Music of Niger - Traditional Musical Styles

Traditional Musical Styles

Hausa, Beriberi, Songhai, Djerma, Dendi, Fula, Wodaabe, and Tuareg traditions, most of which existed quite independently in the colonial period, have begun to form a mixture of styles since the 1960s. While Niger's popular music has had little international attention (in comparison with the music of neighbors Mali or Nigeria), traditional and new musical styles have flourished since the end of the 1980s.

In the north, the Tuareg are known for romantic, informal sung/spoken love poetry performed by both men and women, with voices accompanied by clapping, tinde drums (in women's songs) and a one-stringed viol (in men's songs). The Fula and Wodaabe (largely a nomadic desert subgroup of Fula) keep alive traditions of group singing, accompanied by clapping, stomping and bells. The Wodaabe Gerewol festival is one of the more famous examples of this style of repeating, hypnotic, and percussive choral traditions. The Beriberi too are known for complex polyphony singing.

The region around the capital of Niamey is inhabited by Djerma and Songhai who play, generally solo, a variety of lutes (Molo), flutes and fiddles, and like the Fula, carry on the griot tradition of caste-based praise singers and musicians. Djerma and Songhai traditional music was the topic of extensive study in the late colonial and early independence period.

The Hausa, who make up over half of the country, use the duma for percussion and the molo (a lute) in their Griot traditions, along with the Ganga, alghaïta (shawm) and kakaki (trumpet) for martial, state, and ceremonial occasions. These uses are typified by the ceremonial usage of large trumpets to mark the authority of the Sultanate of Damagaram in the southeast Zinder area.