Local erotic songs and chants among rural Nigerian adolescent males

Abstract

This paper investigates local erotic songs and chants circulating among adolescent males in Nigeria. The purpose is to assess the critical themes which these erotic verses evoke and their potentials in the discursive construction of adolescent sexual identities and definition of the (erotic) spaces and meanings on the basis of which young Nigerian males constitute their sexual conducts. Data indicate high level of awareness and knowledge of local erotic songs and chants among adolescent males. The songs and chants were reportedly used to learn about gender and sex roles, the body, and sexuality, and for recreation. Themes in local boys’ erotic songs and chants are primarily male privileging and penis advantaging, and celebrate male sexual activity, desire, violence, ruthlessness, and risk-taking as well as male control and subordination of women and their body. The songs and chants depict feminity and female sexuality as inferior to masculinity and male sexuality and tend to objectify women’s body as a facility for male sexual pleasure. The paper argues that while erotic verses circulating among adolescent Nigerian males help relieve them of the difficulties caused by the cultural relegation of sex and sexuality to the realm of the unspoken, they contain very disturbing and potentially dangerous images that provide little space for male responsibility and respect for women. Local erotic verses circulating among adolescents present an under-explored resource in sexuality education and a critical entry point for current efforts to understand and help young people extricate themselves from the sea of half-truths, myths, and prejudices about sex and sexuality.