From Alté to Alté-fuji: The Making of a New Genre

You’d bet that was Pasuma singing a cappella.

Do the same with Asake’s ‘Lonely at the Top’. Look at the call and response. Hear the pre-chorus. Listen to the second verse. That’s fuji.

Fuji is a Yorùbá traditional music based on percussion, choral call and response, oratorical melody and Islamic tonality. It was popularized in the 1960s by pioneer, Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, who also named it. It evolved from wéré music, a chant-based wake-up music performed by mobile Muslim groups of young men, called ajisari, who would go around waking up the faithful for prayer and fasting during Ramadan. (For a feel of wéré check out Epo-Akara’s Atoto Arere.) Barrister was instrumental to that evolution. Like Gani Kuti, Alhaji Dauda Epo-Akara and Kollington Ayinla, another fuji pioneer, he was himself a wéré heavyweight.

A cocktail of mostly different Yorùbá forms of music, Barrister combined sákárá, àpàlà, juju and Afrobeat for a distinct fuji sound in the 1970s. All but the last are Yorùbá traditional music genres. This highlights how strongly rooted in Yorùbá culture the genre is. A typical fuji singer has a Yorùbá worldview, dispenses Yorùbá people’s wisdom and showcases their philosophy. They’re also likely to embrace Islamic principles. (See Barrister’s last project, Reality, for a feel of fuji.) Fuji is an ever-evolving musical form. From Barrister’s Fuji Garbage to K1’s Talazo Fuji to Obesere’s Fuji Pop to Ayuba’s Fuji Bonsue to Osupa’s Hip Fuji and Pasuma’s Afro-fuji, fuji is a stubborn sound that has evolved through the decades. Neo-fuji might only be the newest defining stage in its evolution.

Now listen to Seyi Vibez’s and Asake’s songs with their beat. That’s neo-fuji. Neo-fuji is fuji delivery on an Afrobeat/hip-hop instrumental usually with street-heavy lyrics. These days, an Amapiano bounce is often added to the mix. Most neo-fuji artistes cultivate the Yorùbá worldview like their fuji influences. Dami Ajayi, the poet and music critic, writes that Asake obsesses with a quest for wisdom in his songs. That’s a Yorùbá-music attitude. This and a prayerful state of mind are characteristic of neo-fuji singers as they were and still are cognisant of their fuji forebears. The prayerful mood has especially seen most of their outputs classified as Afro-adura—a mix, per Wisdom Musasiru, of Afrobeats (Afro) and prayer (‘àdúrà’). Perhaps, paranoia, like prayer, though a staple in Afrobeats, might also be traceable to fuji. Given the many feuds that fuelled fuji music, there might be a case for this. Only see how Barrister pushed paranoia into the peak of craftsmanship on Reality (2012).

Neo-fuji artistes also embrace a technical move inspired in part by fuji artistes’ Yorùbá wordplay and in part by street slang and ‘lamba’ of Dagrin’s and Olamide’s indigenous rap. See Asake’s second verse on ‘2:30’ for a sample. There, he delivers melodic pseudo-rap lines and dispenses multi-syllabic rhymes as if he was Jay Z in disguise. (Tranquillity, tranquillity/I no get time to dey form activity/Kole kalas, I dey find stability…) Or see Seyi’s ‘Hushpuppi’. Packets of lines are simply him showcasing this skill in different melodies and varying speed. He code-switches, false-raps, alludes, all the while is relaxed and causal. (No be wasa, no be child’s play (no be child’s play)/She wan chop me like pallia’, Barry made/Omo Olohun, moti ra’le/I go j’aye, no matter, yeah-ayy…)

Like most neo-music, neo-fuji on the whole upcycles, updates and rebrands a style of music that is considered old or fading, while being respectful and thankful. It is especially reminiscent of American neo-soul, which, in the 1990s, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Maxwell invented by layering 70s gospel-inflected soul music on 90s hip-hop beats.

For bonus, check out Barry Jhay’s ‘Aiye’. Barry Jhay, who is a child of Barrister, took the title of his dad’s 1980 LP Aiye for his 2018 single. He even retained the old Yorùbá spelling of ‘life’. Consider Portable, Poco Lee and Olamide’s 2021 ‘ZaZoo Zehh’ as well. Also, Pasuma’s QDot-assisted Afro-fuji track, ‘Omo Ologo’ (2022). Neo-fuji is in fact sometimes called Afro-fuji. And Mohbad’s ‘Feel Good’ is a delightful neo-fuji reimagination of James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’.

Thanks to Asake, Seyi Vibez, Zinolesky and Mohbad, neo-fuji is by now mainstream. Streams have been scored, charts topped and tours held. Everybody is somewhat aware. But in a country that has a special lingo for a set of artistes who love their self-expression and artistic freedom more than anything, neo-fuji, though new and in vogue, cannot remain untouchable.