Nigerian Woman Ranked 9th In The World’s Music Most Powerful Women List

Woman’s Hour Power List 2018 released its top 40 most influential women in music and a Nigerian made the list. Her name is Chinyere Adah Nwanoku, OBE (born June 1956, London).

She is a double Bass player and professor of Historical Double Bass Studies at the Royal Academy of Music. She was also a founder member and principal bassist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a position she held for 30 years.

    1. Beyoncé
2. Taylor Swift
3. Vanessa Reed (PRS for Music)
4. Adele
5. Stacey Tang (MD of RCA Records)
6. Gillian Moore (Director of music at Southbank Centre)
7. Rebecca Allen (President of Decca Records)
8. Marin Alsop
9. Chi-chi Nwanoku
10. Maggie Crowe (Director of events at BPI)

Beyoncé came first in a list of the industry’s 40 most influential women, thanks to her feminism, activism and empowering musical messages.

Taylor Swift, Adele and Dua Lipa were also included on the power list, which was unveiled as part of BBC Music Day.

The top 40 didn’t just recognise big-sellers and global stars, making room for the unsung heroes who work behind the scenes to champion women. Third place went to Vanessa Reed who, as director of the PRS Foundation, has persuaded dozens of festivals to sign up to a 50:50 gender balance on their line-ups by 2022.

The top 10 also includes Marin Alsop, who became the first female conductor to lead the Last Night of the Proms in 2013, and Chi-chi Nwanoku, who founded Europe’s first professional majority black and minority ethnic orchestra, Chineke.