Nigerian music prior to the 20th century was deeply local and context-specific: music accompanied rituals, storytelling, festivals, and social events. Instruments such as talking drums, slit drums, gong (such as ogene), and various flutes and xylophones were common. These musical traditions varied across ethnic groups (Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, etc.).
During the colonial era, Nigeria came into contact with Western musical practices through Christian missions, schools, military bands, and urbanisation. These contacts introduced new instruments (organ, piano, brass, guitar) and musical notation, shaping new hybrid practices. Over the 20th century, Nigerians blended indigenous forms with imported influences, giving rise to modern popular genres.
Key Events and People
Church Music and Thomas Ekundayo Phillips
One of the most reliably documented figures in early Nigerian hybrid music is Thomas King Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969). After musical studies at Trinity College of Music in London (1911–1914), he returned to Lagos and served as Organist and Master of the Music at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina, Lagos, for 48 years.
Phillips championed the incorporation of Yoruba language and idioms into choral and liturgical music. He composed settings of psalms, canticles, Yoruba chants, and antiphonal choir works, seeking to merge European sacred music tradition with Yoruba musical sensibilities.
Under Phillips’s mentorship, younger Nigerian musicians, including Fela Sowande, received choral, organ, and compositional training.
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Phillips also published Yoruba Music: Fusion of Speech and Music (1953), a work exploring the integration of Yoruba indigenous rhythms and speech patterns with musical settings.
Thus, Phillips stands as a central figure in the early institutional foundation of Nigerian hybrid sacred music, and his documented contributions are among the more reliable anchor points in this musical history.
Highlife and Victor Olaiya
Highlife, a genre that originated in Ghana, made significant inroads into Nigeria in the mid-20th century. Nigerians adapted it by combining brass instrumentation, guitar, and local rhythmic elements. A survey of Nigerian Highlife notes that the genre “crept into Nigeria in the nineteenth century and has since attained permanent recognition” as an important musical form in Nigeria’s popular music landscape.
One prominent Nigerian Highlife figure is Victor Olaiya (1930–2020), a trumpeter and bandleader. He formed his own band, the “Cool Cats,” in the early 1950s and helped popularise Highlife in Nigeria, bridging it with styles such as jazz and local forms.
Olaiya was chosen to perform at significant national events: for instance, he played at the Nigerian Independence State Ball in 1960, a symbolic moment that marked Highlife’s national visibility.
His contributions exemplify how Nigerian musicians appropriated Highlife to express local identity and to engage public life and state occasions.
Economic and Social Changes
Broadcasting, Distribution & Urban Demand
The expansion of radio broadcasting in Nigeria during the mid-20th century provided a mass medium for popular music. Local radio stations aired Highlife orchestras, choral music, and evolving urban genres, making music more accessible beyond live performances.
Record production, first vinyl, later cassettes, enabled artists to reach national audiences. The demand for entertainment in urban areas created a sustainable market for musicians, bands, nightclubs, and concert circuits.
Urban migration contributed greatly: as people moved to Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and other cities, they brought their musical tastes and created cross-ethnic networks for music consumption. These dynamics encouraged musicians to blend regional styles with more widely appealing forms.
Cultural Identity and National Consciousness
Music became a site for asserting African and Nigerian identity amid colonial influence and postcolonial politics. Musicians drew on indigenous rhythms, local languages, and social themes, cultural pride, social critique, unity.
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Omojola’s study Politics, Identity, and Nostalgia in Nigerian Music analyses the highlife of Victor Olaiya, showing how his music invoked memory, identity, and social belonging.
The integration of Yoruba, Igbo, or other idiomatic elements into popular music contributed to national cohesion: local audiences recognised their linguistic or cultural contexts in broader musical frameworks.
Legacy Today
The 20th-century musical developments laid foundational infrastructure, training, notation, broadcasting, recording, cross-genre experimentation, that underpins Nigeria’s contemporary music success. Today’s Nigerian music industry (Afrobeats, fusion genres) inherits from Highlife, church-music hybrids, and early popular forms.
Institutions such as the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos choir, and choral training programmes preserve Phillips’s tradition. Contemporary musicians still draw upon church choral forms, indigenous rhythms, vocal styles, and instrumental techniques established in earlier decades.
Victor Olaiya’s legacy persists in Highlife revival and sampling projects; his role in national celebrations anchored music in public life.
The growth of Nigerian music in the 20th century was a gradual, multifaceted process. Key figures like Thomas Ekundayo Phillips exemplify how indigenous and Western traditions merged in sacred and choral music. Many popular genres, especially Highlife as propagated by Victor Olaiya, emerged through adaptation and local innovation. Radio, recordings, urban demand, and cultural identity all shaped music’s evolution.
While much remains to be documented rigorously, the lineage from traditional forms through church fusion into modern popular music is well supported by credible sources. This history matters because it shows how culture, technology, identity, and economy interact to produce vibrant musical expression, and how Nigeria’s global musical presence today rests on those foundations.
Author’s Note
This article draws exclusively on scholarly and archival sources to trace the evolution of Nigerian music over the 20th century. It emphasises central figures whose work is documented (e.g. Phillips, Olaiya) and situates developments within social, economic, and cultural contexts. Understanding this history deepens our appreciation of Nigeria’s music today as both heritage and innovation.
References
- “Thomas Ekundayo Phillips: Pioneer in Nigerian Church Hymn Composition.” The Diapason. (Article on Phillips, his study, tenure, and influence.) thediapason.com
- “Victor Olaiya: trumpeter and Highlife icon.” Pitchfork / Music News. (Obituary and summary of his career.) Pitchfork
- Oghenemudiakevwe Igbi, Nigerian highlife music: a survey of the sociopolitical events from 1950-2005 (PDF). (Study of Highlife’s evolution in Nigeria.) ResearchGate
