Contemporary Nigerian Popular music: A Menace to National Development
There is no gainsaying that most of the recent forms of contemporary popular music produced, packaged, made available for public consumption constitute grave danger and serious threat to moral uprightness in Nigerian society. This has exposed the Nigerian society to a wide variety of insecurity and violence. This is evident as seen from series of moral decadence and dissipation that infiltrated the lives of the citizenry especially the youths (the leaders of tomorrow) ranging from, sexual abuse, money mongering, indiscipline, examination malpractice and indecent dressing to mention but a few. Music is a powerful tool and a force for mobilization which brings about either reformation or deformation of character due to the type of rhythm, melody, harmony and principally the lyrics of the songs. This paper examines the new trend of contemporary popular music in Nigeria with a view to assess its negative and pessimistic impacts on the character molding of the citizenry in Nigerian society. Live performances of contemporary popular music were observed and audio and video tape materials relating to the said music were also analyzed based on their educational and moral values of such songs. It wa s discovered that contemporary popular music as we have it today in Nigeria communicates vulgarity and coarseness to the listeners and this poses a lot of negative effects on the attitude of the youths. Musician s employ indecent words to attract the youth thus creating negative influence on the character of the leaders of tomorrow (the youth) to engage in various debauchery. The paper therefore, suggested that relevant agencies should be put in place to ensure that apart from entertainment, music should convey positive character building messages rather than music that egg on and motivate illicit acts. Likewise, musicians should compose songs in the spirit of societal reformation so as to impact moral virtues on the younger generation thus encouraging holistic human development.