The Use of Pop Songs by Sierra Leonean Youths in Enjoying the Space Created for Freedom of Expression after the Civil War

Spencer, Sylvanus

doi:10.2979/africatoday.59.1.71

Africa Today

2012

DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.59.1.71

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The Use of Pop Songs by Sierra Leonean Youths in Enjoying the Space Created for Freedom of Expression after the Civil War

Sylvanus Spencer¹

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Cited by 4 publications

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“…Several authors describe contemporary youth culture in Freetown and Sierra Leone in conjunction with popular music (Alexander 2007; Shepler 2010; Spencer 2012; 2014; Tucker 2012). All of these accounts, however, focus on the socio-political dimension of what is usually dubbed ‘protest songs’.…”

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confidence: 99%

Real Love Versus Real Life: Youth, Music and Utopia in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Stasik

2016

Africa

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The most popular music among youths in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown is music dealing with love. While the music, which is mainly of foreign origin, evokes idealized images of ‘real love’, the real-life relationships of its young audiences are characterized by chronic states of emotional uncertainty and dissatisfaction. Economic disparities lead to an increasing monetization of young people's relationships, driving them either into a fragile flux of multiple partners or out of intimate engagements altogether. Taking this ‘dissonance’ between sonic representations and social relations as a point of departure, in this article I explore the ways in which young Freetonians position themselves at the juncture of desire and reality. After an introduction to Freetown's contemporary music scene, I juxtapose various life and love stories of youths with the fantasies they invest in ‘love music’. In so doing, I discuss the complex relationships between affect, exchange, deprivation and the strictures involved in attaining social adulthood. Drawing on the notion of utopia – denoting a desired yet unattainable state – I argue that it is within the experiential gap between the consumption of a representation and the desire to live (up to) that representation that Freetown's youths rework their horizons of possibilities.

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confidence: 99%

Real Love Versus Real Life: Youth, Music and Utopia in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Stasik

2016

Africa

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Unravelling political and historical threads: youth and masquerade mobility in Freetown

Maples

2018

Social Dynamics

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Transhiphop pedagogy and epistemic disobedience in Senegal

Niati

Shah

2022

International Journal of Research & Method in Education

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The Use of Pop Songs by Sierra Leonean Youths in Enjoying the Space Created for Freedom of Expression after the Civil War

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

Real Love Versus Real Life: Youth, Music and Utopia in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Real Love Versus Real Life: Youth, Music and Utopia in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Unravelling political and historical threads: youth and masquerade mobility in Freetown

Transhiphop pedagogy and epistemic disobedience in Senegal

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