The Popular Music Lineage: Sákárà to Afrobeats
How Yoruba traditional music fed sakara, apala, waka, juju, fuji, highlife, Afrobeat and contemporary Afrobeats, traced through named musicians and specific musical mechanisms rather than gestures at influence.
Yoruba popular music is not a set of separate genres that happen to share a region. It is a single line of descent in which each new form takes the instrumental and vocal resources of the one before it, adds an imported element, and displaces its predecessor commercially. The traditional layer supplies four things throughout: the dùndún and its capacity to encode speech, the call-and-response structure between cantor and chorus, oríkì as the basic mode of praising named individuals in performance, and the Yoruba tonal language itself, which constrains melody because a melody that contradicts the tones produces the wrong words. Those four survive from sákárà in the 1920s to Asake in the 2020s.
A warning about the last section. The traditional-to-juju-to-fuji line is documented in peer-reviewed ethnomusicology, above all in Christopher Waterman's work. The contemporary Afrobeats material is not: what exists is music criticism, and this file marks the difference rather than blurring it.
Sákárà
The earliest of the recorded Yoruba popular genres, defined by two instruments. The sákárà drum is a single-headed frame drum with a clay or earthenware frame, and the gòjé is a one-string bowed fiddle with a horsehair string over a skin-covered gourd . The gòjé is the clearest northern and Sahelian import in the whole Yoruba popular canon and marks sákárà's Islamic milieu.
Yusuf Olátúnjí joined Abibu Oluwa's band in 1927 and made his first record in 1937 . Other names in the genre include Ojo Olawale, Sanusi Aka and Saka Layigbade. The dates here rest on encyclopaedia sources rather than on the specialist literature and should be corroborated against Omojola before being treated as firm .
Àpàlà
Àpàlà emerged from the Muslim Yoruba milieu and its instrumentation is percussion plus lamellophone: agogo bells, àkúbà drums, claves and the agidigbo [S2]. It has no lead guitar, which is what separates it audibly from jùjú.
Haruna Ishola Bello, 1919 to 23 July 1983, is called the father of àpàlà [S2]. Ayinla Omowura, born Waidi Ayinla Yusuf Gbogbolowo, 1933 to 6 May 1980, born at Itoko in Abẹ́òkúta, is the other major figure; he feuded with other musicians including Ishola, whom he later acknowledged as his superior [S2].
The frequently repeated claim that àpàlà originated in Ramadan wake-keeping was not verified in a scholarly source. That origin is firmly documented for wéré and ajísàrí, and may be being transferred to àpàlà in popular accounts; it is not asserted here.
Àpàlà and sákárà were both part of Fela Kuti's formative musical environment, which is the bridge to what follows [S3].
Wéré and ajísàrí into fújì
Wéré, also called ajísàrí, is an Islamic-influenced Yoruba genre performed to wake Muslims before dawn during the Ramadan fast [S4]. It is a functional music with a specific job, and the pioneering wéré musicians of the 1950s and 1960s included Sikiru Ayinde Barrister and Ayinla Kollington, with young wéré groups prominent in Lagos through the 1960s [S4].
Fújì is what wéré became when it left Ramadan and entered the commercial market. Barrister's own account of the name is that he saw a poster at an airport advertising Mount Fuji, the highest peak in Japan [S4]. Two cautions: the story is his self-report and is not independently corroborated, and some sources give a version in which he travelled to Japan, which appears to be a later embellishment. The airport-poster version is the one quoted directly from him and is preferred here.
Barrister's own description of what he combined is a valuable primary statement: sákárà, àpàlà, jùjú, aró, Afrobeat, gúdúgúdú, and elements of highlife [S4]. That sentence names the traditional instrumentarium directly, which settles the retention question for fújì without needing an outside analyst.
Instrumentation begins with the sákárà drum and expands to dùndún, congas, ṣẹ̀kẹ̀rẹ̀, agogo and bongos, later adding keyboards and guitars [S4]. The defining negative feature in the classic period is the absence of a lead guitar line, which is the sharpest separation from jùjú: fújì is voice plus percussion, jùjú is voice plus guitars plus percussion.
The rivalry. Kollington released his first album in 1973 or 1974 and was Barrister's main rival from the mid-1970s, the dispute being specifically over who originated fújì [S4]. It was substantial enough to attract a linguistics paper on the verbal assault between them [S5]. It was eventually settled, with Kollington stating on record that rivalry had caused the controversy and that Barrister created fújì; Wasiu Ayinde, K1, is credited with brokering the reconciliation after the death of Barrister's mother [S4].
The later generation runs through Wasiu Ayinde Marshal, K1 De Ultimate, with Talazo fújì prominent from the late 1980s, Adewale Ayuba with Bonsue fújì, and Wasiu Alabi Pasuma and Saheed Osupa dominating the 2000s [S4].
Wàkà
Wàkà is the women's genre in this family, Islamic-inflected, vocally led. The standard account names Batile Alake as the figure who brought it from private performance to the stage and the record, and Salawa Abeni as its dominant later star.
This material could not be verified against scholarly sources for this file. The claims about Batile Alake's role and about Salawa Abeni being crowned Waka Queen by the Aláàfin in 1992 are widely repeated in the Nigerian press and were not confirmed. Bode Omojola's Yorùbá Music in the Twentieth Century contains substantial treatment of Yoruba women's vocal genres and is the right source to check . The gap is recorded here rather than filled.
Jùjú
Origins. Jùjú developed out of palm-wine guitar music in the Olowogbowo area of Lagos in the 1920s, associated with Abdulrafiu Babatunde King, Tunde King, born 24 August 1910, generally credited as its founder . King made the first jùjú recording in 1936 .
The name is contested and both accounts should be given. One derives jùjú from a reduplication of the Yoruba verb jù, to toss or throw, from a story of a band member throwing his tambourine in the air during performance. The other derives it from the sound of a small Brazilian tambourine-like drum used in King's ensemble . Neither is settled. The English association of "juju" with witchcraft is a false friend and has nothing to do with the genre's name.
Electrification. Ayinde Bakare is confirmed as a jùjú pioneer alongside King and Akanbi Wright, and is credited with electrifying the guitar in the late 1940s; the date was not independently verified .
When the talking drum entered jùjú, which is genuinely contested. Three positions circulate. That Akanbi Wright incorporated the dùndún in 1948, giving jùjú its identifying feature. That Christopher Waterman dates the arrival of the Yoruba talking drum and the multiple-guitar line to the late 1950s and 1960s. And that Ebenezer Obey is credited by many accounts with bringing the dùndún to the forefront of jùjú .
These are reconcilable if the first is read as first introduction, the second as standardisation and the third as popularisation, but that reconciliation is an inference and not a sourced claim. Waterman is the authority in this field and his dating should carry the most weight .
This matters more than a dating quibble. The moment the dùndún entered jùjú is the moment the tradition's speech-encoding instrument entered the commercial popular band, and everything afterwards, including fújì's percussion sections and Afrobeat's rhythm section, inherits from it.
I. K. Dairo, 1930, born at Offa in Kwara State, died 7 February 1996. He founded the Morning Star Orchestra in 1957, renamed the Blue Spots in the early 1960s . He was the first high-profile musician to play the accordion in jùjú, using an amplified accordion as his signature sound, and his major hit was Salome on Decca in 1962 . His practice was syncretic in a specific and describable way: he combined the Ìjẹ̀bú-Ìjẹ̀ṣà choral multi-part vocal sound with melodies and texts from Christian sources, sang in multiple Nigerian languages, and used Latin-influenced dance rhythms . The multi-part choral sound is the retention that matters, and it is a direct carry-over from Yoruba communal singing into a commercial band format. He was appointed MBE; the year was not verified for this file.
Ebenezer Obey. Professional from the mid-1950s in Lagos, he formed the International Brothers in 1964 and renamed it the Inter-Reformers in the early 1970s, recording mainly for West African Decca . The documented mechanism is that he incorporated Yoruba percussion style and expanded his ensemble by adding drum kits, guitars and talking drums . His "miliki sound" appears in album titles from 1973 onward; no source consulted defined the miliki system musically, and it is not defined here.
King Sunny Adé. Juju Music, credited to King Sunny Adé and His African Beats, was released on Island Records in 1982, produced by Martin Meissonnier, who introduced synthesizers and Linn drums and who introduced Adé to Chris Blackwell . The commercial context is specific: Island was looking for a new global artist after Bob Marley's death in 1981, and Fela had just signed to Arista . Adé is credited with bringing the pedal steel guitar into Nigerian popular music, along with synthesizers, clavinet and vibraphone .
The pedal steel is the interesting case. It is an American country instrument, and Adé used it as a melodic voice that bends and slides between pitches. In a tonal-language music where the talking drum's defining capacity is the glide between tone levels, an instrument that glides continuously is not an arbitrary import. Adé's African Beats also carried a large percussion section including dùndún, so the pedal steel sits inside an ensemble organised on Yoruba principles.
Highlife in western Nigeria
Highlife began as palm-wine guitar music, named for the palm wine served at performances, and expanded into an orchestra adding trumpet, trombone, tuba, reeds, trap drums and cymbals, accordion, xylophone and keyboard, with brass and reeds carrying the tones in harmony led by the trumpet [S3].
The name's origin, via Graeme Ewens quoting Yebuah Mensah, brother of E. T. Mensah, to John Collins, is that it was coined by people who gathered outside Accra dancing clubs such as the Rodger Club, watching couples who paid a high entrance fee of about seven shillings and sixpence and wore full evening dress; the people outside called it highlife because they did not reach the class of the couples going inside [S3]. The name is a class observation made from the street.
Fela played in Victor Olaiya's band, Olaiya being a prime exponent of highlife in Nigeria from the 1950s [S3].
The claim that Roy Chicago introduced the talking drum into highlife was not verified for this file. Olorunyomi instead credits Rex Lawson's brand of highlife, with its emphasis on the complexity of traditional Nigerian drum rhythms combining the three-membrane drum, two- and one-membrane conga drums and the Western trap set with cymbals, as the immediate catalyst for Afrobeat [S3]. That is a sourced alternative attribution and is preferred here.
Fela and Afrobeat
Formation. Fela studied music at Trinity College, London in the early 1960s. Olorunyomi places him in a cohort: an older generation including Adams Fiberesima, Akin Euba, Sam Akpabot and Laz Ekwueme who studied classical music and returned as academics and broadcast music directors, and a younger group including Wole Bucknor, Briddy Wright and Fela himself who studied dance and popular music [S3]. Their remote influences were Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Charles Mingus, and their shared conviction, in Tam Fiofori's words, was that the new form had to be rhythm-driven with a strong percussive section [S3].
The highlife period. Koola Lobitos, the Highlife Jazz Band, ran from 1958 to 1969, with titles including Onifere, Yeshe leshe, Lagos Baby, Ajo, Alagbara, Keep Nigeria One and Se E Tun De [S3]. Influences at this stage were soul, blues, Geraldo Pino including a reciprocal influence with James Brown, and the highlife musicians E. T. Mensah, Victor Olaiya and Rex Lawson [S3].
The 1969 United States trip. Sandra Smith, an African-American girlfriend, lent Fela Alex Haley's biography of Malcolm X, which Olorunyomi calls the date-marker of his ideological initiation as a Pan-Africanist [S3]. The period context is the Black Panther era, the Bay of Pigs and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba [S3].
Fela's own account of finding the beat is worth quoting because it names a source that is usually left out [S3]:
I said to myself, "How do Africans sing songs? They sing with chants. Now let me chant into this song: la-la-la-laa..." Looking for the right beat I remembered this very old guy I'd met in London, Ambrose Campbell. He used to play African Music with a special beat. I used that beat to write my tune, man... I didn't know how the crowd would take the sound... The whole club started jumping and everybody started dancing. I knew that I'd found the thing, man. To me, it was the first African tune I'd written till then.
Two things in this. The first move was to chant, that is, to reach for the Yoruba vocal mode rather than for a rhythm. The second was Ambrose Campbell, a Nigerian bandleader working in London, whose beat Fela borrowed. Afrobeat's origin runs through a London-based West African musician, not only through James Brown.
He renamed the band Fela Ransome-Kuti and the Nigeria 70 and recorded My Lady's Frustration in the 1969 Los Angeles sessions [S3]. The definitive shift came with Jeun K'oku and more decisively Why Blackman Dey Suffer, the former carrying bold assertive vocalisation in an upbeat fast tempo reminiscent of James Brown's "Say it loud, I'm black and proud" [S3]
Africa 70's percussion section: a trap set of bass drum, snare and cymbals, two tom-toms, and a three-membrane drum [S3]. In Egypt '80 he added the gbẹ̀du, a Bzoule-type Attoumgblan, interlocking two-a-piece membrane drums and a second bass section, alongside amplified rhythm machine, two keyboards, rattles, metal gong, sticks and bass and tenor guitars, with a horn section of trumpet, alto, two tenor and two baritone saxophones [S3].
The compositional formula, in Olorunyomi's structural analysis: a signature rhythm opens, introducing rhythm messages from keyboards, the two guitars in unison or counterpoint, the trap drum or the two membrane drums; typically a double regular-interval beat on the bass drum against which a snare interlude functions antiphonally; then rattle, gong and rhythm guitars enter, making way for piano, then horns, then chorus and cantor [S3].
The Yoruba retentions, specifically.
Steve Rhodes identifies the bass drum rhythm as Egbaesque, with roots in rhythms of the Orò cult [S3]. That is the most concrete claim of direct traditional retention in Fela's music and it names a specific institution.
Ẹ̀gbá chants including tere kúte and joro jára joro, built on pentatonic harmonies [S3].
Structure gravitating to traditional modal scale rather than European harmonic structure, which is what distinguishes Afrobeat from highlife, since highlife retained functional harmony [S3].
West African ensemble techniques of stratification, modalism and hocketing, noted also by John Collins and Michael Veal [S3].
And the most important one for this corpus: by reflecting the tonal character of African speech pattern in the instrumental section, Fela invests his total ensemble with the power of a speech surrogate, producing the inner voices heard in his music [S3]. That is the dùndún principle transposed onto a horn and guitar band. The instrumental lines are shaped by speech tone, so the horns are doing what the talking drum does.
The cantor role positions Fela in the mould of the traditional griot and of the chief priest [S3], which is also why his songs praise and abuse named individuals at length: that is oríkì structure operating in a nightclub.
On the name. Fela eventually denounced Afrobeat as meaningless commercial nonsense with which recording labels exploited the artist; the name persisted because audiences insisted [S3]. His political organisations were the Young African Pioneers, founded 1976, and the Movement of the People, refused registration for the 1979 election [S3].
Tony Allen. Allen's drumming is universally credited as constitutive of Afrobeat, and its relationship to Yoruba percussion patterns is frequently asserted. That specific analysis was not verified for this file; Michael Veal's Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon is the source to check .
Contemporary Afrobeats
The honest position is that the retention question for contemporary Afrobeats has been asserted by critics and not established analytically, and this file says so rather than manufacturing continuity.
Asake is the clearest case. Mr. Money with the Vibe, 2022, twelve tracks, produced in its entirety by Magicsticks . Reviewers consistently describe a fusion of amapiano, fújì and Afro-pop, with organic instrumentation including strings, choirs and hand percussion; specific tracks including "Peace Be Unto You" and "Organize" are built on log drum bass .
The components should be separated. The amapiano log drum is South African in origin and is not Yoruba, and saying so is not a diminishment. What is Yoruba in Asake is threefold: vocal phrasing derived from fújì, which is where the melismatic, densely syllabic, exhortatory delivery comes from; Yoruba-language stacked choral harmony, which is the same multi-part communal singing that I. K. Dairo brought into jùjú; and call-and-response chant structure between a lead voice and a massed chorus, which is the oldest structural feature in this entire lineage. The log drum sits underneath as an imported floor.
Where the evidence stops. No peer-reviewed musicological analysis was found of Yoruba retention in Wizkid, Burna Boy, Davido, Olamide or the street-pop line. The fújì-to-Asake link is asserted by music critics rather than demonstrated by transcription or analysis . It is widely observed and plausible on its face, and it has not been established analytically. Anything more specific, claims about particular vocal ornaments or particular fújì rhythmic cells surviving into street-pop, would be invention.
There is a further point a reader should hold. "Afrobeats" with the s is a marketing category coined in London in the 2010s covering Nigerian and Ghanaian pop broadly, and it is not Fela's Afrobeat, which is a specific compositional practice. Conflating them is common and produces false lineages. The genuine line from Fela runs to musicians who use his structural devices, not to everyone Nigerian who charts.