Pop Culture, Youth, and the City

Cities today face broad challenges ranging from public health emergencies (for example, COVID-19), to anti-police brutality protests (for example, #ICan'tBreathe and #EndSARS), and unemployment. Stuck in a frustrating period of waithood, or waiting for adulthood, urban youths in Africa are increasingly devising enterprising ways to improvise their livelihoods and assert their right to the city. One creative way in which youths are responding to everyday uncertainty and frustration is through the power of pop culture, which includes creating new artistic, musical, performance, and fashion forms that extend across and beyond African cities. Consider, for example, the cross-cultural power and global appeal of Afrobeats. Notable American musicians, from Beyoncé to Pharrell Williams are fast integrating African pop music into their sounds as part of the upward trend of the Afro-Cool in the United States. This raises important questions about the boundaries between what is cultural appreciation and what is cultural appropriation. In the face of the contradictions of modern city life in Africa, in which people's opportunities and expectations are simultaneously broadened and constrained, how do young people fashion new ways of being and interacting with society? In what ways can crisis become opportunity? To address these questions, we watch films, listen critically to music, analyze written texts, take virtual tours, and visualize fashion and popular art forms that shed new light on the hustle economy in urban Africa, its relationship with pop culture in American cities, and the innovative ways in which young people are making their voices heard in the city.