The music of Niger has developed from the musical traditions of a mix of ethnic groups.

Hausa, Beriberi, Songhai, Djerma, Dendi, Fula, Wodaabe, and Tuareg traditions, most of which existed quite independently in the colonial period, have begun to form a mixture of styles since the 1960s. While Niger's popular music has had little international attention (in comparison with the music of neighbors Mali or Nigeria), traditional and new musical styles have flourished since the end of the 1980s.

In the north, the Tuareg are known for romantic, informal sung/spoken love poetry performed by both men and women, with voices accompanied by clapping, tinde drums (in women's songs) and a one-stringed viol (in men's songs). The Fula and Wodaabe (largely a nomadic desert subgroup of Fula) keep alive traditions of group singing, accompanied by clapping, stomping and bells. The Wodaabe Gerewol festival is one of the more famous examples of this style of repeating, hypnotic, and percussive choral traditions. The Beriberi too are known for complex polyphony singing.

Niger (French pronunciation: [niʒɛʁ], but occasionally pronounced as /niːˈʒɛər/ or ⁱ/ˈnaɪdʒər/), officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east. Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km², making it the largest nation in West Africa, with over 80 percent of its land area covered by the Sahara desert. The country's predominantly Islamic population of just above 15,000,000 is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the nation. The capital city is Niamey, located in the far southwest corner of Niger.

Niger is a developing country, and consistently ranks as one of the lowest ranks of the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI), 186th of 187 countries in 2011. Much of the non-desert portions of the country are threatened by periodic drought and desertification. The economy is concentrated around subsistence and some export agriculture clustered in the more fertile south, and the export of raw materials, especially uranium ore. Niger remains handicapped by its landlocked position, desert terrain, poor education and poverty of its people, lack of infrastructure, poor health care, and environmental degradation.

Randy Weston (born April 6, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York), is an American jazz pianist and composer, of Jamaican parentage.

Randy Weston's piano style owes much to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk (he has paid direct tribute to both on the "portraits" albums), but it is highly distinctive in its qualities: percussive, highly rhythmic, capable of producing a wide variety of moods.

Weston was raised in Brooklyn, where his father owned a restaurant. Weston studied classical piano as a child. He graduated from Boys High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant. His father chose for him to attend there because it had a reputation of high standards. He took piano lessons from a teacher named Professor Atwell.

After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he ran a restaurant that was frequented by many of the leading bebop musicians. Among his piano heroes are numbered Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington (and Wynton Kelly was a cousin), but it was Thelonious Monk who had the greatest impact.