Reclaiming the Òrìsà in Nigeria: The Intersection of Traditional Indigenous Religion and Islam in Yorùbá Popular Culture
FAIN: HB-50225-12
Debra Lynn Klein
Gavilan College (Gilroy, CA 95020-9578)
My project will show that despite the popularity of evangelicalism in southern Nigeria, traditional religious beliefs and practices have been making a steady comeback among Yorùbá Muslims who have continued to incorporate the òrìsà—indigenous spirits—into their Islamic, popular culture, and business practices and worldviews. My hypothesis is that predominantly Muslim Yorùbá towns, in dialogue with òrìsà-focused communities throughout the globe, provide the necessary conditions for a Nigeria-based òrìsà reclamation movement; thus, analyzing the nexus of òrìsà and Islam in popular culture and business contexts will shed light on how Nigerians negotiate and reinvent Yorùbá òrìsà culture through local performance and global networks. This research contributes to analyses of culture reclamation processes in which communities invoke cultural and spiritual traditions in order to claim meaningful identities and lives against the grain of globalizing religious paradigms and practices.
Associated Products
Fújì (Article)Title: Fújì
Author: Debra Klein
Abstract: There is no formal abstract since it's an entry in an edited volume. Here is the opening paragraph:
During the 1960s in post-independence Nigeria, Síkírù Àyìndé Barrister (1948-2010) pioneered and coined the term fújì, a Yorùbá genre of popular dance music. While Barrister was a soldier in the Nigerian army in the late 1960s, he transformed wéré/ajísari music, songs performed by and for Muslims during the Ramadan fast, into this new style of dance music. Fújì is characterized by its Islamic-influenced vocal style, Yorùbá praise poetry (oríkì), and driving percussion. Fújì’s popularity hit a peak in Nigeria and on the global stage in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and fújì bands continue to record their music and perform throughout Nigeria and across the globe into the twenty-first century.
Year: 2019
Access Model: It's a book for purchase.
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Africa and the Middle East
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Destiny: Yorùbá Islamic Performance and Politics of Gender in Ìlorin, Nigeria (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Destiny: Yorùbá Islamic Performance and Politics of Gender in Ìlorin, Nigeria
Author: Debra Klein
Abstract: The Nigerian city of Ìl?rin is renowned for its local, national, and international status as a centuries-old, iconic Muslim city poised between the North and South of Nigeria. However, Ìl?rin is also home to a rich Yorùbá cultural heritage that includes a diversity of practices and beliefs. Ìl?rin’s cultural diversity has produced many exciting oral performance styles, such as the popular music style called Fújì characterized by what I call a “Yorùbá Muslim fusion.” While predominantly Muslim men perform fújì, Muslim women perform several fújì-like, yet distinct, Yorùbá Muslim styles: Bààlúù, S?nw?l?, and Islamic. Since the Quran and hegemonic Islamic institutions oppose the role of women as public performers, Ìl?rin women artists continue to risk being marginalized as insincere and amoral women, Muslims, and citizens. Building on decades of fieldwork with Yorùbá performers and based on recent ethnographic fieldwork with Ìl?rin-based performers, this paper examines artists’ life stories and performances in order to piece together a larger narrative about the politics of Yorùbá gender, class, and morality in and beyond Ìl?rin. Drawing upon the work of Barber (2000), Mahmood (2012), Na’Allah (2009), and Omojola (2012), this paper argues that women artists, through their performances, bring together the Yorùbá concept of orí (potential for final self-realization) and the Islamic concept of kádàrá (destiny), thus embodying a Yorùbá Islamic sense of self. By realizing their Yorùbá Islamic selves, these artists remind us how Yorùbá and Islamic sensibilities can enrich and sustain one another.
Date: 11/18/13
Conference Name: Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference
Stop the Violence: Fújì as an Allegory of Nigerianness in the Era of Boko Haram (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Stop the Violence: Fújì as an Allegory of Nigerianness in the Era of Boko Haram
Author: Debra Klein
Abstract: A proliferation of popular music genres flourished in post-independence Nigeria: highlife, jùjú, Afrobeat, and fújì. Distinct from the other genres, fújì grew out of Yorùbá Muslim communities and is a popular dance music characterized by its Islamic-influenced vocal style, Yorùbá praise poetry, and driving percussion. While fújì’s original “big men”—charismatic and successful front men credited for shaping the genre—propelled fújì into popularity, lesser-known musicians in the Yorùbá city of Ìl?rin, the “Mékà of Yorùbáland,” have been performing fújì since its beginning with a regional emphasis on its Islamic roots. My recent research centers on the fújì community of Ìl?rin, where I have been working with performers of fújì and fújì-related genres since 2010. This paper draws from Martin Shaw (1995), Mahmood (2005), Vargas (2012), and Shipley (2015) to ask how differently situated fújì performers challenge hegemonic discourses of gender, class, and morality that shape local and national politics in Nigeria, such as the Nigerian government’s relationship with the terrorist movement, Boko Haram. This work in progress examines recent performances by Lagos-based fújì big man, Malaika, and Ìl?rin-based artist, Alhaja Sheidat Fatimah. Taking inspiration from Martin Shaw’s discussion of Kikuyu gender ideology within competing discourses of female power and male dominance, this paper reveals the tensions between gendered discourses of morality and “big man” neoliberalism in the shaping of Nigeria’s moral and political landscape.
Date: 11/07/15
Conference Name: American Anthropological Association annual conference
Culture and Power: A Critical Anthropology for the New Millennium (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Culture and Power: A Critical Anthropology for the New Millennium
Abstract: Program:
11:00am – 1:00pm
Prelude
Unilorin anthem
Introduction of Dignitaries
Opening prayer
(15mins)
Welcome Remarks by Prof Charles Bodunde - Dean Faculty of Arts
Special Remarks by Prof Is-haq Oloyede - The Vice Chancellor
Introduction of the Guest Lecturer by Dr Jeleel Ojuade - Department of Performing Arts
Lecture on Culture and Power: A Critical Anthropology for the New Millennium by
Prof Debra Klein - Gavillan College, California, USA
(50mns)
Introduction of the evolution of Fuji Music by Prof AbdulRasheed Na’Allah - Vice-Chancellor, Kwara State University, Malete, Ilorin
Live Performance on the Evolution of Were and Fuji Music (PMAN Kwara State)
WERE:
a. Alhaji Akanbi Baba Olobi (Alias Baba Muniru)
b. Alhaji Saka Jagun (Osupa Anobi)
c. Alhaji Aremu Aladeowo (Golden Fuji)
d. Alhaji Isiaka Ayinla (Easy Kabaka)
e.Alhaji Saliu Kuntu (Commander)
f. Alhaji Saka Danfo (Lord Marshal)
FUJI:
a. Alhaji Adisa Owala (Mr No Serious)
b. Alhaji Besco Adisa Azeez (Bessy Wonder)
c. Alhaji Ganiyu Abefe (Mr Panorama)
d. King Jamiu Ayinde Aloba (SOJ)
e. Sir Kamar Alabi Jasola (Mr Performer)
f. Chief Mumuni Ayanfe Amulelola (Memo wonder)
g. Alhaji Usman Okiki (Hausa to n ko fuji)
ISMAN:
a. Alhaja Seida Fatimah Al-Jafariyah
b. Alhaji Imam Azakir Ismael
c. Alhaji Wasiu Atayese Walihulahi.
(45mins)
Closing Remarks by the Vice-Chancellor –Prof Is-haq Oloyede
Vote of Thanks: Dr (Mrs) Oluyemisi F awole Assistant Director CIE
Announcements
Closing Prayer
Unilorin Anthem
(10mins)
Thank you all for coming
Prof Olugbenga A MOKUOLU
Director, Centre for International Education
Author: Debra Klein
Date: 08/22/12
Location: University of Ilorin, Nigeria
Allow Peace to Reign: Musical Genres of Fújì and Islamic Allegorise Nigerian Unity in the Era of Boko Haram (Article)Title: Allow Peace to Reign: Musical Genres of Fújì and Islamic Allegorise Nigerian Unity in the Era of Boko Haram
Author: Debra L. Klein
Abstract: A proliferation of popular music genres flourished in post-independence Nigeria: highlife, jùjú, Afrobeat, and fújì. Originating within Yorùbá Muslim communities, the genres of fújì and Islamic are Islamised dance music genres characterised by their Arabic-influenced vocal style, Yorùbá praise poetry, driving percussion and aesthetics of incorporation, flexibility, and cultural fusion. Based on analysis of interviews and performances in Ìlọrin in the 2010s, this article argues that the genres of fújì and Islamic allegorise Nigerian unity—an ideology of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and equity—while exposing the gap between the aspiration for unity and everyday inequities shaped by gender and morality.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/yearbook-for-traditional-music/article/abs/allow-peace-to-reign-musical-genres-of-fuji-and-islamic-allegorise-nigerian-unity-in-the-era-of-boko-haram/FDC174C5422B3AF6DEF95224E98682C7Primary URL Description: Cambridge University Press
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Yearbook for Traditional Music
Publisher: Cambridge University Press