This Daily Discovery takes us to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, where Kabusa Oriental Choir have built an unlikely international career from choral reinterpretations of contemporary pop and afrobeats. Founded in March 2019 by Austin Chinemezu Nwamara, the choir first gained attention with a mashup of Kizz Daniel‘s “Yeba” and DJ Spinal‘s “Baba,” performed in full choir robes and filmed on a mobile phone. The video spread quickly across Nigerian social media, catching the attention of both original artists and establishing the choir’s approach: familiar songs reimagined through traditional choral arrangements.

Six years on, Kabusa Oriental Choir have turned viral choir covers into a proper career. Their version of “Soso” hit 42 million Spotify streams, “Valentine is Coming” became an annual tradition after BBC 1XTRA picked it up in 2020, and they’ve headlined festivals across Europe. They’ve also featured on tracks with DJ Snake, Anotr, Folamour and BNXN.

“Detty December” is their take on Nigeria’s end-of-year madness. The phrase, which Mr Eazi helped push into everyday use, covers the stretch from mid December into January when parties, diaspora homecomings, concerts and family gatherings pile up. The choir use close harmonies over drums and bass written for dancing, with the title line repeated almost like a chant. The lyric lifts lines from the English carol “The Little Drummer Boy” and drops them into a December-in-Abuja setting. Harmattan, the dry Saharan wind that leaves dust in the air and a chill in the mornings, sits alongside firework bursts and “everybody jamming”, so church-carol text and Detty December street life sit inside the same verse.

Released via Snafu Records, the track continues the choir’s move from covers into original material. They have written originals before, with “The Corona Song” during the pandemic to share health information as one of the most recognised examples, and “Detty December” extends that shift into songs drawn from everyday life in Nigeria, this time fixed on the late-December calendar.

Listen and stream the track through THIS LINK