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Oladele Ayorinde

Oladele Ayorinde is a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Institute of Musicology at Goethe University Frankfurt (2026-2028), hosted by Prof. Dr. Barbara Alge. He is a Research Fellow at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI) at Stellenbosch University (South Africa), and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Music (Organ House) at Mountain Top University (Nigeria), where he convenes and curates the Organ House Concert and Seminar Series, a research and digital epistemology initiative and open access documentation and archives in Africa. Oladele has (and still) held teaching and research positions at universities in South Africa, Germany, and the United States of America, including Tübingen University and the University of Bonn in Germany; Indiana University, Bloomington, in the United States; and the University of the Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. His Master's studies (at Stellenbosch University) and Doctoral studies (at the University of the Witwatersrand) intersect musicology/ethnomusicology, anthropology, politics, urban studies, cultural economics, global African/Black studies, archive and documentation management, and development studies. 

In 2015, Oladele initiated a research project entitled 'Music, Agency and Social Transformation in Africa', exploring the nexus between music, agency, and social transformation in contemporary Africa and the African diaspora. He began this exploration through his Master's thesis titled Dizu Plaatjies and the Amampondo: music, agency and social transformation. Here, he considers music's capacity to inform social and economic transformation in post-1994 South Africa. He explored how historically disadvantaged South Africans draw on music as social and cultural capital in negotiating political, economic and social empowerment in pre- and post-1994 South Africa. He advanced the argument and theoretical premise of the Master's thesis in his PhD research entitled Music, Agency and Social Transformation in Africa: A Case of Fújì Music in Lagos, Nigeria. Oladele explores Fújì music both as an African popular music genre and culture rooted in Nigeria and West Africa, and as a metaphor for theorising and explaining how social, religious, and cultural values are produced, exchanged, and circulated as everyday political and economic currencies in postcolonial Africa and the African diaspora. Central to this research are the issues of economic and political development and everyday life in postcolonial Africa, as well as the broader discourse on democracy, the neoliberal capitalist economy, migration and the exchange of ideas, cities, and urban development in the Global South. Oladele is currently advancing this research in the Global North, exploring how African popular music and cultures facilitate intercultural dialogue, transnational economic activity, migration, and the development of social and economic infrastructure across cosmopolitan urban centres and cities.

As a trained musicologist and ethnomusicologist, Oladele specialises in political economy, transnational development, everyday sound and soundscapes, city and place-making, artistic research in music, migration and mobility, digital humanities, curatorial practices, heritage and archives, multimodal ethnography and historical praxis, postcolonial studies, agency, and global Black/African studies.

Email: ayopiano@yahoo.com

Project

Mapping 'Fújì' in Germany:  African Popular Music, People and Place-making in Frankfurt 

This project explores 'Fújì' as an African popular musical genre and culture rooted in Nigeria, and as a metaphor for theorising and understanding the social and economic life of African migrants and African popular music and cultures in Frankfurt, Germany. First, as an African popular music genre, Fújì is a musical style from Nigeria that blends Yoruba drumming and Euro-American musical styles and instruments with Islamic-derived socio-religious elements, Yoruba storytelling, praise poetry, and elements from Jùjú, Highlife, and African Gospel music. Fújì emerged on the streets of Lagos and has since garnered a massive following across social and economic classes. Themes from Fújì lyrics, albums, and the star image of its musicians have provided cosmopolitan imageries that enabled local audiences to negotiate alternative spaces of belonging (including nightclubs, social parties, underground music, hotels, festivals, social media, etc.), and alternative economic spaces (roadside music stores, live performances, social media, political events, etc.). Since the early 2000s, Fújì music and musicians have occupied strategic positions in the mainstream Nigerian economy and politics and partly laid the foundations for and sustain 'Afrobeats' (the emerging technological-driven African hip-hop music cultures from Nigeria circulating across Africa, the UK, the US, Asia and beyond). Beyond Nigeria and Africa, Fújì music circulates and is heard directly and indirectly (through allied genres) in African shops, meetings/gatherings, and churches across cities and urban centres in Germany, the UK, the US, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and beyond. Second, I explore Fújì as a metaphor for theorising and understanding African presence in Europe (and across the Global North). Fújì, like any other African arts and cultures, is not just music for dancing or leisure, it is a social universe both in Nigeria and Europe (and beyond) where Africans forge mutual relationships and social and cultural ties to negotiate individual and collective cultural, social and economic well-being.

Through the logic of 'Fújì', Oladele's research project explores the nexus between African popular music and culture, people, migration and place-making in Frankfurt. It uncovers how African popular music and cultures facilitate forms of intercultural dialogues, illuminating the social and economic infrastructures and underlying logic of cities that operate largely unnoticed in Germany (and other European countries). It explores how alternative spaces of socialisation and economic infrastructures in Germany reflect broader discourses on international migration, democracy, diplomacy, cultural identity and transnational economic development. His project contributes to ongoing scholarly and policy debates on the collective cultural and economic well-being of people and migrant communities in Germany and across Europe.

Selected Publications