Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Music of Nigeria/archive3

Music of Nigeria
old nominations and peer review. I've expanded this considerably since the last nom, including a section on music festivals and holidays; I've also added inline citations and a few more references for various things. I also added three GFDL photos and some sound samples. I think the only previous concerns that I haven't addressed fully are 1) too many red links, some of which have been filled in, and 2) problems with the lack of a coherent explanation of what characterizes Nigerian music, which I've attempted to address but decided it's impossible -- Nigeria is a modern creation without anything particularly tying the various peoples together culturally. There is instead some info on more general West African and African characteristics. Thank you for your consideration. Tuf-Kat 05:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I have a request - would it be possible to get any copyleft music on there [esp. full length songs]? There are sections for traditional instruments, Children's music and theatrical music, 'etc where it would be possible (albeit not easy) to find people willing to make their work available under a copyleft license. &rarr;Raul654 05:24, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I have not yet had much luck finding folk music recordings of any kind, much less copylefted. A couple messages to various likely organizations has also not turned up any takers; the Library of Congress has some recordings, but they're not PD and if IIRC, the LoC doesn't even know what the copyright status on them is (and even if I did get permission, it would be $100+ to get a copy since they're not on the web) -- I've been turned down by UNESCO, the University of Ohio, a couple other universities with musicology departments, and some other organizations.  The best I've been able to do is find two copyrighted recordings I could upload a sample of, but they're .ram files and I haven't yet found a way to convert them to ogg. (I left a message at the VP asking for help, but no one has replied -- if anyone here knows how to do that, I'm using a Mac, but could e-mail them to someone with Windows if it's easier). I could still hear back from a couple musicological groups I contacted, but I'm not anticipating much at this point; especially over the last few years, I think such groups have become wary of being criticized for exploiting native performers. They don't want to freely license a folk recording and then be criticized for a "Return to Innocence" or Deep Forest-style fiasco (i.e. an elderly Taiwanese couple is recorded, then the recording is used in a major international hit, for which they are not compensated).  If anyone has any further ideas on who to contact, let me know and I'll do the grunt work. Tuf-Kat 06:50, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Object. All the current sound clips are claimed as "fair use", but none of them has a fair use rationale. --Carnildo 07:10, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Fixed Tuf-Kat 08:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Support. I spent several hours editing this during its peer review, so I hope that doesn't weaken my opinion here (through conflict of interest). I think this is a rich and exciting topic that represents a summary of more detailed information in numerous daughter articles (which I haven't looked at, regrettably). Non-western musical styles often find it hard to compete in the global maelstrom—even in their original country—so making this body of information freely available on the Internet is a very welcome step, for Nigerians, other Africans, and worldwide. The author has brought to bear his considerable knowledge and experience in preparing this text, and has worked hard to improve it with images and sound excerpts, no easy task in this area. Without wishing to pre-empt further improvements that other reviewers may suggest, I congratulate him. I have a few comments:
 * It certainly wouldn't want to be any longer, particularly given the existence of daughter articles. After the start, it's a little like one long list, although adorned with examples and commentary in places. This is not uncommon in Wikipedia articles, and is probably inevitable in dealing with many topics. It's just something to keep in mind when assessing the readability and length.
 * The numerical references are separated by a space from the sentence they follow, which occasionally results in overhang on the next line. One way around this would be to replace the normal space with a non-breaking space—' '—which is a little tedious to do. Another way would be to remove the space. Or you could put the numeral immediately after the full stop, a very common method.
 * I changed to non-breaking spaces. Tuf-Kat 15:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Support. A few more photographs or images might be nice, but not necessary to reach featured article status. I am impressed by this article's comprehensiveness on a topic that might otherwise fall victim to systemic bias. Hydriotaphia 21:55, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I note the more explicit justification of fair use that you've inserted on the info pages of the excerpts. If you don't mind, I'll copy this to the Wikiproject:Composer page, where there's a section on using fair-use excerpts. You might remove the first sentence 'This is from a recording' as redundant, or you could add 'commercial' before 'recording'. Tony 01:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment - this looks really good, certainly much better than when I commented on its first FAC. But there are a couple of things that I think need to be fixed before I would support.
 * First is the large number of redlinks - they make a lot of the article look unfinished, and if they were still there when the article appeared on the main page they would invite vandalism - hard to detect as no-one would be watching them. In particular, there are several redlinks in Main article subheaders, which seems redundant.
 * Filled in stubs for the main article subheaders. Regarding the rest, I could just fill them in with stubs, but I don't think that would be particularly useful.  If vandalism is too great a concern, I don't care if this is ever on the main page. Tuf-Kat
 * Well, I'd probably say that if a stub would not be very useful then they shouldn't be linked at all. But a lot of the redlinks look like they would make for interesting and useful stubs.Worldtraveller 15:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * That's not what I'm saying. I don't have any, or very little, info to add that doesn't already appear in this article.  An article on Segun Adewale would be very useful, a stub that repeats what music of Nigeria already says would be redundant. I've already done that in a few egregious cases, but I don't want to for individual performers and minor styles. Tuf-Kat
 * Second is some of the structuring, for example Fela Kuti's section being separated by several paragraphs from the Afrobeat section.
 * Fela Kuti merged Tuf-Kat
 * I think that works better; but I think the afrobeat section could do with a short introductory paragraph or two explaining what influences gave rise to afrobeat.Worldtraveller 15:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Reorganized, expanded a bit with an intro to the style and Kuti. Tuf-Kat
 * Third, I think the reference style is a bit overwhelming. You have a massive 64 notes, of which 40 refer to Graham and 13 to Afropop.  I think it would make more sense for the refs in the text to direct the reader to the appropriate reference listing, rather than to a note which then gives the reference.  Some of the notes should be retained, though, where they qualify or explain the reference.  I think you have some facts sourced perhaps unnecessarily, while others are not sourced at all.  For example, I think reference 22 is superfluous, while the claim that children make music using a live pufferfish could definitely do with a source.  Some sections seem overwhelmed by references, others lack them entirely. Worldtraveller 10:23, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Note #22 is a source for there being Brazilian influences on Nigerian popular music -- how is this superfluous? It's certainly not intuitive.  I agree that some sections sections would be better with citations, but the article I used to write the bulk of the folk music section is no longer on the web, so I can't reference it.  My understanding was that it isn't possible for multiple text references to refer to the same source, so they each link to their own note that gives the source.  Can you give me an example article that uses the method you'd prefer? Tuf-Kat 15:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmm, there seems to be a numbering problem. #22 links to a ref that's #21.  I don't have time to fix it now, but I'll see if I can figure it out tonight. Tuf-Kat 15:30, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, fixed the ref numbering, there were two stray pipes in the note templates and an unused reference. The 22 I meant was a reference to Nigeria's history of political strife, which seems superfluous for a music article. As for multiple references to the same source, you can just re-use  each time you want to indicate that something came from reference xxx.  An example of where you could cut down on the number of individual citations is in the intro, where you have three separate superscripts pointing the reader to Graham - one superscript at the end of the paragraph would be sufficient. Worldtraveller 15:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, down to 45 notes at the end and 48 total, meaning three link straight to Graham's work in the references section -- I conflated a number of individual citations together, as long as they were in the same paragraph and there was nothing extremely opinionated or potentially disputable involved; the ones that couldn't be easily conflated became identical citations to the references section. I kept the individual citations to the book by Karolyi because it's a whole book with no specific section on Nigeria, whereas Graham is a relatively short essay; a reader checking in Graham could find a reference fairly easily because there's only a few pages to look through, but Karolyi's got 277 pages.  I guess I'll see about changing some of the Afropop and African Chorus references.  Is this better? Tuf-Kat 21:33, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 49 citations with 23 specific notes. Tuf-Kat
 * Support, lots of content, great work. &mdash; Stevey7788 (talk) 04:23, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment- section on Igbo music is much shorther than Yoruba and Hausa music, and Igbo music doesn't have a main article, but this is just a minor issue. &mdash; Stevey7788 (talk) 04:23, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree this is not ideal, though I note that the Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo are the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria, in that order (29, 21 and 15% respectively, according to demographics of Nigeria), and also that the highlife section under popular music is basically Igbo-specific, since highlife in Nigeria is mostly an Igbo thing, so this small difference in coverage is perhaps not as egregious as it may appear. Thanks for the kind words though!Tuf-Kat 07:02, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Just a note for full disclosure. I'm going to alert people who voted on previous nominations that this article is nominated again.  This will include both people who supported and opposed. Tuf-Kat 06:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, well, a goodly number of both supports and opposes are no longer active, so I won't bother with them. Tuf-Kat
 * Holy crap! Out of 5, Cgorman, Ambi, Taxman, and Ta bu are all on break! &rarr;Raul654 06:47, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Cgorman and Ambi appear to have some activity, so I left them messages. The first nominator, User:Guido Dimicelli, is also inactive and has been for awhile (looks like he never got much past noob). That is quite a coincidence -- I wonder if this article carries some sort of anti-wiki disease... that only Michael Snow and myself are immune to... Spooky... Tuf-Kat 07:00, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Since that didn't really work, garnering only two neutrals, I'm going to try leaving a message at the countering systemic bias page to see if anyone there would like to comment. I realize that that may look like trolling for votes from people who will support on the principle of wanting a featured article on Nigerian music irregardless of the quality of the article, so I will explicitly mention the FA standards and suggest that they carefully read the entire article and give suggestions for improvement even if they support. Tuf-Kat
 * Neutral. This seems to cover brilliantly all the different predominant forms of Nigerian music. What it seems to lack, however, is much of a combined historical narrative for those wanting to know how Nigerian music has evolved - there are sections for most of this, but they are spread through the article, which makes it somewhat hard to follow. Ambi 07:31, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I sort of share Ambi's concerns that the article lacks a narrative flow (whether organized along a historical theme or otherwise). The nature of the topic makes this rather challenging to accomplish, I concede. For me, the frequent section breaks do as much to interrupt the structure of the article as they do to organize it. I understand their use, but it always seems quite abrupt, like a bunch of jumbled-up stub articles with little to tie them together. However, I recognize that much good work has gone into the article and it is significantly better than it was previously. My comments are hopes for further improvement, not outright objection. --Michael Snow 17:58, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I don't really understand either of your (Snow or Ambi) comments. There really isn't much that ties together Nigerian music (unlike American music, for example, where most everything's a derivative of the blues one way or another).  The country's a recent construct and not a coherent nation-state like say France or Sweden.  I can't just make up a "combined historical narrative" because it would look nice. Would having a separate music history of Nigeria help? Tuf-Kat 18:50, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Myself, I don't quite see how the nation-state issue matters that much, other than the obvious fact that the article isn't going to focus on the music of Cameroon, for example. Sure, "Nigerians" don't have a unitary history, musical or otherwise, but I don't think we're asking for one to be invented or forced into the article. Hence my point that a pure historical or chronological organization is not necessarily the way to go.
 * What I'd like to see more of is how the different aspects interact or relate to each other. The article already covers this in places, but could use still more, and I think this would help with what we're looking for. Even if the ethnic groups in Nigeria have only shared a country in recent times, they've lived in some geographic proximity for longer, and a certain level of cultural influence presumably shows in various directions. To take one of your counter-examples, in writing an article on French music you couldn't properly ignore the influence of German, Italian, or Spanish music (thought: writing Music of Nigeria is akin to writing Music of the EU). I understand that we can't trace things back using neat musical genealogies to a common origin in some Nigerian Eden, but the level of musical cross-fertilization can still be explored. When direct information isn't available, a compare-and-contrast approach to the subject is a possible alternative. --Michael Snow 16:14, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
 * While I now understand your concern, I don't know how to resolve it. While the ethnic groups in and near Nigeria have undoubtedly influenced each other, that doesn't really have anything to do with Nigeria itself -- the Yoruba may have music similar to the Ashante of Ghana and unlike the Temne of Sierra Leone, but then the Yoruba exist outside of Nigeria, as do the Ashante and Temne in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and there is much variation within each of those groupings anyway.  In other words, it's possible to divide the West African ethnic groups into various interrelated music areas, but those music areas are completely independent of the countries' borders, so that's really a topic better suited for music of West Africa in a general sense, and Yoruba music more specifically.  It's not really like a hypothetical "music of the EU" article since that can be subdivided into regions that share identifiable characteristics (i.e. Germanic music) and exist entirely or almost so within the EU itself.  It'd be like writing music of France if all the ethnic groups in Europe were randomly redistributed while the national borders were randomly redrawn -- there would still be connections between the ethnic groups, but those would have nothing to do with the national boundaries. Tuf-Kat 19:28, 19 September 2005 (UTC)