1. Introduction

Nollywood is the branded name of Nigeria’s unique and globally recognised film industry. Since its birth in the early 1990s, Nollywood has championed an unprecedented cinematic revolution on the African continent (Krings and Okome, 2013). This revolution has been made possible by its extensive output, as well as its popularity and unparalleled ability to reach remote and non-elite audiences (Ugochukwu, 2013). Consequently, the emerging body of scholarly writing on African cinema in the Twenty-first Century greatly focuses on the advent and activities of Nollywood (for example, Adejumobi, 2007; Adesanya, 2000; Barrot, 2005; Hanyes, 2000; Jedlowski, 2011; Larkin, 2004; McCain, 2013; Onuzulike, 2007). Broadly speaking, Nollywood gives voice to an array of cultural views – beliefs, music, poetry, dance, and history: it essentially tells the Nigerian story the Nigerian way. As a result of efforts to adequately express Nigerian culture, the industry’s films are replete with recurring storylines and themes. However, beyond such repetitive thematic issues are those subtle socio-cultural and processual practices, without which it is almost impossible to grasp the complexity or otherwise of its soundtracks as artistic works that are simultaneously ethical and profit oriented. For example, Nollywood fundamentally approaches soundtrack as texted music. The use of texted music is grounded in the art of prefiguring – an approach wherein music functions to negotiate and foretell dialogue and scenes in film. Thus, the chances of scoring a locally made Nollywood film using only instrumental music are negligible. In an interview, veteran Nollywood film composer Stanley Okorie (2015) asserts:

Why wouldn’t they [soundtracks] have lyrics? Nobody has time for your instrumentals. Are you trying to make the people watching the film sleep? A couple of times I have done movies with instrumentals…with serenades for certain places [parts of the film]. All right. But that is as far as it goes. Do not forget: the people who appreciate jazz and instrumental music do not watch our movies.

Furthermore, the insistence on texted music strongly mimics indigenous storytelling practices in Nigeria wherein the accompanying music to folktales and folk theatre is not only vocal but also intended to ‘give back’ the story/plot to its audience. Prefiguring is thus an example of a localised creative process – one that I have argued is Nollywood’s deliberate choice aimed at resisting perceived film music influences from such foreign cinema traditions as mainstream Hollywood (Sylvanus, 2012). Nigerian film composer Austin Erowele (2015) confirms this statement when he says:

In Africa, we want our songs to have relevance to the movie. We vocalise our songs a lot […] so, you cannot make a [film] song without any vocals. Otherwise, to the [executive] producers, you have not done anything, and [you] will be told… ‘This is not how we do it here’. So, you must vocalise your sound [-track]. Anybody that writes without vocalisation is trying to copy the Hollywood thing.

Erowele’s assertion strongly affirms what is the norm in Nollywood film music, including a robust reliance on Nigerian musical culture. This approach has, in part, contributed to the industry’s divergent organisational and creative process, which some of its overseas-trained practitioners struggle to undermine.

The observations made so far may appear difficult to understand and perhaps unmethodical to the industry outsider. Yet, my research shows that they are actually well-conceived and articulated thoughts, which bear far less discrete underpinnings of the country’s history, subcultures/cultural imaginary, and other socioeconomic perspectives. To be clear, Nollywood film music is largely the product of informal practices and symbolic actions (discussed later). Many such actions are garnered through statements such as ‘This is the way we do things around here’ (Erowele, 2015), which imply norms that insider-practitioners intuitively follow. In other words, their actions and inactions together signal and symbolise what is really valued in the industry. Taken together, these and other observations combine to both suggest and situate Nollywood film music productions within a differing operational space and structure. In what follows, I identify all those involved in the business and creative processes of Nollywood film music production. I also explain what their definitive individual roles are as well as how they interact in the collaborative process. By examining the stakeholders’ working relationship, a unique Nollywood structure and hierarchy of practitioners emerges (Figure 1). This structure not only differs somewhat from those found in some other global film music industries but also is critical to how the final product is influenced and, therefore, understood.

2. Nollywood Film Music Production: Stakeholders, Structure, Roles, and Relations

Nollywood uses familiar designations to identify its human enablers within the production process. However, not all titles depict the function of the bearer in their entirety. For example, there exists someone called the Marketer whose full designation reads ‘Executive Producer/Marketer’ (EPM). By convention, a marketer strategises and promotes the sales of a product. However, in Nollywood the marketer (or EPM) is the equivalent of Hollywood’s film producer and, perhaps, much more. The EPM is usually the sole financier of film projects – a very powerful figure who controls nearly everything from decisions about: who to cast in the film; which composer to contract; what to pay the different members of the production team; to when the soundtrack should be submitted; what musical genre and style the soundtrack should possess; the language of choice for the lyrics; and, occasionally, where music should be laid on a film. As such, it is unsurprising that the EPM’s interaction with the rest of the team is usually more monologue than dialogue.

The next group of stakeholders are the film director and film music composer. Fieldwork reveals that the film director is only responsible for coordinating the film’s visual subjects and objects. Even so, the final decisions rest solely with the EPM, and there is very little room for compromise. In essence, the film director plays no part in the collaborative process and outcome of any locally made Nollywood soundtrack. This is a striking and astounding observation, particularly as it differs markedly from most director-led Euro-American processes. Specifically, all expectations about the soundtrack flow directly from the EPM to the composer. As such, and to paraphrase most of the practitioners that I interviewed, what is termed a ‘discussion’ with the EPM is more or less an instruction to the composer. Basically, the role of the film composer in Nollywood is to realise the EPM’s prescribed creative (musical) intentions, however flawed. The composer’s opinion seldom counts, except in rare cases where the film genre is itself a hybrid.[1] For the purpose of this article, the list of established Nollywood film composers includes Stanley Okorie, Austin Erowele, Shadrach John, Mike Nliam, and Chiemere Emejuobi. Other less well-known composers are Maxwell Chidiebere Leonard, George Nathaniel, Kayode Dada, and Chimex Alex.

In addition to the aforementioned stakeholders is the film sound editor who works more closely with the director than with the composer. The sound editor performs many audio-related tasks including laying the soundtrack on to the film – a role that is arguably reserved for the composer in some other film traditions. This is the status quo in Nollywood because many of the composers either do not have the technology to lay soundtrack on to film, or they lack the know-how, or both. As a consequence of having the sound editor in this role, the art of prefiguring becomes a subtly contested privilege between the sound editor, the EPM, and the composer. In effect, this collaborative demarcation between the sound and music professionals encourages the control of music by the former in ways that promote prefiguring. Put simply, the process drives the aesthetic construct of Nollywood soundtracks.

Others in the production team include singers, recording studio managers, and audio engineers who are basically the support staff and financial responsibility of the film composer. Generally, the EPM expects the film composer to write, perform, and record the soundtrack alone. This demand implies that the industry expects a film composer to possess a singing voice. This, too, is another marked difference in comparison to its Euro-American counterpart wherein composers may not necessarily be singers. Enter Erowele (2015):

To belong to the industry, you must be more of a singer/songwriter. You must be talented especially in the ability to visualise the script [plot] because [until recently] you only get the script not the preview [rough-cut] of the film.

For this reason, EPMs seem acutely aware of how each film composer sounds in song. So, to ensure compliance, some of them listen to hear the composer’s own singing voice in the soundtrack. What the foregoing suggests is the existence of some hierarchies and structures that guide the production process.

It is my theory that the hierarchy of Nollywood film music production is somewhat linear and less complicated than, for instance, Hollywood’s (see Figure 1). The head of the production team is always the EPM. Although there is a film director, the next important person to the EPM, in the context of the soundtrack, is the film composer. As already stated, the film director has no responsibility in the film music process (see Figure 3). In reality, most composers and directors never get to know each other. The sound editor, singers, and other audio studio personnel make up the lowest tier of this hierarchy. This simple one-directional production structure has merits and demerits. On the one hand, it eliminates the bureaucracy of extensive and rigorous collaborations that exist where too many persons are involved. It also saves production time, which is very important to the EPM. On the other hand, not much creative freedom is encouraged as composers merely work to the EPM’s terms. Also, the turnover time affects quality negatively because works are often hurriedly done. These issues encourage thoughts on the tension between ‘quality’ and ‘the popular’, and how they may be negotiated. The fact is that this hierarchy and structure is not going to change any time soon because it is remotely guided by what Haynes (2000; 2010) describes as Nollywood’s ‘cultural value and politics of mass entertainment’. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that the industry has taken a stance regarding the aforesaid tension. My view is that Nollywood stance privileges ‘the popular’ over ‘quality’.

Figure 1. Nollywood film music production structure

The Nollywood film music production structure is different on paper and in practice to its Euro-American counterpart. Specifically, it contrasts significantly with the auteur-driven model of Europe and, perhaps, Hollywood. According to Menne (2011: 36), the auteur theory argues that ‘the unity of a film – its totality of decisions – must be rooted in the director’s agency’. In other words, the film director is the major creative force in a motion picture, and is considered the ‘author’ of the movie. Both the European production model and the complexities of collaboration in Hollywood give considerable (creative) influence to the film director. By my scrutiny, Nollywood’s organisational/production model is both culturally specific and relevant to Nigeria. Four main reasons support this position statement.

First, the ‘absence of a founding philosophy’ or bureaucratic process by a body of filmmakers to fashion out Nollywood’s agenda means that the industry would need to adopt a bottom-up conceptual approach to cinema. This grassroots/streetwise approach would work to guarantee a production process that thrives largely in oral tradition. This then feeds the second reason – ‘appropriation’. As an industry, Nollywood is a socio-culturally responsive phenomenon. This implies that the customs, laws, values, and expectations of its host culture and people primarily dictate its cinematic contents and business strategies.[2] Accordingly, film and film music projects were and still are seen through the prism of folklore and theatre, where, like the leader of the cultural troupe, Nollywood’s EPM is the be-all and end-all. There is, therefore, no room for a parallel leader in the guise of an artistic (or film) director. In other words, stakeholders appropriate the collaborative roles and also reinvent the observable functionality of human agency and music in folklore and drama. They also appropriate indigenous modes of transacting business, particularly word-of-mouth commissions, payment by cash, and the conviction that royalties to film composers is both alien and untenable.

The force of appropriation connects the third reason: ‘power’. Nollywood’s existing organisational structure essentially treats the composer as a marginal rather than a strategic component of the film project. For instance, the EPM prizes the actor well above the film composer; and will likely risk contacting and contracting an outright novice for the soundtrack. Shadrach John (2015) affirms this:

In terms of musical quality, for instance, these guys [marketers] are so cheap that they would rather go to some roadside studio and get something knocked together, instead of coming to people who are experienced, and who can give them something good. So you hear some soundtracks, which sound like…somebody is just hitting tins and then you hear some very scary voice singing, you understand. So, it saddens me. And that is where this criticism is coming from; that’s the angle it is coming from. I bet you will not watch any of Stanley’s stuff [work], my stuff, or Austin’s stuff, and not see some form of quality, whilst retaining the local content.

The ability to wield power flows from the fourth reason – ‘money’. In this context, the EPM is often the sole financier of the project. Unlike the European or Hollywood film director who often has to account for film project funds from sponsors, Nollywood’s EPM owns all profits/losses and reports to nobody. Money is therefore a critical reason negotiations of and around a soundtrack are tied to the number of theme songs per film since, according to Erowele (2015), ‘the more [the] theme songs, the more [the] money’. This factor has, together with the urge to imitate how music functions in indigenous storytelling practices, ensured that Nollywood film music does not adopt the long-form narrative tonal model. The organisational structure alone, however, does not fully reveal every detail leading up to the final soundtrack. A deeper understanding follows from examining aspects of the creative process.

3. The Nollywood Film Music Creative Process

Whereas it can be argued that Hollywood soundtrack productions are more expensive, less hurried, and structurally and aesthetically detailed, Nollywood’s, on the other hand, are transacted orally, very cheap, and completed over a remarkably short time (often between two days and a week). Structurally, Nollywood soundtracks lack homogeneity: the musical compositions do not develop thematically from start to finish in the films. Many of such film songs are strophic in form and tonality, and strategically applied to scenes without regard for the music’s rhetorical function and potential for continuity. Also, Nollywood film music rarely synchronises with the moving image, and there is no conscious effort to emphasise diegetic and non-diegetic narrativity [3]. All locally-made Nollywood films have texted (vocal) music soundtracks that are originally and specifically composed for them (see audio examples 1 [https://clyp.it/rm0nzchf] and 2 [https://clyp.it/rm0nzchf]). All the practitioners who spoke to me maintained that there are no musical scores or any other form of musical notation in use in Nollywood. Thus, the process requires that film songs be learned by rote. This exercise could take between a few minutes and some hours (see Figure 2). Also, depending on the complexity of the song(s) as well as the disposition of the musicians, actual audio recording follows immediately. Erowele (2015) offers a detailed description of this process during a studio observation in Lagos:

First, I write my songs. Next, you come to this kind of studio [where] you have the engineers, singers, etc. and meet. And since I have prepared everything – without music score… I pre-record the songs. I have a [mobile] phone here that I record my songs [into]. I write the lyrics and I record the songs with its lyrics in my own voice. Once the singer comes, I give the singer the phone [and] she listens to it, takes the [written] lyrics to the [recording] booth to sing. Now, she knows the melody [and] she knows how it [the song] goes…she just knows the song! So, that’s for the singer. My engineer is there. He is monitoring everything. He is the technical person. Also, he makes his own input too – his own suggestions, like, ‘why don’t you do it this way, and so on?’

Figure 2. Nollywood film composer, Austin Erowele in session with one of the female singers. Photo credit: Author, 2015.

Likewise, I note that the singer does not work to any kind of ready-made backing track or programmed instrumentation. Rather, she works to a rendition in the composer’s own voice (in this case, Erowele’s), which is stored in a mobile phone (as shown in video example 1). All other aspects of the soundtrack are then realised in a different or the same studio using the keyboard and computer programming apps. Both the business and creative processes create a framework of something unique and fascinating about Nollywood film music (see Figure 3). Taken together, it is not surprising that Nollywood practitioners have developed a film music lexicon of their own – of expressions such as ‘log sheet’, which is clearly a bastardisation of Hollywood’s ‘cue sheet’. Basically, the Nollywood log sheet is a list of sound samples and effects to match the different moods in a film’s plot, and is usually in the composer’s handwriting (Figure 4).

Video Example 1.

Figure 3. The Nollywood film music process chart

Figure 4. sample log sheet (‘Kamara Log’) for use in a Nollywood soundtrack. Courtesy of Austin Erowele, 2015.

As noted earlier, both the sound editor and EPM actively engage in some decisions about the soundtrack, especially prefiguring and, therefore, spotting. Stanley Okorie (2015), who is widely regarded as the ‘Father of prefiguring in Nollywood’, explains:

So, most times you make a song… for instance, you see [that] in a story a woman’s husband dies in scene 14, and in scene 15 she is crying. You now make a song for scene 15 but the [sound] editor now goes ahead and lays it on scene 13. What has he done? He has already told the story of the film. It’s not Stanley Okorie that [has done that], because the story of a film (even the foreign ones) must be about [the film]. So, what happens is that most times the [sound] editors – some callous editors – lay this song that is supposed to have been sung after the husband has died…they now lay it before the husband dies. So, that already tells you that the husband is going to die. […] So that’s number one. Most times you find out that what I get is the rough cut, it is not the final cut [of the film]. So, I may make the music for scene 15. But by the time the [Executive] producer and director see the film, there is no more scene 15. So, that music made for scene 15, which they have paid me for, will not be wasted. They can play it at scene 12; after all, ‘the woman’s husband will die’.

Okorie raises a valid concern. Yet it can also be argued that the absence of a final sound map or cue sheet, which, according to Sonnenschein (2001: 49), ‘details exactly what sounds are on which track at exactly what time’, paves way for editing assumptions because the Nollywood log sheet does not, in the Hollywood sense, ‘give accurate guidance to the sound editor and mixer’. Thus, one way to curb the powers of ‘some callous [sound] editors’ might be to introduce cue sheets. But this may never happen because the notion of a ‘cue sheet’ is unimportant in Nollywood. So, whereas a cue sheet reveals minute-by-minute details of sound-visual relationship/design, the (Nollywood) log sheet is a temporary cognitive expression of choices made at the earliest stages of composing for the film. To complicate matters, the log sheet is not also passed on to the sound editor.

Nollywood composers also uses the term ‘score/scoring’, which strictly means deciding where to place music on film – something called ‘spotting’ in Hollywood. So, even when Nollywood films show credits with the words ‘Music score by…’ it really does not refer to the existence of any orchestrated (notated) material. Shadrach John (2015) explains:

We are not trained. Everything you see is raw talent, [and] from experience. It is [a] very crude process for us over here. We do not do all this music notation thing. For example, I had a week to do this [referring to a soundtrack], and I wrote three songs, you know, three tracks for this. But we have people that read music. They can actually do these things [score for film]. But because of the money…a single project may only bring in $1000; and don’t forget [that] you have to pay everyone that works with you [per project] from that money. So, they [those who studied music] think it’s an insult to their professionalism.

Similarly, I would add that preparing a film score requires ample time and attention to detail – two elements that the industry itself does not quite encourage.

My ethnographic research also reveals that the use of ‘source music’ is highly discouraged, in part, because of litigation in connection with the use of copyrighted materials. Also, ‘temp tracks’ are not required and used in Nollywood because it is not the norm to sample the opinions of a select audience concerning prospective film songs.[4] So, whereas Hollywood employs temp tracks to commercially evaluate consumer tastes and expectations, Nollywood’s evaluation is entirely based on the words of the EPM who relies more on intuition than actual empirical survey. This kind of behaviour bestows EPMs with considerable influence – an aspect that feeds the politics of film music identity, which I explore fully in my doctoral thesis (Sylvanus, 2017). In all, I argue that the above observations, which arise from working within an oral tradition, combine to bestow Nollywood film music with its own inviolable spirit. It is, therefore, my theory that some differences exist between Nollywood and, say, mainstream Hollywood soundtrack processes. The following table summarises some of these differences.

Table 1 Some differences between Nollywood and Hollywood film music traditions

4. Reading Nollywood Film Music

Locally produced Nollywood films usually disclose storylines through the camera’s ‘long shot’. This suggests that the camera is not the ‘narrator’ of plots: it does not ‘move’ in the manner of classic motion picture films. I argue that this practice is both technological and ideological in orientation. I call this the ‘sanctity of immobility’ because it is an ideology that the industry’s approach to camera has sustained for two and a half decades. Technically, it is mimetic of a TV tradition wherein the target audience is expected to ‘fill in’ from genuine socio-economic and cultural experiences. Like Nigerian television productions, Nollywood particularly favours the ‘long shot’, ‘medium two-shot’, ‘close-up’, and occasional ‘three-shot’ camera styles.[5] Following this manner of use of camera, Geiger (2012: 59) notes that Nollywood pictures ‘closely resemble the TV soap operas that in part influenced it’. Yet by avoiding series and serialisation, Nollywood movies also conform to the structure of film production. This is why Nollywood embraces both motion picture and television approaches, and is, therefore, a hybrid film industry (Haynes and Okome, 2000).

By de-emphasising the role of the camera and emphasising both dialogue and vocal music, a conscious shift away from ‘seeing’ to ‘listening’ is established.[6] This explains why one can ‘watch’ Nollywood films as much with the ears as with the eyes. The emphasis on listening is strongly reflective of an oral tradition, which, not only demands that production processes are both participatory and representative, but also that the spoken word (whether as dialogue or texted music) is elevated above all other forms of (non-verbal) communication, including picture. This shift further implies that the soundtrack becomes hyper-explicative as a tool for revealing the story or ‘singing the film’ as commonly expressed within the industry.[7] The notion of singing the film (or prefiguring) is a core index for knowing how to read Nollywood film music.[8] By comparison, this approach contrasts sharply with mainstream Hollywood where the soundtrack is not hyper-explicative. Instead, a greater premium is placed on the appeal of picture composition and the camera as narrative tools (Ramsaye, 1926; Pichel, 1946; Sontag, 2001; and Zone, 2007).

5. Conclusion

This article is a small part of my original and ongoing research into mainstream Nollywood film music. On this occasion, I have focused on the industry’s business and creative processes with intent to advance our knowledge and understanding of Nollywood soundtracks from the perspective of divergence. As a result, many facts have emerged including: how film projects are contracted and executed; who the stakeholders are; where their allegiances rest and intersect; what the practitioners truly value; what guides and sustains the system; and how the mainstream Nollywood film music approach differs from other known traditions – all of which should support how its film music is read. The Nollywood business and creative processes have, among other things, guaranteed the preservation of its film music genres, their strophic musical forms, local languages, and the art of prefiguring. And so, I agree with Jeffery Geiger who, while discussing the political aesthetics and ‘shifting perceptions’ of Nollywood films, suggests that the industry does not need a ‘western auteur (a ‘Scorsese’) [model]’ because of the ‘distinctive styles of [executive producers/marketers] such as the Ejiro brothers, Izu Ojuwku, and […] Tony Abulu’ (2012: 61). In essence, Nollywood’s divergent creative process has worked and continually so for the local industry, especially regarding the character of its film music.

ENDNOTES

[1] Hybrid film genres are those that show inter-generic or trans-generic attributes. For instance, the presence of attributes of a horror film genre in, say, comedy. This notion is further explored in my doctoral thesis (see Sylvanus, 2017).

[2] This is evidenced in over 200 Nollywood films that I have watched, and the oral accounts of stakeholders. The film and film music themes of such productions specifically depict the way of life and forms of recreation/entertainment of the locals.

[3] See, for example, Karishika (1998), The Master (2005), Ekaette Goes to School (2014), and Native Fowl (2014). These and similar mainstream Nollywood films can be seen online via such outlets as Iroko TV. I should caution that Iroko TV streams films from many sources including ‘New Nollywood’ – the parallel industry to the one in focus here.

[4] For a fuller understanding of temp tracks and source music see, for example, Sadoff (2006).

[5] Thompson and Bowen’s Grammar of the shot (2009) is a useful book that explains everything from the different kinds of shots to the guidelines for their application.

[6] This argument is well advanced in TV music texts such as Donnelly (2005).

[7] This expression became widespread from the mid-2000s following Nollywood’s use of texted (vocal) music to narrate the storylines of films. According to Shadrach John, local stand-up comedians invented and popularised the term to disparage Nollywood’s approach to film music.

[8] I am working on another article that focuses wholly on prefiguring and ‘the Nollywood Rule’.

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Scoring Without Scorsese: Nollywood's Divergent, Creative Process

Issue 3, Autumn 2017

Creating Headspace: Digital Listening Spaces and Evolving Subjectivities

How Men Became the Sole Adult Dancing Singers in Iranian Films