waka

Waka music in the Yoruba tradition is associated with the Muslim Yoruba community and was traditionally performed by women for women — at naming ceremonies, weddings, and female social gatherings. The musical structure uses sekere (beaded gourd), sakara (a small frame drum), and call-and-response vocals. The word waka may derive from Arabic waqqa or from a Yoruba description of the musical style's lilting, easy-flowing quality.

Salawa Abeni, born in 1963 in Ijebu-Igbo, Nigeria, became the defining artist of waka music from the late 1970s onward. Her recordings for EMI Nigeria and later independent labels established waka as commercially viable. Her debut album 'Late Wasiu Alabi' (1979) was released when she was sixteen; by the 1980s she was one of Nigeria's most commercially successful musicians, earning the honorific 'Commander of Waka Music.'

Abeni's music blended traditional waka rhythms with contemporary production, incorporating talking drums, chorus vocals, and eventually electronic instruments. Her lyrics addressed social issues — domestic life, women's concerns, Islamic values, and occasionally political commentary. She became a model for women in Yoruba popular music at a time when the industry was dominated by male artists.

Waka is a minority genre internationally compared to juju or Afrobeat, but within Nigerian Muslim communities and Yoruba diaspora contexts it maintains a strong presence. Salawa Abeni continues to perform and record; her catalogue documents four decades of Yoruba Islamic popular music.