The music of Nigeria includes many kinds of Folk

Traditional music

Traditional music is the term increasingly used for folk music that is not contemporary folk music. More on this is at the terminology section of the World music article...

 and popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

, some of which are known worldwide. Styles of folk music are related to the multitudes of ethnic groups in the country, each with their own techniques, instruments, and songs. Little is known about the country's music history prior to European contact, although bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

 carvings dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries have been found depicting musicians and their instruments.

Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

 has been called "the heart of African music

Music of Africa

Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from sub-Saharan African music traditions....

" because of its role in the development of West African highlife

Highlife

Highlife is a musical genre that originated in Ghana in the 1900s and spread to Sierra Leone, Nigeria and other West African countries by 1920...

 and palm-wine music

Palm-wine music

Palm-wine music is a West African musical genre. It evolved among the Kru people of Sierra Leone and Liberia, who used Portuguese guitars brought by sailors, combining local melodies and rhythms with Trinidadian calypso and soca music...

, which fuses native rhythms with techniques imported from the Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

 for the development of several popular styles that were unique to Nigeria, like apala

Apala

Apala is a musical genre, originally derived from the Yoruba people of Nigeria.It is a percussion-based style that developed in the late 1930s, when it was used to wake worshippers after fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan...

, fuji

Fuji music

Fuji is a popular Nigerian musical genre. It arose from the improvisation Ajisari/were music tradition, which is a kind of music performed to wake muslims before dawn during the Ramadan fasting season...

, jùjú

Jùjú music

Jùjú is a style of Nigerian popular music, derived from traditional Yoruba percussion. The name comes from a Yoruba word "juju" or "jiju" meaning "throwing" or "something being thrown." Juju music did not derive its name from juju, which "is a form of magic and the use of magic objects or...

, highlife, and Yo-pop

Yo-pop

Yo-pop is a style of Nigerian popular music, popularized in the 1980s by Segun Adewale. The style did not remain popular for long as it was quickly replaced by afro-juju towards the end of the 1980s....

.