📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
Nigerian popular music has been one of the world's most prolific producers of genre innovation over the past three decades, generating highlife-derived Afrobeats, Afropop, Afro-fusion, and Afrobeats sub-genre evolution at a pace that conventional music history narrative cannot adequately explain, and a complex systems theoretical approach offers a more powerful analytical framework for understanding these innovation dynamics. This study applied a complex systems theoretical approach to understanding Nigerian popular music innovation from 1990 to 2023. A multi-method complexity research methodology was employed, combining network analysis of musical influence relationships among 150 major Nigerian artists, agent-based modelling of genre innovation diffusion, and ethnomusicological analysis of selected genre emergence case studies. Musical influence network analysis used album liner note acknowledgements, artist interviews, and music publication data to map influence relationships. Agent-based simulation modelled how individual artist innovation decisions propagate through the influence network under different conditions of market feedback, radio gatekeeping, and international platform access. Simulation results showed that small groups of highly connected artists serve as disproportionate innovation catalysts, and that genre innovation accelerates when international platform access creates new feedback loops that partially bypass domestic gatekeepers. Ethnomusicological case studies of highlife-to-Afrobeats transition, the juju-fuji stylistic boundary, and the Afrobeats global moment illuminated specific complex system mechanisms. The original Musical Innovation Complex Systems Framework identifies four leverage points for creative policy: connectivity facilitation, innovation incubation support, gatekeeping diversification, and international platform equity. Expert review confirmed the framework's theoretical originality.
Keywords: Nigerian popular music, complex systems, genre innovation, music theory, Afrobeats
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