I intend to ... share with you some excerpts from my collections over the years of what has been happening to social music in Nigeria, and I intend to be very informal. As a matter of fact, I am going to ask you to participate at certain levels of this conversation. At least that way I will know that you are still awake. I am going to try and take you on a musical tour of Nigeria and show you how the various parts are represented in the urban social music of today. In other words, each part of Nigeria has in some way contributed to what has become the social music that is known in the urban parts of Nigeria . To do this, I have to go back and look at how certain things came about and therefore I am going to start off by making two categorical statements. I love doing this because it challenges you to ask, "What right does he have to make statements like that"? The first one is that the life of a Nigerian is tied up with music, from the cradle to the grave. There is no part of our lives that does not have some sort of music connected directly with it. At the time when the child is born, there is music that is made in most parts of the country to celebrate it. When the child reaches. age grade there are forms of music to accept him. When we get married and when we die, music is associated with these as well. When we plant our crops and when we reap them we make a certain sort of music. Now, this ties music into our whole existence from the day we are born, w the day we die and go back into the grave.

In each of these areas, the vegetation dictated the type of musical instrument that people would play. The people did not leave their environment to go somewhere else to look for materials with which to fashion their musical instnlments. They took what was readily available to them. So you will find that in the swamp areas we have a lot of instruments of wood and clay; the tropical forest produced mainly wooden instruments and in some cases augmented with skins but basically wood. As we move further up, from the more sparse vegetation sprung cane and bamboo; people used these and went to the extent of incorporating dry leaves. Further up North the gourds take precedence. Even though these can also be found down south, they constitute the bulk of the northern in ­ struments.

So, what I am saying in effect is this: the type of music and sounds produced by the different peoples in the different parts of Nigeria had been dictated before the people even came there, because what nature put there determined what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.

The next point I would like to take from there is that apart from the natural resources of these areas, things like the smelting culture of the He areas, which predated the arrival of the Europeans in this country, gave tise to things like the ·Agogo" for example. The "Agogo" was not initially conceived as a musical instrument. It was an instrument used by the town crier, who had to attract attention at night when he went round. But because it could be made in different sizes and therefore had different tones and ranges, people said, "Why not use it as a musical in ­ strument," and it drifted from its original purpose into music.

The other area I'd like to look at is in animal husbandry because we observe the movement of cattle along the cattle trails from the North, down to the south and south-west of the country. Throughout the entire region, they had and still have what is called the "trumpet cul ture", because all along the route, you found that people used cow horns as a musical instrument. Not only the horns, but the skins as membranes for drums, the entrails for making strings for instruments like the molo, the hair for making bows for playing those strings. We use the horns for the trumpet ... So there is a whole other culture which developed out of animal husbandry in the same

way as something developed out of smelting and something out of what nature provided. So whilst I maintain that the original and most significant contribution to the nature of music made was what nature itself provided, I would also have to recognise that there were other areas which, as a result of technology, if you would like to call it that, threw up other types of instruments.

One instrument in particular I would like to mention, which is a piece of engineering we probably don't recognize. I'm sure most people here have seen an instrument which comes basically from the east - it's called an Ekwe. it is a wooden log, one piece, which is carved out and ends up with two lips. These two lips are the major keys of the instrument and they are holes hollowed out of the log.

Now, this log is carved out by people in the village. They never went to any university and they probably never heard of engineering. They carved that log without breaking it; it's still one piece. It's carved out and carved out in such a way that the thickness of the two lips varies, so you get two different tones by hitting one or the other. Now that is engineering at its best.

I tried asking an old man near Awka how this thing was made, a few years ago. He smiled and said, "My son, when you grow a bit older, you will understand. [Laughter]. Well, I wondered how much older he wanted me to get.

Another wooden instrument, the xylophone, consists of strips of wood cleaned and shaved until the thickness gives a specific tone. These strips are arranged sometimes on a clay pot, sometimes on bamboo, or banana stems; but arranged in such a way that, they can be played with wooden mallets. Native to the eastern part of the country, in Akwa lbom, lmo, Abia and Anambra. In each one of these states, it is tuned differently. Even amongst the lbos, I found different tunings.

In the North, when we get into the bamboo area, the main instrument you find is the flute. There is a whole range of flutes to be found in the North, varying both in length and thickness.

All these instruments we have been talking about, you are going to hear in the illustrations I will play. And what I would like you to do is to listen and say what are the instruments you hear and, if possible, tell me where that particular illustration came from. Now as I said, if you do this I will know that you are awake. Also, you will help me to move from that stage, to the next because then, we will all be talking on the same platform, more or less. So I think we should start by looking at the first example.

The gourds lower down here, (in the South) are used as an interesting instrument, with beads strung around them. They are called shekere in Yorubaland. Further up north, the gourds grow bigger. They are cut in two, turned over and beaten with sticks - as percussion instruments.

We have dealt with the Agogo. The talking drum, maybe people just take that instrument for granted. It is like an hour glass, made up of a piece of wood, again hollowed out with openings over which are placed leather heads. These leather heads are then connected by thongs attached to the perimeter of both heads. What happens in effect is: when you hit one head you set up a vibration inside the hollow, with 'the other head acting as your sounding board. That sound will be your base sound - the sound from which you start.

As you pull the connecting strings, you are tighten ­ ing those two heads, and the sound moves up with each stage of tightening of the thongs. The reason why that instrument is called the talking drum is because the area from which it comes (Yorubaland), has a tonal language. Yoruba is one of the most tonal languages I know and it has got the propensity for changing the meaning of what you are saying at the slightest mistake. That drum, because of its ability to tighten and slacken those strings, moving its tone up and down within minuscule sound print, can replicate the reflections of speech, but is identifiable only to the person who understands the language of the drum. Not every Yoruba person does. This instrument was used, I am told, in the olden days, to communicate with warriors when they were going into battle. I know that it was used when radio first came to Nigeria and it is in fact, still used in Ibadan a station identification. Now here is the interesting thing about it because, the person who asked for that particular thing was Tom Chalmers, an Englishman, who was the Director-General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Service. He said, "I want the drum to say: This is the Nigerian Broadcasting Service [in English]," which the drum did say, but the Yoruba person, who understands the drum, does not speak English like that. When he hears the drum, he hears what that drum is saying in Yoruba. This is how we have ended up with T'olubadan ba ku, tani j'oye? [When the Olu'badan dies, who will wear his crown?], instead of, "This is the Nigerian Broadcasting Service".

At the time that Sunny Ade was visiting the States (about four years ago), they were working on that instrument. A representative of the company went into a concert that Sunny Ade was giving and during the interval went to the dressing room with a prototype of this and said, "This is our own version of the instrument you were playing. We would like you to play it and tell us what you think." Sunny Ade being the good Nigerian that he was, realized what was happening and said; "No, I am sorry I can't try that instrument!" Basically, what they were looking for was an endorsement, an endorsement from a well known Nigerian musician. They would then say, "Sunny Ade says this instrument is perfect' and that is it. It goes into the market and all of a sudden, your talking drum starts having trouble.

Well I think I have covered the various instruments, now I can start trying you out. This is the first example.

[Several Sound Recordings, followed by interactive discussions, questions and answers.]

The various sounds that you have just heard, the instruments that played them and the parts of the country from which those instruments came, all went into the tapestry that became the urban social music of Nigeria. Now, when we are talking urban music we go back to the 20s. Urban really meant Lagos because that was the centre of activity and that was the point at which the first contacts were made with the foreign influences.

Ibadan also came up later in the 20s (late 20s to the late 30s) when the juju bands started appearing and I must at this point go back to my notes because I am now dealing with information which is precise and on which I would hate to be quoted wrongly.

Continued here ...