Resumen de Negotiating body, sex, and self-fashioning in Fújì music
A growing body of literature interrogating the voluptuous rendering of human sexuality in popular culture has focused on sex scripting in Western films and the commodifica-tion of women and their representations in popular media. However, exploration of how linguistic metaphors and innuendoes are deployed to affirm or contest expressions of desires that are sacred, sensitive, or taboo in Fújì music has received little scholarly atten-tion. Of what significance is contesting social structure on sexuality to Fújì as a Nigerian popular musical genre? This empirical study explores this question while drawing on an ethnographic and interpretive literary analysis. Drawing from Hakim’s notion of ‘erotic capital’, the analyses and discussion operationalize the sexual scripting framework, Black feminist thought, and African/Black revolutionary art. I argue that sexual narra-tives and connotations in Fújì performance are often generated as powerful resources to contest sexual sensitivity and push back on silence on sexuality, negotiate and solicit artistic identity, and exact influence on public conversations on sexuality. By and large, this article affirms the engagement of sensual lyrical content as constitutive of revolu-tionary art and a social transformative site in which the body is negotiated as a catalyst for sexonomics in the contemporary ‘ear-tearing pant-and-bra’ musical evocations
