“Oyinbo, I go chop your dollar” -- A Talk By Christopher Waterman

In Africa as elsewhere, popular music has long been complexly articulated with the struggle to create, texture and defend viable life-spaces under challenging economic circumstances. This talk is a reflection on recent developments in Nigerian popular music, focusing on songs dealing with the 419/internet scammer controversy ("Yahoozee," by Olu Maintain, "No More Yahoozee [The Reply]," by Harri Best Moradiyo, and "Oyinbo, I Go Chop Your Dollar," by Nkem Owoh), and on musicians' reactions to the Central Bank of Nigeria's recent attempt to outlaw the "spraying" of cash at ceremonies.

Christopher Waterman, dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts), oversees six degree-granting departments: architecture and urban design, art, design | media arts, ethnomusicology, music, and world arts and cultures.   

The school also houses The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music (comprising the departments of ethnomusicology, music and musicology), five centers (the Art | Sci Center, the Art | Global Health Center, the Center for Intercultural Performance, the Experiential Technologies Center and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts); two internationally acclaimed museums (the Fowler Museum at UCLA and the Hammer Museum), and a major performing arts program, (UCLA Live).

Waterman is an anthropologist and musician who specializes in the study of music and culture in Africa and the Americas. He joined UCLA in 1996 as a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures, becoming chair of the department in 1997, and was appointed Dean in 2003. He has conducted extensive field research among the Yoruba people of Nigeria, and is the author of “Juju: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music” (University of Chicago Press, 1990) and co-author of “American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3” (Oxford University Press, 2007).

In his capacity as a bassist, Waterman has performed with such artists as Zoot Sims, Larry Coryell, Buddy Emmons, the Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey orchestras, and I.K. Dairo (M.B.E.) and His Blue Spots.

His work has been recognized with Fulbright and Social Science Research Council fellowships, a post-doctoral fellowship at Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities, and awards such as The Ethel Curry Distinguished Lectureship in Musicology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), the Class of 1960 Professorship at Williams College, and the Robert Trotter Lectureship, awarded by the College Music Society. Waterman was cited by Rolling Stone magazine for his innovative course on world popular music in 1992.

Prior to joining UCLA, Waterman was associate professor of music at the University of Washington, where he served as head of the ethnomusicology program and chair of the African studies committee. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a B.Mus. degree in composition and electric bass from Berklee College of Music.