Yabbing and Wording

Yabbing and Wording: The artistry of Nigerian stand-up comedy is
a long-overdue academic interrogation of the novel stand-up practice in
Nigeria as performance. ‘Yabbing’ comes from the Nigerian Pidgin
English verb, ‘yab’, which means a satirical jibe thrown at individuals,
groups or institutions. Nigeria’s Fela Anikulapo-Kuti used this
effectively in his recorded and live music performances against
successive military regimes. ‘Wording’ derives from the English term
‘word’ and refers to a game in which parties exchange insults. It is a
modern-day coinage for traditional forms of joking that existed across
Nigeria and elsewhere in precolonial times.

In this book, Nwankwọ
identifies ‘yabbing’ and ‘wording’ as outstanding indigenous elements
within contemporary stand-up practice in Nigeria. On the one hand, these
local joking patterns inform how comedians fashion their narratives. On
the other, they mitigate offence and how the audience responds to
ridicule in joke performance venues. The book’s strength is its academic
perspective and the inclusion of as many examples of stand-up and
comedians as possible, to give a panoramic view of the practice. It also
traces the historical path of the development of professional stand-up
comedy in Nigeria. Its closing chapters detail the global outreach of
Nigerian stand-up while also anticipating its future developments.