ABSTRACT
This work investigates the use of more than one language in writing and performing Rhythm and Blues songs in the Nigerian music sector. Nigeria is a multilingual society and by such it is made of up bilinguals and multilinguals that tend to have a weak language (language that an individual is less fluent in) and a strong language (Language than an individual is more fluent in) as part of the languages they speak. This work is carried out to give an insight to why R&B songs in Nigeria contains more than one language and also seeks to answer the questions relating to what motivate an R&B artiste to write his/ her songs with more than one language (in the context of code mixing)
The theoretical framework employed in this work is that of Hymes’s (1962) Ethnography of communication (EOC) which was also employed by Gumperz (1964), Saville-Troike (2003), Duranti (1997), Johnstone (2004), Hazen (2002) and many others. The S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G model constructed from the EOC theory was adopted to analyze the data which were downloaded from music websites and phones. The analysis which is descriptive in nature was done with a view to finding out how language is used by the R&B artiste. The lyrics of five R&B songs of some popular Nigerian artistes namely: Mr. 2kay, Flavour, Adekunle Gold, Olamide and Lastly 2face Idibia who is now referred to as 2baba, were used as data for the work.
This work therefore concludes that it is a norm to write and perform R&B songs in more than one language which comprises mainly Pidgin, Yoruba, Igbo, Idoma, Tiv and English so as to make the songs more acceptable to the Nigerian society which is highly multilingual in nature. The use of more than one language will carry everybody along in the sense that an individual who does not understand Yoruba in an R&B song will surely understand Pidgin and/or English thereby making the songs more interesting to listen to and more acceptable to all.
