Author: Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu

IT was with heavy heart that I took a phone call that informed me of the passing away of my bosom friend, Prof. Muhtar Hanif Alhassan in a hospital in Cairo on Thursday March 21, 2024. I have been aware of his illness. I and Salisu Ɗanyaro have been monitoring his unfortunately deteriorating health. In the end, the sun sets at noon for an incredibly bright, brilliant, super intelligent unassuming quite genius from Kano, northern Nigeria. I first met Muhtar in June 1993. He had returned from Sussex University, Brighton, UK after his doctoral studies in 1992, and people kept…

FOR the past 43 years that I have been a researcher, there were two areas I stay clear of: politics and religion. If you see my hand in any of these two, then the entry point is popular or media cultures. For instance, I have recorded a lot of Kano Qadiriyya’s Anfasu zikr, not as a devotee, but as an ethnomusicologist – focusing on the body percussion and movements (after studying the wonderful works of Margaret Kartomi on body percussion while in Morocco). Similarly – and to balance things somewhat – I recorded Tijjaniyya zikr sessions at Chiranci in the…