“What portraits were used to sell music in the tumultuous, mercurial decade of the 1970s, when Nigeria’s primary concern was the construction of national identity, the making and re-making of a country. What secrets about this national project did the musicians’ faces hold? How was the zeitgeist written on their bodies, the bodies with which they sang the songs of the people?”

Read more:

https://magazine.waxpoetics.com/article/nigerian-1970s-album-covers-wuruwuru-archives/

Summary:

Through the lens of 1970s Nigerian album covers, this essay examines how music, photography, and design became intertwined tools for expressing personal and national identity in a newly postwar, oil-boom Nigeria. It traces how visual aesthetics, from Fela Kuti’s Zombie to Geraldo Pino’s Afro Soco Soul Live, mirrored and molded the aspirations of a society grappling with military rule, class mobility, and modernity.

By reading album art as social text, I interpret these visuals as coded negotiations of respectability, rebellion, and freedom, revealing how Nigerians reimagined themselves through image and sound alike.

🌟 Why clients value this:

This project demonstrates my capacity to translate cultural aesthetics into socio-political insight, bridging art and strategy. It offers clients a model for how to:

• Decode the visual grammar of aspiration across markets.

• Understand how cultural production shapes national mood and identity.

• Build communications and narratives that resonate with deep-seated desires for dignity, joy, and freedom in postcolonial or transitional contexts.