International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue XII, December 2022|ISSN 2454-6186
Affliction and Frightened Laughter in the Song “Covid” by a Kenyan Gusii musician, Henry Sagero.
Felix Ayioka Orina*, Christopher Okemwa
Kibabii University, Kenya
Kisii University, Kenya
*Corresponding Author
Laughter in the face of affliction and looming danger can be an outrageous act bordering on taboo. Indeed, any attempt to make light of a matter as grave as Covid-19, a pandemic that has occasioned endemic fright and a global existential crisis of a magnitude never witnessed before, can only confirm one’s callousness or, at best, be evidence that the concerned party has lost it and is now displaying signs of severe mental distress. Fear, anxiety, distress, panic and terror would be the more typical reaction, some art produced in the aftermath of Covid-19 reveals a tendency towards the comic. A case in point is the song “Covid” by Henry Sagero. The present paper seeks to examine the aesthetic value of humorous representations in life-threatening circumstances with reference to the song titled “Covid” by Henry Sagero of Bonyakoni Kirwanda Band—a popular music artist from Kisii County, Kenya. The focus will be on establishing the link between the artist’s perception of the existing threat, his conception and deployment of humorous images and, ultimately, the audience’s anticipated participation (or reaction thereof) in the ensuing humorous enterprise. With the purposively sampled song, the study pursues a descriptive and analytical approach aimed at revealing how artistic responses and choices within the phenomenon of popular art have not only been influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic but also the extent to which they contribute to collective societal resilience and survival. Theoretically, the study is grounded in semiotic and psychoanalytic tenets that enable us to view meaningful existence.
Key words: pandemic, Gusii community, aesthetics, imagery, humour, popular art, semiotics, psychoanalysis
I. INTRODUCTION
Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand
Mark Twain (in Zolten 1988)
Pandemics have had an intermittent manifestation in the long history of humankind. They have, at different times and with varying intensities, ravaged civilisations and communities. Severe ones such as Smallpox, Influenza, HIV/AIDS, Ebola and, now, Covid-19 have disrupted entire social orders while mild, and often cyclical, ones such as polio and measles have occasioned immense distress and trauma. A look at past artistic creations among Abagusii reveals the community’s artists have, occasionally, provided personal accounts of their people’s horrifying experiences in the hands of various past epidemics. In modern Africa, works by such Rhumba maestros as Franco (Attention Na Sida—1987) and Oliver Mtukudzi (What Shall We Do?—1999) stand out. In Kenya, renowned Musicians such as Princess Jully (Dunia Mbaya, 1998) and Longombas (Vuta Pumzi, 2005) fashioned messages on HIV and AIDS that attracted many listeners in Kenya and beyond. It may therefore be important to study how artistic messages are drawn from and suited to times of adversity and their aesthetic effectiveness thereof. In the present paper, we undertake a close reading of Henry Sagero’s song, “Covid”, with the intention of looking at how the artiste’s deployment of humour fits in pandemic art within the modern context that is influenced more and more by popular culture. It is an attempt to examine how, as Zolten (1988) puts it, an otherwise infamous act of “mocking death and ridiculing tragedy” (4) ends up being something that people find aesthetically rewarding.