Mountain Top University Library

Since the early 20th century, the guitar has been an important component of Nigerian
popular music. Nigerian popular musicians have borrowed and adapted playing
techniques from rock, funk, and western classical guitar styles in developing distinct
guitar styles. As this study shows, through examples from King Sunny Ade and
Oliver De Coque’s selected works, these adopted guitar techniques include double
stops, broken chords, sliding technique, palm muting method, Hawaiian guitar, and
alternate picking. The Juju and Highlife examples presented in this study are part of
the Nigerian popular music that uses the guitar. Selected works of King Sunny Ade
and Oliver De Coque have been examined, and the techniques discovered in these
works were re-applied in the composition of an original song, “Ayo mi ti de”.