Mouth with Which the King Curses: Abuse and Departicularization of the Enemy in King Sunny Ade’s Jùjú Music

The enemy is a recurrent subject in many African musical forms. Abuse is a major means through which the idea of the enemy is conceptualized. Using the jùjú music of King Sunny Ade of Nigeria and the reaction of his audience and rival musicians as an example, this article shows that the conceptualization of the enemy is denied specificity through the musical artist’s choice and deployment of referential codes. One result of this is that the performer has ceded to the audience power of the interpreter, enabling them to such a point that they sometimes constitute a class of narrators that contends with him to privilege a different myth.