World Spirituality Classics, Vol 3: The Muslim Highlife of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah

When Alhaji Waziri Oshomah started his band in Afenmailand in southern Nigeria’s Edo state they would walk miles to gigs carrying their equipment on their heads, including a self-made amp powered by torch batteries. However, his music was soon popular enough to attract rich sponsors who funded these recordings made during the 1970s and 1980s.

Singing in English and the local Etsako language in a guttural exhortation, his lyrics mix Judeo-Christian imagery and the teachings of Islam over throbbing, sinuous dance rhythms that fuse Nigerian highlife and palm-wine guitars with Western pop tropes. The hypnotic guitar motifs, psych keyboards and blaring trumpet stabs have led to some to compare his fusion of Nigerian tradition and Western styles with Fela Kuti. Yet the analogy is misleading, not least because his music is not politically rebellious – rather, many of his compositions are in the ancient tradition of ‘praise singing,’ not only to his God but paying tribute to elders, tribal leaders and even captains of industry – one track, dedicated to a patron and 17 minutes long, is simply titled ‘Alhaji Yesufu Sado Managing Director’. The call-and-response vocals are similarly steeped in tradition, although the ornamental tones of his main foil Madam Hassanah Waziri – one of his several polygamous wives – owe something to Bollywood playback singing.