As promised in my last post, my goal this week was to find music in Yoruba or orin ni yoruba! Before searching, I knew popular Nigerian artists like Wizkid, Burna Boy, Asake, Rema and Tems, but I only heard their English songs/most popular. I didn’t know if they sang in Yoruba or were from other linguistic groups. After some research, I found out some are Yoruba (as Yoruba is a language and ethnic group Indigenous to Nigeria). Rema and Burna Boy are from other linguistic groups and sing in other dialects like Pidgin English, Igbo and Bini. Learning about where these Nigerian artists come from highlighted that it is important to find precisely what languages they speak and where they come from, as Nigeria has linguistic and cultural diversity. I’m still searching for more music, but here are two of my favourite songs from the songs I’ve been listening to so far!
As much as I love contemporary music, I also love finding music from the other decades, especially from the 70s. When I want to find music, I usually use platforms like Apple Music, but on TikTok, there are a lot of pages dedicated to finding music that goes beyond what is popular on the charts. I came across a TikTok, and of course, now I can’t find the original video, but the creator said Nigerian 70s music is underrated and played The Lijadu Sisters. The duo comprises twin sisters Yeye Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu. They are considered icons in the Afrobeat world and fuse traditional Yoruba cultural sounds with various genres. While looking at other songs from the 70s, I found another artist named Bola Johnson, who was popular around the same time as the Lijadu Sisters and shared a similar funk and Afrobeat sound. Here are the songs I liked the most from these artists.
I plan to do more Yoruba music discoveries and make a playlist, which I’ll happily share in my next post.
Last but not least, the word of the day is Pẹpẹyẹ which means duck. 🦆
References:
https://www.thelijadusisters.com/
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