jùjú music
A Nigerian popular music genre blending Yoruba percussion, call-and-response vocals, and electric guitars, developed from the 1920s through the 1980s.
In Depth
Jùjú music emerged in Lagos in the 1920s when Yoruba musicians began incorporating Western instruments — particularly the guitar and later the pedal steel guitar — into traditional Yoruba praise-song formats. Tunde King is credited as the first jùjú musician. The genre evolved through several phases: I.K. Dairo added the accordion and talking drum in the 1960s, Ebenezer Obey expanded the ensemble with multiple guitars and percussion in the 1970s, and King Sunny Adé brought jùjú to international attention in the 1980s.
King Sunny Adé's albums for Island Records in the early 1980s introduced jùjú to Western audiences, with critics comparing his shimmering guitar textures and polyrhythmic percussion to those of minimalist composers. His use of the Hawaiian steel guitar to mimic the talking drum's tonal inflections was particularly innovative. Jùjú's influence extends into Afropop, world music, and through Adé's impact on artists like Paul Simon and David Byrne. The genre remains popular at Nigerian social functions, particularly naming ceremonies and weddings.
King Sunny Adé was initially marketed as "the next Bob Marley" by Island Records in the 1980s — while that commercial comparison fell short, his jùjú music influenced an entire generation of world music artists.