DESCRIPTION:
Track 3 by King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal from the 1997 album Fuji Garbage Music Party. Biography by Andy Morgan, July 2002: Back in the Nigeria of the colonial era, Muslim youths used to go from door to door in the wee hours during Ramadan, waking up the faithful and reminding them to pray. Each posse had a lead singer and up to twenty chorus singers who also played percussion. The joyous rhythmic music of these youths or ‘Ajiwere’ became known as Were music.

In the 1960s Were evolved through various hybrids into Fuji music, so called either after the Yoruba word ‘faaji’ meaning ‘enjoyment’ or because the speakers that generally delivered the music were made by the Japanese electronics giant, Fuji. Wasiu Ayinde Adewale Omogbolahan Anifowoshe arrived on the scene in the late 1970s and blended street slang and youth culture with the traditional koranic chants of the genre. He also cranked up the tempo and added western instruments like keyboards, saxophone and guitar to the typical Fuji line up. In 1984 he released his classic album ‘Talazo 84’ and his new sharper, feistier take on Fuji was dubbed the Talazo System.

Talazo/Fuji is hi-energy dance music, propelled by orchestral amounts of percussion and crowned with swooping chants and guitar or keyboard riffs. In 1994 Wasiu was crowned King of Fuji Music and regally renamed King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal, or KWAM 1 for short, by the King of Oyo in Ibadan, western Nigeria. Last year, the King of Lagos, Adeyinka Oyekan II, conferred the royal title ‘Olu Omo’ or ‘Golden Child’ on Wasiu.