Wikipedia:Peer review/Music of Nigeria/archive2

Music of Nigeria

Aside from the lack of pictures and sounds, which I am attempting to fix, does anyone have any suggestions? I recently added a bunch of inline citations and changed some things around in accordance with past comments. Here's the old discussions. Tuf-Kat 07:29, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Overall an excellent article, at least in my oponion, that covers the topic in depth. However I did trip over the assertion that "Nigeria has also produced some of the most popular music in the world". I think that an assertion this broad needs to be backed up with specific examples in a section on Nigerian music that has achieved world-wide popularity. Similarly with the statement that "the country's musical output has achieved great international acclaim". Thanks. :) — RJH 14:42, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

The first claimed weakened, and the second sourced. Obvious exceptions, like Fela Kuti, notwithstanding, Nigerian music is primarily a domestic affair. Tuf-Kat 07:15, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

It looks good, thanks. About the only other element the page could use is a few more illustrations, either of notable artists or local instruments. — RJH

Great article. One thing that could imporve the flow would be taking out some of the section headings and getting rid of the {{main}} links. --nixie 09:19, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I removed a couple of the main article links, and got rid of two section headings. Is this better? Tuf-Kat 16:22, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I gave it a read. Here's what struck me:

1. First, the article is overlong (42 KB). I wonder if it might be a good idea to summarize the "Folk music" section based on region rather than ethnic group. In a country with over 400, as the article claims, it seems odd to only focus on three here.

42 kb isn't all that long, and three groups focused on are by far the three largest in the country (I've amended the article to explicitly say that).

1. The intro says Nigeria has "dozens or hundreds of tribes". Which is it?

Fixed.

1. Lots of passive voice.
2. What about modern Christian praise music? I've never been to Nigeria, but I lived in Cameroon, and the Anglophone portion of that country takes its cultural cue from its western neighbor. Nigerian singer Agatha Moses is like Elvis in Anglophone Cameroon. The mainstream radio is saturated with Nigerian praise music, so you're as likely to hear a Nigerian cover of an American Christian contemporary tune as you are to hear Danfo Drivers (an extremely popular Nigerian reggae group). Again, I haven't been to Nigeria, but I suspect things are similar in the south of the country.

Some googling gave me enough info for a paragraph, though some web pages (like this) seem to imply that gospel is extremely popular in Cameroon, and that much of it is Nigerian. I'm not sure it's quite as important in Nigeria itself.

1. Piracy. How do these artists make any money? What's the business model like? I know that in Cameroon, I only found one store that sold actual, non-pirated CDs, and these were priced ten times as high as the pirated ones sold at thousands of street kiosques and off of teenage boys' heads. This is probably a topic for Music of Africa, but a mention of how piracy affects the Nigerian music industry would be good.

I added a mention in the bit about the music industry in the lead, but I agree a more detailed examination belongs at music of Africa.

1. A couple of places mention what I think are states in Nigeria, but the wikilinks go to disambig pages. The two I caught were Adamawa and Borno.

Fixed, I think

1. "The most extreme northern region uses essentially monodic music . . . ." What's "monodic" mean? If it's not a typo, a quick definition would be good.

It means having only one melodic line (see monody). Fixed.

1. The article currently mixes American and British English. I'd say go with British, considering Nigeria's colonial history. (This would affect "marginalized" and "theater", but probably a few other words, too.)

Fixed, may have missed some.

1. The Hausa boorii cult is described as featuring "trance music". You might want to specify what you mean -- Trance music is a genre of techno music, and I don't think that is the intended meaning here.

Fixed.

1. The section on "Classical music" is awfully short. Could this be merged somewhere else so it doesn't stick out so much? Similarly, the phrase "African Western classical composers" is awkward. Perhaps "African composers in the Western classical style"? I keep getting tripped up thinking "West Africa".

Changed to one of the most famous African composers of the Western classical tradition, paragraph moved to lead

1. The quote under "Palmwine and the invention of juju" seems out of place, as no sources are quoted directly in the rest of the article.

Fixed.

1. What's an "MBE"? Perhaps spell out the acronym or define it.

Fixed

1. Watch where were is linking. It's not an article about Muslim songs.

Fixed.

1. Likewise, check all the links to be sure that they're going where they're supposed to. Juju is linked a lot, and it should go to jùjú music.

Fixed.

Good article. Hope you do Music of Cameroon next. BrianSmithson 14:19, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

My next African one was going to be music of Kenya or music of South Africa, because they should be relatively easy to research. I hope to spend some time on Cameroon soon though. Thanks for your comments! Tuf-Kat 17:11, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

I've spent considerable time going through it and editing on the clause level. Based on the inconsistencies in the first part, I regularised the spelling to BrEng; I realise now that I should have asked the author whether he prefers Br or US spelling. It's a fabulously rich topic, and the article, although too long, is mostly well written. It could do with some trimming down to the daughter articles. It's rather densely linked, which makes it harder to read, so I delinked the simple years, decades and centuries, since these are of little use to the reader. I've reduced spacing between the sentences to one space, to avoid the 'rivers of white' problem. I hope that this becomes a featured article. Tony 04:32, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

British English is right (or more precisely, Nigerian English, which is the same as I understand it). Your edits look great. Thanks. I hope I can get it featured soon too, but I don't think it will unless I can find some freely-licensed pictures. I've been sending e-mails out to a bunch of webpages, but so far haven't gotten permission from anyone. Tuf-Kat 08:03, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Pictures are essential; I wonder whether you might trawl through releated articles and ask some of the contributors for help; and there must be some ethnomusicologists who either possess photos or can point you towards those who do. Tony 08:21, 3 September 2005 (UTC)