Oliver Twist, popular music and electoral nostalgia in Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Electoral nostalgia involves a return in thought to an electoral period or to a deed from an electoral period in one’s past. This essay is concerned with the electoral engagements of Oladapo Daniel Oyebanjo, better known by his moniker D’banj, as these relate to the 2011 presidential election bid of Nigeria’s erstwhile president Goodluck Jonathan. The essay assesses the role of D’banj as campaign songwriter and observes his immediate post-2011-election works as reactionary performances to the hullabaloo generated by his involvement in President Jonathan’s campaign. D’banj’s post-election record ‘Oliver Twist’ (2011) is conceptualized as evidence of electoral nostalgia in popular music. The essay offers a critical look into the single by engaging the ‘Oliver Twist’ concept’s English origins, the trigger for the appropriation of the concept by D’banj, the mastermind of the resulting transformative work, its calculated dissemination to target audiences, and the successes it garnered.

KEYWORDS:

• Popular music
• politics
• electoral nostalgia
• D’banj
• Oliver Twist

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 2011. The 41st Academy Awards (1969) Nominees and Winners. Available from http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/legacy/ceremony/41st-winners.html.

2. HipTvOnline (2011). Wrong Move for D’banj? Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=871NzBS6aUY.

3. D’banj. 2011. Goodluck by D’banj Available from http://saharareporters.com/2011/03/18/sr-speaks-d%E2%80%99banj%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Ckokolette%E2%80%9D-interview-jonathan.

4. The Copyright Society of Nigeria has granted the author permission to quote Nigerian popular music texts and images for research and learning purposes.

5. It is noteworthy that Raoul John Njeng-Njeng, better known as Skales, released a version of ‘Oliver Twist’ in 2019 (remixed in 2020) wherein his pitch relies on the desire of more and more of a singular woman, contrasting from D’banj’s which sought more and more of different women/individuals.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Garhe Osiebe

Garhe Osiebe is a media and cultural anthropologist with the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, Vietnam. He is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the African Studies Centre and the International Library of African Music, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.