Filmmaker and musician Boya Dee is back with a new documentary, The House That Naija Built.
The new film sees Boya fly over to Lagos, Nigeria to meet with some of the local DJs, promoters and producers who have helped define Nigeria’s identity in house music over the last four or five years.
Travelling between studios and venues, he speaks to Del Noi of Element House, Dolapo Osunsina of h-Factor, Sweat It Out’s Dr. Love aka DJ Tomce, Tigran Sounds of Ekolectro, and Sons Of Ubuntu.
The new short film traces the origins of house music—a distinct scene from the Afro-house parties—back to Lagos Underground. Theirs was the only party in town for a while, but soon Element House rose up and others, including h-Factor, Sweat it Out Lagos, Mainland House, Raveolution, Activity Fest, and others joined the ranks. Now, Del Noi explains, Lagos has gone from one house music party a month to at least one every week.
“What happens is that people have different ideas and different versions of what house should be,” Osunsina explains, “so what’s happened is that you have these little smaller communities of niche ideas of what house is for them.”
As Tomce explains, house music wasn’t an instant smash in Nigeria. “What it is now is way bigger than what we thought it would be. My friends never thought Nigerians wouldn’t fuck with it, but I knew they would.” At first, he says, there was a little resistance from clubbers who couldn’t relate to it and festival bookers who weren’t taking the bait, but time proved him right.
Interestingly, he adds, it was the setting that made a difference. “You can enter a space and know, this is for a rave. Nigerian clubs, the way they’re built, it’s not built for [raving].” What you get is a house music scene much more in tune with house music’s roots in warehouses, studios and open-air spaces.
The Nigerian house scene of 2025 is still very much its own thing, blending tech house and deep house with local reference points and signatures that give it a fizzing energy that bursts out of the screen.
Hit play on the new documentary, released via Network One, at the top.
