayek, Mike Alvarez, Felicitas Baruch, Sarah Cho, Matt Ross, Carmen Hernández-Ojeda, James Earl Owens, Porntip Israsena Twishime, and Siyuan Yin. To my awesome network of kind and supportive friends; thank you so much for always being here, standing by me and encouraging me. To all the members the African Graduate Students Association: Nyaradzai Changamire-Hokonya, James Hokonya, Korka Sall, Jean-Philippe Sasore and Leah Ndanga. Thank you Ruthfirst Ayande for copyediting sections of my dissertation. A special thank you to Ximena Abello Hurtado for your companionship and constant challenges to my thinking that have shaped many of the ideas in this project. I want to thank my family for their unfailing support throughout this process, especially my dad, Gottfried Nikoi (Mr. Nikoi) who has been calling me from Ghana every Sunday since I arrived in the U.S. in 2012 for my graduate studies. To my mum, Adjorkor Sowah, thank you for constantly praying for my safety and success. I am thankful to my sisters for their unwavering faith in me: Rita Naadu Nikoi, Nicholina ‘Baby’ Nikoi and Millicent Naadu Lartey. To my nieces and nephews, you continue to bring so much joy to my life and remind me of why what I do is important: Jacob and Naa Quashie; Edem, Giana, and Eyram Adzakey; and Jason and Amadea Antwi. I am extremely grateful to my aunt, Patience ‘Auntie Pat’ Berko, you have been my number one rock here in the U.S. supporting me both financially and emotionally. v ABSTRACT HIPLIFE MUSIC IN GHANA: POSTCOLONIAL PERFORMANCES OF MODERNITY SEPTEMBER 2019 NII KOTEI NIKOI, B.A. PUBLISHING STUDIES, KWAME NKRUMAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OHIO UNIVERSITY, M.A. COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Sut Jhally 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 vi 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 representation of women in hiplife reveals both gender dynamics and the ongoing nature of racial formation in Ghana. 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. This study contributes to work on popular culture in Africa and to audiovisual studies in several ways. First, it emphasizes that developmentalism, which advances industrial countries in North America and Europe as models of development in the Global South, has become an integral facet of how social transformation is imagined by the state and its people. Second, it argues that hiplife videos, to date understudied, are forms for understanding artists’ self-representation and the construction of their performative identities. Third, it transcends textual approaches to music video studies and concentrates on the production set. The set is regarded as a social event in which many constituencies come together under specific circumstances to create art and exchange knowledge through practice. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1. POSTCOLONIAL PERFORMANCES OF HIPLFE ......................................................1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................1 Conceptual Framework ....................................................................................................9 Decoloniality: Modernity/Coloniality ..........................................................................9 Post-Development ......................................................................................................16