ORALITY & LITERATURE WEEK4

Lagos in contemporary Nigerian Music: Femi Eromosele

Eromosele gives an analysis of cinematography in the city of Lagos, Nigeria through a music
video and in a deep context which he explains to be a documentary by an artist called Brymo
on a song named “1pound”. In the beginning he describes how Nollywood is misrepresented
in the video because of the nature of the music video being portrayed as a film from the
viewer’s perspective. Elements of extreme class division are depicted through the photos he
attached to the article, explaining parts of Lagos where the wealthy reside, the middle class
and the low class living from hand to mouth. What he explains about the video and the story-
telling is how it displays socio-political issues surrounding the city of Lagos and he even cites
it by providing the meaning of the lyrics. he is aware of the music culture being undermined
and thus argued for how the music video should turn out in a way that less favors Lagos as a
the capital city.

The reason he goes beyond receiving the music video as just entertainment is because of how
the video was shot and how it addresses classism, its perception on the hierarchy of classes
within the city and capitalism being the root cause. My encounter with this article was
interesting especially because of how detailed his description of the music video was, such
that I found his writing clear and understandable over the actual music video on YouTube, he
described every single shot in great detail and showed in writing the political affairs of the
capital city. The article gave me a different perspective on story-telling especially because he
advocates for the video to have been deserving of being broadcast in the news as a
documentary rather than MTV channel as entertainment because it visualizes significant
economic roles. We don’t often find an artist interpreting music in a political way particularly
when the sound is afrobeat, it is usually linked with ambiance, I loved how the author
describes the video so vividly, and it gave me a different perspective on narration. However I
anticipated the plot-twist subsequent to the analysis, which was the description of Brymo’s
auto-biography, his background makes one understand why his visuals may have come out
the way the author described and it is because he rose from proletariat to bourgeoisie through
music and fame. I now have a broader understanding of story-telling through music videos
and that music videos can be educational that should be documentaries.