Explores the instrumentalization of various aspects of popular culture in Africa. This anthology provides insightful data on and discussions of a wide array of popular cultural manifestations and theoretical perspectives, covering such issues as kinship, religion, conflict resolution, music, cinema, drama, andliterary texts. The issues cohere around the understanding that culture is situational and political. Going beyond merely challenging popular stereotypes and representations of Africans and African-related practices in various outlets, the book reveals how popular cultural practices are instruments that have been manipulated for personal and collective survival. The book is distinctive in its codification and explication of aspects of popular practices that are based on data from countries in Africa, Europe, and the Americas that showcase cultural negotiations either with reference to how notions, values, norms, and images of Africans have been packaged and exploited over theyears or how popular cultures are used as tools of resistance and agitation by the various focal groups that are discussed. The topics are presented and illustrated in ways easily accessible to readers of all backgrounds. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Augustine Agwuele is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Anthropology, Texas State University, San Marcos. Contributors: Arinpe Adejumo, Augustine Agwuele, Antoinette Tidjani Alou, Maurice N. Amutabi, Tokunbo A. Ayoola, Nicholas M. Creary, Toyin Falola, Celeste A. Fisher, Denise Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson, Hetty ter Haar, Debra L. Klein, Emmanuel M. Mbah, Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, and Asonzeh Ukah

Responding to growing international interest in Yoruba culture, practitioners of bata performance - a centuries-old drumming, dancing, and singing tradition from southwestern Nigeria - have presented themselves to the world as an emblem of traditional Nigeria. Locally, however, the market for bata has been declining as it plays less of a ritual role and opportunities for performance have dwindled. Debra L. Klein's lively ethnography explores this disjunction, in the process revealing the world of the bata artists and the global culture market that helps to sustain their art. "Yoruba Bata Goes Global" describes the dramatic changes and reinventions of traditional bata performance in recent years, showing how they are continually recreated, performed, and sold. Klein delves into the lives of Yoruba musicians, focusing on their strategic collaborations with artists, culture brokers, researchers, and entrepreneurs worldwide, and she explores how reinvigorated performing ensembles are beginning to parlay success on the world stage into increased power and status within Nigeria. Klein's study of the interwoven roles of innovation and tradition will interest scholars of anthropology; African, global, and cultural studies; and ethnomusicology alike.