The album focuses on a broad selection of recordings made in Nigeria in the 1960s, a period when apala music was at the height of its popularity. Apala is a deeply rhythmic, hypnotic and powerful musical style that combines the punchy nasal vocals and traditions of Islamic music, the Agidigbo (thumb piano), and the drumming and percussive techniques and rhythms of the Nigerian Yoruba. The most important figure in apala music is undoubtedly Haruna Ishola, who features throughout this album. Ishola has an almost mythological status in his role as a popularizer of apala music in Nigeria. Apala is a popular music that also functioned as a form of cultural resistance. The music involves no Western instrumentation and is sung in the Yoruba language, with its aesthetic and implied cultural rejection of the colonial domination of the British Empire over Nigeria, which lasted from 1901 until independence in 1960, being palpable. Apala is a style that stands alongside others more familiar in the West such as Fuji, Highlife, Juju and Afrobeat. Of these modern forms, apala perhaps remains the most ‘rootsy’ style (sometimes described as ‘neo-traditional’) due to the authenticity of its sound.
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