vice and videos 137stream formulas of comedies and romances. The remaining independent
producers did the same. Hence, the films tended to focus increasingly on
attraction and spectacle and vigorously brought back the song-and-dance
routines that were crucial to selling movies. Promotional film trailers,
which are fed into the market a couple of months before a film’s release,
began to consist almost entirely of such showstoppers. On top of that, they
displayed the stars in spectacular dresses modeled on styles of the West,
which became an equally important factor in drawing audiences.
The fact that such elements remained crucial for Hausa videos despite
censorship can be accounted for by the policy of the Kano State Censor-
ship Board at that time, which left plenty of room for negotiation between
filmmakers and their censors. As Adamu (2004) suggests, the board was
expert at exploring all sorts of “ways of generating revenue for the Kano
State Government through the various fees it charge[d] filmmakers for
almost all aspects of film production (licensing, censoring, screening,
distribution),” and according to rumors, the board was not above raising
fees to line the censors’ private pockets (55–56). In a press interview, the
executive secretary of the board, Abulkadir A. Kurawa, defended his of-
fice’s work by pointing a finger at the filmmakers:
W hat the law enables us to do is to make corrections. Most of the films
with singing and dancing have thus been censored. We have asked them to
effect corrections. But because of their sheer indiscipline, irresponsibility
and stubbornness, they always release the unedited version of the films.
There is little we can do about this because we don’t have enough equip-
ment and personnel to monitor the market. (quoted in Adamu 2004: 56)The filmmakers, however, justified the production of films lacking sharia
compliancy by referring to their audiences. As filmmaker Dan Azumi
Baba points out, the video industry is a market-driven business, and must
therefore keep a keen eye on consumer preferences: “The Hausa viewing
audience contributes significantly to encouraging us to adopt Westerniza-
tion in Hausa films. This they do through refusal to buy films that do not
have these elements, because despite all their criticisms, they still rush
out to buy these films” (quoted in Adamu 2007: 90). In a similar fashion
Mansura Isa, an actress famous for her suggestive dance style, comments
on the reason for the inclusion of song-and-dance routines: