The music of Nigeria includes many kinds of folk and popular music. Little of the country's music history prior to European contact has been preserved, although bronze carvings dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries have been found depicting musicians and their instruments. The country's most internationally renowned genres are Indigenous, Apala, Aurrebbe music, Rara music, Were music, Ogene, Fuji, Jùjú, Afrobeat, Afrobeats, Igbo highlife, Afro-juju, Waka, Igbo rap, Gospel, and Yo-pop. Styles of folk music are related to the over 250 ethnic groups in the country, each with their own techniques, instruments, and songs. The largest ethnic groups are the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. Traditional music from Nigeria and throughout Africa is often functional; in other words, it is performed to mark a ritual such as the wedding or funeral and not to achieve artistic goals. Although 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 planting season.
The clave is a rhythmic pattern used as a tool for temporal organization in Brazilian and Cuban music. In Spanish, clave literally means key, clef, code, or keystone. It is present in a variety of genres such as Abakuá music, rumba, conga, son, mambo, salsa, songo, timba and Afro-Cuban jazz. The five-stroke clave pattern represents the structural core of many Cuban rhythms.
A hand drum is any type of drum that is typically played with the bare hand rather than a stick, mallet, hammer, or other type of beater.
The music of Togo has produced a number of internationally known popular entertainers including Bella Bellow, Akofah Akussah, Afia Mala, Itadi Bonney, Wellborn, King Mensah and Jimi Hope.
Jùjú is a style of Yoruba popular music, derived from traditional Yoruba percussion. The name juju from the Yoruba word "juju" or "jiju" meaning "throwing" or "something being thrown". Juju music did not derive its name from juju, which is a form of magic and the use of magic objects, common in West Africa, Haiti, Cuba and other South American nations. It evolved in the 1900s in urban clubs across the countries, and was believed to have been created by Ababababaa Babatunde King, popularly known as Tunde King. The first jùjú recordings were by King and Ojoge Daniel in the 1920s, when King pioneered it. The lead and predominant instrument of jùjú is the Iya Ilu, talking drum.
The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, Sudan, Cameroon and in many West and Central African countries. Their folk music has played an important part in the development of Nigerian music, contributing such elements as the Goje, a one-stringed fiddle. There are two broad categories of traditional Hausa music: rural folk music and urban court music. They introduced the African pop culture genre that is still popular today.
The music of West Africa has a significant history, and its varied sounds reflect the wide range of influences from the area's regions and historical periods.
The Batá drum is a double-headed hourglass drum with one end larger than the other. The percussion instrument is still used for its original purpose as it is one of the most important drums in the yoruba land and used for traditional and religious activities among the Yoruba. Batá drums have been used in the religion known as Santería in Cuba since the 1800s, and in Puerto Rico and the United States since the 1950s. Today, they are also used for semi-religious musical entertainment in Nigeria and in secular, popular music. The early function of the batá was as a drum of different gods, of royalty, of ancestors and a drum of politicians, impacting all spheres of life in Yoruba land.
An agogô is a single or a multiple bell now used throughout the world but with origins in traditional Yoruba and Edo music and also in the samba baterias. The agogô may be the oldest samba instrument and was based on West African Yoruba single or double bells. The agogô has the highest pitch of any of the bateria instruments.
The talking drum is an hourglass-shaped drum from West Africa, whose pitch can be regulated to mimic the tone and prosody of human speech. It has two drumheads connected by leather tension cords, which allow the player to change the pitch of the drum by scraping the cords between their arm and body.
Isaiah Kehinde Dairo MBE was a Nigerian Jùjú musician.
In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the use of music is not limited to entertainment: it serves a purpose to the local community and helps in the conduct of daily routines. Traditional African music supplies appropriate music and dance for work and for religious ceremonies of birth, naming, rites of passage, marriage and funerals. The beats and sounds of the drum are used in communication as well as in cultural expression.
The agidigbo or ‘’’molo’’’ is a large traditional plucked lamellophone thumb piano used by the Yoruba people of Nigeria to play apala music.
The Yoruba people are a West African ethnic group who mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by the Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute more than 44 million people in Africa, are over a million outside the continent, and bear further representation among members of the African diaspora. The vast majority of the Yoruba population is today within the country of Nigeria, where they make up 15.5% of the country's population according to CIA estimations, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. Most Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language, which is the Niger-Congo language with the largest number of native or L1 speakers.
Roy Chicago was an indigene of Ikare-Akoko in Ondo State, Nigeria. He had two children Bolajoko and Kayode Akintola. He was a musician and band leader who played in the Highlife style, introducing talking drums into the musical style. He moved to Lagos from Ibadan in the late 1950s, and was most popular during the 1960s. In contrast to Victor Olaiya, whose music was based on Ghanaian melodies and progressions, Roy Chicago based his music on Nigerian indigenous themes and folklores. He was one of the highlife musicians who changed his name to a purely Western form, perhaps to make it sound more cool.
Gbedu literally means "big drum" and is a percussion instrument traditionally used in ceremonial Yoruba music in Nigeria and Benin. More recently, the word has come to be used to describe forms of Nigerian Afrobeats music.
The Sakara drum is one of the four major families of Yoruba drums of Nigeria. The other families are the Dundun/Gangan or talking drum, the Batá drum and the Gbedu drum. Each family includes drums of different sizes, with the mother drum playing the lead role and other drums playing in support. The Sakara is also made and used by the Hausa people of northern Nigeria.
Indigenous Nigerian music is the music originating from the various indigenous tribes of Nigeria. It encompasses mainly traditional music styles, although some forms have absorbed partial influences from genres performed by immigrant and foreign musicians.
Orlando Julius Aremu Olusanya Ekemode, known professionally as Orlando Julius or Orlando Julius Ekemode was a Nigerian saxophonist, singer, bandleader, and songwriter closely associated with afrobeat music.
