In the Nigerian pop music of today, Fuji, named after a Japanese mountain by the pioneer, late Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, continues to hold relevance, even almost beyond what was the norm in the 70s when the genre was being circulated across Europe and the Americas.
Although Fuji Music originated a decade pre-independence, the notable Yoruba dance music itself was crafted out of an already existing sound known as Wéré specifically devoted to Muslim faithfuls to awaken them at dawn in preparation for the day's fasting during Ramadan. Wéré has its origin in Ibadan where the pioneer, Alhaji Dauda Epo-Akara and some of his other notable colleagues conceived the music through trying to imitate the Sákárà Music.
Fuji became an infectious sound through the pioneer's combination of influences from Wéré, Yusuf Olatunji's Sákárà and the Àpàlà Music popularized by both Haruna Isola and Ayinla Omowura. These three genres of indigenous Yoruba music predate Fuji. Sákárà, according to documented history, came into existence in the 30s alongside Àpàlà. While both were more commercial, the Wéré resonated more with the locals of Ibadan.
Significantly, Apala, deploying traditional instruments like the hand-plucked agidigbo, a gong and some drums, became the music for the Yoruba partying culture, while Sákárà, mostly meditative and ominous with the stick-beaten drum named after it and the violin-like goje made of different ropes artistically strung together, shared features of eulogy with Àpàlà. Notwithstanding, Wéré in its own diversity, was strictly employed for religious purposes.
With the rise of Sikiru Ayinde Barrister in the 70s, Fuji became the biggest Nigerian music export alongside Fela's Afrobeat, which the late Barrister himself confessed formed a major influence on Fuji. By the end of the 80s, Barrister had successfully toured across both of the US and Europe, hence, making the genre more popular and attractive to his rival, Kolington in the 70s; and a generation of younger commercial Fuji stars born hungry to take the baton; K1 De Ultimate, an apprentice of Barrister himself, through the 80s, Adewale Ayuba and Abass Obesere both in the 90s respectively; each breaking out with his own unique style and distinct appeal to the merry-chasers in the art of music consumption in South Western Nigeria.
Interestingly, Fuji had no records of a female performer. Instead, the female developed a staple similar to Fuji, known as Waka. Waka, due to the never-ending effects of evolution, is now popularly perceived as the Nigerian Islamic Music, which in the generation of today, has male performers; ridiculously.
Objectively, what is inherent in this long history of Nigerian pop music is what Burna Boy painstakingly termed a "fusion". Right from the existence of Sákárà and Àpàlà in the 30s, any genre consequently breaking out was either fused with or carved out of a readily dominant sound. This fusion became very heavy through the birth of Fuji and Afrobeat respectively. Both creations rooted in the 50s make it even more of a pop culture than mere chance playing out. In respect to the confusion borne out of sound tags and sub-categorization, the same culture of music bashment persists today in Nigerian music.
In a more modern history spanning across two decades back, both Barrister's Fuji and Fela's Afrobeat have respectively received innumerable acclamations from younger Nigerian musicians in matters of influences. The last 13 years witnessed the rise of grandiose Nigerian musicians like Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy; three heavyweights who continue to ceremonially owe the success of their new-born Afrobeats sound to the master pioneer, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, whose fraction of Afrobeat provided a skeletal framework for the origination of Afrobeats, Afropop or in a more debatable term, Afro-fusion.
Fela seems to take more of the plaudits of the new age musicians than Barrister basically because of the effects of Afrobeat lively instrumentation on Afrobeats. Perchance, his activism and his doggedness; or his upholstery of culture. Nonetheless, the influence of Fuji on Afrobeats is domineering in the latter's vocal delivery than in its beat making. Although Fela's Afrobeat is more of the foundation for Afrobeats, however, a large number of Afrobeats stars have earned a name or a brand by consciously or unconsciously tapping from the elements of Fuji Music.
The likes of Teni, Zinoleesky, Mohbad, Naira Marley, Seyi Vibez, QDot, Dotman, Portable, Bella Shmurda and even Olamide Baddo himself, have at different stopovers in their respective careers tapped into the evergreen musicality of Fuji Music. Fuji and modern Afrobeats are cross-functional irrespective of the lesser reverence accorded Fuji. Both sounds complement each other so well in recent dates that we now have a fusion. While Pasuma, Osupa, Obesere, Remi Aluko and some other Fuji authorities made countless attempts to test the waters of Afrobeats in the near past, the fusion of Fuji with Afrobeats did not quite appeal to the mainstream audience until strenuous attempts from the duo of Olamide Baddo and Dammykrane in the 2010s.
Historically, the first notable Nigerian song to fuse Fuji with a mainstream pop sound is Weird MC's Ijoya released in 2006. This was followed by Bouqui's Molejo shortly afterwards. However, the latter's hook screams more of Iya Aladuke's over 70 years old Senwele Music than it borders Fuji. Subsequently, after these two iconic records came Konga's Kaba Kaba featuring late rapper, Dagrin and the Fuji veteran, Remi Aluko. However, with the rise of Olamide, the most versatile Nigerian artiste alive, pop sound fusion with Fuji amassed either through direct sampling or the ideation of Fuji on a Hip Hop record. Olamide released or featured on Fuji House, Fuji Garbage, Anifowose, Oga Nla, Action and State of Nation to that effect around 2013-15.
In what looks like the peak of evolution for the not-so-remarkable romance between Fuji and Afrobeats, Asake's break into mainstream music in 2022 offered more than the hope of a fruition to this decades-old rusty fusion. Mr Money, as he is synonymously hailed, appears very intentional about this matrimony of sounds since he sealed a deal with Olamide's YBNL two Februaries ago. With three projects in his discography, Asake gloriously proves Fuji is the novelty Afrobeats needs for more diversity, and as the case is in Asake's artistry, infection.
Probably because of his background in Theater Arts and the torches of Olamide in his path, Asake's approach to Afrobeats leans on the foundation of Fuji — his heavy instrumentation; perhaps, he finds fulfillment in South Africa's Amapiano because the mid-tempo percussion that characterizes the signature Afrobeats is too brittle to shoulder the heaviness of the package of excessive violin loops, piano chords, blaring saxophone and buzzing basslines that form the bases of his music. Also, the progress of Afrobeats' instrumentals seem to flag down the pace in his rap-induced verse lines. Only Fuji has this kind of pace, and rather than deploy the indigenous Fuji percussion which have proven not innovative in the aforementioned past attempts, Asake improvises with the breezy Amapiano.
Asake's knowledge of art puts him several miles ahead of his colleagues in affairs of creativity. Rather than name-drop prominent historical figures in his music as often as in Fuji, Asake thoughtfully leaves the cover arts of his music to do the calling; with visual references to the re-imagined Pablo Escobar's mugshot on the cover of Mr Money With The Vibe, Malcolm X's gun pose on the cover of Terminator which consequently became his fanbase initial and Basquiat's stylistic multi-packed dreads on the cover of Work of Art.
Juxtaposed with his delivery of Hip Hop verses, Fuji, known for bloats and gloats, also seems to influence his love for braggadocio as the subject persistently holds sway on each of his projects: Joha off Mr Money With The Vibe or 2:30 on his latest offering, Work of Art. When Asake is not lyrically wagging fingers, his exaggerated appearance in clothes, unconventionally wayward like that of his go-to music video director, TG Omori, is a case of polarity across board as two different segments of music lovers tirelessly argue whether or not his dressings are fashionable.
As much as Asake rode the fusion of Afrobeats with Fuji to success, the singer should never be boxed in that reality; he transcends that realm as a unifier of culture with his knowledge of art, evident in the graphic aspect of his music; his custody of language, there in his diction; his exploration of music, surplus in his rap-like verses, Fuji-like vocalization and even the replacement of the goje moans specific to Sákárà with the violin; the complete novelty Afrobeats has never experienced before in the entirety of its almost a score of existence.