THE IMPACT OF SOUL MUSIC IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The emergence of soul music in Nigeria represents the flowering of the transatlantic intercoursebetween Nigeria and the Americas in respect of music. Soul music was a socio-musicalbombshell that impacted several aspects of Nigeria’s music and her social life and left enduringlegacies thereby. Over the years, very few attempts have been made within Nigerian scholarlycircles to explicate its impact and legacies, thus creating a yawning gap in these aspects ofliterature on popular music in Nigeria. It is this gap that this study seeks to fill. While the paperis largely descriptive, it is spiced with context analysis that derives from secondary and primarydata. Primary data were obtained from interviews of musicians, participant and non-participantobservations, listening to recordings while secondary data were gleaned from books, journals,seminar papers, newspapers and magazines. This paper reports that Soul introduced a newharmonic sequence, ensemble format, enthroned originality as a mark of musicianship,heightened dance as a factor that generates vogues, and introduced the practice of costuming inAfrican popular music. Socially it established fandom as a critical element in vogue creation andpatronage and popularized the American English accent in Nigeria. Through these effects, Soulestablished the African – American presence in Nigerian popular music and it became a nichethat others have since built upon.