In an essay titled “Unsinkable City,” the Nigerian author and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka describes Lagos as “exert[ing] a secretive, sometimes resented, but tenacious hold on all who pass through its steamy streets and tumultuous markets.” He writes further, “The Lagos of today is what preoccupies, agitates, repels and seduces, and from widely different causes. Lagos is truly a Joseph-city, a garment of many colors, textures and stylists” (Reference Soyinka2020: n.p). Soyinka’s recollection is sprinkled with lyrics of highlife music and names of renowned musicians and performers, illustrating cogently how the city is often inconceivable without the cultural expressions it engenders and its capacity to move people. Indeed, scholars over the years have attempted to unpack aspects of the relationship between Lagos and various musical genres in Nigeria (Boluwaduro Reference Boluwaduro2018; Waterman Reference Waterman1988, Reference Waterman1990; Olaniyan Reference Olaniyan2004; Alaja-Browne Reference Alaja-Browne1985, Reference Alaja-Browne1989; Eromosele Reference Eromosele2021). But in a manner that mimics the restlessness of the city, the creative outputs that tether themselves to it continue to proliferate and supply the interested researcher with much to contemplate. In the last few years, countless music videos have been released specifically referencing Lagos by name or using images of locales within the city. This list includes videos such as Kizz Daniel’s Eko Footnote 1 , Teego’s Lagos, Brymo’s 1 Pound (The Documentary), Wizkid’s Ojuelegba, Caze’s Lagos City, Jazzman Olofin’s Eko Ile, Adipaper and Twist Berry’s Lagos, Humblesmith’s Beautiful Lagos, Jacky Afrodiva’s Lagos Life, and countless others.Footnote 2 This article is an attempt to contemplate further some of the questions that emanate from observing the efflorescence of visual texts about and in Lagos, and which, to some degree or another, the scholars cited above have tried to explain by recourse to the history and politics of the city. Why does Lagos, among the many other cities and towns in Nigeria, preoccupy music stars the way it does? In particular, what is the relationship between the city’s popularity and the star image? In addressing these questions, I offer the notion of affective capital, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s thinking on emotions and Pierre Bourdieu’s elaboration of the different kinds of capital. I proceed by first laying out the understanding of star image that frames the thinking here, and then sketching out the contours of the available scholarship on emotional capital—the dominant term under which the relationship between feelings and capital has been theorized. Finally, I conclude with specific examples of the phenomenon under investigation.
Lagos and Nigerian Music
Music videos’ connection to the city should be rather unremarkable by now, considering that scholars have long observed the importance of the urban experience to the flourishing of popular culture. According to James Ogude (Reference Ogude2012), the city’s openness or fluidity stimulates creative energy to redefine identities and artistic forms and their modes of consumption, outside the restrictions of traditional contexts. The urban is privileged in Karin Barber’s seminal “Popular Arts in Africa” where, using a tripartite structure of traditional – popular – elite, she locates popular art in the creativity of the emergent urban working class. She calls it “the large class of new unofficial forms which are syncretic, concerned with social change, and associated with the masses. The centers of activity in this field are the cities, in their pivotal position between the rural hinterland on the one hand and the metropolitan countries on the other” (Reference Barber1987:23). In the age of new media, the city retains its importance as the hub of production and dissemination of technologically mediated forms. The increased speed and avenues of access to national and international circuits of recognition have their nodal points in the city, rendering it the Mecca of artistic success and stardom. Moreover, the size, density, and heterogeneity of the city (Forster Reference Forster, Newell and Okome2014) assures that even if aspiring stars do not make it to the big leagues, modest success yields a bigger fan base than non-urban contexts would offer. The city thus provides the social, economic, psychological, and material conditions for the flourishing of popular arts, even in an age of technological interconnectedness.
The city of Lagos has just such a reputation. The most populous city in Africa, it is home to the greatest number of radio and television stations in Nigeria. Following the deregulation of broadcasting in 1992, this number increased exponentially, enabling a diversification of content previously the sole preserve of state broadcasting outfits (Betiang Reference Betiang2013). It is unsurprising that the recent continental dominance of Nigerian cultural production remains tied to the city, a phenomenon that has chiefly been investigated with regard to the video film industry known as Nollywood (Haynes Reference Haynes1995, Reference Haynes2007).
However, the socio-economic conditions underwriting Lagos’ dominance have a longer history than the current digital age. Its early cosmopolitan composition is crucial in this regard. In the 1800s it became the abode of freed Yoruba slaves from Brazil, Cuba, and the West Indies (known as Aguda or Amaro), repatriated Yoruba slaves from Sierra Leone (the Saro), and colonial administrators, missionaries, and European businessmen (Boluwaduro Reference Boluwaduro2018; Bender Reference Bender1991; Omojola Reference Omojola1995). In 1914, when Lagos was made the capital of an amalgamated Nigeria, its status as the economic, administrative, and entertainment hub of the colonial nation was cemented. Infrastructural development in the form of roads, railroads, and port facilities connected the coastal town to other parts of the country and beyond, drawing in much migrant labor (Waterman Reference Waterman1988). Its expanded economy and increased linkage to other places created an atmosphere conducive to new musical expressions which typically built on the traditions of the dominant Yoruba ethnicity. New music genres—waka, ajisaari, and later, sakara, asiko, and palmwine music—emerged beside the European music played at the salons and parlors of the black elites (Waterman Reference Waterman1988). This trio of sakara, asiko, and palmwine music became a key influence for genres such as juju, highlife, Afrobeat, and fuji, which remain in practice today.
Nigeria’s global image in the second half of the twentieth century radiated from the happenings in Lagos. Drawn by the promise of economic advancement and the infrastructure for popular entertainment (recording studios, nightclubs, and other avenues of leisure) developed there from the end of the second world war through the 1970s, hopeful musicians poured into the city, creating the effervescent atmosphere of creativity that would culminate in what has been called “Nigeria’s Golden Age in music” (Servant Reference Servant2003:30). I.K Dairo popularized juju music, prefiguring the successes of later juju musicians such as Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey; highlife swept through the country, thanks to the efforts of Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya, Eddy Okonta, and others; Fela Kuti, in conjunction with Tony Allen, invented Afrobeat; and Sonny Okosun developed his Ozzidi sounds. This period also witnessed the growth of Nigerian popular theater, initiated by artists such as Hubert Ogunde, who formed his first theatrical group, the African Music Research Party, in Lagos in 1945. The consolidation of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) in 1977 encouraged the production of television serials, which helped to produce many of the actors and directors who would become pivotal to the flourishing of Nollywood (Sylvanus Reference Sylvanus2018:46).
Unfortunately, these developments in arts and culture came to a halt as the oil boom ended and the 1980s ushered in a period of austerity that the country has yet to recover from. Lagos was not exempt from the effects of this economic downturn. Coupled with successive military rule that stifled freedom of expression, the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Program wrecked the economy; insecurity increased, nightlife declined, cinemas closed down, piracy became the order of the day, international record labels (EMI, Sony-CBS, Polygram) pulled out of the country, citing the nation’s Nigerianization policy and their inability to make a profit (Servant Reference Servant2003:33–34), and musicians who could afford to leave the country, did so (Adedeji Reference Adedeji2013). Not until the end of the twentieth century did Nigeria begin to gradually emerge from the cold, thanks to the creative use of imported electronics in Lagos markets. The availability of video technology in the city birthed Nollywood, as digital recording also resuscitated the music industry.
The vacuum left by the departure of major record labels, while eroding a sense of industry structure, motivated aspiring artists to produce their music in home studios and create private labels to market it. The absence of gatekeepers allowed room for much experimentation, especially with genres such as RnB, pop, and hip-hop coming out of America and Europe at this time. Out of this grew the Ajegunle (galala) music of Daddy Showkey, Baba Fryo, Daddy Fresh, and the like, following in the wake of established reggae musicians such as The Mandators, Ras Kimono, and Majek Fashek. Perhaps the most influential outputs were the Nigerian hip-hop and RnB sounds of Lagos-based groups such as The Plantashun Boiz, The Remedies, Trybesmen, and Maintain, which became the precursors of what now travels internationally as “Afrobeats.” Though the popularity of these new genres spread through the efforts of pirate networks circulating cheap album copies beyond the limited reach of the young labels, one cannot discount the significance of the emerging network of private radio and television stations in Lagos. Affordable video technology reduced the cost of making music videos, which were then distributed to provide much needed local content. Those who quickly distinguished themselves as top music video directors resided in Lagos, drawing others to seek them out.
The above outline, necessarily broad for lack of space, only partly explains the continued obsession with Lagos in Nigerian music and videos. To get a clearer picture, one must also consider the influence of foreign genres and the subtle differences between the music star image and that of other industries. Hip hop has arguably been one of the biggest influences on Nigerian music since the 1990s, and it is quintessentially an urban genre. According to Murray Forman, underlying hip-hop culture is the “prioritization of spatial practices and spatial discourses” (Reference Forman2002:3) and the majority of such articulations “emerge from within the contextual boundaries of the urban space” (Reference Forman2002:26). The urban scene not only influences the genre but inheres in the specific kind of work produced by its practitioners. The differences between cities or regions inform the brands which emerge. Hence Forman wonders, “Can Jay-Z be realistically disconnected from Brooklyn or Nas from Queens? Can Snoop Dogg be comprehended without acknowledging his Long Beach, California, roots and can Outkast be isolated from Atlanta? Where these individuals are from is an essential element of who they are and what they project, whether in a broader regional sense of space or in more finely nuanced and closely delineated scale of place” (Reference Forman, Forma and Neal2004:156). His observation connects the themes of genre and star image that this article intends to explore. Contemporary musical genres in Nigeria, especially those that claim some form of influence from hip-hop, engage in similar practices. Appropriating the genre seems to imply a concomitant adoption of its concerns with the city in a manner more conspicuous than in other popular musical forms such as juju, fuji, and the like, which, while drawing on indigenous sources, equally flourish in the city.
Missing in critical analyses of Lagos and popular culture is the city’s role in the image of its cultural practitioners. Noah Tsika’s (Reference Tsika2015) study of Nollywood stars features the city, but chiefly in terms of the infrastructural apparatus it provides to the industry and not with regard to the stars themselves. Stephen Boluwaduro’s (Reference Boluwaduro2018) essay on the symbiotic relationship between Lagos and its musical genres draws attention to how music stars leave their mark on the cityscape by engaging in product endorsements, lending their voices and faces to be used in commercials and billboards. Christopher Waterman’s (Reference Waterman1990) earlier work on juju music in Lagos notes how the social identity of the musician is often evident in the kind of music he plays (Reference Waterman1990:54). In a later essay, he shows how specific demographics of urban youth propped up the celebrity status of artists such as Fela and Lagbaja, who sometimes adopted “the rough voice of a Lagos motor tout” in his performances (Reference Waterman, Palmberg and Kirkegaard2002:28). The text that perhaps comes closest to the sort of emphasis I have in mind is Tejumola Olaniyan’s Arrest the Music!, which offers insightful observations about the contribution of Lagos to the creation of the legendary phenomenon of Fela. “[O]nly a postcolonial Metropolis such as Lagos could have produced Fela,” Olaniyan (Reference Olaniyan2004:88) asserts. Lagos—“the classic embodiment of the nation’s raucous and freewheeling dependent capitalist economy in which rabid acquisitiveness, swindling, cozening, corner-cutting, and cleverness are the primary currencies of exchange” (Olaniyan Reference Olaniyan2004:90)—provided Fela with a wealth of political and social issues to critique, cementing his image as a fearless radical in the process. The city’s role in putting together “Fela,” the sign that has persisted in the popular imaginary, is thus an indirect one. Lagos frequently provided a way for the musician to address bigger issues within the nation, a case example for the arguments he expounded about the “postcolonial incredible.” Olaniyan’s exposition, though a good start to this conversation, differs from the dimension of the city that concerns this essay. In the songs and videos of those who, after Fela, have been drawn by the city’s magic, it is the uniqueness of Lagos that moves them; it is its particularity that they seek to appropriate in a more direct and deliberate process of image-making.
The City and Star Image
Star image as a concept of analysis in film and popular culture is given its most influential articulation by Richard Dyer. In what has now become a classic study, Dyer couples a sociological and semiotic conception of the star as signification constructed from the array of images or appearances on- or off-screen. This image is not “an exclusively visual sign, but rather a complex configuration of visual, verbal and aural signs. This configuration may constitute the general image of stardom or of a particular star. It is manifest not only in films but in all kinds of media texts” (Reference Dyer1998:34). In other words, not only can there be variations in star images with regard to different celebrities and the industries in which they work (cinema, music, sports, and others), but the specific images also consist of media texts which can be grouped in terms of “promotion, publicity, films and criticism and commentaries” (Reference Dyer1998:60, italics in original). Everything and anything available for public consumption on any star generates or adds on to certain dimensions of their images. These could be interviews, public appearances, pictures in magazines, social media posts and comments, and even sources of unverified information, such as rumor. The multiplicity of sites where the image is articulated inevitably feeds its polysemy. Depending on the audience and the different competences they bring with them, the image is open to a wide range of interpretation, especially because meaning is not resident in the sources but rather “produced in the moment of interaction between moviegoers and star texts” (McDonald Reference McDonald2000:7). This does not translate to open season on subjective interpretation. No matter how multiple the possible interpretations may be, the range of meanings a star text can generate is necessarily limited. There is both a structured and temporal dimension to the image (Dyer Reference Dyer1998:64). The recalcitrance of signification can be tamed by placing the texts in context, situating them within the cultural and historical milieu of their articulation. This explains why stars rise at some point and become less popular at others (McDonald Reference McDonald2000:8).
I generally concur with the notion of star texts as ciphers for the temper of the socio-historical moment of their emergence. But I also think it is productive to read a bit more slowly the nature of the sources of the text, by which I mean those that tend to be read in film-focused star studies as adjacent to the film itself: the promotions, interviews, television appearances and the like. Even Dyer (Reference Dyer2004:3) notes that these sources are often less privileged than film in the construction of a star image. The interesting difference with music stars is that the distance between primary text (music) and other sources for promoting the text and the star is much shorter. The distinctions are fuzzier, too. To watch a music video, for example, is to listen to a star’s song. It is also to be exposed to the visual qualities the stars want associated with them. What this means here is that the issues that the music stars depict in their songs are no more crucial than the visual accompaniment in the videos. The music, the song lyrics, and the images are anchored by the performer. Whereas in film, the star contests the representational space with other variables such as the director’s vision, the film’s plot, other actors (whose performance might upstage her) and so on, everything in the music video is calculated to, in addition to making a distinct claim about some subject or the other, say something about the music star. Even the director’s vision—if it is separate from the musician’s—cannot stand in opposition to or deliberately undermine the music star.
So, what does it do to the star to sing about the city? What does it matter that her music video is crammed with images of the cityscape—of Lagos in particular? Previously, I have argued that such practice transforms the setting from a one-dimensional factor to a character in the same category as the performer, such that the contemplation of one colors the other (Eromosele Reference Eromosele2021). Through a process of associative consumption, the audience sees the star as wrapped up in the city, and vice versa. Building on this argument, I proceed further to explain how this process works, looking at what it is about the city that the stars particularly want to connect to. Memory and “lived body experience” play an important role in this (Eromosele Reference Eromosele2021:13). But memory about a place is valuable only in relation to others; lived experience in a particular place at a particular time excludes experience of other places at that same time. Basically, the question that animates my return to the issue is, “why Lagos?” I proffer a simple answer: stars do not merely use the city as conduit for social criticism (as implied in Olaniyan’s [Reference Olaniyan2004] analysis of Fela) but place themselves in contiguity with the city in a way that ensures the sliding of meaning and affect from one to the other. In this instance, I conceive of the city as a sign capable of evoking a range of affects in ways that other cities (as particular signs) cannot. In other words, I consider the effect of Lagos as relational. Though musicians may present other cities and locales in their videos, they rarely generate the traction that Lagos commands.
My thoughts here are well illustrated by Made in Lagos, the 2020 studio album by the Nigerian musician Wizkid (see Figure 1). The listener unfamiliar with Wizkid’s oeuvre might think that the connection between the songs and the city is similar to that which obtains with labels on products and appliances announcing their place of manufacture. That is, they might presume the songs are what is “made in Lagos,” until they learn that the album was partly produced in the UK and, except for the track “Blessed” (with Damian Marley) featuring an excerpt of sounds typical of Lagos urbanscape, the songs are hardly about the city specifically. It becomes evident that it is Wizkid that is being sold as “made in Lagos” and that the title is a gesture of authentication, a packaging of the star as a commodity whose assurance of high quality is tied to its provenance. To be made in Lagos is to embody important characteristics of the city. The songs in the album do not say exactly what these qualities are, but it is easily conceivable that the title aims to root Wizkid in his local beginnings, despite his recent successes and admittance into the global musical mainstream. What Wizkid aims for is less a definite sense of what it means to be produced in Lagos than what it feels to encounter Lagos. Hence the track “Blessed” begins with an extra-diegetic recording of a woman hawking “pure water and cold mineral” against a background one may easily identify as Lagos. Without directly referencing the city, the song evokes its atmosphere in a manner reminiscent of the Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh’s installations of the soundscape of Lagos, which, when encountered on the streets of Helsinki by a Nigerian student, made him think he was going insane. “[H]e dropped his backpack and cleaned his ears; he next thought someone was working magic on him to make him return home to Lagos. He finally located the source of the sound, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art” (Magee Reference Magee2018:440).
Figure 1. Album cover of Wizkid’s 2020 studio album Made in Lagos
While the response to sounds, mentions, and images of the city may not always be as dramatic as that of the student above, it is often visceral, especially in those for whom memory and nostalgia entangle. The capacity of Lagos to trigger a range of emotions is mobilized by artistes as a device for channeling forms of attachment. The city operates within an affective economy that renders it a more effective sign than any other in the country. By using the term “economy,” I am implying that whatever value the city has as a sign or image is accumulated over time through expenditure and circulation. It is a form of capital that can be drawn on. When artistes do this as means of promotion, they also extend the meanings and emotions one may attach to it. I will explain further below the idea of capital that I borrow from and how my conceptualization differs from the sense in which emotion/affect as capital has been theorized so far.
Capital and Emotions
Foundational to the concept of capital is the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who expands the term beyond the sphere of mercantile exchange. In “The Forms of Capital” (Reference Bourdieu, Richardson and Nice1986), Bourdieu troubles the distinction between those practices that are economic in the strict sense of involving the maximization of monetary gain, and those that are presumed non-economic or disinterested. The delineation of one category, he opines, necessarily produces the other, and any science of the economy of practices in society must reckon with how the two are connected. In addition to economic capital, there are other kinds of capital symbolic in nature, such as cultural capital, social capital, intellectual capital, and linguistic capital. Though they are irreducible to economic capital, the symbolic capitals are different manifestations of it. Through the illusion of disinterestedness in profit, the fields of symbolic capital assert their importance and autonomy. They are “homologous to the structure of the economic field,” explains Robert Moore (Reference Moore, Bourdieu, Concepts and Grenfell2008:104). “Each field of symbolic capital reproduces the system of unequal relations in the economic field (relations of class and power) and, in doing so, reproduces the fundamental structure of social inequality” (Moore Reference Moore, Bourdieu, Concepts and Grenfell2008:104). The capitals can appear in different states. Cultural capital, for instance, can be embodied (in terms of dispositions, or, as I explain below, habitus), objectified (in the form of cultural goods such as books, pictures, and instruments) or institutionalized (for example, academic qualifications) (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu, Richardson and Nice1986:17). Each capital is convertible to other forms.
Across his writings, Bourdieu connects capital to the concepts of field and habitus. It is in relation to these that capital represents a valuable tool for analyzing social practices. He defines habitus as “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” (Reference Bourdieu and Nice1990:53). In other words, the habitus is shaped by one’s past and present circumstances such as family upbringing, educational experience, one’s social circles, and the like, while equally capable of shaping, “structuring” one’s present and future practices and position in society in ways that are neither predictable nor illogical (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu and Nice1990:55–56; Maton Reference Maton, Bourdieu, Concepts and Grenfell2008:51). Habitus is situated within a field; that is, a social arena where the struggle over resources and privileges takes place (Zembylas Reference Zembylas2007:449) such as the political field, academic field, economic field, or the field of cultural production. Bourdieu describes field as a game in which players are positioned according to the amount of capital they wield, by how that capital increases or decreases as the field evolves over time, and the structure of the capital (their disposition or habitus) through this process. Capital is only meaningful within a field, which is in turn shaped by the “relations of force between players” (Bourdieu & Wacquant Reference Bourdieu and Waquant1992:99).
Bourdieu never directly extends his concept of capital to emotions or affect; however, several scholars have gone on to do so through a close reading of his work. The first of these is Helga Nowotny, who conceives of emotional capital as a kind of social capital, a resource women possess in greater abundance than men because of the constraints placed on them in acquiring other kinds of capital. She defines emotional capital as “knowledge, contacts, and relations as well as access to emotionally valued skills and assets, which hold within any social network characterized at least partly by social ties” (Reference Nowotny, Epstein and Coser1981:148). Women’s restricted access to the public sphere, she argues, effectively ensures that emotional capital flourishes in the private domain, subject to different rules of transformation than other kinds of capital. Crucially, it does not easily convert to economic value, except in the form of investment in the success of children and husbands. Patricia Allat extends Nowotny’s concept in her research into the role of families in private schooling, observing “the way mothers devoted their skills gained from their formal education to the advancement of their children.” For her, emotional capital refers to “emotionally valued assets and skills, love and affection, expenditure of time, attention, care and concern” (Reference Allat, Bates and Riseborough1993:143).
More recent thinking on emotional capital continues the tradition of tying it to education or professional training and the emotional resources available within the family (see, for example, Reay Reference Reay2000, Reference Reay2004; Gillies Reference Gillies2006; O’Brien Reference O’Brien2008; Zembylas Reference Zembylas2007; Reid Reference Reid2009; Schweingruber & Berns Reference Schweingruber and Berns2005). Indeed, very few have resisted the temptation to associate emotional capital with education and parenting practices. Michalinos Zembylas attempts a less restrictive conceptualization, opening the term up to the “dialectics of history, politics and emotions” (Reference Zembylas2007:453). He interrogates how institutional and everyday practices perpetuate emotional norms that come to represent forms of capital for some and deficit for others. Within the ethnic conflict setting in Europe that is his focus, it is those emotional practices that circulate between students and teachers that define the ethnic Other and transform emotional capital to cultural or social capital and vice versa (Reference Zembylas2007:454). However, he shares with other essays on the subject the tendency to tie emotional capital to habitus, to individualize it.
My idea of capital diverges from other theorists in its foregrounding of circulation and accumulation, and in the de-emphasis of habitus or embodiment. The above accounts on emotional capital tie it implicitly to human subjects, even when it is understood—as it is by Zembylas—to be generated not from within the individual or society, but in the realm of social relations. For almost all these authors, human subjects are the repositories of this capital. I am attempting to analyze the term from a much less anthropocentric position. I resort to affective capital to differentiate my understanding of emotion/affect and capital from the predominant thinking. One important component of this is that capital can also be the preserve of non-human subjects, inasmuch as they are understood to be participants in the process of social exchange, and affect is taken as a category that interpenetrates both human and inanimate entities. My theorization takes on aspects of arguments arising from the distinction between emotion and affect.
The terms “affect” and “emotion” are often used interchangeably, and the literature on both are considered bodies of related research. I have maintained that practice so far to accommodate the available literature on emotion/affect and capital. However, theorists who prefer “affect” sometimes distinguish it from emotions by examining the origins of both. Affects, they assert, are precognitive, pre-social bodily feelings (Bladow & Ladino Reference Bladow, Ladino, Bladow and Ladino2018). They are defined in the words of Ben Anderson as “transpersonal and prepersonal intensities that emerge as bodies affect one another” (Reference Anderson2009:78). Emotions, on the other hand, are what affects become when they have passed through social and cultural interaction. They are the cultural categories created by the application of the society’s interpretive machinery on bodily sensations. An important aspect of the notion of affect is expressed in Baruch Spinoza’s early conception of the term as action potential. That is, affect ensues from encounters between bodies and becomes modified as it moves between them, increasing or decreasing, aiding, or constraining their capacity or potential to act (Duff Reference Duff2010:885). This understanding considers bodies to “include an array of both human and nonhuman actors, objects, and processes. Regardless of the nature of this body, whether human or nonhuman, all bodies are potentially affected by a panoply of other bodies in any particular encounter” (Duff Reference Duff2010:885). The importance of circulation shows up in Sara Ahmed’s theorization, from which I borrow in the next section.
Affective Capital, Lagos, and its Appropriation
Drawing on psychoanalytic and Marxist thinking, Sara Ahmed explores how emotions operate as an economy. She argues that emotions are neither resident within the individual nor outside in the society. Rather, their moments of intensity surface the boundary between the individual and society. Emotions involve “relationships of difference and displacement without positive value” (Ahmed Reference Ahmed2004:45, emphasis in original). They become attached to their objects as a result of the dual process of circulation across a social and psychic terrain, and a concealment of the history of that circulation. Hate, for example, is economic because of the way it can be made, in certain contexts, to stick together or equate certain figures such as the foreigner, asylum seeker, the burglar, and the criminal, who are interpreted as being out to harm “us.” Certainly, the same object or sign is not always regarded with the same intensity or emotion; it does not always possess the same value. Inferring from Marx’s idea of capital as linked to the capacity of money to generate surplus value through circulation and exchange, Ahmed concludes that “[s]igns increase in affective value as an effect of the movement between signs: the more signs circulate, the more affective they become” (Reference Ahmed2004:45). That buildup of affective value ensures that certain objects move us in unique ways. The crux of emotional capital as it has been largely theorized is that it focuses on how people ensure or deal with being “moved.” What Ahmed helps us to consider is the other side of the equation: what or who moves. Affective capital, in my analysis, is not so much the capacity or skill to facilitate being moved in desirable ways, but the capacity to move others, the capacity to influence how they are moved.
That certain places can affect us in ways that are not easily undone is a truism. Our feelings of groundedness in places we call home, for instance, surely illustrate this. Ahmed importantly observes that emotions close the gap between being moved and being attached: “what moves us, what makes us feel, is also that which holds us in place or gives us a dwelling place” (Reference Ahmed2004:11). But how do we differentiate between those places that we are attached to and the general space? For Edward Casey (Reference Casey2001), that is the difference between “thick” and “thin” places. This idea, thinly articulated by Casey, is developed by Cameron Duff into a parsing of places that hold a sense of meaning and belonging and those that do not. Thick places are “contrived in the imbrication of affect, habit, and meaning” and possess “uniquely differential character” (Reference Duff2010:882, 886). In other words, they are specific, evoking particular emotions and memories. If affect is understood pace Spinoza as the body’s “power of action,” then thick places also support a diverse range of “enriching experiences” (Duff Reference Duff2010:886). Their affectivity is not simply a description of the feeling states they engender but also the activities and practices that they make possible. Thin places are the opposite: generic and devoid of the habitual practice and affective resonance that produce the thick places, they offer nothing to hold the self in place. They can, however, also be transformed into thick places through the same process.
Duff’s differentiation is a useful transition for our concern here. The privilege of thick places over thin ones that she describes resonates with what I refer to as affective capital, though I extend the term to encapsulate a whole city and not just selected pockets in it. If affect is accumulated through circulation, then thick places can be the objects of practices that ensure that they possess more affective hold on more people. That is, they are the consequence of the (orchestrated) dispersal and circulation of affect. It is no secret that urban infrastructure is often manipulated to generate particular affects in those who use it (Adey Reference Adey2008). From airport terminals to shopping malls and manicured roadsides, the city is a collection of places targeted at disciplining the user’s affect. On a larger scale, the imperative to attract investments and, especially, tourist revenue, fuels the commitment to increasing the reach of a city’s affective capital through avenues of persuasion such as the media and internet. This is part of the labor that governments and city officials engage in toward raising the profile of their constituencies. They direct the affective responses of both the inhabitants and those who look in from the outside.
To be sure, my argument is not that cities only possess the affective capital of thick places through this process of conscious accumulation. If such places are also made through the routine (circulation) of practices, then their capital need not always be directed toward pre-determined ends. They can obviously hold more capital because of the sheer number of people whose lives and everyday routines revolve around them. What I am aiming to point out is the historicity of the affective resonance that thick places hold. They do not come ready-made. The places that move and therefore hold us, that affect us, are also products of economic, social, and historical processes. To speak Bourdieu’s language, the affective capital of cities is not unconnected to their economic and cultural capitals over others. As I have already suggested, Lagos demonstrates this point perfectly.
Lagos has come a long way since its beginning as a small lagoon town in the seventeenth century. It is not only the most populous city in Africa; it is also one of the continent’s most important economic hubs. According to some estimates, if Lagos were a country, it would have the fifth largest GDP in Africa (Cheeseman & de Gramont Reference Cheeseman and de Gramont2017:462). Regardless of its status as the capital of Nigeria until 1991, the recent visibility of the city as a Mega or “Model city” (Kaplan Reference Kaplan2014) has been traced to the governorship regimes of Bola Ahmed Tinubu (1999–2007) and Babatunde Raji Fashola (2007–2015) (Cheeseman & de Gramont Reference Cheeseman and de Gramont2017; Adama Reference Adama2018). During this period, a number of factors, including the desire for more independence from federal government allocations, its accompanying reform of the taxation system to boost locally generated revenue, a high modernist vision of a future city, and the need of the oppositional party in Lagos to secure the political hold of the state, led to more efforts at urban reform through long- and short-term infrastructural projects.Footnote 3 Since the rife corruption in the country’s polity had made many Lagosians reluctant to pay their taxes, the government—especially under the administration of Fashola—embarked on aggressive public relations focused on “winning hearts and minds” (Cheeseman & de Gramont Reference Cheeseman and de Gramont2017:464). In jingles and advertisements, images of the infrastructural projects around the city were projected and aimed at convincing the people that, with the help of their taxes, “Lagos is working.” The already established economic and political dominance of the city received further augmentation with the images flooding the media about the city’s transformation. To be sure, this appropriation of the media toward the practical ends of taxation and legitimizing the governors’ political party was also an affective project. Fashola admits in an interview that the urban reforms were meant to instill a sense of “pride” in Lagosians (Cheeseman & de Gamont Reference Cheeseman and de Gramont2017:469).
In Lagos, we see how economic capital is inextricable from the city’s political history, which is in turn entwined with other factors such as the size of its population, translated to the massive number of those for whom this city will always activate a myriad of affect (its affective capital). To recall Bourdieu, we know that this capital is only valuable because of its scarcity and the competition it engenders among cities (within and outside the country) which jostle for prominence economically, politically, culturally, and otherwise. Put simply, the capital has meaning only within the ambits of what we might call an urban or metropolitan field. To accentuate one form of dominance often involves leveraging others, converting them to the desired privilege. As such, Lagos’ economic prominence sustains its political importance in Nigerian politics and feeds its status as a magnet for producers of cultural texts, who can in turn be mobilized for various campaigns by the government to sustain its economic and political hold. Crucially, affective capital is not the sole preserve of the state to manipulate. Individuals with far-reaching influence may also cash in on this quality of Lagos as a ready-made sign in the popular imaginary. This is what musicians do in their music and videos.
One common feature of such videos is the promotion of positive affect, sometimes by directly plugging into the government’s efforts in this regard. This is to such a degree that some videos end up looking, more than anything else, like government PR materials or instruments to bolster the political image of the governor—which they probably are, considering the continuous influence of patronage on popular music in Nigeria. A quintessential example of musicians who have built important aspects of their star image this way is the hip-hop artist Olamide Adedeji, who goes simply by Olamide. In I love Lagos (see Figure 2), he wears the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) uniform as he struts on the road, flanked by armed policemen.Footnote 4 He sings of the improvement to the police force that Fashola’s successor, Akinwunmi Ambode (2015–2019), has made through the provision of new vehicles and helicopters. Most importantly, he sings to the audience that they will love Lagos if he takes them to specific parts of the city (Badagry, Lagos Island, Elegushi Beach, and Oniru Beach). His focus is on the infrastructural projects that have shored up the reputation of the Lagos State government (since Ahmed Tinubu) as progressive and competent. The video combines a healthy dose of medium, wide, aerial, and high angle shots to capture the beauty of the places mentioned. They are supposed to provoke the viewer’s admiration and love, and if they do not, the atmosphere of enjoyment that the city offers at night and the possibility of meeting someone famous ought to do it.Footnote 5 The image of Olamide strutting on a tidy street in a LAWMA uniform, surrounded by police vehicles and stern looking policemen does the double work of identifying him with both the administrators of the state (important enough to be guarded) and the workers actually responsible for the day-to-day activity of keeping the streets clean. He repeats this look a year later in a sanitation and hygiene campaign sponsored by Sterling Bank, indicating how financially rewarding the move turned out to be.
Figure 2. Screenshot of music star Olamide dancing in front of policemen in his music video I Love Lagos
While Olamide’s case represents an extreme end of this phenomenon, elements of his video recur in others in varying degrees. Hublesmith’s Beautiful Lagos is almost a replica, complete with the high angle shots of bus stops all over Lagos and the homage to Akinwunmi Ambode. So is Eko Ile by Strings. Other less politically inclined offerings rely on recognizable icons of Lagos for their effect. Familiar features include danfo buses (orange minibuses with black stripes that are the main source of transportation for many Lagosians); The Three White Cap Chiefs statue (see Figure 3); the National Arts Theatre; and dancing Eyo masquerades. These are capped off with medium shots of people walking, working, or hawking on the streets, often defying the bleakness of the surroundings with laughter and dancing. Kizz Daniel’s Eko (see Figure 4), for example, begins with a young man waking up to the sound of the radio encouraging listeners to go out and hustle. This is followed by shots of dancers on the street and people going about their daily routines. Kizz Daniel stands on top of a danfo surrounded by a crowd, and then in front of Eyo masquerades, appareled in white like them. Toward the end of the video, there is the customary club scene, with everyone having a good time. Throughout the video, the musician simultaneously identifies with the crowds of Lagos and sets himself apart from them with his demeanor and clothing. His love for the city is shown to be something he shares with others, but it also proclaims his eminence, since it is his music and video that mediate the viewer’s encounter. This asymmetry, true to the practice in such videos, is attenuated by the general atmosphere of enjoyment, where even those who are apparently having a hard time of it share in the happiness of being in Lagos.
Figure 3. Aerial shot of the Three White Cap Chiefs in Humblesmith’s Beautiful Lagos.
Figure 4. Screenshot of music star Kizz Daniel dancing with Eyo masquerades of Lagos in the video Eko
In Wizkid’s Ojuelegba (Figure 5), the star’s relationship to Lagos is figured as affinity with the common people of the city, especially the locale named in the title. This is demonstrated through his commute in the minibus taxi that is perhaps the most recognizable icon of Lagos. The first half of the video shows him lip-synching in transit with other passengers who serve as background to his performance. The simultaneous proximity to and distance from everyday people expressed in the scene manifests in several codes in the lyrics and the moving image. For example, he sings about how “ni Ojuelegba, dem know my story [in Ojuelegba, they know my story]”, thus anchoring his claim to belonging on the city’s nature as the repository of his life narrative. Ojuelegba is for him a “thick” place because the people know and share his history. The street and shop signs that the camera takes care to highlight are not just geographic markers, but also points in his personal trajectory. However, the video maintains a sense of mystery, where the first shots of the singer are of his shoes and his back, with the inscription “It’s a secret” written on his T-shirt. Despite the fact that his life is common knowledge among his fans, the video suggests, it remains distinct because of the success he has been able to attain. “Dem know my story” is an attempt to position the city crowds on screen as witnesses to his previous struggles and ultimately the extent of his achievements. When the video later shows him about to feast at a table set specially for him, it is both a commentary on Lagos as the place of possibilities and testament to his character. He is proof that the diligence and prayer he talks about in the lyrics work. The appeal to “hustle” as the unifying objective of all those who reside in Lagos is foregrounded by the images of people commuting and going about their daily routines, inscribing their lives on the city as they build up its various capitals.
Figure 5. Screenshot of Wizkid singing in a danfo in the music video Ojuelegba
The music video is a site for the comingling of signs and—since those signs carry their different charges—a site for affective transfer. Musicians appeal to the “thickness” of Lagos, encoded in its signs, for the projection of specific images. This is what separates videos with generic locations like beaches, yachts, or even other cities with less familiar markers, from those featuring Lagos. The artist who swaggers down the street or looks down upon the city from rooftops in the latter kind is not just performing confidence and success, but doing so in Lagos. Necessarily, the star image entangles with notions and sayings around what others take Lagos to be, for example, “Èkó o gba gbere [Lagos tolerates no sluggishness]”, “Èkó ò ní bàjé [Lagos will never spoil]”, “Èkó akéte, ìlú ọgbọn [Lagos, land of wisdom]”, and so on. Lagos’s capital in generating affective responses potentially becomes that of the artiste as well. Nowhere is this more visible than when such videos circulate via streaming platforms, such as YouTube, that allow for audience engagement. The comments on Olamide’s I Love Lagos include those proclaiming their love for the musician, those declaring how they intensely miss “home,” Nigeria, or Lagos; and those who miss the city without ever having been there before. Notably, many of those expressing such sentiments are people in the diaspora, who have at one point or the other spent time in Lagos or Nigeria. The music becomes the soundtrack to their reminiscence, and their love for the musician entwines with their nostalgia and homesickness. Olamide is a nodal point, a sign to anchor their feelings about Lagos.
It is difficult to measure the extent to which this appropriation pays off in terms of traction for the artist. Much depends on other factors, such as the appeal of the music and the artists’ effort toward such an image. Some of the musicians mentioned here have only achieved very modest levels of success, despite suturing themselves to the narratives of Lagos. They mostly have single videos or tracks woven around their connection to the city. This contrasts with highly successful acts such as Wizkid and Olamide, whose music not only appeals to a vast majority, but who have also expended more creative effort toward their affiliation with the city. Among Olamide’s oeuvre are tracks such as “Anifowose,” “Ikeja girls,” “Lagos Na Wa!,” and “Lagos Boys”—songs that, in their titles, consistently reiterate his connection to the city. Even songs that do not conspicuously reference Lagos, such as “Wo!!,” are made into videos replete with images of the city. As for Wizkid, his success on the international scene is largely predicated on the hit single “Ojuelegba,” a song that simultaneously invokes his connection to Lagos and to the Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti.
In conclusion, I should comment very briefly on the part played by the audience in this phenomenon. Things are rarely so clear cut, some might say, since the meanings of the city are often contested and far from homogenous. The city is both hell and heaven for many, both a zone of endless opportunities and the arena of accelerated ruin. The musician who seeks to appropriate the city in a positive way, it would appear, is working with a number of uncertain variables, much like roulette. How can she possibly be sure what memories or affects she will trigger in whom? In view of the previous examples, this is less of a quandary than it might seem. The quality of any production is capable of swaying the audience’s experience or memory of Lagos. A music video portraying the comic side of commuting in Lagos—I have in mind here Falz’s One Trouser—potentially frames the actual experience as a lot less frustrating. A catchy party tune accompanied by images of Lagos (such as Olamide’s Wo!! or Eko by Kizz Daniel) activates a positive mood that embraces the city and the singer in its circulation. Thus, what appears on screen takes as much from real life encounters as it influences how those encounters are interpreted.
The relationship between Lagos and its stars is mutually beneficial. Drawing upon the affective charge of the city simultaneously contributes to its accumulation, further providing grounds for others to do likewise. More importantly, the stars make themselves integral to the narratives of the city rather than just providing a visual template for understanding urban life or for archiving memories, as we see in the case of Soyinka. The connection between the music industry as a field of competition and what we earlier termed an urban or metropolitan field actively alters the experience of the city. As many know, the industry at any time is saturated with innumerable hopefuls seeking to become stars, and a handful of stars determined to remain in the limelight. The music video is an avenue for asserting distinction, and musicians aim for increasingly sophisticated and innovative videos with high production values that emulate a global mainstream. This is to ensure their rotation on television stations across the various broadcasting platforms. With budgets that sometimes rival Nollywood productions, they pull in highly skilled directors and technical expertise.Footnote 6 Consequently, the music videos present some of the most stunning images of the city to be found anywhere. These influence the city’s favorable appraisal compared to other locales, so that, in the quest to stand out, the stars position Lagos to do the same with their audience.
