“Juju Music” by King Sunny Adé, 1982 – listen here

by Ismaila Tunde Oladimeji

Juju Music (1982) The Album is a significant milestone in career of Sunday Adeniyi Adegeye, popularly known as “King Sunny Ade”, or simply “Sunny Ade”. Ade was born on the 22nd September 1946 in Ondo, Nigeria. He had a brief educational stint, but his passion for music and musical instruments motivated his turn to jùjú music. Sunny Ade was from a royal family and showed early signs and interest in the entertainment industry. Today, he is a successful artist and has been nominated for the Grammy awards twice. His album, Juju Music, typifies his mastery of this musical genre and deserves to be examined.

Martin Meissonnier’s production, the choice of instruments, linn drum, and synthesizer, helped the album and, indeed Sunny Ade to gain popular Western recognition. The album opens with the steady percussions of drums and guitars in ‘Ja Funmi,’ an invocation to the Yoruba concept of ‘ori’ (one’s head) to fight for a person and grant him or her success. ‘Eje Nlo Gba Ara Mi’ follows on the almost reflective mood of the opening song with another invocation to the listener to give the artist the opportunity to redeem himself. ‘Mo Beru Agba’ is more pacy, relying entirely on drums, the staccato bursts of the gangan interspersed with a strong vocal backing as Sunny Ade delivers a didactic address (or warning) to the listener to beware of betrayals and to respect elders. ‘Sunny Ti De Ariya’ and ‘Ma Jaiye Oni’ leans strongly into juju’s roots as the favoured music of party-going socialites. ‘365 is My Number’ presents the artist propositioning a lady and offering her his number, while the last track ‘Samba’ leans into Yoruba proverbs and tradition of self-adulation to pronounce himself as king in juju.

Jùjú is a popular Nigerian musical form that originated in the western part of Nigeria. It is peculiarly Yoruba artistic form that emerged in Lagos in the early 1930s (Waterman, 205). Its most famous representatives are Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, Shina Peter, Tunde Nightingale, I. K. Dairo, Ayinde Bakare, among others. Waterman traces the roots of jùjú to the earlier musical genre așíkò, which, on its own part, is connected to the Brazilian samba (205). The first major figure in the trajectory of jùjú music is Tunde King, who set the tone for the form’s dependence on Yoruba oral repertories (206).

At the inception of the genre, the banjo and the şèkèrè (beaded gourd rattle) were the major musical accompaniment to the lyrics. However, as the jùjú genre progressed through innovations from talents such as Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey, instruments prominent within the terrain of Western music such as the piano, the electric guitar, xylophones, and jazz drums were introduced to support and complement the traditional instruments. These refinements have made jùjú music livelier and more energetic. 

Sources

Waterman, Christopher. ‘Yoruba Popular Music.’ In The Garland Handbook of Music, edited by Ruth M. Stone, 2008, Routledge, pp. 198—215.