Juju Music
Encyclopedia
Juju Music is the 1982 major label
debut of Nigeria
n jùjú band
King Sunny Adé and His African Beats
. It represented the first worldwide release for Adé, who was already established in his native Nigeria as its "biggest musical draw and juju music's reigning monarch". The album was a critical and commercial success, peaking at #111 on Billboard's
"Pop Albums
" chart. The New York Times
, which described the album in 1982 as "the year's freshest dance-music album", credited it in 1990 with having launched the "World Beat movement in the United States". In its review, Allmusic indicates that the album gave Adé "unprecedented exposure on the Western market and introduced a slew of music lovers to the sounds of Afro-pop", concluding that it "should not only be the first-disc choice for Ade newcomers, but for the Afro-pop curious as well.
approached Adé about releasing his material internationally under its Mango Records imprint, the musician was already a star in his native Nigeria, with his own record label
, his own nightclub
to host his performances and a track record of releasing three or four albums a year. When Adé agreed, he was teamed with Martin Meissonnier
, a French
record producer
who advised that the typical long song structures of Nigerian music would not work for Western audiences
. Accordingly, Adé divided a number of his Nigerian hits for international release, a task he found unchallenging. He later explained that "In Nigeria, we got used to non-stop recording, about 18 to 20 minutes of music. But over here, the music should be track-by-track for the radio and the dance floor. It's like making a dress. One by one, the different pieces are joined together, but you can still see the lines where they meet".
The album Juju Music was coupled with an international tour, with Island Records ambitiously hoping to position Adé as a new Bob Marley
. Island's marketing of Adé was later described by Tucson Weekly
as "a monumental juncture in the exposure and development of world beat music; perhaps the first time a major American imprint had fully endorsed an African-derived music that was not reggae".
heritage might lead listeners in America
to a sense of familiarity with Adé's music, as the Yoruban culture has far-flung influences in other cultures and musical types. Rather than catalog those represented types, Palmer described Adé's style as a "fusion of traditional Yoruba drumming with a pop instrumentation that includes pedal steel guitar and synthesizer".
Palmer notes the songs, many of which are "drawn from traditional proverbs", "espouse traditional values". In a 2005 interview, Adé confirmed that in his musical career "all the songs are more or less a proverb". The artist offered as an example of this an explication
of the popular anthem "Jafunmi" from Juju Music, an "instant classic" according to Afropop Worldwide which he plays at every show in spite of the vast body of work from which he might choose. Adé indicated that "Ja Funmi" is a common phrase meaning "Fight for me", adding:
He concluded with an explicit explanation of the metaphor
, saying, "You use your head to represent your God".
In spite of the title of that song, Adé's tone is not aggressive, marking what Palmer highlights as an essential difference between most music from underdeveloped nations
and that on Adé's album—listeners of the time expected such music to be "angry and militant", but Adé is rather "sweet and cool", a traditional element of Yoruban art. In his review, Palmer describes the beginning of the song "Mo Beru Agba" in detail, concluding that the music shifts "textures as mercurially as an African breeze, but with three talking drums and a section of congas, bongos, and other percussion instruments continuing to lay down a densely woven fabric of propulsive rhythms". The overall impression to Rolling Stone
reviewer Chip Stern was of "some hazy, distant dream of communal ritual and peace".
, but also with opening international doors for other performers of Afropop
.
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
debut of Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
n jùjú band
Jùjú music
Jùjú is a style of Nigerian popular music, derived from traditional Yoruba percussion. The name comes from a Yoruba word "juju" or "jiju" meaning "throwing" or "something being thrown." Juju music did not derive its name from juju, which "is a form of magic and the use of magic objects or...
King Sunny Adé and His African Beats
King Sunny Adé
King Sunny Adé is a popular performer of Yoruba Nigerian Jùjú music and a pioneer of modern world music. He has been classed as one of the most influential musicians of all time.-Background:...
. It represented the first worldwide release for Adé, who was already established in his native Nigeria as its "biggest musical draw and juju music's reigning monarch". The album was a critical and commercial success, peaking at #111 on Billboard's
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
"Pop Albums
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
" chart. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, which described the album in 1982 as "the year's freshest dance-music album", credited it in 1990 with having launched the "World Beat movement in the United States". In its review, Allmusic indicates that the album gave Adé "unprecedented exposure on the Western market and introduced a slew of music lovers to the sounds of Afro-pop", concluding that it "should not only be the first-disc choice for Ade newcomers, but for the Afro-pop curious as well.
Background
In the early 1980s, when Island RecordsIsland Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
approached Adé about releasing his material internationally under its Mango Records imprint, the musician was already a star in his native Nigeria, with his own record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, his own nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
to host his performances and a track record of releasing three or four albums a year. When Adé agreed, he was teamed with Martin Meissonnier
Martin Meissonnier
Martin Meissonnier is a French journalist, producer, director and composer. Formerly a journalist for Libération, he has made a specialty of discovering new types of music...
, a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
who advised that the typical long song structures of Nigerian music would not work for Western audiences
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
. Accordingly, Adé divided a number of his Nigerian hits for international release, a task he found unchallenging. He later explained that "In Nigeria, we got used to non-stop recording, about 18 to 20 minutes of music. But over here, the music should be track-by-track for the radio and the dance floor. It's like making a dress. One by one, the different pieces are joined together, but you can still see the lines where they meet".
The album Juju Music was coupled with an international tour, with Island Records ambitiously hoping to position Adé as a new Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
. Island's marketing of Adé was later described by Tucson Weekly
Tucson Weekly
The Tucson Weekly is an alternative newsweekly that was founded in 1984 by Douglas Biggers and Mark Goehring, and serves the Tucson, Arizona metropolitan area of about 900,000 residents. The paper is a member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies...
as "a monumental juncture in the exposure and development of world beat music; perhaps the first time a major American imprint had fully endorsed an African-derived music that was not reggae".
Musical style
Although Meissonnier altered the song structure, he did not alter Adé's style. To Westerners, Adé's music seemed eclectic, with reviewers of Juju Music commenting variously on the mingling of "the spacey mixing techniques of Jamaican dub" into Adé's "Nigerian polyrhythms", and—even more minutely—on the "echoes of old reggae in its lean guitar riffs, salsa in its Yoruban drum patterns, country in the steel-guitar playing, dub in the music's wide-open holes, folk and calypso in its gentle singing and the Grateful Dead and jazz in its long jams". At the time of the album's release, New York Times reviewer Robert Palmer speculated that Adé's YorubanYoruba people
The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...
heritage might lead listeners in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to a sense of familiarity with Adé's music, as the Yoruban culture has far-flung influences in other cultures and musical types. Rather than catalog those represented types, Palmer described Adé's style as a "fusion of traditional Yoruba drumming with a pop instrumentation that includes pedal steel guitar and synthesizer".
Palmer notes the songs, many of which are "drawn from traditional proverbs", "espouse traditional values". In a 2005 interview, Adé confirmed that in his musical career "all the songs are more or less a proverb". The artist offered as an example of this an explication
Explication
The idea and practice of explication is rooted in the verb to explicate, which concerns the process of "unfolding" and of "making clear" the meaning of things, so as to make the implicit explicit...
of the popular anthem "Jafunmi" from Juju Music, an "instant classic" according to Afropop Worldwide which he plays at every show in spite of the vast body of work from which he might choose. Adé indicated that "Ja Funmi" is a common phrase meaning "Fight for me", adding:
He concluded with an explicit explanation of the metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
, saying, "You use your head to represent your God".
In spite of the title of that song, Adé's tone is not aggressive, marking what Palmer highlights as an essential difference between most music from underdeveloped nations
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
and that on Adé's album—listeners of the time expected such music to be "angry and militant", but Adé is rather "sweet and cool", a traditional element of Yoruban art. In his review, Palmer describes the beginning of the song "Mo Beru Agba" in detail, concluding that the music shifts "textures as mercurially as an African breeze, but with three talking drums and a section of congas, bongos, and other percussion instruments continuing to lay down a densely woven fabric of propulsive rhythms". The overall impression to Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
reviewer Chip Stern was of "some hazy, distant dream of communal ritual and peace".
Reception
According to Rolling Stone, both the album and the debut tours received "universal rave reviews". In its own review, the magazine recommended that "Fans of the New Romantics' soul train...disembark and check it out—the view is breathtaking". The New York Times praised the album as "lilting, lyrical, compulsively danceable", "spectacularly up-to-date" and "difficult to resist". Combined, the album and tour have been credited with not only internationally popularizing World BeatWorldbeat
Worldbeat is a music genre that primarily refers to a blending of Western pop music with traditional/folk or world music influences...
, but also with opening international doors for other performers of Afropop
African popular music
African popular music, like African traditional music, is vast and varied. Most contemporary genres of African popular music build on cross-pollination with western popular music. Many genres of popular music like blues, jazz, salsa zouk, and rumba derive to varying degrees on musical traditions...
.
Track listing
All tracks composed by King Sunny Adé.- "Ja Funmi" – 7:08
- "Eje Nlo Gba Ara Mi" – 7:14
- "Mo Beru Agba" – 3:27
- "Sunny Ti de Ariya" – 3:46
- "Ma Jaiye Oni" – 5:07
- "365 Is My Number/The Message" – 8:16
- "Samba/E Falaba Lewe" – 8:07
Personnel
- Shina Abiodun – congaCongaThe conga, or more properly the tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed Cuban drum with African antecedents. It is thought to be derived from the Makuta drums or similar drums associated with Afro-Cubans of Central African descent. A person who plays conga is called a conguero...
- Mofes Acambi – drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
- King Sunny AdéKing Sunny AdéKing Sunny Adé is a popular performer of Yoruba Nigerian Jùjú music and a pioneer of modern world music. He has been classed as one of the most influential musicians of all time.-Background:...
– guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, composerComposerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, keyboards, vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
, mixingAudio mixing (recorded music)In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may... - Ademola Adepoju – steel guitarSteel guitarSteel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use...
- Adisa Adeyemi – bongosBongo drumBongo or bongos are a Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of single-headed, open-ended drums attached to each other. The drums are of different size: the larger drum is called in Spanish the hembra and the smaller the macho...
- Jacob Ajakaye – vocals
- Rasaki Aladokun – African drumDjembeA djembe also known as jembe, jenbe, djbobimbe, jymbe, yembe, or jimbay, or sanbanyi in Susu; is a skin-covered drum meant played with bare hands....
, talking drum - Gani Alashe – shekereShekereThis article is about the musical instrument. for the musical genre, see Sekere.The shekere is an instrument from West Africa consisting of a dried gourd with beads woven into a net covering the gourd. Throughout the continent there are similar gourd/bead or gourd/seed percussion instruments. Some...
- Michael Babalola – maracas
- Adrian Boot – photographyPhotographyPhotography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
- Tunde Demiola – vocals
- Niyi Falaye – vocals
- Jomoh Gbadamosi – African drum, talking drum
- Segun Hori – guitar
- Jelili Lawal – bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
- Segun Llori – guitar
- Godwin Logie – mixing
- Martin MeissonnierMartin MeissonnierMartin Meissonnier is a French journalist, producer, director and composer. Formerly a journalist for Libération, he has made a specialty of discovering new types of music...
– keyboards, producerRecord producerA record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music... - Bob Ohiri – guitar
- John Okeumeu – guitar, rhythm guitarRhythm guitarRhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
- Alhaji Timmy Olaitan – drums, African drums
- Matthew Olojede – vocals
- Femi Owomoyela – vocals
- Segun Shokumbi – vocals
- Bruno Tilley – designGraphic designGraphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...