THE IMPACT OF SOUL MUSIC IN NIGERIA

Abstract

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