234 african appropriations
more than 10 times today already. The funniest part is that I don’t see any
white in him anymore and I am not even talking about his color. It is the
way [he] reasons, the way he sighs and talks with his hands like a correct
naija boy that I so much enjoy.” Despite the fact that this commentator
reports “not seeing any white in him anymore,” which is an interesting and
valuable observation in itself, I contend the very fact that a white man is
displaying the habitus and the language proficiency of a typical Nigerian
are what fascinate the viewer and make him watch the clip “more than 10
times a day.” And I am almost certain he would not be as interested if the
same stories had been related by a fellow black Nigerian (a “correct naija
boy,” as he puts it).
African music economies have changed considerably in the past de-
cade. With the coming of music television and digital media, recorded
music is no longer simply heard but rather heard and watched. In Tanza-
nia, Nigeria, and southern Africa, music videos have become important
promotional tools, and artists who want to be successful need to produce
them (cf. Hacke 2014). This trend works in favor of the three musicians I
discuss in this chapter. In a media environment that privileges audiovisual
media more than ever before, looking different proves an asset. White
performers of African music thus become the exotic eye candy of local tv
programming dominated by the unmarked norm of “blackness.”^6 This is
not to say that white performers were previously absent from the African
music landscape. Johnny Clegg in South Africa and John Collins in Ghana
are two famous examples, and I am almost sure there must have been
other less well-known performers here and there, too. But unlike (at least
two of) the three musicians I am considering here, Clegg and Collins did
not capitalize on their skin color in their stage names.^7
Being white is a double-edged sword for popular African music artists,
however. On the one hand, their white skin allows them to stand out from
their many African counterparts and gives them an exotic quality. On
the other, it has the disadvantage of coming with a host of ambivalent or
even negative signifiers that could kill a music career before it got started.
“W hite” is the color of colonialism, apartheid, and tourism, and thus as-
sociated with people who were, and still are, detached from the day-to-day
struggles of ordinary people, to say the least. For African audiences to
accept their work, the musicians need to engage in complex negotiations