n Nigeria, when musicians play well, and especially when they throw in a lyric of praise for a guest of honour or a patron sponsoring the performance, guests in the audience shower the musicians with money. Paper naira bills get tucked into shirt collars, fall between guitar strings and are plastered on moist foreheads.

King Sunny Adé, at 62 possibly Nigeria's most famous living performer, knows this practice well. It's called spraying. And like the hugely popular juju music he plays, it's a tradition still little known to the West.

“It's an old music that has never been heard in the Western side of the world. It's a traditional music of Africa, a music for parties, a happy music you listen to, to just keep on dancing and enjoy yourself. ”

“Sometimes in parts of Nigeria, when you are having a party or a marriage ceremony … people will shower money and you will be dancing on it. That's [something] I don't like. We have to respect the naira. In my case, when they put it on my forehead or throw it at me, I pick it up. I don't dance on it,” Adé says over the phone. In fact, the tradition is so prevalent that even criticism by the former governor of Nigeria's central bank to quit showering precious currency on people and on the floor hasn't stopped the practice, Adé explains. “It's a tradition.”

And that seems analogous to the cultural divide that has made it difficult for the music industry in the West to come to grips with juju music and its chief ambassador, Adé. Tradition is central to the music, with its talking drums, call-and-response rhythms, and especially long, multi-instrumental jams which would put the Grateful Dead or Phish to shame. And yet, it is thoroughly modern and has spawned everything from World Beat to Afropop. It has also propelled Adé to his long-held status as a leading artist in the catch-all, world-music category.

Some could trace the emergence of the world-music market in the West to such releases as EMI's definitive 1967 classical Indian album Call Of The Valley (back when sitars were of course the rage in rock) or Bob Marley and the Wailers' 1973 major label debut Catch A Fire on Island Records. Marley was undoubtedly world music's Elvis and the Beatles rolled into one. After his death, Adé, who had by that time been long established in Nigeria's music scene, was a potential successor. So, in 1982, Island sub-label Mango Records released his international breakthrough album, titled simply Juju Music.

Mango and Island had high hopes for Adé. But the pseudo-World Beat of Peter Gabriel and David Byrne in the 1980s seemed enough to satisfy the majority of Western record buyers. And Adé wouldn't or couldn't anglicize his music in the same way that Island's Chris Blackwell could tailor Marley for rock tastes. More than two and a half decades later, Adé is still talking in terms of Western audiences finally coming around to juju music.

“It's an old music that has never been heard in the Western side of the world. It's a traditional music of Africa, a music for parties, a happy music you listen to, to just keep on dancing and enjoy yourself. It has nothing to do with religion or politics. It's just for entertainment and education, sometimes it has lessons for the kids,” Adé says. He also notes how it crosses ethnic distinctions within Nigeria, and so isn't tied solely to the country's Yoruba group from which many of its drumming traditions derive. This helps give the music its breadth and inclusiveness.

And Adé says he's happy to still be seen as the music's ambassador after all these years, even if he has thought often about retiring. “There was a time I said in a press conference that I only wanted to record, do shows on television and only occasionally play, and you see the people making posters all over the place, telling me ‘Why do that?'

“So eventually I had to say to them, ‘I never said I wouldn't play. I said I want [a slower schedule].'

“And they said, ‘No. You are not sick. You are not disabled. We need you.' And little kids would come and say, ‘Please, I want you to play at my wedding.'” Adé recounts all of this with a kind of grandfatherly mix of amusement and resignation. So, even if he doesn't getting sprayed with naira on his current North American tour, it's guaranteed to be the fate that forever awaits him in Nigeria.