Northern Nigeria Experiences Rise In Home-grown Hip Hop
Broke and with time on his hands, Naziru Hausawa, an unemployed biology graduate, decided to introduce his own blend of rap and hip hop to the most conservative city in Nigeria's Muslim north, Kano, where authorities wage war against immoral western culture.

That was six years ago. Now Hausawa, 28, is the proud owner of the Golden Goose recording studio, thus named because of the amount of money it brings in.

Some 60 studios, recording home-made rap and hip hop, have sprung up since 2002 in Kano, Nigeria's northern commercial capital, and have turned out 50 albums and hundreds of singles.

"Young people the world over are attracted to western music on the Internet, but here, because of unemployment they decided to record their own music and use it to make a living," said Abdallah Uba Adamu, an anthropology professor at Kano's Bayero University who does research on local rap and hip hop.

But in this conservative Muslim city, the sex and drugs that predominate in the lyrics of much imported rap music have given way to social issues such as poverty and corruption.

"We make songs to make money and we have to respect the sensibilities and sensitivities of our fans who frown at drugs, violence, sex and anything vulgar," local musician Ibrahim Bello, alias Billy-O, told AFP as a muezzin's call to prayer rang out from a mosque behind his studio.

Some of the musicians are attired in traditional style in loose cotton trousers and matching tunics; others have adopted western styles.

Hausawa said employment is getting ever harder to find in Kano. Out of the 500 factories in the city 15 years ago, some 400 have now closed, mainly due to power shortages.

"It is unemployment that has pushed young men with talent to domesticate rap and hip hop as a way of being productive and as a means to financial independence," Hausawa told AFP in his studio.

Recent official figures show that more than half of youths in Kano are unemployed -- a statistic Bello bemoans in his track entitled 'Bamayi'.

"We have finished school, we have no jobs while the son of a big man drives past us in big cars looking down upon us with disdain, while we can't have even three square meals and our parents look at us hopelessly, therefore we rebel", he sings in the local Hausa.

Although Kano is the home of the music industry, the songs are popular throughout the north. And the Kano state authorities are determined that no elements of the global rap culture of drugs and violence should "contaminate" music in northern Nigeria.

http://www.independentngonline.com/bnew/article02