Dan Maraya Jos (born Adamu Wayya in 1946 – 20 June 2015) is a Nigerian Hausa Griot best known for playing the kontigi.
Dan Maraya Jos, whose name means “The Little Orphan of Jos”, was born
in 1946 and Died Saturday, 20 June 2015 in B’ukur, near Jos in Plateau
State, Nigeria. His Islamic name is Adamu, but his father died shortly
after his birth and his mother died while he was still an infant, hence
the name by which everyone knows him.
Dan Maraya’s father was a court
musician for the Emir of Bukur, who took Dan Maraya under his care when
his parents died. Dan Maraya showed an early interest in music and came
under the influence of local professional musicians. During a trip to
Maiduguri while he was still a pre-teen, he was impressed by musicians
there and made a kuntigi, with which he has accompanied himself ever
since.
The kuntigi is a small, single-stringed lute. The body is usually a
large, oval-shaped sardine can covered with goatskin. Dan Maraya and
other kuntigi players are solo performers who accompany themselves with a
rapid ostinato on the kuntigi. During instrumental interludes they
repeat a fixed pattern for the song they are playing, but while singing,
they will often change the notes of the pattern to parallel the melody
they are singing.
Like most professional musicians, the mainstay of Dan Maraya’s
repertoire is praise singing, but Dan Maraya singles out his personal
heros rather than the rich and famous. His first, and perhaps still his
most famous song is “Wak’ar Karen Mota” [“Song of the Driver’s Mate”] in
praise of the young men who get passengers in and out of minivan buses
and do the dirty work of changing tires, pushing broken down vans, and
the like. During the Nigerian Civil War, he composed numerous songs in
praise of soldiers of the federal army and incorporated vivid accounts
of scenes from the war in his songs.
Many of his songs incorporate social commentary. These include the
songs on marriage in the study here, which probably date from the early
1970’s. One might argue that they are really one large song, and in
performance, Dan Maraya incoporates lines from each of them. However,
the recordings that serve as the basis for this study have three
distinct musical settings, and the songs themselves have three different
themes. “Jawabin Aure” [“Discourse on Marriage”] lists the problems
attendant in divorce and admonishes married couples to try to patch up
their differences. “Auren Dole” [“Forced Marriage”] decries the practice
of families arranging marriages for their daughters rather than letting
them decide on their own mates. “Gulma-Wuya” [“The Busybody”] describes
a neighborhood gossip who works in collusion with a boka (a
practitioner in casting spells, removing evil spirits, etc.) to disrupt
marriages by sowing dissension between women and their husbands. The
latter song is amusing in that Dan Maraya performs it as a drama,
imitating the voices of the different characters as they speak, a
technique that he has used in other songs as well.
Article credit: Aliyu Badeggi
