From Moral Panic to Water and Garri

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, The Age of Afrobeats. Buy the issue here.

Alongside her widespread exposure and acclaim, Tiwa Savage’s success as a mainstream artist within a male-dominated industry and society has been laced with moral panic from her audience. Such moral panic is worth revisiting because it brings into focus the alarming ways that Nigerian society views the bodily autonomy of women artists and entertainers.

In 2013, Tiwa Savage released a music video for the ‘Wanted’ single from her debut album, Once Upon a Time. In the Moe Musa-directed video, Tiwa Savage can be seen wearing a nude body suit, which caused widespread shock and controversy at the time. Nigerian media outlets described the video as ‘raunchy’, and a Nigerian housewife wrote an open letter to Tiwa Savage, therefore highlighting the hysteria and moral panic that the video caused within the Nigerian pop cultural landscape of 2013. In the letter, the housewife mentioned that prior to the ‘Wanted’ video, Tiwa was ‘perceived as an ambassador of the youth,’ and by releasing such a provocative video, she had tarnished her reputation. The letter also went on to call the video a ‘mistake’, insinuating that it was a piece of work that Tiwa Savage should be ashamed of or apologize for. Although such a response appears to be quite hyperbolic and overdramatic today, it was nothing short of expected at the time.

The negative comments about Tiwa Savage’s ‘Wanted’ video emphasized a wider general consensus, whereby the sexual autonomy and freedom of women made Nigerian people and the Nigerian media disproportionately uncomfortable, particularly when such displays were made by Nigerian women such as Tiwa Savage, as opposed to Western artists. At the time, there was a misconception that women revealing too much of their skin was solely done in the West. In the mid to early 2000s, while Western popstars wore mini-skirts, tank tops and bikinis in their music videos, Nigerian women artists were still expected to uphold an illusion of conservatism and purity through their musical work, due to fear of being ridiculed and critiqued if they chose to go against society’s expectations of them. Through the ‘Wanted’ music video, Tiwa Savage not only shattered this illusion, but she equally laid a foundation for younger women artists, such as Ayra Starr, to do the same. This is demonstrated through Ayra Starr’s musical discography which includes songs, such as ‘Cast’, where Ayra Starr sings that she wants to be herself ‘with no shame.’ It is further highlighted through Ayra Starr’s fashion choices, which are heavily inspired by early 2000s fashion, consisting of micro mini-skirts and tank tops that are ironically similar to the looks which Nigerians and the Nigerian media in the early to mid-2000s viewed as solely reserved for Western artists.

As acknowledged by the writers Jane Bowers and Urban Bareis in the 1991 article titled Bibliography on Music and Gender—Women in Music, ‘it is important to look at gender both in and around music as expressive of a society’s arrangements as to power and authority. But to do so completely, the entire social complex surrounding the music must be considered.’ In light of this, the ‘Wanted’ music video exposed the hypocrisy within the Nigerian music industry and the double standards that existed (and still exist today). At the time of the ‘Wanted’, video release, Nigerian male artists constantly had overly sexualized images of women in their music videos, and this did not cause widespread backlash. However, when a woman artist took ownership of her sexual freedom (as seen through Tiwa’s visual and creative direction for ‘Wanted’) it suddenly became a controversial issue. Through the ‘Wanted’ video, Tiwa Savage demonstrated that the feminine body is a site of ridicule and critique when it is displayed in a way that society (in this case, Nigerian society), does not expect or approve of. In such cases, the shock does not simply remain a shock. Instead, it leads to vitriol, moral panic or frenzied reactions as seen through the open letter that the housewife wrote to Tiwa Savage.

Tiwa Savage was one of the first contemporary artists that showed the Nigerian music industry a glimpse of the global reach and exposure that was possible for Afrobeats and Afropop music in the mid to late 2000s. In 2019, Universal Music Group announced that it had signed a seven-year exclusive recording contract with Tiwa Savage. At the time, Nigerian artists were not signing international record deals on the wide scale they are today. The only other contemporary artists who had these international record deals were the largest artists in the country—Davido signed a deal with Sony Music in 2016 and Wizkid also signed a deal with Sony Music the following year in 2017. On the other hand, Burna Boy signed a deal with Atlantic Records in the US and internationally he signed an exclusive deal with Warner Bros in 2017. Tiwa was the only woman at the time, who gained this international footprint and was playing in the same global field that the ‘big three’, artists in Nigerian music were gaining traction and exposure in. Despite this, she is often left out of conversations about the beginnings of the ‘Afrobeats to the world’ momentum.

As noted by the writers, Emília Ferreira, Joana d’Oliva Monteiro, and Sílvia Prazeres Moreira, women artists are ‘shrouded behind an “Invisibility Cloak” that naturalizes a masculine aesthetic world.’ If this ‘Invisibility Cloak’ is applied to Tiwa Savage’s career and the contributions that women make not just to Afrobeats—but equally to the Nigerian music industry at large—it becomes quite clear that the role women play is diminished to maintain the social order and hierarchy of a male-dominated industry. Tiwa Savage was the first African woman to win the ‘Best African Artist’ award at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2018. She was also the first African woman to sell out the Indigo O2 venue in London in the same year. She was one of the first Nigerian artists to be featured on ‘The Colours’ show, where she performed her song, ‘Attention’, in 2019. This then led to a stream of other successful performances by Nigerian artists, notably Oxlade’s ‘Ku-Lo-Sa’ in 2022. Although international recognition, acclaim and appeal are not (and neither should they be), the primary markers of success, it is still worth noting that Tiwa Savage has achieved a great amount within a global context.

However, in a culture and society that places an ‘Invisibility Cloak’, on the work of women, Tiwa Savage’s contributions although acknowledged to a certain degree, are not acknowledged enough. Tiwa Savage’s milestones are discussed or mentioned, but they are not archived, documented and cemented in collective popular culture memory, the same ways the achievements of male artists often are. This alludes to a wider issue, where the collective achievements of women in the Nigerian music industry are often hidden and belittled, while the achievements made by men are celebrated openly and magnified. The September 2023 Headies ceremony serves as a recent indication of this, as the male-focused categories were announced on the Headies stage, while the women-focused categories were solely announced through social media.

Although Tiwa Savage’s global reach cements her position as one of the main faces of the Nigerian music industry, this has not been without controversy, as seen through her recent performance at the May 2023 British coronation concert (in celebration of King Charles III), which was watched by over 12 million people. Performing at such a large event raised Tiwa Savage’s profile and most likely exposed a larger audience to her music, but at what cost? At the coronation ceremony, Tiwa Savage performed ‘Keys to the Kingdom’—a song she recorded for Beyonce’s 2020 Black is King album. If the music is solely considered, Tiwa Savage delivered a sonically strong performance. She represented her country in a green dress, which symbolized the Nigerian flag and her band complemented her vocals cohesively.