Rethinking Nollywood Film Music: The Case for a Persistent Identity System

Abstract

Rethinking Nollywood Film Music: The Case for a Persistent Identity System Emaeyak Peter Sylvanus (bio) Introduction If we consider discussions on the ambiguity of film music as the “new classical music” within and outside of the dominant North American and European traditions, then a study of Nollywood film music makes for both an interesting and original contribution to the debate.1 Accordingly, this article considers mainstream Nollywood, which, in addition to being “the most visible form of cultural machine on the African continent,”2 has been overlooked by film music scholars. The current article is a synthesis of the most important arguments to date on film music in Nollywood (Nigerian cinema). It specifically outlines, integrates, discusses, and summarizes three central outcomes: (1) the Nollywood film music identity formations and their interconnectedness, (2) the three contexts through which the identity formations are performed, and (3) the Nollywood film music persistent identity system (NoPIS), which is modeled following a systematic integration [End Page 173] of the first two outcomes. The NoPIS reveals how Nollywood film music speaks to culture, its practitioners and consumers, and even scholars. Indeed, practitioners’ perceptions of identity and its articulation in their own words and works have been critical to the discourse, structure, and theoretical outcome of both the NoPIS and this text. This article adds to an emerging body of film music publications on African cinema.3 Elsewhere, I have argued that within notions of localization and representation, Nollywood film music-making processes bear important expectations for both the filmmakers and consumers with whom its composers deal. Such expectations include the ability to: (1) generate a culturally relevant (Nigerian) piece of work; (2) appeal to the filmmakers and target audience; and (3) create a sense of authenticity by ensuring that the music prefigures (i.e., communicates and predicts) the storyline(s).4 Such publications have equally shown that there is an enabling sociocultural and informal fiscal environment that supports the business of film music production in Nigeria.5 Granted these enabling conditions, the composer’s ideologies and intentions are then carried through in the genre, style, and manner of application, which give it meaning and socio-musical symbolism. All these are complemented by the social action, interaction, and mediation between such groups as fellow film composers, sound editors and engineers, producers, filmmakers and marketers, and promoters. The social actions emanating from such a chain of interactions add new meanings to the film music––meanings situated between the word, sound, and screen: a subtle reconfiguration of orality and viewership that has persisted with some refinement since inception in the 1990s. Consequently, specific developing trends on and around identity issues and processes in composing music for Nollywood films have emerged, including analyses that highlight areas of interest and frustration relating to the filmmaker–composer collaboration dynamics, which consciously exclude the film director;6 the social-organizational framework and the barriers to entry for film music projects in Nollywood;7 the problems and prospects of the industry’s genre categorization and labeling;8 the merits and demerits of a Nollycentric film music approach that its three schools of thought promote and sustain;9 the dynamics of power, money, gender relations, and ethics of the conceptualization, negotiation, and articulation of identity;10 and the forces of ethnicity, language, and cross-cultural and transnational film music influences.11 Additionally, I have attempted to explain the connection between the film music industry, individualism, the marketers’ cinematic intentions, the composers’ responsibilities and independence, and the audience’s consumption behavior.12 Lastly, I have shown how much [End Page 174] Nigerian TV music shaped aspects of Nollywood soundtrack practice.13 All these suggest that Nollywood may have transformed film music via the process of localization. Yet, film music itself has transformed its host culture (Nigeria), particularly regarding the reading and discussion of identity. What remains is the modeling of practitioners’ artistic results to arrive at what might be called a persistent identity system for Nollywood soundtracks. As far as Nigeria is concerned, film and film music are borrowed art forms. In other words, they are popular (multimedia) texts that have not originated from Nigeria, yet their successful appropriation and reinvention have made them...