International records / Internet Archive

Yoruba Street Percussion

From the label: "All the music here is based on voices and percussion, though a couple of cuts use a guitar in the ancillary sort of way that Europeans tend to use percussion. All of it, too, is 20th century street-popular music that didn't exist in the traditional Yoruba world, but developed as a result of a heady blend of urbanization, internal migration and the spread of Islam among the Yoruba. All of it is essentially unknown outside Nigeria. All of it is hugely popular in Nigeria, partly because of its Muslim connections, but more importantly because it is seen as intensely African and ma…