In ’70s Nigeria, the an anomaly – independent singer-songwriters standing up to a corrupt government and chauvinist musos. Now their visionary grooves are being rediscovered and, reports celebrated at last. “We were ahead of everybody LIJADU SISTERS were DAVID HUTCHEON, rightly and we were women,” says TAIWO LIJADU.

IT’S APRIL 2024, A SWELTERING MORNING IN OUIDAH, THE COASTAL CITY IN BENIN THAT was once one of the West African hubs in the transatlantic slave trade. The Nigeria-born singer Taiwo Lijadu, 75, has left her home in Harlem to make her first visit to Africa in 38 years, and her initial stop is the Gateway Of No Return, a monument to historic evils. Nearby stands the Tree Of Forgetfulness, around which enslaved Africans were forced to walk to symbolically discard all memories of the lives they were about to leave. The kingpin of Ouidah’s slave markets was the Brazilian Francisco Félix de Souza, who was reputed to have had 99 wives and hundreds of children. Among his direct descendants: Taiwo and her twin sister, Kehinde.

“Our mother begged us to make reparations,” Taiwo says. “We have to ask forgiveness from those who were captives, who were killed.” Summoning all the wisdom she’s gathered from her years as a priestess in Nigeria’s indigenous Yoruban religion, she performs a cleansing ceremony. “I’m not begging for my great-grandfather’s soul,” is how she describes it, struggling to keep her composure. “I’m begging for those of us who are his children, that we may be exonerated in all of this. We did not have a hand in it, but we can still see the devastation in Africa.” Taiwo Lijadu’s eyes well up, her voice falters.

Two months later, on June 2, the centuries-old Tree Of Forgetfulness will split in two and fall over. Mark it down as another victory for the indomitable Lijadu Sisters, the greatest Nigerian band you may never have heard of.

THOUGH KEHINDE DIED OF CANCER IN 2019, TAIWO IS STILL TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. THE Sisters’ final album, 1979’s Horizon Unlimited, was recently reissued by Numero Group. Danger – celebrating its 50th birthday – will follow in February. Hopefully, all their other releases will follow. Ahead of their time, they were women who wrote, arranged and sang their own music: a unique stew of funk, disco and reggae with a sauce of punk attitude and political dissent – no small thing in a country where the ruling generals lined their pockets with the proceeds of an oil boom and threatened violence against anyone who complained.