How Nigerian pop stole Fuji praise-singing

All four are connected by praise-singing. And while some young listeners might find the idea of praise-singing alien, many old music lovers would consider present-day instances of praise-singing as a reinvention. 

Sometime in the first half of the 1990s, an apocryphal tale went around the Fuji music scene about a certain Lagos-Island socialite who had an accident in the city, precisely on the Third Mainland Bridge according to some accounts. He died before he could get any serious medical attention. Details later emerged that he died while driving home angrily, ostensibly to go pick thick wads of naira notes and stage a comeback after he was elbowed out of KWAM 1’s praise-singing list by a rival socialite at a Lagos function.

Ironically many Fuji buffs learned of the death through a praise-singing number dedicated to the deceased. In the end, it signaled how fundamental praise-singing culture is to Fuji. Yet Fuji is no orphan in this context.

In the 1960s through to the 1970s, Haruna Ishola, the late apala maestro, recorded tons of memorable praise-singing numbers for many a Yoruba socialite across the region, including Diaspora Yoruba folks in the far north. Haruna it was who notably shifted the klieg lights to members of the Oroki Social Club in Osogbo, Egbe Basiri in Sagamu-Remo, Egbe Parkers in Kaduna, among others. Ditto for other greats who played genres that are in the extended family of Haruna’s apala: Anigilaje Ayinla Omo Wuramotu, S. Aka Baba Waidi, Yusufu Olatunji, Fatai Olowoyo, among others.

The artist who perhaps elevated praise-singing to an enduring art was Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey Fabiyi, the musician-turned-evangelist whose sonorous, delicate voice was in itself a brain-bursting asset. Where Sunny Ade was a tad hyperbolic in his embellishments, sometime tilting toward the extreme, Obey’s were measured. Sunny Ade, it could be argued, relied heavily on the potency of his beats; Obey’s magic rested on his melody. And a few of the pebbles thrown at the man’s enduring legacy would come from the rationalisation that the artist and his contemporaries encouraged graft through their praise-singing.

In any case, although Sunny is still performing wonders on the dance floor, the Biblical old has passed away for Obey: the artist dropped his legendary juju microphone—in the strict professional sense, at least—after he picked up the holy book.

In the way these things seem now in contemporary Nigerian pop, this meeting of cultures has made it quite difficult to identify that there is actually a gulf in the sound and times that produced the various generational hits recorded by these artists, living and dead. That intersection, if we throw in a little mischief, captures the paradigm shift in contemporary Nigerian pop, evident in the blurred line between these generational sounds. Like the one between, say, King Sunny Ade and his wailing guitar and Small Doctor and his humorous, if brainless, lines. Or the hits in the oeuvres of KWAM 1 and Olamide, Haruna Ishola and QDot, Pasuma and Destiny Boy, Iya Aladuke and Mukaila Senwele, Dauda Epo-Akara and 9ice, Reekado Banks and Ayinde Bakare, Korede Bello and, say, Ayinde Barrister.

The lines, if any, have become blurred—if not totally invisible.

While Fuji seems to be the most coveted bride among contemporary pop artists in terms of sound appropriation, all of the remaining older genres—apala, juju, waka, sakara—have not been spared in terms of style. Where there was the long, elaborate praise-singing of the 1970s, we now have per second name-dropping, perhaps due to the short duration of pop tracks.

In QDot’s ‘Ijo Gelede’, for instance, nothing in the track’s central theme elevates the (Yoruba) culture, as the optics of his carefully selected words and the ‘Ooni-of-Ife’ improvised cosmetics in the video dubiously seem to claim. It’s a decent track, nevertheless. And the closest connection the track has with culture is in the faint praise-singing in its third verse, done in per-second name-dropping.

Before ‘Ijo Gelede’, 9ice, although without pretension to culture elevation, did something similar with his controversial Yahoo-yahoo anthem, 'Living Things', name-dropping internet scam artists from Hushpuppi to Opa 6. All of the rampaging Agege boys, from Junior Boy to Destiny Boy, have done their own namedropping.

Yet given the shortness of pop tracks, and the insatiable appetite these latter day socialites have for staying in the limelight, I think there may be another shift soon. It is likely that they would withdraw their patronage or negotiate for a longer duration, as it was in the 1980s and still is in the traditional genres.

It is unlikely that any prudent socialite would prefer the Q-Dot short-lived 2-second recognition to, say, a Sunny Ade or a KWAM 1’s never-ending holler. Because in the end, with Q-Dot, irrespective of the amount involved, it is just a bland, uninspiring 2-second name-dropping.

With KWAM 1, however, and perhaps for a lesser fee, they get a 3-hour elaborate praise session, with the assurance that the artist would stuff his lines with head-bursting embellishments. But then again, do these publicity-craving socialites care about prudence?