The Seventies: Part Eight

The Seventies: Part Eight.

Nigeria’s affluence in this era attracted a large number of immigrants from nearby African countries, who sought to take advantage of the favorable economic conditions in the continent's Giant and reap their share of prosperity. And so, throughout this decade, as many as two million migrant workers from Anglophone and Francophone Africa made their way [often illegally] into urban and commercial centers throughout Nigeria and assumed mostly menial occupations as farm laborers, factory workers, iron-benders, carpenters, night-guards, housemaids and smugglers.

Undeniably, these peoples have played a huge part in the formation of popular Nigerian and West African culture, art, and music in this era. The groups which have had the largest singular impact on the musical traditions of 1970s Nigeria are the Ghanaians, the sons and daughters of Nigeria’s smaller but older cousin and rival, who had just introduced the world to Highlife—a genre of music which united the rhythmic and melodic structure of Akan languages with Western instruments—a few decades earlier, the Cameroonians, who pioneered the electrifying Makossa, and the Congolese, whose Soukous would turn out to be the rave amongst the younger generations in dance halls and nightclubs across Africa and the Caribbean.

At this time period, numerous Ghanaian musicians and artists were already living in Eastern Nigeria, as Ghanaian music was extremely popular in this part of the country. “Ghana Fever” had undeniably swept Igboland by storm: teenagers and young adults crowded around beer parlors, nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels, collected vinyl records of their favorite Ghanaian artists, and for a brief period of time, the Twi language was popularly spoken in the streets of commercial centers like Owerri, Aba-Ngwa, and Onitsha. Aba and Onitsha (in what are now Abia and Anambra states respectively), were the hub of Ghanaian highlife in Igboland [as well as Nigeria] at this time and were littered with countless nightclubs that catered to their citizens’ musical appetite. The people of Aba, having shown great hospitality and affection towardsArtists like Oliver de Coque and Prince Nico Mbarga (whose band, Rokafil Jazz, released its smash hit “Sweet Mother” in 1977—a song which has since sold millions of copies worldwide and has since been the most popular song in Africa) integrated Highlife with more-modern electric instruments and elements of Soukous and Makossa to set the stage for the contemporaneous development of other styles such as Afro-Jazz, Afro-Funk, and Afro-Beat, all of which would grow increasing popularity towards the late 70s and into the 80s.

#igbohistory