Juju vs Fuji Music

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, however, this was after KSA signed a deal with Island Records. In the wake of Bob Marley’s death, Island Records attempted to raise yet another global superstar, and the easy charm and charisma of KSA drew 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 a “gently hypnotic, polyrhythmic mesh of burbling guitars, sweet harmony vocals, swooping Hawaiian guitar, and throbbing talking drums.”

Names like Dayo Kujore, Mico Ade, and Dele Taiwo cluttered the juju musicscape in the 90s, a draconian period of economic austerity occasioned by military rule. In the face of unrestrained hunger and hardship, by all means, culture is one of the early casualties. Ironically, during this period, juju music enjoyed a fresh breath of Sir Shina Peters (SSP). His triad albums Ace, Shinamania, and Dancing Time were so successful in southwestern Nigeria that the widespread popularity trekked to Midwestern states and dared to cross the River Niger!

Shina Peter’s strategy to the juju of his forebears was quite enthralling. As with every genre of art, individual talent and insight are important, and what Mr. Peters did differently was to quicken the pace of juju music with a column of heavy percussion like the music had never had. His nimble feet and love for sexual innuendo were very reminiscent of King Sunny Ade, but his percussion pattern was deliberately different. Even his snare drummer brought a distinctive sound that juju had never known. His percussion seemed to aspire 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, presumably 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 was after “Dancing Time” with a music video featuring clips of his huge concert at Obafemi Awolowo University.

Since SSP, juju music has seemingly remained stagnant as a genre. The entire 90s 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 among Muslim Yorubas, wrestled the baton of popularity with juju music. Interestingly, fuji music is the closest in equivalence to American hip-hop music. For one, fuji music was bereft of the subservience to forebears that juju embraced so tightly; young fuji turks were more Faulkerian in their attitude to the reigning masters, and even though fuji was not as sophisticated as juju in sound, it was widely embraced across southwestern Nigeria.

That juju music has not produced a single influential practitioner since SSP is a reason to assume that the genre has remained stagnant for about two decades. This does not take away from the continual practice of this style of music by local bands and even by its former practitioners, or the thousands of LPs of the albums churned out still enjoying their fanatic audience to date, or that new school practitioners of afrobeats are pinching from the music and taking the substrate to their sonic laboratories to develop something which is, at best, referential.