Native American Colonialism Essay

European colonialism in Africa was a violent process of exploitation and dominance in the political, social, and cultural sphere of native society. Pop culture music and dance are dynamic social products that provide insight into the shifting sociocultural formations of a society. Through this analysis of pop culture I will discuss the classist social hierarchies established by colonialism and defined power by proximity to whiteness. I will explore native actors’ response to colonial social hierarchies in their alliances or resistance to colonialism and their influence on music and dance styles. Finally, we will evaluate ways in which music and dance are forms of resistance that challenge the status quo in colonial societies. Africa became an arena of oppressive white supremacist

Fela is a renowned Nigerian musician who established himself as a counterculture artist who cemented ideas of native traditionalism in his art expressions. Although Fela came from a privileged background, Fela often spoke out against affluent native Africans upholding and aligning with colonialists as a means of securing their sociopolitical and economic power over the lower class native population. Fela, citing his grandfather, a famous priest who often succumbed to ideas of western superiority, denounced such behavior as a mistake and promoted expelling colonialism from sociocultural practices in the formation of postcolonial native pop culture. As such, Fela’s influence to pop culture music was a direct response to the power imposed by both European colonizers and native African leaders upholding western superiority. In this way, power is both used to establish the arena in which popular culture develops, and shifting pop culture conveys the dichotomous dynamic between conflicting powers of colonialism and resistance through