NIGERIA: DANCE, FOLKLORE, COUSINE, MUSIC

Nigeria has about 250 ethnic groups. With so many different people, the country has a large cultural diversity.

In Nigerian traditional societies, dance is the focus of religious ritual and ceremony: a priest is the leading dancer. Using dance and symbolic gestures to lead initiates in dances designed to appease the supernatural powers, solicit divine protection, or give thanks to the guardian spirits of the community.

Nigeria’s folklore is much connected to antique traditions (myths, dances, and rites) characters of the popular fictional. An example: The Eringa’s story, a woman so strong that    exceeded all the strong man in her community.

The Nigerian cuisine consists of various dishes and food for hundreds of their ethnic groups living in west African. A variety of spices and herbs are used in conjunction with palm oil or peanut oil, giving a deep flavor soups and sauces which are preferably made very hot and spicy foods . The colorful festivals reflect on the aromatic culinary market, and the roadside snacks cooked on barbecues or fried in oil are plentiful and varied in their region.

Music is almost always used in rituals, such as weddings or funerals.  The drum is the most used native instrument. Nigeria has several music styles, like apala, fuji, jùjú, highlife and yo-pop.

After the Second World War, Nigerian music started to incorporate new instruments and techniques from the USA and Europe. Presently Nigeria has some of the most advanced recording studio technology in Africa.












References:
nairaland.com - nigerian folklore
foodbycountry.com
personal.psu.edu
en.wikipedia.org - Music of Nigeria
yorubatribe.blogspot

Nigeria: a diversified country

Nigeria is located in Western Africa and borders the Gulf of Guinea, between Benin on the west and Cameroon on the east. Abuja is the capital of Federal Republic of Nigeria and Lagos, the commercial capital of the country.

 Its flag was adopted on October 1, 1960, the day when the country gained independence from Great Britain. In 1959, the design was submitted into the national competition by Michael Taiwo Akinkunmi. The white vertical stripe between two green stripes of equal dimensions symbolizes the elements of the flag: the white stripe denotes peace and unity, and is also symbolic of the Niger River bisecting the countryside, the green stripes represent agriculture.

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the eight largest in the world (170, 1 million, sense 2012). The great majority of its population live situation of poverty.

The currency in Nigeria is Naira (subdivided in 100 kobo).

The Nigerian religions are divided in 40% of Christian, 50% of Islamic, 10% of tribal religion.

Constitutionally, Nigeria is a laic state, but during almost 40 years the North government has preferred the Muslim religion. Consequently of this, Christians and ex-muslins have been discriminated, Christian girls from the North, must wear a hijab (typical Muslim attire when she goes to the school).

There’s for of a big linguistic diversity, are more of 500 languages, an are in vigour, others are extinct, distributed around the Nigerian territory (Rf. Ethnoloque/languages of the world). Some examples of the major languages spoken there: Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ibibio, Eba, Fulfudeand Kanuri. English is a language official of the Nigeria.

Yoruba’s Phrases