Aṣíkò
Aṣíkò (Ashiko) is a musical genre similar to sákárà music from Nigeria, West Africa. Aṣíkò was the Christian version of sákárà (Sakara). It developed originally as a type of
syncretic street drumming in port towns throughout Anglophone West Africa. By the 1920s it was also played by musicians inland in Yoruba towns like Abęokuta and Ibadan. Isaac O. Delano gives a detailed description of an aṣíkò ensemble in the 1930s:
"Another popular native dance is the "Ashiko". It is not a Yoruba dance in its origin, but was imported from Sierra Leone or somewhere that way. The "Ashiko" dance is chiefly performed by Christian people, and has only one kind of music, rather quicker than the "Sakara" . . . and resembles a fox-trot. No stringed instruments are employed, only drums and carpenter's saw, used occasionally to make a kind of noise on its sharp edge, as an embellishment to "Ashiko" drum music. Sometimes a bottle is also used, a nail beating time on it, for the same purpose. The drummers, five in number, all beat similar drums, and produce a continuous volume of music. The dancing is done by pairs, two ladies and two gentlemen facing each other. The drummers sing as in the "Sakara" dance with chorus boys, but no one else sings with them (Delano [1937] 1973:157)."
