Nishad'in Hululu (Hausa Popular Culture)

Published in (Nigerian) Weekly Trust , 20th December, 2002 Hausa cultural studies never had it so good. I doubt if there is any field of cultural studies that has engaged much attention from critics — both virile and eunuchs — like studies of contemporary Hausa culture. Outside the country, the main focus is on attempting to understand what makes the Hausa person tick; for instance, why, in spite of high western education, the highly educated and articulated Hausa intellectual retains his cultural mindset and never sees himself as a poor photocopy of a Europeanized mind. On the internet, the focus is on whipping up sentiment against Hausa “zealots” and “fundamentalists” who seemed ready to decimate any opinion contrary to their religion. The incidence with ThisDay newspaper article of November 16 2002 generated a lot of heated debates initiated by “Naija” webmasters, not just against Muslims, but Hausa generally about their “fanaticism”. Within the country the main focus is on enterta...

Previously published in Weekly Trust (Nigeria), March 10-16, 2000 Oh dear! Just when you thought it is all over and laid to rest, someone has to stroke the embers of The Great Soyayya Debate again. It would appear that Garkuwa magazine (January 2000) and its prophets of doom were too early in gleefully mourning the “death” of Hausa novel (and don’t count the over 35 new, non-continuity novels that have been released in Kano alone since January this 2000). I am of course referring to the opinionnaire review of soyayya novels as given by Alhaji Ibrahim Bello, the Area Manager of the Zaria branch of Macmillan Nigeria Publishers Ltd, and Alhaji Ja’afaru D. Mohammed, General Manager of the Northern Nigerian Publishing Company (NNPC), Zaria in New Nigerian Weekly of Saturday February 19, 2000 (“Soyayya Novels Get a Kick in the Face”). Macmillan and NNPC, it should be recalled, make nice bedfellows, so the views were part of the same vacuous, and thus innocuous, continuum. Ordinarily, the vi...

The flurry of literary activities by Hausa youth (aged 18-32) in vernacular (Hausa) prose fiction in Northern Nigeria drew a flak of criticism — both for and against. This post presents a distilled perspective of the criticisms from the popular press in Northern Nigeria in 1999. Sources: Abdalla Uba Adamu, “Hausa Literature in the 1990s”, New Nigerian Weekly, Saturday April 24 and Saturday, May 1, 1999. Ibrahim Malumfashi, “Beyond the Market Criticism”, New Nigerian Weekly, Saturday May 15 1999. Abdulaziz S. Malumfashi, “Babinlata: A Writer with a Difference”, New Nigerian Weekly, Saturday May 22 1999. Ibrahim Sheme, “Of Market Forces and the Hausa Novel”, New Nigerian Weekly, Saturday June 5 1999. Abdalla Uba Adamu, “Idols of the Marketplace: Literary History, Literary Criticism and the Contemporary Hausa Novel”, New Nigerian Weekly Saturday June 12, 1999 Ibrahim Malumfashi, “Dancing Naked in the Market Place”, New Nigerian Weekly, Saturday July 17, 1999 ************ “…most of t...

This entry is an annotated list of critical debates and perspectives on Hausa prose fiction, often referred to as "soyayya novels". The debates occured on the pages of northern Nigerian newspapers (mainly in the Hausa language) in the early 1990s to 2002. The debates virtually stopped because the attention of the critical established had shifted to the Hausa video film which was getting established as the new focal point of cultural attack. Hausa prose fiction is produced predominantly by young men and women in the Hausa language. The main dominant theme is romance (soyayya -- hence the label, Soyayya novels). The predominance of romantic theme in novels aimed at teen population in an Islamic society is seen as an attempt to corrupt the morals of youth in the society. These debates capture the two camps -- both pro and against the novels. For more specific details of this Hausa prose fiction genre, see Adamu, A. U. 2006, Loud Bubbles from a Silent Brook: Trends and Tendencies...