Hausa Roko and Maroka: Social Dimensions of Professional Entertainment in Argungu, Northern Nigeria

Hausa professional entertainers are classed as economic dependents of the larger society from whose privileges and responsibilities they are largely excluded. Their ambiguous position exempts them from the observance of conventional norms of social conduct that responsibilites of full membership in society entails. Today they celebrate attributes with which the Hausa polities historically endowed their memberships, but the license to apportion praise and dispraise in equal terms bespeaks their generic freedom from conventional restraints and is a corollary of their condition.