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Founder of Indigo Distortion and author of ‘Collaborative and Experimental: The Evolution of Afrobeats and Its Current Landscape’ Zainab Kuku, believes any Afrobeats musician that is currently highly-rated is deservedly so: ‘The Nigerian music industry before streaming was really hard, there was no clear structure for distributing music and a lot of our highly rated artists started out in that era. There is nothing overrated about that.’
My life would probably be a fiction or non-fiction book, which explores uncertainty.
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About the Author
is a writer and the founder of music platform, Indigo Distortion.
Nigerian novelist, poet and author of Graceland, Chris Abani, does not believe ‘Nigerian literature’ exists as a category: ‘It is a common misconception that there is a fixed category that can be read as essentially “Nigerian literature”. Nigeria has 500 nations, 500 languages and about 2,000 dialects. While culture and language can overlap, the level of diversity is such that Nigerian literature cannot be easily narrowed down.’
For the co-founder and publishing director, of Cassava Republic Press, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, it is telling that African literature is often pronounced dead in recent years, when more women and queer voices are becoming more prominent: ‘The loudest obituary writers about African literature tend to be men. These elegies seem to come from a tacit sense of personal or generational displacement rather than from the actual state of the field.’
Nigerian poet, novelist and author of Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-Hearted, Ben Okri, argues that Nigerian literature doesn’t always have to be about Nigeria: ‘Nigerian literature limits itself to Nigeria and then limits even the ways in which the country can be written about. What we want is a vast literature, a great literature…that speaks to all humanity.’
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