Music of Nigeria
Nigerian music includes many styles of folk music relating to the dozens or hundreds of tribes and ethnic groups in the country, each with their own techniques, instruments and songs. Nigeria has also produced some of the most popular music in the world, playing an important role in the pan-West African development of highlife and palm-wine music, fusing native rhythms with techniques imported from the Congo, Cuba and elsewhere. Highlife was an important foundation for the development of several popular styles unique to Nigeria, like apala, fuji, juju and Yo-pop. Later still, Nigerian musicians created their own styles of United States hip hop and Jamaican reggae. Out of all the African countries, Nigeria has some of the most advanced recording studio technology and commercial opportunities for its performers, and the country's musical output has achieved great international acclaim.
Folk music
Main article: Nigerian folk music
Over four hundred ethnic groups are native to Nigeria, and many more have immigrated there in recent years. Traditional music from Nigeria is almost always functional; that is, performed to mark a ritual such as a wedding or funeral, and not for pure entertainment or artistic enjoyment. Though some Nigerians, especially children and the elderly, play instruments for their own amusement, solo performance is otherwise rare. Music is closely linked to agriculture, and there are restrictions on, for example, which instruments can be played during different parts of the growing season. Work songs are a common feature of traditional Nigerian music. They help to keep the rhythm of workers in fields, river canoes and other fields. Women use complex rhythms in housekeeping tasks, such as pounding yams to highly ornamented music. In the northern regions, farmers work together on each others' farms and the host is expected to supply musicians for his neighbors.
Musicians in Nigeria are not generally professional, though there are exceptions. The northern Muslims and eastern Adamawa, for example, have groups of specialized musicians. The issue of musical composition is also highly variable. The Hwana, for example, believe that all songs are taught by the peoples' ancestors, while the Tiv give credit to named composers for almost all songs, and the Efik name individual composers only for secular songs. In many parts of Nigeria, musicians are considered allowed to say things in music which would otherwise be perceived as offensive.
The most common format for music in Nigeria is a call-and-response choir, in which a lead singer and a chorus interchange verses, sometimes accompanied by instruments which either shadow the lead text or repeat and ostinato vocal phrase. The southern area features complex rhythms and solo players using melody instruments, while the north more typically features polyphonic wind ensembles. The most extreme north region uses essentially monodic music with an emphasis on drums, and is in general more influenced by Islamic music.
Epic poetry is found in parts of Nigeria, and its performance is always viewed as musical in nature. Blind itinerant performers, sometimes accompanying themselves with a string instrument, are known for reciting long poems of unorthodox Islam among the Kanuri and Hausa. These and other related traditions may be descended from similar Maghrebian and European traditions. The Ozidi saga, found in the Niger Delta, is a well-known epic which takes seven days to perform and utilizes a chorus, a narrator, and percussion, mime and dance.
Hausa
Main article: Hausa music
The Hausa of the north are known for complexly percussive music and the one-stringed goje fiddle, as well as a praise song vocal tradition. Music is used to celebrate births, marriages, circumcisions and other important life events. Hausa ceremonial music (rokon fada) is well-known in the area, and dominated by families of praise-singers, most famously including Narambad. The kakakai, an elongated trumpet, is the most characteristic instrument, along with tambura drums.
Rural Hausa music includes dances like asauwara (for young females) and the spirit possession dance bori. Hausa folk music has produced popular entertainers, including Dan Maraya (known for his one-stringed lute, the kontigi), Audo Yaron Goje, Muhamman Shata and Ibrahim Na Habu (known for his kukkuma fiddling).
The Hausa bòòríí cult is especially well-known outside of the country, and has been brought as far north as Tripoli, Libya by trans-Saharan trade. The bòòríí cult features trance music, played by calabash, lute or fiddle. During ceremonies, women and other marginalized groups fall into trances and perform odd behaviors, such as mimicking a pig or sexual behavior. These persons are said to be possessed by a character, each with its own litany (kírààrì). There are similar trance cults (the so-called "mermaid cults") found in the Niger Delta region.
Igbo
Main article: Igbo music
The Igbo people live in the southeast of Nigeria, and play a wide variety of folk instruments. They are known for adopting foreign styles quite easily, and were an important part of Nigerian highlife. The most widespread is the thirteen-stringed zither called an obo. There are also slit drums, xylophones, flutes, lyres and lutes, and more recently imported European brass instruments.
Courtly music is played among the more traditional Igbo, who keep to their royal traditions. The ufie (slit drum) is used to wake the chief and communicate mealtimes and other important information to him. Bell and drum ensembles are used to announce when the chief departs and returns to his village.
Yoruba
Main article: Yoruba music
The Yoruba have an extremely advanced drumming tradition, especially using the dundun hourglass tension drums. Ensembles using the dundun play a type of music that is also called dundun. These ensembles consist of various sizes of tension drums along with kettledrums (gudugudu). The leader of a dundun ensemble is the iyalu who uses the drum to "talk" by imitating the tonality of Yoruban. Much of Yoruban music is spiritual in nature, and is devoted to the Orisas of Yoruba mythology.
Yoruban music has become the most important component of modern Nigerian popular music, as a result of its early influence from European, Islamic and Brazilian forms. These influences stemmed from the importation of brass instruments, sheet music, Islamic percussion and styles brought by Brazilian merchants. In Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, these multicultural traditions were brought together and became the root of Nigerian popular music.
Modern styles like Salawa Abeni's waka and Yusuf Olatunji's sakara are derived primarily from Yoruban traditional music.
Theatrical music
Main article: Theater of Nigeria
Nigerian theater makes extensive use of music. Often, this is simply traditional music used in a theatrical production without adaptation. There are also, however, distinct styles of music for Nigerian opera. Here, music is used to convey an impression of the action onstage to the audience. Music is also used in literary drama, though musical accompaniment is more sparingly used than in opera. Again, musical communicates the mood or tone of events to the audience. An example is J. P. Dark's Ozidi, a play about murder and revenge, featuring both human and non-human actors. Each character in the play has a theme song which accompanies battles in which the character is involved.
Traditional Nigerian theater includes puppet shows in Borno and among the Ogoni and Tiv, and the ancient Yoruba Aláàrìnjó tradition, which may be descended from the Egúngún masquerade. With the influx of road-building colonialists, these theater groups spread across the country and their productions grew ever more elaborate. They now frequently use European instruments, film extracts and recorded music
Children's music
Children in Nigeria have many of their own traditions, usually singing games. These are most often call-and-response type songs, using archaic language. There are other songs, such as among the Tarok people, that are sexually explicit and obscene, and are only performed far away from the home. Children also use instruments like unpitched raft-zithers (made from cornstalks) and drums made from tin cans, a pipe made from a pawpaw stem and a Jew's harp made from a sorghum stalk. Among the Hausa, children play a unique instrument in which they beat rhythms on the inflated stomach of a live, irritated pufferfish.
Traditional instruments
Main article: Nigerian musical instruments
Though percussion instruments are the most omnipresent, Nigeria's traditional music utilizes a number of diverse instruments. Many, like the xylophone, are an integral part of music across West Africa, while others are imports from the Muslims of the Maghreb, or southern or eastern Africa, and yet more are recently brought from Europe or the Americas. Brass instruments and woodwinds were early imports that played a vital role in the development of Nigerian music, while the later importation of electric guitars spurred the popularization of juju music.
Xylophone Main article: Xylophone
The xylophone is a tuned idiophone, common throughout Africa. In Nigeria, they are most common in the southern part of the country, and are of the Central African model. Several musicians sometimes play one xylophone simultaneously. They are usually made of loose wood placed across banana logs. Pit- and box-resonated xylophones are also found.
Percussion Main article: Percussion
Ensembles of clay pots beaten with a soft pad are common; they are sometimes filled with water. Though normally tuned, untuned examples are sometimes used to make a bass rhythm. Hollow logs split lengthways, with resonator holes at the end of the slit, are also used. They used to be used for communication over great distances.
Various bells are a common part of royal regalia, and were used in secret societies. They are mostly made of iron, or bronze in Islamic orchestras of the north. Struck gourds placed on a cloth and struck with sticks are a part of women's music, as well as the bòòríí cult dances. Sometimes, especially in the north, gourds are placed upside-down in water, with the pitch adjusted by the amount of air underneath it. In the southwest, a number of tuned gourds are played while floating in a trough.
Scrapers are common throughout the south. One of the most common type is a notched stick, played by dragging a shell across the stick at various speeds. It is used both as a women's court instrument and by children to produce insults aimed at others. Among the Yoruba, an iron rod may be used as a replacement for a stick. Rattles made of gourds containing seeds or stones are common, as are net-rattles, in which a string network of beads or shells encloses a gourd. It is played mostly in ritual or religious context, and mostly by women.
Drums of many kinds are perhaps the most common type of percussion instrument in Nigeria. They are traditionally made from a single piece of wood, or spherical calabashes, but have more recently been made from oil drums. The hourglass drum is the most common shape, though there are also double-headed barrel drums, single-headed drums and conical drums. Frame drums are also found in Nigeria, but may be an importation from Brazil.
String instruments Main article: String instrument
The bow is found in Nigeria; it is a mouth-resonated cord either plucked or struck. It is most common in the central part of the country, and is associated with agricultural songs, or songs expression social concerns. Cereal-stalks bound together and strings supported by two bridges are used to make a kind of raft-zither, played with the thumbs, typically for solo entertainment. The arched harp is found in the eastern part of the country, especially among the Tarok. It usually has five or six strings and pentatonic tuning. A bowl-resonated spike-fiddle with a lizard skin table is used in the northern region; it is an import from North Africa, and is similar to Central Asian and Ethiopian models. The Hausa and Kanuri peoples play a variety of spike-lutes.
Other instruments
A variety of brass and woodwind instruments are also found in Nigeria. These include long trumpets, frequently made of aluminum and played in pairs or ensembles of up to six, and are often accompanied by a shawm. Wooden trumpets, gourd trumpets, end-blown flutes, cruciform whistles, transverse clarinets and various kinds of horns are also found.
Popular music
Main article: Nigerian popular music
From humble beginnings in the streets of Lagos, popular music in Nigeria has long been an integral part of the field of African pop, bringing in influences and instruments from many ethnic groups, most prominently including the Yoruba. The earliest styles were palm-wine music and highlife, which spread in the 1920s among Nigeria and nearby countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana. In Nigeria, palm-wine became the primary basis for juju, which dominated popular music for many years. During this time, a few other styles, like apala, derived from traditional Yoruban music, also found a more limited audience. By the 1960s, Cuban, American and other styles of imported music were finding a large fanbase, and musicians began to incorporate these influences into juju. The result was a profusion of new styles in the last few decades of the 20th century, including waka music, Yo-pop and Afrobeat.
Palmwine and the invention of juju
Main article: Palm-wine music
By the beginning of the 20th century, Yoruban music had incorporated brass instruments, written notation, Islamic percussion and new Brazilian techniques, resulting in the Lagos-born palm-wine style. Palm-wine can also refer to related genres in Sierra Leone and Ghana, where the style remains more popular and more internationally well-known, but it originally applied to a diverse set of styles played with string instruments (especially guitars or banjos) with shakers and calabashes accompanying. It was an urban style, frequently played in bars to accompany drinking (hence the name which refers to the alcoholic palm wine beverage).
In the 1920s, the first stars of palm-wine had emerged, most especially Baba Tunde King. King probably coined the word juju, a style of music he helped create, in reference to the sound of a Brazilian tambourine or perhaps to the term's use as an expression of disdain by the colonial leaders (any native tradition was apt to be dismissed as mere juju nonsense). By the early 1930s, recording had begun by British record labels like His Masters Voice, and more celebrities emerged, including Ojoge Daniel and Speedy Araba. This early pop music was called juju, and has remained one of the most popular genres in Nigeria throughout the 20th century.
Apala
Main article: Apala
Apala is a style based on percussion styles derived from Yorubaland. It emerged in the late 1930s, used to rouse worshippers after the fasting of Ramadan. Under the influence of popular Afro-Cuban percussion music, apala grew more polished and found a large audience. The music used two or three talking drums drums, a rattle (sekere), thumb piano (agidigbo) and a bell (agogo). Haruna Ishola was long the most famous apala performer, and he later played an integral role in bringing apala to larger audiences as a part of fuji music.
1950s, 60s and 70s
Following World War 2, Nigerian music began to take on new instruments and techniques, most importantly including electric instruments, imported from the United States and Europe. Rock and roll, soul and later, funk, became very popular in Nigeria, and elements of these genres were added to juju by the likes of I. K. Dairo. Highlife, meanwhile, had been slowly gaining in popularity among the Igbo people, and their unique style soon found a national audience. At the same time, apala's Haruna Ishola was becoming one of the country's biggest stars. In the early to mid 1970s, three of the biggest names in Nigerian music history were at their peak: Fela Kuti, Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade, while the end of that decade saw the beginning of Yo-pop and Nigerian reggae. In the 1970s, Afrobeat singer Fela Kuti began his period of greatest fame at home and abroad, amd his harassment by governmental authorities who disapproved of his highly-critical lyrics.
Though popular styles like highlife and juju were at the top of the Nigerian charts in the 60s, traditional music also remained popular. Traditional stars included the Hausa Dan Maraya, who was so well-known he was brought to the battlefield during the 1967 Nigerian Civil War to life the morale of the federal troops.
Modernization of juju
Main article: Juju
Following World War 2, Tunde Nightingale's s'o wa mbe style made him the first superstar of juju, and he introduced more Westernized pop influences to the genre. During the 1950s, recording technology grew more advanced, and instruments like the gangan talking drum, electric guitar and accordion were incorporated into juju. Much of this innovation was the work of IK Dairo & the Morning Star Orchestra (later IK Dairo & the Blue Spots), which formed in 1957. Dairo became perhaps the biggest star of African music by the 60s, recording numerous hit songs that spread his fame to as far away as Japan. In 1963, he became the only African musician ever honored by receiving an MBE from the United Kingdom.
Spread of highlife
Main article: Highlife
Among the Igbo people, Ghanaian highlife became popular in the early 1950s, and similar guitar-band styles from Cameroon and Zaire soon followed. The Ghanaian E. T. Mensah, easily the most popular highlife performer of the 1950s, toured Igbo-land frequently, always to an ecstatic reception. Bobby Benson & His Combo were the biggest Nigerian highlife band of the decade, and was followed by Jim Lawson & the Mayor's Dance Band, who achieved national fame in the mid-70s. Lawson's death in 1976 occurred at the height of his fame. This was also the period of biggest success for Nigerian highlife, Prince Nico Mbarga and Rocafil Jazz's "Sweet Mother", a pan-African hit that sold more than thirteen million copies, more than any other African single of any kind. Mbarga used English lyrics and a style he dubbed panko, becoming the last major popular musician of Nigerian highlife.
After the civil war in the 1960s, Igbo musicians were forced out of Lagos, and they returned to their homeland. The result was that highlife ceased to be a major part of mainstream Nigerian music, and was thought of as being something purely associated with the Igbos of the east. Highlife slowly died out in the east, supplanted by juju and fuji. A few performers kept the style alive, however, such as Yoruba singer and trumpeter Victor Olaiya, the only Nigerian to ever earn a platinum record, Stephen Osita Osadebe, as well as Sonny Okosun, Victor Uwaifo, and Orlando "Dr. Ganja" Owoh, whose distinctive toye style fused juju and highlife.
Popularization of apala
Main article: Apala
Apala, a traditional style from Ijetsu in Yorubaland, also became very popular in the 1960s, led by performers like Haruna Ishola and Ayinla Omowora. Ishola, who was one of Nigeria's most consistent hitmakers between 1955 and his death in 1983, recorded apala songs which alternated between slow and emotional and swift and energetic. His lyrics were a mixture of improvised praise and passages from the Koran, as well as traditional proverbs.
Fuji
Main article: Fuji music
The late 1960s also saw the appearance of the first fuji bands. Fuji was named after Mount Fuji in Japan, purely for the sound of the word, according to Sikiru Barrister. Fuji was a synthesis of apala with Islamic vocals and accompanied by the sakara, a tambourine-drum, and Hawaiian guitar. The genre's earliest stars were Haruna Ishola and Ayinla Omowura. Fuji grew steadily more popular in the late 60s and into the 70s, becoming closely associated with Islam in the process.
Fuji has been described as juju without guitars; ironically Ebenezer Obey once described juju as mambo with guitars (theoretically making fuji equivalent to mambo). The first stars of fuji were the rival bandleaders Sikuru Ayinde Barrister and Kollington Ayinla. Ayinde remains perhaps the most popular fuji performer to date. He began his fuji career in the early 1970s with the Supreme Fuji Commanders, though he had sung Muslim were songs since he was ten years old. Ayyinde's rival was Ayinla "Baba Alatika" Kollington, known for using social commentary in his lyrics. He was followed in the 1980s by burgeoning stars like Barrister Wasiu.
Diversification: Ade, Kuti and Obey
Ebenezer Obey formed the International Brothers in 1964, and his band soon replaced I. K. Dairo as the biggest Nigerian group. They played a form of bluesy guitar-based music that included complex talking drum-dominated percussion elements. obey's lyrics addressed issues that appealed to urban listeners, and incorporated Yoruban traditions and his conservative Christian faith. His rival was King Sunny Ade, who emerged in the same period, forming the Green Spots in 1966 and finally finding fame with the African Beats after 1974's Esu Biri Ebo Mi (1974). Ade and Obey raced to incorporate new influences into juju music and gather new fans; Hawaiian slack-key, keyboards and background vocals were among the innovations added during this period of rapid change. Songs also changed from short pop songs to long tracks, often over twenty minutes from beginning to end. Bands increased from four performers in the original ensembles, to ten with I. K Dairo and more than thirty with Obey and Ade.
Fela Kuti, who would soon emerge as perhaps the most renowned Nigerian musician, began performing in 1961 but didn't create his distinctive Afro-beat style until being exposed to Sierra Leonean Afro-soul singer Geraldo Pino in 1963. A brief period in the United States saw him exposed to the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers, an influence that he would come to express in his lyrics. After living in London briefly, he began recording with Africa 70, a huge band featuring renowned drummer Tony Allen. With Africa 70, Kuti recorded a series of hits, earning the ire of the government as he tackled such diverse issues as poverty, traffic and skin-bleaching. In 1985, Kuti was jailed for five years, but was released after only two due to an international outcry and massive domestic protests. Upon release, Kuti continued criticizing the government in his song and became known for eccentric behavior, such as suddenly divorcing all twenty-eight wives because "no man has the right to own a woman's vagina". When he died of AIDS in 1997, it launched a period of national mourning that was unprecedented in Nigerian history.
1980s and 90s
In the early 1980s, both Obey and Ade became international stars. In 1982, Ade was signed to Island Records, who hoped to replicate Bob Marley's success, and released Juju Music, which sold far beyond expectations in Europe and the United States. Obey released Current Affairs in 1980 on Virgin Records and became a brief star in the UK, but was not able to sustain his international career as long as Ade. Ade led a brief period of international fame for juju, which ended in 1985 when he lost his record contract after the commercial failure of Aura (recorded with Steview Wonder) and his band walked out in the middle of a huge Japanese tour. Ade's brush with international renown brought a lot of attention from mainstream record companies, and helped to inspire the burgeoning world music industry. By the end of the 1980s, juju had lost out to other styles, like Yo-pop and reggae. In the 1990s, fuji and juju remained very popular, as did waka music, Nigerian reggae and other styles. At the very end of the decade, hip hop music spread to the country after being a major part of music in neighbors like Senegal.
1980s: Yo-pop and Afro-juju
Main articles: Yo-pop and Afro-juju
Two of the biggest stars of the 80s were Segun Adewale and Shina Peters, who began their careers performing in the late 70s with Prince Adekunle. They eventually left Adekunle, however, and formed a brief, but acclaimed, partnership before beginning solo careers. Adewale was the first of the two to gain success, when he became the most famous performer of Yo-pop.
The Yo-pop craze did not last for long, replaced by Shina Peters' Afro-juju style, which broke into the mainstream after the release of Afro-Juju Series 1 (1989). Afro-juju was a combination of Afrobeat and fuji, and proved to be extremely popular and igniting popular fervor dubbed "Shinamania". Though he was awarded Juju Musician of the Year in 1990, Shina's follow-up, Shinamania sold respectively but was panned by critics. His success opened up the field to newcomers, however, leading to the success of Fabulous Olu Fajemirokun and Adewale Ayuba.
Waka
Main article: Waka music
The popular songstress Salawa Abeni had become nationally renowned after the release of Late General Murtala Ramat Mohammed in 1976, which was the first Nigerian recording by a woman to sell more than a million copies. In the 80s, she remained one of the nation's best-selling artists, creating her own unique variety of music called waka; she was so closely associated with the genre that a royal figure, the Afaaffn of Oyo, Obalamidi Adeyemi, crowned her the "Queen of Waka Music" in 1992. Waka was a fusion of juju and fuji with traditional Yoruban music.
Reggae
Main article: Nigerian reggae
Nigerian reggae was popularized by stars like Majek Fashek, whose 1988 cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song", became an unprecedent success for reggae in Nigeria. Fashek was, like many later Nigerian reggae stars, a part of the long-running band The Matadors, who toured and recorded incessantly during the mid to late 80s and early 90s. Later prominent reggae musicians included Jerri Jheto, Daddy Showkey, Ras Kimono and the London-based MC Afrikan Simba.
Hip hop
Main article: Nigerian hip hop
Hip hop music was brought to Nigeria in the late 1980s, and grew steadily popular throughout the first part of the 90s. The first acts included Osha, De Weez and Black Masquradaz. Mainstream success grew late in the decade, with the fame brought by hits like The Trybesmen's "Trybal Marks" (1999) and the trio The Remedies' "Judile" and "Sakoma". One of the Remedies, Tony Tetuila, went on to work with the Plantashun Boyz to great commercial acclaim. The 1999 founding of Paybactyme Records helped establish a Nigerian scene. Other prominent Nigerian hip hop musicians include former Remedy Eedris Abdulkareem, who had a well-publicized spat with the American star 50 Cent, Deshola Idowa, JJC and the 419 Squad, Modenine and Terry the Rapman.
External links
References
- Graham, Ronnie. "From Hausa Music to Highlife". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 588-600. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0
- Karolyi, Otto. Traditional African & Oriental Music. Penguin Books. 1998. ISBN014023107