ETHOS OF DEVIANCE: THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF

MARLIANISM IN NIGERIAN POP-MUSIC

Rev. Dr. Jude Toochukwu Orakwe (jatomaria@[Link]),

ABSTRACT

This essay engages in an analytic study of the Marlian movement, revolving around the

persona and music performance of Naira Marley. As such, the author – by application of

hermeneutics and contextual analysis – seeks to investigate the extent to which a music star

can function as a powerful factor exercising an enormous influence on youth culture, whether

this influence produces desirable or undesirable results. This study argues that while the

music of Naira Marley serves as an entertainment, especially given its extraordinary appeal to

mainly the class of the youth, it is, in fact, on the one hand, an instrument of cultural protest,

and on the other, a tool of enactment of non-conformist and deviant morality. At the same

time, Marlian music seeks to establish a peculiar pattern of social identity through upholding

queer principles that bestow some recognizable format to the Marlian movement and give the

Marlian devotees their sense of belonging within the movement. Ultimately, the specific

functionality of the Marlian music within the contemporary Nigerian youth culture is rooted

in the fact that music can function as tool for the marketing and dissemination of ideas,

values and political ideologies. It can also serve and has always functioned as a powerful

instrument for the negotiation of identity, whether the identity in question pertains to an

individual or a defined group. But in the final analysis, music is imbued with intrinsic ethical

values and can positively or negatively influence the worldview, attitude and mannerisms of

a person or group.

Keywords: Music, identity, political ideologies, Marlian movement, ethical values

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 Introduction

Music has always had wide range of influences on human beings and on the society. Indeed,

while it “can be a medium of expression through which we pray and protest and remember and

relax,” it also “provides a lens through which we can understand the most deeply felt aspects

of human experience” (Shelemay 2006, p. xvii). Music functions as a vehicle of dissemination

of religious or quasi-religious credo, philosophical ideas and political ideologies. It can also be

a powerful instrument for the negotiation of common or group identity. However, influence

from music is not simply morally indifferent. This is why ancient music theorists talk about

the ethos of music, which simply implies that “music possessed moral qualities and could affect

a person’s character and behavior.” For these ancient theorists, “the wrong kind of music makes

you the wrong kind of person, and the right kind tends to make you a better person” (Hanning

2002, p. 6). Consequently, the moral effects of music on the listening subjects can be positive

or negative.

The Marlian movement, centred around a famous pop music star, Azeez Fashola, a.k.a. Naira

Marley, demonstrates the extent to which cultic adoration of a music star can lead to desirable

or undesirable consequences. In its emergence, Marley’s music together with the Marlian

movement it inspired serves as an apparatus of opposition to “the dominant culture of political

establishment” (Shelemay 2006, p. 382). Therefore, while it serves as an entertainment, with

strong appeal to mainly the class of young people, it is in the final analysis, an item of social

resistance. In the very act of resisting the dominant class, Marlian music becomes a means of

negotiation of identity inasmuch as it gives rise to some rather anarchist ideologies (complete

with even rules!) that gives a social shape to the Marlian movement. These basically anti-social

beliefs and rules give a prospective member his or her locus standi within the Marlian

movement.

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 Ethnographic and Biographic Data

On April 9, 2020, the Vanguard newspaper reported the court trial of Naira Marley as follows:

“In spite of the lockdown still in place, dozens [no fewer than 200] of fans of singer, Azeez

Fashola, a.k.a. Naira Marley, were at the premises of Ikeja Chief Magistrates’ Court to show

support for their idol” (Royal 2020). Naira Marley was alleged to have flouted the Covid-19

law of social distancing as decreed and enforced by Lagos State of Nigeria in the context of

the lockdown imposed by the State Government as a measure to stem the incidence of spread

of the coronavirus. According to the Vanguard newspaper, many of the fans who called at the

court to support Naira Marley came from various strata of the society. In general, their reason

for solidarity with Naira Marley revolves around his standing as a representative “voice of the

voiceless in the street” as one of the fans put it. Eventually, the Lagos State Government

decided to drop the charges. It was alleged in some quarters that the government did this in

response to Marley’s pledge to cooperate with the Lagos State Government by using his music

as a weapon of war against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Naira Marley, a new generation hip-hop artist, gained prominence in the late December of 2019

and early January of 2020 because of the viral circulation of his ideologies in the social media.

But he was far earlier in the music scene before the circulation of his weird credos. As far as

identity and trademark are concerned, he is well “known for his anti-establishment youth spirit

and viral dance crazes” while his music “connects the West African diaspora to their roots as

he delivers his lines in a syrupy mixture of Yoruba and English” (Koku 2020). Originally born

in Lagos State, Naira Marley was in Peckham, South London at the age of 11. Amidst the

camaraderie of young friends, he discovered his singing talent. Eventually he became decisive

about pursuing a music career once his first track, Marry Juana (Marijuana) became a success

in the UK. Marry Juana served as an introduction to Marley’s “‘gangster with feeling’

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persona” as well as “signposting his marriage to a ‘do-whatever-I-like’ lifestyle” (Koku 2020).

This was in 2015. However, with Marley’s release of the track Issa Goal, a track he performed

with Olamide and Lil Kesh in 2017, he got a foothold and started to make waves in Nigeria.

Marley eventually became a rock star for the Nigerian youths when in 2019 he released the

song, Am I a Yahoo Boy, in which he made an open advocacy for what in Nigerian street

parlance is known as “Yahoo, Yahoo” or “419,” slangs designating and encompassing all forms

of internet-related criminal offence of scam or advance fee fraud (Ige 2020). According to

Adegoke (2020) his release of this song was shortly preceded by his arguing in the Instagram

that scam is not a crime while urging Nigerians to pray for internet fraudsters instead of

criticizing them. Nevertheless, this song and its seeming support for criminal fraudulence led

to Marley’s arrest by the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC). But

the arrest turned out to be a stroke of good fortune as “that song and his subsequent arrest was

the beginning of greatness to come for the artiste and the increase in his popularity around the

world. He became a discussion and they [mainly young people] also wanted to know who he

was, hence, [he attained an] increase in fame” (Abraham 2019). The controversy-proneness of

Naira Marley, his music and movement attained a veritable crescendo with his eventual release

on bail. According to news report, “granted bail two weeks later, Marley told the story of life

behind bars in a single titled ‘Soapy’ which became not just a club anthem, but a world song”

(Abraham 2019). Part of the fame – unfortunately so – of Soapy is in its being an essentially

lewd performance filled with sexually explicit references and a dance style that celebrated

autoerotic promiscuity.

However, the most important factor that gave his music and movement greater prominence was

Marley’s rather systematic enunciation of principles, effectively establishing the Marlian

organization, of which he is the “President,” as a movement, which—in the scathing

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description of Ademiluyi (2020)—is “made up of renegades and outlaws who abhor societal

convention in their bid to stand out from the pack.” In line with this development, mere

sympathy towards Marley would not just be enough to make someone a member of the Marlian

movement. One must observe the rules of membership. Ologbosere and Ademuyiwa (2020)

put it rather piquantly thus:

…you cannot just wake up and be a Marlian, the artiste allegedly has a set rule
and standards fans must meet before they can be identified or qualified to call
themselves Marlians. To be a Marlian, you must among other things, be a
follower and a fan of Naira Marley and embrace some of his lifestyle, if not all.

Similarly, Williams (2020) opines: “more than just a look… it seems being a Marlian is a

mindset, a mentality: one that’s firmly anti-establishment, anti-authority, and pro-doing just

what you want to do often with your tongue firmly in cheek.” Furthermore, according to Ige

(2020), some Nigerian youths “have confessed to becoming or associating with deviants,

rebellion, among other vices in order to be tagged as true Marlians.” Hence one is not surprised

by his (Ige’s) question as to whether “Nigerians [can] contain this generation of deviants?”

Marlian Rules of Deviancy

To define the rules of the Marlian movement as orientated towards deviancy could easily

provoke the anthropological debate as to whether such would amount to value-based judgement

of a music artist or not. But the phenomenologically observable and undeniable reality on

ground is that Marlianism is by intent meant to make the Marlian faithful deviant in order for

such an adherent to be specifically and authentically Marlian. We will examine five of these

specific Marlian laws or rules.

The first norm of the Marlian movement is the adoption of crazy hairstyle. This may not be

unconnected with an originally Rastafarian ethos of “levity” which “includes the wearing of

long hair locked in its natural, uncombed state” (McAlister, 2020). Historically, Rastafarian

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wearing of dreadlocks (long matted hairstyle) was introduced in 1950s by some of the members

of the militant youth wing of the movement known as Youth Black Faith (King 2002, p. xix).

Nevertheless, this apparently outrageous innovation was resisted by some members of the

radical group resulting in the split of the group into two factions: those who wear unkempt hair

and those who accepted the necessity of combing hair. Curiously though, the 1960s saw the

two factions coming together again with all Rastafarians embracing the dreadlocks as one of

their visual emblems (King 2002, p. xix). Be that as it may, wearing of dreadlocks or even

plaited hair in the Marlian movement could be possibly defined as a paraphernalia of non-

conformism and aggressive rebelliousness, the specifically normative deviancy that is central

to the Marlian philosophy.

Aesthetically allied to the donning of crazy hairstyle is the “no-belt/no-pant” law. Authentic

Marlians are expected to wear their trousers without belt: “Naira Marley is known to have said

in his songs… that he doesn’t wear belts but owns many trousers” (Ige 2020). Certainly, the

implication of this is that in Marlian aesthetics, sagged or low-slung trouser (which possibly

exposes the male underwear) is the norm. However, in what looks like a feminine adaptation

of the rule, young female members would go without their lower briefs at least on some days.

The law means that “they shouldn’t wear panties on certain days” (Ige 2020) even while going

about in public places. There had been stories on the public communication media about some

girls’ schools having to deal with students who belonged to the Marlian movement and were

found to have adopted such disturbing but inexplicable eccentric aesthetic standard.

True to his Rastafarian bent, Naira Marley encourages his fans to use alcohol and hard drugs.

In the Rastafarian praxis, the smoking of ganja helps one to attain an altered state of

consciousness or trance. In this way, Rastafarians come to a rather subjective perception of

themselves and the world around them. According to Clarke (1980, p. 49) “smoking herb/ganja

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reduces tension and induces a feeling of relaxation and oneness with the world, particularly the

inner world.” Referring to himself as “born for weed” (Igbolabi), Marley instructs that

“Marlians are expected to be able to smoke weed, drink and also mix local concoctions/herbs”

(Ige 2020). Specifically, on the issue of use of drugs, Marley eventually went revisionist

advising his fans to avoid engagement with drugs. This was probably because of a public outcry

against the perceived bad influence of his music and so-called rules. Nevertheless, with a

contradictoriness that is typical of a confusion-prone group, Marley indicated that “Marlians

don’t do drugs unless it is prescribed.” (Ige 2020). He did not say what the drugs would be and

who would do the prescription or when; but he effectively implied that members can “do

drugs,” but “only if it is prescribed.”

Another stratum of the Marlian philosophy has to do with the so-called zero-manner approach

popularly couched in the malaprop-spelt jargon: “No Mannaz.” This jargon is an oft-used word

in the Marlian enclave. According to Abraham, “after his career breakthrough… the tag name

given to his fan base ‘Marlians’ became a household name and even their motto ‘No Mannaz’

is one of the most used words.” By implication therefore, a true Marlian should ideally be a

man or woman with contempt for societal conventions and etiquettes. Indeed, placed on the

hot crucible of Marlianism, traditional norms evaporate and ought to disappear into the thing

air. As Ige puts it, Marlians “are expected to fear nothing.” This explains the chaotic behaviour

of Marlians at an end of year MarlianFest concert that took place at the Eko Hotels and Suites

Victoria Island, Lagos in December 2019. Marlian fans, as certainly expected, “resorted to

scaling the fence, bypassing security and disrupting activities within the hotel” an action that

“caused [security] officers to arrest a couple of them” (Alabi 2019).

Another important principle of the Marlian culture is its denigration of western education

expressed in the catch-phrase “Marlians don’t graduate, they drop-out.” In dealing with this

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principle, it seems germane to point out that such anti-learning ideology apparently serves to

demarcate between Naira Marley as an individual and Marlianism as a movement. Whether the

principle is truly attributable to Marley or erupted as a shadowy paroxysm only indirectly

traceable to his persona, fact is that one of the greatest offenders against the principle itself is

Marley who not only has a bachelor’s degree but also master’s. This has prompted a twitter

user, Funke Fatai, to rail piteously against Marlian enthusiasts thus: “Do you know Naira

Marley is a graduate of Peckham Academy in the UK where he graduated with distinction in

business. The shocking aspect of his biography is that, he is a Master’s Degree holder!!! And

you are there shouting Marli[a]ns don’t graduate, I pity you.” In the final analysis however,

many young people especially undergraduates are taking the principle of becoming academic

drop-outs seriously.

Analysis of Some Select Lyrics of Marlian Music

In this section of the essay, I intend to examine two of the more important musical works of

Naira Marley, namely, Issa Goal (2017) and Am I a Yahoo Boy (2019) as a way of coming to

terms with Marley’s approach to musicking. In general, it must be said that in the delivery of

the lyrics of these tracks, Marley usually adopts the semi-rap mode in which the melodic

functioning of the piece is subjugated to the heterophonic pattering of an almost non-tonal

singing. It is important to recall that in rap music, a “recurring beat pattern provides the

background and counterpoint for rapid, slangy, and often boastful rhyming patter glibly intoned

by a vocalist or vocalists” ([Link]).

The track, Issa Goal, as already mentioned above was released in 2017 and one would suspect

that Naira Marley unveiled the piece probably in anticipation of its serving as an

accompaniment to the outing of the Nigeria Super Eagle football team to the FIFA World

Championship that was held in Russia in 2018. Eventually, Marley had a remix of the track

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performed with Olamide and Lil Kesh on 16th of June, 2018. Thus, Issa Goal “became an

unofficial anthem for that year’s Nigerian World Cup campaign as the international diaspora

massed behind the team’s footballing efforts” (Koku 2020).

Therefore, basically speaking, Issa Goal is an anticipated celebration of an imagined goal

scoring and, possibly, an eventual victory by the Nigerian footballers in future championship

as can be seen in the sempiternal recurrence of the refrain Issa Goal: “Bebesia issa goal,

Sangalow issa goal Shanowole issa goal, Escoba issa goal, Toros issa goal, Naira Marley issa

goal, Olosho issa goal…” This goal is however seen as the product of magic – probably a

Nigerian or African magic. “What is this magic, I need that magic?” asks Marley.

The reference to the football magic (whether Nigerian or otherwise) leads to a reminiscence of

several fantastic performances of Nigerian teams at the stage of world soccer. One of the most

spectacular of these “magic” performances was during the football tournament of the 1996

Atlanta Olympic Games. Highlights of that outing include the semifinals with the Brazilian

team during which Victor Ikpeba and Kanu Nwankwo delivered the Nigerian team from an

early 3-1 lead by the Brazilians, making it 3-3, with Kanu finally squashing the Samba boys

with a lone goal shot fired into the Brazilian goal net during an extra time (defined by the then

FIFA rule as the golden goal). The competition final saw the Nigerian team clinching the

golden trophy after defeating the Argentinian team with 3-2 goal aggregate (Adewuyi 2016).

Now, it can be argued that the relevance of Issa Goal is in its being a music track that supports

and fosters Nigerians’ extraordinary zeal, craze and mania for the football game. With a hip-

hop item or rap music like Issa Goal (coming from a pop idol like Marley) in the background,

the time of watching football competition – by youths gathered for such in a public place or in

night clubs – could also be a time of strengthening bonds of youthful togetherness with

accompanying (and possibly deviant) ethical choices like drug mongering, non-conformism

9
and gangsterism. Such defiant deviance would be more likely if the youths belong to the

Marlian movement.

Next, the track Am I a Yahoo Boy (2019) is another number that has – and quite expectedly –

the quintessential Marlian I-don’t-care trait. As previously indicated, it found Naira Marley

behind the detention bars, even if only briefly. He was promptly arrested by the EFCC on the

suspicion that he is abetting the crime of scam popularly known in Nigerian slang as 419.

Indeed, Am I a Yahoo Boy is basically a track with a rhetoric and, perhaps, ambivalent question

as to what really constitutes the essence of con game. The track, cast in call and response format

– with the response featuring a wild heterophonic mixture of infant and adult voices – begins

with some sort of alarm delivered in a readily fluent but apparently thoughtless manner that is

characteristic of rap music: “see me see trouble Marlians…” Then comes the important

question: Am I a Yahoo boy?

In this controversial song, Marley argues rather weakly that “he is not a Yahoo boy.” He is not

a scammer or rather, resists being labelled as a scammer. This is a probably a make-believe

defense put up on behalf of several Nigerian young people who are into scamming and advance

fee fraud, probably as a result of unemployment. These young people are constantly under the

radar of the Nigerian SARS, a notorious squad of Nigerian police that eventually became a

household name for harassment, unjust incarceration and intimidation. Marley boldly asks the

police: Shey won ko yahoo si mi lori ni… Shey mo jo’mo yahoo? (Is Yahoo written on my

forehead… Do I resemble a fraudster?) But he turns around to insinuate that scamming is in

fact acceptable and should be seen so. Needless to say, the idea of establishing the justifiability

of scam would take a Copernican revolution in the moral order. Nevertheless, he references

“the person I scammed…” and then prays: “may God not let us be stressed.” Then he comes

up with the wish: “The mark that gives me steady money, let us not be separated” (maga to

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funmi lowo steady se, k’arin wa ko ma daru) and further informs listeners that “all my friends

are yahoo” (Yahoo lawon ore mi se). It could be possible that this last quoted phrase ultimately

created the conviction in the minds of security agencies that Naira Marley had some questions

to answer with regard to his perceived advancement of acceptability of scam through the

medium of music.

Music of Naira Marley as a Redefinition of Morality

An important logical consequence of the advent of Marlianism in pop music performance in

the Nigerian context is that it signifies the advent of an alternative morality. Marley’s music

represents a full and programmatic return to the ideals of what has been technically defined as

Dionysian music. Such aesthetic ideal is well known from the history of music in ancient Greek

civilization wherein the cult of Dionysus involves full advertence to reckless lack of restraint,

a frenzied and even orgiastic embrace of indiscipline as standard ethos of cult music. Within

the Dionysian enclave, music is normatively sensual, as such serving to drive “people into the

erotic or in some other way essentially intent on sensual feelings of pleasure” (Ratzinger 1997,

p. 156). Therefore, it is scholarly insufficient to simply dismiss the Marlian cult as merely

involving a group of deviant boys and girls. I argue that if the ancient Greek cult of Dionysus

can be described as a worship score, Marlian music is only a contemporary secular

rearrangement or re-orchestration of that score. This point of view is exemplified in Marley’s

anthem Soapy, a track he released after his incarceration and which is laced with verbal and

non-verbal sexy references and innuendos and his famous Am I a Yahoo boy described above.

Beyond the Greek history of music, the Dionysian ethos surfaces in modern pop culture in

which music is experienced as an instrument of “liberation from the ego” involving “the

pleasure of destruction, the removal of the barriers of everyday life and the illusion of

redemption in liberation from oneself, in the wild ecstasy of noise and the masses” (Ratzinger

11
1997, p. 155). Liberation in this context must be understood as based on “anarchistic ideas of

freedom” (Ratzinger 1997, p. 156). It is therefore important to state that anarchist ideology is

central to the ethos being advanced by the Marlian pop culture and its attendant music.

Politically speaking “anarchism is a radical, revolutionary leftist… philosophy that advocates

for the abolition of government, hierarchy, and all other unequal systems of power” (Kelly

2020). From the perspective of pop culture “the idea of anarchy has been characterized by

either a middle-fingers-up, no-parents-no-rules punk attitude” and represents a clear-headed

adoption of “violent chaos and disorder” as ethical option (Kelly 2020). This is precisely the

implication of the Marlian “no mannaz” principle. In the calculation of Naira Marley, the

present political and moral order of things should be turned upside down. This is an option that

has some nexus to and with all that is signified by Fela’s inauguration of the Kalakuta Republic

in the 1970s. This is probably why Marley sang in the track Am I a Yahoo boy “Olopa kole mu

wa, tani SARS fe mulo ni bi? Won fe shey mi bi Fela…” (Police can’t arrest us, who does

SARS want to pick up here? They wanna treat me like Fela…). Marlianism and its

accompanying music can therefore be defined as a renaissance of Fela’s politico-moral

philosophy.

Conclusion

“Can Nigerians contain this generation of deviants?” asks Ige. As seemingly interesting and

germane as this question sounds, it misses a crucial point in understanding the nature or essence

of the new Marlian culture currently prancing on the stage of contemporary Nigerian pop

culture. The point is that the Marlian pop-culture is based on a systematic politico-moral

ideology, namely anarchism. It is a well-articulated revival of the Dionysian frenzy in music.

By that very fact, I wish to argue that a checkmating of Marlianism cannot be achieved by

simply posing some moralist lamentation or moralistic questions but only by upholding for the

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emulation of Nigerian youths a superior or more convincing music counter-culture. A

demonstration of such musical counter-culture can begin with musical forms that are

characterized by serenity, balance, goodness of form and classic beauty. Needless to say, these

features are most clearly reflected in the classical music of not only Haydn, Mozart and

Beethoven but also those of other Western and African composers from various other periods

of music history. Nevertheless, certain forms of foreign and local pop-music are equally

beautiful, well-ordered and oriented to positive ethos. They can equally stand as an

aesthetically more useful alternatives to the Marlian musical anarchism.

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[Link]

Alabi, T. (2019), Nigerians react as Marlians jump fence at Naira Marley’s show.
[Link]

Clarke, S. (1980), Jah music: the evolution of Jamaican popular song. London:
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Hanning, B. R. (2002), Concise history of western music. N.Y. & London: W.W. Norton &
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Ige, R. (2020), The Marlian gang: Can Nigerians contain this generation of deviants?
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McAlister, E. A. (2020), Rastafari political and religious movement. In Encyclopaedia
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