When you search Afrojuju on the web, the first thing you are likely to see is the name, Sir Shina Peters. A man that carried this style so well that it became synonymous with his name in the mid to late 1990s.
However, the original genre of this music is actually called Juju music, and it dates as far back as the early 1920s in Nigeria. The style’s name, ‘Juju’, is actually derived from the Yoruba word ‘Jiju’ which translates as ‘throwing’ or ‘to be thrown’. Not as erroneously believed by some to have originated from the word ‘Juju’, meaning magic or the practice of magic. Well, that’s a tricky one. And we can’t blame them, can we?
The Juju style finds its roots in the traditional Yoruba percussion and is said to have been created by Ababababaa Bababtude King, popularly known as Tunde King. Other early performers include Ojoge Daniel, Irewole Dengel and Prince Benjamin Aderounmu, known as Kokoro, the blind minstrel.
While the phrase Juju music might sound a little distant when you hear it, many of the elderly musicians we respect so much today actually belong to this genre. People like the legendary King Sunny Ade, Chief Ebenezer Obey, Adeolu Akinsanya, Fatai Rolling Dollar, I. K. Dairo, and Dele Ojo, just to name a few.
This generation of musicians were the ones who incorporated new influences like Funk, Reggae, and Afrobeat into Juju music. This incorporation also led to the birthing of genres like Fuji, Apala, Waka, Sakara, and most notably, Afrojuju, a mixture of Juju music and Afrobeat.
While Afrobeats is the trend of the day, we cannot worry that Juju music will go into extinction anytime soon. This is because of its deep cultural roots and communal acceptance among the party-oriented Yoruba people.
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