Who's afraid of juju music?

Moments later, we walked into a street opposite the popular Club 57 at Ikoyi, a vibrant sound leading our footsteps. The place was called 100 Hours and, in that early hour of the morning, it was living up to its name, jamming some proper juju music. The culprits of the sound were an all-male band led by a female singer sitting on a barstool and crooning a cover of one of King Sunny Ade’s hit songs.

Warm seats welcomed us. A blue scrawl on a white board introduced the band: Ayo Balogun and the Harmonic Voices.

They were clearly a disciplined band, hitting drums, strumming guitars and parting songs with such vibrancy even though they must have been performing for close to six hours. Ayo Balogun did not look like a 58-year-old; sometimes she would stand to stylishly stretch her feet and, at other times, dance to give instructions to her band.

She was playing juju music and her set-list was clearly unrehearsed.  In doing covers of different popular juju and highlife songs, her approach was heavy on fast-rhythm percussion and the weakest link of the rhythm seemed to be the pianist. In between the bawdy juju lyrics that glibly described voluptuous bodies and promises of sexual satisfaction, she would sing gospel songs of thanksgiving.

Between juju music and highlife

In a newspaper interview, Queen Ayo Balogun, a former president of the juju Musician Association, corrects the notion about the perceived fetishism of juju music attached to its name. Juju, to the layman, is voodoo or jazz. The mere mention of juju may bring to the mind frenzied incantations, craven images, as well as other fetish paraphernalia. Balogun opined that juju music had nothing to do with voodoo or black magic; that it rather had everything to do with making music that speaks to social conscience and good citizenship.

The origin of the name juju is an interesting one. Early juju musicians played an array of instruments: chiefly drums, guitars, and their voices. It was not unusual for singers to sing and play the tambourine. And sometimes, in the heat of the groove, they would throw up their tambourines high in the air and catch them (as they fell back down).

The translation of the verb “throw” in Yoruba is “ju” and, Yoruba being a tonal language, repetition is often used to lay emphasis, hence the doubling of the verb “throw” which is “juju”. Although the tambourine is not much a consequential instrument tied to the sound of Juju music as a whole, it also gives insight to the roots of Juju music, especially in the early African church.

Juju music is believed to be a syncretism, a marriage between traditional practices and western instruments like highlife and, in some places, it is believed to be highlife. The idea that highlife is actually a genre of music on its own is quite bothersome, especially as it is more of an aesthetic than it is a definitive sound. After the influential tour of Ghanaian Highlife maestro, E.T. Mensah, it became clear to listeners that a cocktail of one’s own culture can be made using western instruments and highlife music of this era could be identified by the substrate of the culture from which it was drawn.

In this vein, Juju music could easily be referred to as south-western Nigeria’s derivative of highlife. But then again, this statement is problematic in its simplicity. Juju’s early variants of ashiko as well as agidigbo did not so much as have western influences on their sound. Those sounds remain distinctive today, even if its practitioners are aged and dying off.

Juju and the civil war

The bail-out will be that modern juju music is a close variant of south-west Nigeria's highlife. With practitioners like Tunde King, Tunde Nightingale, as well as the influential Isaac Kehinde Dairo, juju music became updated to the modern status of a highlife sound. I.K. Dairo, an Ijesha man who had worked as an itinerant cloth seller and barber, formed a band called the Blue Spots, which played a distinctive role in the invention of modern Juju music.

With his background in the early African church of Cherubim and Seraphim, he introduced Christian hymns into juju music. He was also said to have mastered the accordion which he also brought into juju music. His falsetto was not so much a new addition or his tendency to sing in his dialect or his demure style of praise singing, but he updated juju music by refreshing it to aspire to the standard of highlife music. His mastery of the rpm records also helped him to cut short tracks and ensured his fame as the first juju superstar.

As time would have it, the rise of juju music coincided with the oil boom of the 70s, so that praise-singing became a prominent aspect of the music. This ensured that KSA as well as Chief Commander, honey-tongued griots, became not only superstar musicians but millionaires.

It would not be unusual today to draw blanks when you mention the name I.K. Dairo. The more likely response will be to mistake the father for his son, Paul Play Dairo, a decent Nigerian R&B singer who scored a number of hits remaking some of his father’s old numbers.

Forty plus years after the Nigerian civil war and the boom of juju music (along with oil sales in Nigeria),  the juju superstars that linger on our lips are King Sunny Ade (KSA) and Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey, both one-time apprentices of Moses Olaiya, the musician/comedian, and Fatai Rolling Dollar, the agidigbo music maestro respectively.

Their musical journey was set for greatness even though they started from humble backgrounds. King Sunny Ade, born into both royalty and poverty in the Ondo kingdom, had a love for music so intense that he was more willing to sing than to get a western education. His sojourn to Lagos led him to the highlife band of Moses Olaiya. He would break away from this apprenticeship to start his own band, first called Green Spots band, a name curiously reminiscent of the influential I.K. Dairo. Ebenezer Obey’s journey is quite similar, even though it began about five years earlier than Sunny Ade’s; his apprenticeship with Fatai Rolling Dollar’s band culminated in his forming the International Brothers, who became the Inter-reformers after they switched their initial style of music from juju-highlife to the definitive juju that characterized Obey’s oeuvre.

Juju music in the '70s and '80s

The rise of juju music coincided with the oil boom of the 70s, so that praise-singing became a prominent aspect of the music. This ensured that KSA as well as Chief Commander, honey-tongued griots, became not only superstar musicians but millionaires.

Hugely talented and prolific, it is best to imagine them as the ying-yang of juju music. While KSA is the graceful entertainer with nimble feet, Obey’s music is more reflective and philosophical—both are accomplished guitarists. As one would expect of music made for dance, KSA’s music is sometimes fast-paced and suffused with innuendoes that conflate dancing prowess with sexual activities. Obey’s closest attempt to a booty call was from his early numbers and his most successful love song, “Paulina,” is at once a sultry appeal and a lover’s prayer.

If the 70s was for oil boom and mirth-making, the 80s was a very unsettling period in Nigeria’s politics and economy, fraught with coups and countercoups. Music and precisely juju music was one of the casualties of this era; the tune of the music moved away from merriment to more reflective and meditative themes.

Nonetheless, this was after KSA signed a deal with Island Records. In the wake of Bob Marley’s death, Island Record’s attempted to make another superstar and the easy charm and charisma of KSA had drawn them to his sound, which they re-engineered into a sonic masterpiece that became characteristic of King Sunny Ade’s music. It is this remake that Rolling Stone Magazine referred to as “gently hypnotic, polyrhythmic mesh of burbling guitars, sweet harmony vocals, swooping Hawaiian guitar, and throbbing talking drums.”

While KSA was moving his frontiers into the international market, Ebenezer Obey had made an influential album that took care of all ceremonial events known to the party-loving Yorubas. Weddings, birthdays as well as naming ceremonies were part of his all-inclusive long-playing record, which is played or covered till date.

Of course there were other musicians doing juju music. A good number of them released influential albums—the likes of Kayode Fashola, who was at a risk of sounding monotonous; Dele Abiodun; and Segun Adewale, who was in a duo with the less-speaking and more guitar-strumming Shina Peters—but the soil was stifling as the competition was keen and way above their heads. The contest was covertly between Sunny and Obey.

Sir Shina Peters and the '90s

Names like Dayo Kujore, Mico Ade, Dele Taiwo cluttered the juju musicscape in the 90s, a period of economic austerity occasioned by military rule. In a time of unrestrained hunger and hardship, culture is casualty. In this period, ironically, juju music enjoyed a freshness brought by Sir Shina Peters (SSP). His three albums Ace, Shinamania, and Dancing Time were so successful in south-west Nigeria that its popularity trekked to the Midwestern states and dared to cross the River Niger!

What Mr Peters did differently was to quicken the pace of juju music with a column of heavy percussion. He called his brand of music afrojuju. His nimble feet and love for sexual innuendo was reminiscent of King Sunny Ade, but his percussion pattern was deliberately different.

Even his snare drummer brought a distinctive sound. The drumming patterns sometimes aspired to American rock music and Shina did not pursue this sound with guitar strums; he had little interest in the Hawaiian guitar that KSA had brought into juju music after his contact with the sonic alchemy of Island Records. Shina Peters would go on to release a slew of albums and, notably, his climax came after Dancing Time – with a music video featuring video clips of his huge concert at the Obafemi Awolowo University.

Since SSP, juju music has seemed to remain stagnant as a genre. The entire 1990s did not produce a single enduring juju artist. By the mid-80s, fuji music was already growing in prominence. Fuji music, finding its early origin in the wake-up music of the ajisaari amongst Muslim Yorubas, wrestled for the baton of popularity with juju music. Interestingly, fuji is the closest in equivalence to hip-hop music. For one, fuji music lacked a subservience to its forebears; juju music embraced its own tightly. Even though fuji was not as sophisticated as juju in sound, it became widely embraced across south-western Nigeria.

Does juju music have a future? 

The new millennium has not change the story. Juju music is pretty much an item of nostalgia these days. And this begs for a conversation about what Juju really was. Was it a standalone genre or just a musical fad that has had its day in the sun? Was it a destination in itself or part of a journey?

The biggest quasi-juju player of the 2000s, Yinka Ayefele, came into prominence in the aftermath of a car crash which left him paraplegic. He calls his brand of juju music the onomatopoeic 'tungba', tracing his musical lineage to Orlando Owoh’s 'kennery music' which was essentially more highlife than juju.

Juju music is still played by local bands and even by its former practitioners. Thousands of LPs of the albums churned out still enjoy a fanatic audience. New school practitioners of afrobeat pinch from the genre. Yet for every 100 Hours where one can still enjoy juju music in the wee hours of the morning, a thousand places where contemporary music plays abound. But even ashiko and agidigbo, its precursors, still have practitioners doing gigs in the underbelly of Lagos Island where this kind of music is revered. The question is: Is juju music’s survival hinged on the acceptance of the heavy percussion driven tungba or on the rise of another juju superstar?

A version of this piece was published by Bakwa Magazine.