Nigeria: Young Hausa People Produce a Lot of Novels - Adamu

By Muhammad Kabir Yusuf

When last did you meet a personality of this calibre? The man, Abdalla Uba Adamu became a professor of Science Education in 1997 at the age of 41. He is now a cultural anthropologist, studying popular culture, media and Hausa society. He single-handedly developed internet journalism in Bayero University for which Mass Communication department of the university employed his services. From 2003 when he convened an International Conference on Hausa Home Video, he became internationally acclaimed authority in the field with a number of paper presentations in Germany and U.S.A. He is currently the director of Volkswagen Centre for Research. In this interview with Muhammad Kabir Yusuf, he explains how flexible his personality is which allows him to explore art, literature, popular culture and media.

For quite a long time you have been a very good friend of popular culture. What is the history behind that?

Well, the only history is that I have always been interested in the popular culture. And by popular culture I mean mass entertainment such as: music, literature and films. But my main interest was really music as a young child growing up in the heart of the city of Kano. I had always been interested in music, especially American music. It was much much later that I discovered African music.

When I say African music, I am talking about Hausa music to be specific. That drew my attention to the study of popular culture. I wasn't so keen on films, particularly Hausa films, because I had not been watching them like I almost every one. But when they became a point of public debate, I started to look at them; their structure, their composition, their generation, their distribution and then I started my real analysis of popular culture with literature some time in 1999. It was while I was studying literature that the whole idea of studying films came in. While I was studying films, the whole idea of studying music came in. While I was studying music, the whole idea of art came in. That is not to say that there is distinct stages. Something starts and another thing comes in and it is converged into it. So, this is the beginning of my systematic analysis of popular culture, through the so-called soyayya novels.

When I started, I was very much aware of the fact that I was not a specialist in the area. All my training and all my researches were in Science Education before. So, when I started, I knew that I was moving into an area with my back exposed to attack from people who will insist that since its not my area, I don't have business to get in. and there are a lot of things I had to learn. For example, conceptual frameworks, theoretical frame works, and key players in literary periods and development. I was not afraid to ask those who know to explain to me things I didn't understand. That was how I started. To study popular culture, you have to do it from systematic and analytical point of view, not from emotional perspective. It is not a question of what you like and what you don't like. It is a question of what does this thing do precisely in relation to the international process. For instance, the young people among Hausas produce a lot of novels, what about other young people in other parts of the world sharing similar culture; do they also produce the same kind of literature? This is my kind of focus of analysis. I am not really interested in the substance of what they do write; the grammer, the syntax and all that. That is not my main concern. My main concern is the fact that young people do write and communicate. It is from this, actually, that I moved into the area of cultural communication. Because I was looking at the way media is used to communicate ideas and thoughts. Those media could be in so many forms; it could be music, it could be literature, it could be films, and also the whole idea of intermediality between one medium into another. So, it started with the literature. But it kept going; moving from literature into film, then moved to music, then moved to other things.

It is generally assumed that you initiated the idea of Centre For Hausa Cultural Studies as a furtherance for your breaking away from Science Education into Popular Culture. What were the objectives for the establishment of the Centre?

I didn't create Centre For Hausa Cultural Studies. I didn't even know about the centre when it was created. The person who first brought the idea was Ahmad Salihu Alkanawy who is a film maker. It happened during a planning meeting held for International Conference on Hausa Video Film. Instead of just convening a conference on Hausa home video, Alkanawy suggested creating a centre for Hausa cultural studies, and people accepted the idea. I wasn't there at that particular meeting. I was away. It was only when I returned that I was briefed. And it sounded like a very good idea to me. The now newly created centre managed the affairs of the conference. After the conference and the subsequent publication of its proceedings, we felt the need to sustain the centre. Not just to look at films, but also to look at literature, music, arts and other things. That is to be able to rightly describe the centre as a platform for understanding and analysing how the mass media interact with popular culture in the Hausa society. This include how do the young people interact with internet, MP3 players, how do they compose music using synthesisers, how do they create novel using word processors, how do they make films using video cameras, or even graphic packages.

We are interested basically in media technology and young Hausa people and how they use media technology to promote popular culture. So, the whole idea of Centre For Hausa Cultural Studies is to promote the use of media technology in promoting Hausa popular culture. We want to systematise it, we want to understand it, and we want to document it, because nobody is documenting it.