{"id":93341,"date":"2025-02-17T09:30:19","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T09:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/african-music\/likembe-raji-owonikokos-kwara-system\/"},"modified":"2025-02-17T09:30:19","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T09:30:19","slug":"likembe-raji-owonikokos-kwara-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=93341","title":{"rendered":"Likembe: Raji Owonikoko’s “Kwara System”"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

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\n<\/a><\/div>\n

\nI just came into possession of a raft of great Yoruba recordings from Nigeria – lots of j\u00f9j\u00fa, \u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0 f\u00faj\u00ec, w\u00e1k\u00e0, \u00e8wi,<\/i> what have you – and I’ll be sharing some of them with you over the next few months. For now we have on tap Raji Owonikoko, with his take on the venerable\u00a0\u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0<\/i> genre, which he calls his “Kwara System.” About \u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0<\/i>\u00a0Christopher Alan Waterman writes in his excellent book J\u00f9j\u00fa: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music<\/i> (University of Chicago Press, 1990):<\/p>\n

\n… \u00c0p\u00e0l\u00e0<\/i>, a praise song and social dance music, developed in the late 1930s in the Ijebu area, and was popularized by a musician named Haruna Ishola … \u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0 <\/i>groups generally included small hourglass-shaped pressure drums called \u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0<\/i> or \u00e0d\u00e0m\u00f2n<\/i>, an \u00e0g\u00edd\u00ecgbo <\/i>bass lamellaphone, several conga-type drums, and a metal idiophone such as an agogo <\/i>or truck muffler (Thieme 1969). Like postwar j\u00f9j\u00fa<\/i>, \u00e0g\u00edd\u00ecgbo<\/i> and \u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0 <\/i>drew upon Latin American recordings, preexistent popular genres, and deep Yoruba rhetorical devices. These social dance and praise song genres provided an urban-centered musical lingua franca, a set of stylistic coordinates for the construction of modem Yoruba identity. Each of them relied upon indigenous principles as a unifying framework for innovation…\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nThe rather sedate, philosophical sound of\u00a0\u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0,<\/i> whose foremost practitioners were the late\u00a0Haruna Ishola<\/a> and\u00a0Ayninla Omowura<\/a>, gave way to the more frenzied sounds of\u00a0j\u00f9\u00fa,\u00a0<\/i>f\u00faj\u00ec <\/i>and the like, but it’s never disappeared, and has been given new life in recent years by artists like\u00a0Musiliu Haruna Ishola, son of Haruna Ishola, who was featured in a previous Likembe <\/i>post<\/a>.<\/div>\n

\nAlhaji Mohammed Ahmed Raji Alabi Owonikoko, better known as Raji Owonikoko, is one of the\u00a0musicians who have carried the\u00a0\u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0\u00a0<\/i>torch into the present day. At least judging from today’s musical offering, Kwara System Originator<\/i> (Olumo ORPS 58, 1977), his “Kwara System,” named after his home state, adds a few uptempo fillips to the basic sound. In a 2012 interview<\/a>\u00a0with PM News<\/i> (Lagos) he said:<\/p>\n

\n…I hail from Kwara State. My father is a native of Buhari while my mother hails from Ijomu, Oro both in Irepodun Local Government Area of Kwara State. I was born in Oro that is why many people believe I am from Oro … I grew up with elderly friends and contemporaries. I became more popular among them because I always sang during Ramadan fasting period, waking Islamic faithful in the community at dawn to observe Shaur <\/i>[Suhoor<\/i>]\u00a0… As a result of my talent, I became the leader of our musical group. Thereafter, I moved to Lagos with some members of the group where I recruited others to join my group. Along the line, I met King Sunny Ade, and Jide Smith, who was into music instrument rentals. I eventually changed to\u00a0\u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0<\/i>\u00a0music genre because of the love I had for the late\u00a0\u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0\u00a0<\/i>music sage, Alhaji Haruna Ishola, in spite of other types of music around then…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nI hope you will enjoy this offering of\u00a0\u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0<\/i>, Kwara style!<\/p>\n

\nDownload Kwara System Originator<\/i> as a zipped file here<\/a>.<\/div>\n
\n<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just came into possession of a raft of great Yoruba recordings from Nigeria – lots of j\u00f9j\u00fa, \u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0 f\u00faj\u00ec, w\u00e1k\u00e0, \u00e8wi, what have you – and I’ll be sharing some of them with you over the next few months. For now we have on tap Raji Owonikoko, with his take on the venerable\u00a0\u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0 genre, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12025],"tags":[44608,16229,44607,44606,2345],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-93341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-music","tag-kwara","tag-likembe","tag-owonikokos","tag-raji","tag-system"],"yoast_head":"\nLikembe: Raji Owonikoko's "Kwara System" - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=93341\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Likembe: Raji Owonikoko's "Kwara System" - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I just came into possession of a raft of great Yoruba recordings from Nigeria – lots of j\u00f9j\u00fa, \u00e0p\u00e0l\u00e0 f\u00faj\u00ec, w\u00e1k\u00e0, \u00e8wi, what have you – and I’ll be sharing some of them with you over the next few months. 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