Country in West Africa. It has an estimated population of 128·79 million (2000 estimate) and a total area of 923,773 km2. It is one of the most musically diverse countries in Africa. The high profile of music of a few groups (see Hausa music, Yoruba music and Igbo music), and the relative familiarity of certain heavily promoted urban subgenres serves to obscure the overall picture of Nigeria (fig.1).
If the pattern of musical styles and musical instrument types can be reduced to a single factor, it is the interweaving of Islamic influence, spreading southwards from the desert kingdoms in Niger and Chad, encountering the differing types of music characteristic of such southern peoples as the Yoruba, Edo (Ẹdọ or Bini), Ijo (Ịjọ), Igbo and Efik/Ibibio. Christianity became a significant factor on the 19th century, spreading widely throughout southern Nigeria and in parts of the north, such as the Jos plateau, where Islam has been resisted.
ROGER BLENCH
Music in Nigeria cannot easily be separated from the society that produces it; all music has a function, and it is not usually conceptualized as an art in the Western manner. The appropriate use of text is often a cause for admiration, rewarded by ‘spraying’ (i.e. placing a monetary gift against the forehead of the musician). Music accompanies life-cycle rituals, weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies, political rallies and all types of work. Solo performance is unusual, although older people and children play instruments for their own amusement. Performance is strongly linked to seasons or activities such as planting or harvest; in the semi-arid regions it is common to find prohibitions on particular instruments during part of the year, for example when crops are growing. Musical forms allow something to be sung that would be offensive if spoken.
The professionalization of music is highly variable within Nigerian societies. Among the Islamic peoples of the north, for example, musicians form specialized occupational groups. In Adamawa, in the extreme east, musicians belong to castes associated with blacksmithing and funerals. In much of the southern and central areas musicians are not specialized, and there are no social prohibitions against playing an individual instrument, although a tradition often runs within families. It is often thought that playing an instrument is not a skill that needs to be learnt and that practice is unnecessary.
The ideology of composition also shows striking variations; in some cases, for example among the Tiv, all songs are the product of a named composer, except perhaps children’s songs. In the north-east, among the Hwana for example, all songs are attributed to the ancestors, even when contemporary references suggest this cannot be true. Among the Efik/Ibibio, songs with ritual content are never innovated, whereas it is quite normal to compose secular songs.
Music frequently accompanies work, keeping the rhythm of a particular activity and encouraging physical labour, especially in the fields or in housebuilding. In the riverine areas, paddling songs were used to keep the pace of canoes. Groups of women frequently pound yams in large mortars that require accurate coordination; elaborate rhythmic patterns with ornamental flourishes accompany the pounding songs. In most of the regions north of the forest, the seasonality of rainfall requires farmers to work collectively on their farms. The host farmer is usually expected to have musicians to entertain the labourers.
Trance or ecstatic music is principally associated with the Hausa bori (bňňríí) cult, widespread in Sahelian Africa and carried to Tripoli by the Saharan trade. Accompanied by either the Goge (gňňgč) fiddle or the garaya (gŕrááyáá) lute and a struck hemispherical calabash, women and other socially excluded groups fall into trances and act out characters or personalities. Often the stereotyped behaviour and the gestures that are adopted, such as becoming a pig or mimicking sexual behaviour, are forbidden in ‘normal’ contexts. The possessed characters have individual praise-songs or ‘litanies’ (kirari or kírŕŕrě). In the Niger delta the ‘mermaid’ cults also have an ecstatic character.
Apart from masquerades, there is a tradition of travelling musical theatre in some regions. In the eastern delta among the Ogoni and Tiv (kwagh-hir) and Borno, itinerant puppet theatres move around accompanied by musical ensembles. The plays are a blend of humour and moralizing and were updated with topical references to specific communities. These have largely disappeared, although the Tiv still perform plays with adult performers. Yorubaland has a rich tradition of alaarinjo (Aláŕrěnjó), a type of travelling dance-theatre that dates to the 16th century and that was recorded by early European travellers. The alaarinjo probably developed from the egungun (egúngún) mask, but soon became professional and subdivided into competing groups. The development of road infrastructure in the colonial era allowed these troupes to travel farther and to attempt to outdo other groups with special effects. The heart of these groups is traditional drums, but these are increasingly displaced by amplified European instruments, recorded sound tracks and even short film extracts. The alaarinjo groups were also the inspiration for the ‘African Music Research Party’ introduced by Chief Hubert Ogunde in 1946, the ancestor of modern professional theatre troupes.
Music in Nigeria tends to be conceptualized in song. Even with instrumental music, the underlying song is usually identifiable. Performers are usually praised in terms of the textual content of their songs, rather than delivery or vocal quality. With few exceptions, Nigerian languages are tonal, that is, syllables are assigned musical pitches that are essential to their prosody. Some languages may include as many as five pitch levels, although two or three are more usual. On this basis, a sound-producer (even whistling) that faithfully reproduces the tonal contours of a spoken utterance may be said to ‘speak’ and be understood by those competent in the language. Some languages are more amenable to this than others, depending on the number of level tones and the phonological contrast in segments. Where intelligibility is relatively low, ‘talking’ instruments have a number of set idioms or standard paraphrases with which audiences are familiar. However, in other languages, almost any spoken utterance can be readily translated into surrogate speech.
The following examples illustrate the principle of speech surrogates. Exx.1a and 1b were played on the evogi lute of the Nupe, a two-string spike lute with a calabash resonator. The player was a hunter ‘speaking’ common proverbs on his instrument. In this transcription the melody closely follows the relative pitch contour of the utterance.
The use of musical instruments for surrogate speech is fundamental to the maintenance of social structures and of ethnic boundaries. Surrogate speech is essential in musical performances within hierarchical societies, since the praises of powerful individuals are uttered on instruments. Loud instruments, such as long trumpets or hourglass drums, broadcast the current status of individuals more rapidly and effectively than sung praises.
Surrogate speech is also found in egalitarian societies, however. Among some Igbo groups, for example, narrative songs can be performed on multi-player xylophones. The performer playing the high notes will create the narrative, while two players on the lower register of the instrument repeat ostinato patterns that are actually short phrases meaning ‘it is true’ or some similar affirmation. Among the Bena (Bana or Yungur) in the north-east, the xylophonists accompanying a dance play a truncated proverb with the right hand when someone new enters the dance circle; the audience understands the application of the proverb to a particular individual. The Nupe transverse clarinet is played at harvest time to announce the names of proposed wives, as shown in ex.2
In the Niger delta, among the Kolokuma Ijo, drummers use drum pitches to ‘speak’ to masqueraders, communicating a sequence of dance steps. In this case, more strikingly, the dancers, who hold curved swords, slap the jingles around their ankles in a particular sequence and ‘speak’ back to the drummers, indicating a particular phrase or pattern. The Gbari people sometimes use pairs of gourd rattles, which, although of no specific pitch, have distinct timbres, so that an equivalence is set up between pitch-height and tone of the rattle. Ex.3 is a transcription of a Gbari man performing a greeting in Hausa, a language with only two tone-heights that can be more easily represented by paired rattles.
Dance pervades most musical performance in Nigeria; only praise-music and some types of ceremonies are not conceptualized in terms of dance. In many languages, the terms for ‘song’ and ‘dance’ are either exactly the same or closely related. The repertory of solo instruments played for amusement, such as the sansa (lamellophone) or the raft zither, generally consists of dance-songs. The most energetic dances are found in the forest area, while those in the north tend to be more restrained, a possible result of Islamic influence. Dancers frequently wear rattles on their arms or legs, which are sounded rhythmically with the dance; women frequently play gourd rattles in more southern areas. Masks frequently involve quite elaborate dances, a considerable feat in the sometimes cumbersome costumes.
Gender roles are strongly marked in Nigerian music. Throughout the country, men dominate in instrumental playing, and in extreme cases women hardly play any instruments at all, for example in the strongly Islamicized regions of the north. In the south and south-east, it is common for women to play a wide variety of instruments within their own associations, but it is men who play at public events. Instruments usually played by women include gourd rattles and, less often, other types of idiophones. This tradition carries over into church music, where women play percussion instruments to accompany services.
By contrast, women dominate in singing in many societies. Even in some strongly Islamicized areas of the north, women are thought to be more proficient than men, and their grasp of appropriate proverbs and epithets more fluent. As a result, among the Nupe or the Kanuri, for example, women singers can become extremely wealthy and influential in ways that would otherwise be impossible. Among the Nupe, some well-known praise-singers (enígbá) form their own ensembles (enyŕkó) of drummers and flautists to perform at major ceremonies, both public and private.
In most Nigerian societies, children have distinct musical cultures, both in terms of sung repertories and in the construction of sound-producers. Singing games are popular among children and are usually accompanied by call-and-response patterns with lyrics that may be archaic or obscure. Some children’s songs have explicitly erotic lyrics; among the Tarok people of east-central Nigeria, the herders have an entire repertory of obscene songs (mnap-mshě ován gi bil), accompanied by a pottery drum. Although tolerated in the context of ‘the bush’, such songs are never sung near the village. Similar singing games exist in many different societies with different song texts. In some societies, for example among the Idoma, adults consider the correct performance of children’s games part of their moral education, and an adult will undertake to supervise them on moonlit nights.
Children make and use their own distinctive sound-producers. Sometimes these imitate those of adults, for example unpitched raft zithers of cornstalks and tin-can drums with plastic heads. Other instruments, such as the widespread zagadu (zŕgŕdúú), a jew’s harp made from sorghum stalk, and the kabushi (kŕbúúshě), a double-reed pipe made from a green papaya stem slit lengthways, seem to be restricted to children. Hausa children capture and irritate puffer fish so that they inflate, allowing the children to beat out rhythms on their stomachs. Children also imitate ‘forbidden’ sound-producers, reproducing the wooden-plaque bullroarers of male secret societies with sorghum internodes and the voice-disguisers with cereal stalks made into simple mirlitons.
Apart from instruments directly imported from North Africa, Islam has brought specific musical forms such as the dhikr (or zikr). The large ceremonial ensembles characteristic of the northern Nigerian courts, including kettledrums slung on camels’ backs, trumpets and shawms, are typical of the Maghreb. Vocal production of Hausa praise-singers is influenced by Arab singing styles as well as the monodic recitational ensembles that gather during Ramadan. Islamic folk culture is also present; the ecstatic bori cult resembles other Islamic cults, such as the Somali zar, and uses the one-string horsehair fiddle, while the gani cult of the Nupe, performed with hobby-horse and dancers with brightly coloured clothes, is part of the same tradition as Morris dancing. The essentially monodic style of North African music has virtually eliminated polyphony in all areas influenced by Islam.
European musical traditions were imported in the 19th century, but they seem to be blended with musical styles brought by ex-Sierra Leoneans who were descendants of freed slaves who became entrepreneurs along the coast. Some Nigerian instruments associated with Christianity, such as the frame drum, reflect a direct New World influence. Along the coast, older Anglican churches still reproduce faithfully an English style of service, but in general even established churches use African instruments in services. A typical ensemble consists of frame drums, gourd net-rattles, large struck pots, and smaller hand-held struck pots. Typically these instruments have spread from the coast and remain alien to the cultures of people who play them. There is a lively tradition of church music composition among academic composers, while oral hymn composition flourishes in some communities in the south.
The other aspect of mission culture relevant to music was the destructive prohibition of any type of performance associated with ‘paganism’. During the early colonial period, converts were discouraged from taking part in any ceremonies that had non-Christian overtones. In some areas, masks and instruments were physically burnt, and even today some Christians still eschew secular dancing and music. The large number of independent churches actively encourage the use of traditional musical instruments.
The overall pattern of musical forms in Nigeria reflects its historical layering. The most common underlying pattern, as elsewhere in Africa, is essentially the call-and-response structure where a lead singer articulates a semi-improvised text to which a chorus, vocal but often supported by instruments, responds, either shadowing the lead text or repeating an ostinato vocal phrase. These sometimes overlap, producing a simple polyphony. Beyond this, a distinct difference can be discerned between northern traditions and those of the centre and south of Nigeria. Much of the forest area is dominated by drums and idiophones, and the music is rhythmically correspondingly complex with numerous unpitched instruments playing interlocking patterns. Such solo melody instruments include the sansa, pluriarc, arched harp and raft zither. The oba (ruler) of Benin who was noted for playing the akpata (ákpátá) lamellophone c1700 would be a relatively unusual figure today (see ..\Frames/F920057.htmlPluraic, fig.1).
In the sub-humid regions north of the forest the predominant musical type is the polyphonic wind ensemble, and the structural elements of this form are also found in vocal and xylophone music. Further north, music is essentially monodic, again with a greater emphasis on drums, reflecting the influence of Islam, although some comparative evidence suggests that this may also have been a pre-Islamic pattern. The distribution of these musical forms is also strongly related to ecology and social structure. Polyphonic ensembles, where each player has an equal musical part, perhaps not technically demanding but requiring considerable rhythmic precision to perform the music correctly, are characteristic of small-scale egalitarian societies. Typically, the instruments are aerophones such as side-blown horns, end-blown gourd horns, panpipes, single-note cylindrical whistles or even notch flutes with finger-holes. According to the prevailing scale in a given society, an instrument is tuned to each degree of the octave, and these sets may cover up to three octaves. Each instrument has a short phrase to play and enters in sequence like an extended canon. Sometimes there is a sequenced ‘answering’ of phrases. Among the Anaguta (Iguta) of the Jos plateau, a flute producing a full scale allows a more elaborate interweaving of complementary melodies.
From the tuning of instruments such as the xylophone and raft zither, we can deduce that pentatonic and heptatonic scales predominate throughout much of the country. There is little doubt that the influence of radio and recordings has normalized tunings to Western intervals, for there seem to be traces of older equiheptatonic scales. Research with Tiv composers suggests that their melodies are not conceptualized in terms of octaves; what seems to matter most are intervals.
Individuals are not usually singled out as expert performers, and there may be no term for ‘musician’ in the vernacular since everyone is expected to be able to play. Related to this is a notion that one need not practise on a musical instrument since performance is a skill all individuals have. In the more hierarchical societies of the north and south-west, by contrast, proficient and well-rewarded individuals perform vocal and instrumental music and play an important role in the validation of authority structures through praise-singing. Immense changes in demography, infrastructure and the distribution of wealth have begun to blur this pattern in the 20th century, and migrant communities often transport musical forms, adapting them in part to the conditions of their new situation. Some Middle Belt communities now maintain dual ideologies, accepting the ideology of the master-musician for incoming styles, associated with singing the praises of the wealthy and powerful, while still maintaining egalitarian ideologies for the older, polyphonic styles.
This pattern does not correspond to the delta and Cross river areas, where societies are largely small-scale, egalitarian and dominated by numerous cross-cutting associations that reflect gender, religion or economic links. Percussion dominates the music of this region, and wind and string instruments are rare. Melodies are provided by multi-player xylophones or tuned drum sets. However, as with wind ensembles, the musical forms are participatory, with numerous players taking part according to their level of skill. However, since many societies are quite exclusive, particularly those associated with specific masks, specialized musicians are quite common, although they do not serve the political function found in hierarchical societies.
A musical form found only in some places is the performance of epic poetry. Although treated by some authors as ‘poetry’ in the sense of text, this is always a musical performance. Among the Hausa and the Kanuri, long epic poems are performed by often blind itinerants, either unaccompanied or with a string instrument and sometimes reflecting unorthodox versions of Islam. Many Arabic poetic metres were brought to West Africa and adapted to the prosodic requirements of indigenous languages. These epic recitations are a surviving link to similar traditions in the Maghreb and medieval Europe. The recent rise of orthodox Islam led to prohibitions on some of these performers, making the task of recording and transcribing these epics all the more urgent. In the Niger delta, by contrast, the Ozidi saga, a hero-myth that traditionally takes seven days to perform, includes dancing, mime, narrator, chorus and percussion ensemble.
Nigerian sound-producers are diverse, especially idiophones and drums. Those described below represent only a sample of the most common types. Idiophones are extremely varied and can be subdivided into tuned and untuned instruments. Among the tuned idiophones, the most important is probably the xylophone. Xylophones are found throughout the south and south-east, where they are of the Central African type, loose wooden bars laid across banana logs often with several performers playing one instrument simultaneously, using interlocking patterns. Pit- and box-resonated xylophones are found more rarely in this region. In parts of the Jos plateau and the north-east, xylophones resonated with cow horns or gourds and slung from the performer’s neck are used in sets of up to seven instruments (fig.2). The resonators have holes covered with spider-web mirlitons that produce a buzzing sound. Leg xylophones have also been recorded from the plateau area and Igboland, generally played by women for amusement.
Various types of sansa (lamellophone) are found throughout much of southern and central Nigeria. The original type seems to have been made from raffia midribs with keys of the same material, tuned with latex, but instruments with iron keys attached to a heavy wooden board, sometimes box-resonated, now predominate. Very large instruments with two or three untuned keys used as bass notes in ensembles are found in the Niger delta.
Ensembles of tuned clay pots, beaten on the open mouth with a soft pad, produce deep booming notes with a partially aerophonic component. Usually producing a pentatonic scale, individual pots are tuned by placing water inside them and may be found in one- or two-octave sets. These sets are used throughout the Niger delta and in adjacent areas for entertainment. Untuned single instruments may be used to create a rhythmic bass pattern in some ensembles, as well as in church music.
The most important of the untuned idiophones are the slit-drums, hollow logs slit lengthways, often with resonator holes at the ends of the slit, producing two distinct notes. Slit-drums are common throughout southern Nigeria and were formerly used for communication. Very large slit-drums existed at one time in the south-east, but a combination of deforestation and modern transport has caused them to disappear. However, smaller slit-drums made from bamboo internodes are regularly used for dance accompaniments and still sometimes ‘speak’ in ritual contexts.
Clapperless bells or iron gongs, single or double bells struck with a beater seem to have been originally part of chiefly regalia in most regions. In some Middle Belt societies, they were the prerogative of secret societies, perhaps because iron was rare and expensive. The emergence of cheap iron with European trade made them more available, and they are now used as a common time-keeping instrument in all types of music throughout the country (fig.3). Urban popular groups sometimes attach tuned sets of these bells to a frame. Bronze clapperless bells are found in Islamic chiefly orchestras in parts of the north. Clapper bells of a similar design are used more rarely and usually in ritual contexts.
Struck gourds are a common accompanying instrument; large, hemispherical gourds are placed on a cloth and struck with paired sticks to accompany various types of women’s entertainment music as well as for the Hausa bori possession dances. They are sometimes held against the chest and beaten with the hands. In a variant of this, the gourd can be upturned in a basin of water, and the pitch adjusted by the amount of air trapped under it. These instruments are common throughout the north-central regions. A recent variant of this recorded in the south-west includes a tuned set of such gourds floating in an oblong trough.
Scrapers of various designs are used throughout the south, but a specific type is the notched stick: a thin piece of hardwood carved with rings, along which is threaded a spheroidal bush-fruit. A scraping noise is produced by sliding the dried fruit-shell along the stick and different pitches result from the speed at which the shell is moved. The notched stick is found throughout most of southern Nigeria and is used primarily by children to produce insulting epithets. However, it can also be a court instrument played by women in some areas of eastern Yorubaland where the stick is replaced by an iron rod with brass mounts.
Gourd rattles containing seeds or pebbles are common almost everywhere, but a more elaborate type is the net-rattle, which has a string network of fruit-shells or beads loosely enclosing a dried gourd. The network is held by the performer and slapped rhythmically against the gourd. The net-rattle is played predominantly by women in ritual contexts, but it has also become central to church ensembles and can be found all over the country in this context.
Drums dominate musical ensembles throughout Nigeria and exist in a variety of shapes and reflect a variety of construction methods. Drums are usually made of single pieces of wood or more recently, salvaged oil-drums, but can also be made from spherical or hemispherical calabashes. One of the most common drum types is the kalangu (kŕlŕngúú) hourglass drum, a double-headed drum with laces connecting the heads, held under the arm. The laces are squeezed to alter the pitch of the drum-head during performance and beaten with a curved stick. Often referred to as a Talking drum (although many other types of drum can be used to ‘talk’), it is common among Hausa, Yoruba and many other Islamic peoples, and is used by praisesingers to imitate speech-tones. Various single-headed hourglass drums are used as rhythmic accompanying instruments.
The ganga (gŕngáá) double-headed barrel drum, with its two heads laced together, is slung from the performer’s shoulder and beaten with sticks or hands (fig.4a). It is often used to accompany dancing, praise-singing and various types of secular performance. The performer may damp the second skin with his hand to alter the pitch of the struck head. Single-headed drums, open at the base with the skins either pegged or laced and wedged, are found throughout the country in a great variety of shapes, sizes and designs. Commonly played with the palm of the hand, these drums are occasionally played with sticks. In the Niger delta and the Cross river area, conical drums with wedges used to tune the heads are made in sets of six or eight and played by a single performer.
Frame drums are less common, but a distinctive type that may have come originally from Brazil is now used in churches and in some types of secular music. The samba rectangular frame drum has a second, interior frame that allows wedges to be used to tighten the head. It is usually placed against the knees of a seated player and struck with paired sticks. Frame drums made from the broken necks of pots, with a head kept in place by a network of short sticks, are used to accompany specific praise-song repertories.
Nigerian chordophones are similar to those found elsewhere in West Africa. The oldest type is probably the musical bow, which usually has a mouth-resonated vegetable-fibre cord that is either plucked or struck while a small flat stick is placed against the string to produce different harmonics. The musical bow is played throughout central Nigeria and is often associated either with stages of crop growth or with songs of social criticism.
Raft zithers are made from dried cereal-stalks laid parallel and bound together; strings are supported by two bridges and tuned by overwound vegetable fibres. The tuning is usually pentatonic, with the strings arranged in groups of three and the main string doubled on each side at the octave. The raft zither is played with the thumbs using a strumming technique and is found throughout central Nigeria. It is generally a solo instrument used for beer-drinking or other entertainment. Children make untuned replicas of raft zithers at harvest time.
The arched harp is found across a wide area of east-central Nigeria, becoming a dominant prestige instrument along the Cameroon border, where it is frequently associated with the blacksmith caste. Among Tarok composers, the arched harp is associated with songs of social criticism. The harp almost always has five to six strings with a pentatonic tuning, although some two-octave instruments have been recorded (fig.4b). Pluriarcs with five or six strings are found in the Igbo areas and in some parts of the south-east. Pluriarcs were strongly associated with ritual but now seem to have largely disappeared.
One of the most prestigious instruments in the north is the one-string goge horsehair fiddle, a bowl-resonated spike fiddle with a lizard-skin table (fig.4c). It is of North African origin and is related to similar instruments in both Ethiopia and Central Asia. It is principally played in Islamic societies to accompany praise-singing and ecstatic cults such as the Hausa bori. A Hausa proverb, ‘gňňgč kan bidi’a ke nan’ (the goge is the source of heresy), associates the goge with worldly and deviant beliefs.
There are different types of spike lutes, especially among the Hausa and the Kanuri. The molo (móólóó), a two-string lute with a trough-shaped wooden soundbox, is similar to those found widely across the West African savanna and is used both for bori and by hunters. The kuntugi (kůntúgě) is a related type with one string and a resonator made from an oval herring-tin, played by popular radio singers. The garaya (gŕrááyáá) has a spherical ground resonator covered in skin and can be quite large. Garaya are often played in ensembles of three to four instruments that produce a rhythmic thrumming associated with possession dances (fig.4d). Lutes with necks that transpierce the resonator to anchor the strings beneath it are sometimes found among other peoples of central Nigeria.
Aerophones include a variety of instruments, such as those associated with Islamic courts throughout the north. The best known of these is the kakaki (kŕŕkŕŕkíí or long trumpet) usually made of brass or bronze, although now frequently made of scrap materials including aluminium. They are usually played in pairs, but sometimes in sets of up to six, and are used to imitate speech. Permission to have a set made was widely recognized as the seal of authority of a newly established or upgraded polity. They are almost always played together with the algaita (ŕlgáitŕ) oboe (fig.5a) and are historically linked to analogous ensembles in Morocco and Uzbekistan. Instruments operating on the same principle, though historically unrelated to the kakaki, include the end-blown wood trumpets common in ensembles in the plateau area and the end-blown gourd trumpets made of cylindrical and spherical gourds played by the Samba Daka in tuned ensembles along the Cameroon border.
Horns are usually side-blown. Some southern chieftaincies had large side-blown elephant tusks similar to those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaďre), but antelope horns are more common. These are disappearing for lack of antelope, now replaced by either cow horns or wood. The distal end may be open or closed, producing either one or two notes. Although most commonly treated as unpitched, on the Jos plateau, among the Ngas and related peoples, they are played polyphonically in tuned sets, the largest ensemble spanning three octaves. These horns are used as a ceremonial or signal instrument.
Long trumpets are invariably accompanied by the Algaita oboe, a sub-Saharan version of the Maghrib ghaita that presumably dates from the medieval trans-Saharan trade. The algaita is almost always played together with the kakaki trumpet in Islamic court ensembles to produce surrogate speech in ceremonial contexts. The Tiv people in the south-east, however, have adapted the instrument for secular dance music, swange, increasing both its size and volume.
Tilɓoro (tilboro) or damalgo side-blown clarinets made from cereal-stalk internodes (fig.5b) are found throughout the north-central regions. These clarinets are open at the distal end with the reed cut directly from the stem. Children blow them after the sorghum harvest, although more elaborate instruments that have resonators of bush-orange or animal horn at one or both ends are used for speech imitation.
End-blown flutes blown across a chamfered embouchure, played in a manner similar to the Arab ney, with up to four finger-holes are found widely throughout northern Nigeria (fig.5c), sometimes with elaborate decoration, such as the Kanuri shilá. Single closed tubes blown across the top and used in tuned sets are common in the Middle Belt; bound sets forming panpipes are rare. Such ensembles accompany secular dance music.
Cruciform conical wooden whistles (fig.5d), blown across the top like panpipes, have two finger-holes in either side of the body, often on projecting arms. Usually untuned, they may have developed from signal instruments, since they are still common among hunters for communicating without disturbing animals. Among the Tarok, they are used on market days to transmit information about the state of the market and who is present. They are often used in dances to mark changes in songs or steps and occasionally found in pentatonic tuned sets. These instruments are the origin of the whistles that mark the Brazilian samba and are made with modern materials. Similarly, spherical fruit-shell ocarinas were probably once designed as hunters’ signals; they are now used to make music in the bush or blown to imitate the voices of masks.
Masks and their associated secret societies are one of the most common forms of religious expression, and it is generally held that the spiritual entity inhabiting the mask cannot use ordinary speech or song. It is therefore common for masks to make use of voice-disguisers as well as to sing in ritual or archaic languages. Commonly these voice-disguisers have mirliton membranes similar to a kazoo, inserted in the sidewall of a wooden, bamboo or horn tube. In initiation cermonies, these can be constructed in gradated sets like wind ensembles. Other voice-disguisers include spherical clay pots and wooden megaphones.
Even before the establishment of the colonial regime, the first importation of Western music began through the missions and, once recordings became widespread, urban populations were exposed to a wide range of musical styles. Fusions of traditional forms with European instruments began in the 1930s with major growth in the 40s and 50s, probably fuelled by the experience of soldiers. By the 1960s, a wealth of musical styles had developed, especially in the south-west, where the Yoruba had been very active in creating hybrid forms. Music from the former Zaďre had been very influential, along with West Indian calypso, Latin American styles such as samba and some types of African American music such as jazz. Ensembles tend to mix traditional drums and iron clapperless bells with guitars, keyboards and, increasingly, electronics.
Recordings created as exports have songs chopped into three-minute cuts, but in performance individual songs can be extended with improvised segments of praises of those present. Musical styles now develop quickly, and the music press in Nigeria reports and documents these developments. Local subgenres of urban music are found throughout the south, but further north, urban music has remained notably more traditional, where the updating of textual materials is given greater priority than instruments or musical styles. Song texts tend to be in English, pidgin or major languages such as Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. The market for other languages is rather restricted, and local performers tend to become known via state radio stations or cassettes.
Nigeria has produced many well-known modern performers, some of whom became internationally famous such as Fela Kuti and ‘King’ Sunny Adé, as well as those of an earlier generation such as ‘Bobby’ (Bernard Olabanji) Benson. Nigeria has always had a lively industry for its own urban music, although this remained home-grown until the promotion in Europe of artists such as Sunny Adé in the 1970s. High levels of dubbing of recordings make it difficult for Nigerian recording artists to make an income from local distribution, and many prefer to record, press and distribute outside the country, so that a proportion of sales can earn foreign exchange. CDs have yet to become widespread, but there is a lively market for local cassette production. There are few recordings of non-electric music available except in the case of popular northern praise-singers. Scholarly field recordings of Nigerian music are few, although the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan produced a series of striking recordings, none of which is still available.
Western-style compositions with notated scores have been produced since the late 19th century, usually by musicians trained primarily in the church. The rise of the university system encouraged more composers to experiment with African texts, instruments and rhythms in their music. However, this remains an urban phenomenon, largely restricted to the south-west. Composers of the first generation who experimented with producing African church music include J.T. Ransome-Kuti, A.T. Ola Olude and T.K. Ekundayo-Phillips. More recent composers include Fela Sowande, Akin Euba, Ayo Bankole and Lazarus Ekueme.
Sources for the history of Nigerian music are limited. Musical instruments appear on Benin plaques, and medieval chronicles record the introduction of trumpets in the Islamic region. Instruments also appear in the engravings of some early travellers. The first scholarly account dates only to 1892, and history must therefore be derived from secondary sources by plotting the contemporary distribution of instruments and performance types and linking them with known linguistic and archaeological data.
Given the size and richness of Nigerian musical traditions, scholarly interest in the country’s music has unfortunately been slight. Music departments in Nigerian universities have contributed greatly with indigenous descriptive work, and some institutions, such as the Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies (CNCS) in Zaria, have archived student dissertations containing much valuable information about otherwise unknown musical traditions. The archives of the Borno Music Documentation Project (BMDP), based in Maiduguri, contain are unparalleled range of sound and video recordings of the music of north-eastern Nigeria, and material is still being added to their collections. However, the continuing crisis in the university system has severely restricted local research, although information about music can sometimes be found in locally published ethnographies. Nigeria’s multiplicitous radio and television stations have recorded a wide variety of materials over the years, but these are not readily accessible to researchers. Recordings made from the 1960s to the 80s by the Institute of African Studies, Ibadan, and the CNCS represent a valuable archive of material, but financial problems put their long-term future in doubt.
C.R. Day: ‘Music and Musical Instruments’, Up the Niger (London, 1892), 264–81
M. Mackay: ‘The Traditional Musical Instruments of Nigeria’, Nigerian Field, xv/3 (1950), 112–33
M.G.M. Lane: ‘The Music of Tiv’, AfM, i/1 (1954), 12–15
R.G. Armstrong: ‘Talking Instruments in West Africa’, Explorations, iv (1955), 140–53
H.U. Beier: ‘Yoruba Vocal Music’, AfM, i/3 (1956), 23–8
A.V. King: ‘Employments of the Standard Pattern in Yoruba Music’, AfM, ii/3 (1960), 51–4
A.V. King: Yoruba Sacred Music from Ekiti (Ibadan, 1961)
L. Bouquiaux: ‘Les instruments du musique des Birom’, Tervuren-Africa, viii/4 (1962), 105–11
W.W. Echezona: Ibo Musical Instruments in Ibo Culture (diss., Michigan State U., 1963)
W. Konrad: ‘Über Buduma-lieder und den Bau einer fünfsaitigen Buduma-harfe’, Jahrbuch museens Völkerkunde Leipzig, xxii (1966), 64–74
K. Krieger: ‘Musikinstrumente der Hausa’, Bässler-Archiv, xvi (1968), 373–430
G. Kubik: ‘Ŕló Yoruba Story Songs’, AfM, iv/2 (1968), 10–32
D.L. Thieme: A Descriptive Catalogue of Yoruba Musical Instruments (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1969)
S.E. Akpabot: ‘Standard Drum Patterns in Nigeria’, AfM, v/1 (1971), 37–9
D.W. Ames and A.V. King: Glossary of Hausa Music and its Social Contexts (Evanston, IL, 1971)
D.W. Ames, E.A. Gregersen and T. Neugebauer: ‘Taaken Samarii: a Drum Language of Hausa Youth’, Africa, xli (1971), 12–31
P. Dark and M. Hill: ‘Musical Instruments on Benin Plaques’, Essays on Music and History in Africa, ed. K.P. Wachsmann (Evanston, IL, 1971), 65–78
A. Euba: ‘Islamic Musical Culture among the Yuruba: a Preliminary Survey’, ibid., 171–81
F.E. Besmer: Hausa Court Music in Kano, Nigeria (Ann Arbor, 1972)
D.W. Ames: ‘A Sociocultural View of Hausa Musical Activity’, The Traditional Artist in African Societies, ed. W. d’Azevedo (Evanston, IL, 1973), 128–61
B. Ranung: ‘Music of Dawn and Day: Music and Dance Associations of the Igede of Nigeria’, Ethnos, xxxviii (1973), 24–42
L.E.N. Elwueme: ‘African Music in Christian Liturgy: the Igbo Experiment’, AfM, v/3 (1973–4), 31–9
F.E. Besmer: Kídŕ Dárŕn Sállŕ: Music for the Muslim Festivals of Id al-Fitr and Id al-Kabir in Kano, Nigeria (Bloomington, IN, 1974)
L.E.N. Elwueme: ‘Linguistic Determinants of Some Igbo Musical Properties’, Journal of African Studies, i (1974), 335–53
S.E. Akpabot: Ibibio Music in Nigerian Culture (Ann Arbor, 1975)
K. Nicklin: ‘Agiloh, the Giant Mbube Xylophone’, Nigerian Field, xl (1975), 148–58
T.A. Sebeok and D.J. Umiker-Sebeok, eds.: Speech-Surrogates: Drum and Whistle Systems (The Hague, 1976)
J.D.C. Djedje: The One-String Fiddle in West Africa: a Comparison of the Hausa and Dagomba Traditions (diss., UCLA, 1978)
C. Keil: Tiv Song (Chicago, 1979)
O. Arewa and N. Adekola: ‘Redundancy Principles of Statistical Communication as Applied to the Yoruba Talking Drum’,Anthropos, lxxv (1980), 185–202
M. Nzewi: ‘Folk Music in Nigeria: a Communion’, AfM, vi/1 (1980), 6–21
U.N. Abalogu, G. Ashiwaju and R. Amadi-Tshiwala, eds.: Oral Poetry in Nigeria (Lagos, 1981) [incl. A.V. King: ‘Form and Functions in Hausa Professional Songs, 118–35]
K. Gourlay: ‘Long Trumpets of Northern Nigeria in History and Today’, AfM, vi/2 (1982), 48–72
C. Iyimoga: ‘Kundung: the Berom Xylophone’, Nigeria Magazine, no.142 (1982), 49–52
F.E. Besmer: Horses, Musicians and Gods: the Hausa Cult of Possession-Trance (Zaria, 1983)
M.A. Omibiyi-Obidike: ‘Bobby Benson: the Entertainer Musician’, Nigeria Magazine, cxlvii (1983), 18–27
R.M. Blench: ‘The Morphology and Distribution of Sub-Saharan Musical Instruments of North African, Middle Eastern and Asian Origin’, Musica Asiatica, iv (1984), 155–91
J. Uzoigwe: ‘Tonal Organisation in Ukom Drum Performance’, Nigeria Magazine, liv/3 (1986), 53–60
R.M. Blench: ‘Idoma Musical Instruments’, AfM, vi/4 (1987), 42–52
A.E. Inanga: ‘The Social Role of Song Texts in Bčmbé Music among the Čgbá’, Nigeria Magazine, lv/3 (1987), 73–81
I. Iyortange: ‘Continuity and Change in Tiv Music and Drama’, Nigeria Magazine, lv/4 (1987), 52–6
J.N. Lo-Bamijoko: ‘Classification of Igbo Musical Instruments, Nigeria’, AfM, vi/4 (1987), 19–41
R. Boyd and R. Fardon: ‘Bisíwééri: the Songs and Times of a Muslim Chamba Woman (Adamawa State, Nigeria)’, African Languages and Cultures, v/1 (1992), 11–41
E. Kini-Olusanyin: ‘Bembe: the Sound of Ritual Drum’, Yoruba Ideas, i/1 (1997), 10–17
Nigeria, i: Hausa Music; Nigeria, ii:Hausa Music; Nigeria, iii: Igbo Music, coll. D.W. Ames, Bärenreiter BM 30 L2306, 2307, 2311 (1968, 1969, 1975) [UNESCO Anthology of African Music]
Ancient Music of the Idoma, coll. R.A. Armstrong, Asch Mankind Series AHM 4221 (1969)
Music of Dawn and Day, coll. B. Ranung, Love Records LXLP 513/4 (1970)
Music from the Villages of North-Eastern Nigeria, coll. P. Newman, Asch Records AHM 4532 (1971)
The Kings of Otukpo and Adoka, Benue State, coll. R.A. Armstrong, Institute of African Studies, Ibadan EMI-NCR18 (1972)
Nigeria: musiques du plateau and Musiques du Nigeria Central, coll. B. Quersin, OCORA 82, 85 (1973)
The Igede of Nigeria, coll. R. Nicholls, Music of the World CDT-117 (1991)