Hey guys, my name is Suté Iwar and I'm one part of Nigerian Funk, along with Modupeola Soetan, and Onyinye Muobuike. We started Nigerian Funk in August 2021 out of the passion we have for our Nigerian musical legacy and our dismay at the disconnect between that legacy and everyday Nigeria.

Like many millennial and gen-z Nigerians, we didn’t grow up with extensive awareness of the strides that musicians of past eras made. Some of their music was in our homes but that was only a fraction of the output from those times. Nigerian Funk is an attempt to re-introduce Nigerians to their musical legacy and also educate the world on Nigerian superstars and innovators from the past.

In light of this, we at Nigerian Funk would like to introduce a novel project called ‘The Nigerian Music Preservation Project’. This project is an initiative designed as the first national collection, sensitisation and archiving of the popular music history of Nigeria, beginning in the 1950s and ending in the 2000s. This is a long term project motivated by the current gap in the active preservation and documentation of Nigeria’s music history and the need for access to this history for posterity.

Our long term goals include:

1. Establishing a digital database of popular Nigerian musicians starting from the 1950s to the 2000s.

2. To archive music materials from the 1950s to the 2000s. The archive may contain various formats including musical instruments, sound recordings (CDs, DAT tapes, DVDs, gramophone records, magnetic tapes, mini discs, reel tapes and sound cassettes), films, videos (VHS and Beta), playback equipment, paper documents (letters, minutes of meetings, newspaper cuttings, financial documents, song texts, photographs, diaries and posters), textiles, music manuscripts and born-digital content (sound recordings, images and written content).

3. To establish a physical space where these archived materials can be exhibited to the public. This space will be a museum and will house all archived materials, and an interface to access the digital database.

4. To organise public outreach campaigns aimed at the mass sensitisation of Nigeria’s musical history.

These goals can only be achieved with help from you. The money you send in will help kickstart this initiative and will be used to:

1. Fund on-field research. This research will include accessing current archives such as those of the NTA, digitising analogue media so it can be preserved and shared, and carrying out interviews with music industry participants from the past for posterity.

2. Fund the production of professional media (graphic, audio, video) showcasing the findings of our research. These productions would be presented on video streaming sites like YouTube and Instagram.

3. Fund the acquisition and preservation of music materials.