Yorùbá Political Songs: A Communication Tool For Critique and Protest.

Abstract:

People in contemporary politics are generally demonstrated as self-centered villians whose interests in politics are mainly focused on their personal aggrandizement and not for the masses who are working tirelessly to survive. Among the people are the politicians who depend on the feast of the masses’ daily sweat and who fail to provide for the people and their enviroments’ basic needs. The aim of this paper is to identify and establish that Yorùbá political songs, which is an aspect of Yorùbá literature usually constructed to reflect either positive or negative attitude of their leaders towards the masses and to also counter and disqualify their lacadeisical attitudes of running the government of the people, is seriously affecting the development of their communities and Nigeria as a whole. This paper presents a structural analysis of some selected Yorùbá political songs using linguistic, thematic, and discourse analysis techniques. It also examines politicians’ use of language, how they form their words to reflect the uncare attitude of their leaders. Fifteen political songs were collected from various political followers. Ten of those songs which were imbued with abuse, curse, hatred, riddicle, financial fraud and political shift jubilation were randomly selected. The paper concludes that, in as much as songs promote the well-being of the society and enhance people’s lives, they can also be used to caution bad habits that may have serious negative effects on the society.