Alhaji (Dr) Mamman Shata pronunciationⓘ MON (born in 1923 in Musawa, Katsina State, Nigeria, died on 18 June 1999) was a Nigerian singer.
She was born in Tofa town in the Kano Emirate and met Shata's father, Ibrahim Yaro, when she went to visit a relative in Musawa.
Lariya had a son, Ali, from a previous marriage and had two children with Yaro, Mamman Shata and his sister Yalwa.
Ibrahim Yaro did not want his son to become a musician due to widely held belief that music or praise-singing was a form of 'roko' or begging.
Shata as a young man was engaged in selling kola nuts and after the sale he would share the profit to people he met on his way home or in the market and came back empty handed.
Finally, he settled in Bakori after his benefactor, Abdullahi Inde, a prince of Musawa who was working there as a Native Authority official in charge of buying cotton and groundnuts, asked him to move other there.
From his base in Bakori, Shata, with his band, toured all over Northern Nigeria including Katsina, Sokoto and Kano, which he first visited in the late '40s.
[8] Shata was famed to have sung for every topic under the Hausa land's sun: agriculture, culture, religion, economy, politics, military, morality and etiquettes, animals, trade, etc.
He had serious disagreements with some, such as Ahmadu Doka, Mammalo Shata and Musa Danbade, but generally he maintained a cordial relationship with most singers, who regarded him as a leader.
In his song Kyautar Chafe, after Shata sings "kuma ka ji kalanguna na fadi" ('listen to what the drums are saying'), the vocal part is interrupted for about one measure to give voice to the kalangu alone.
When the 2- million-man march for Abacha Must Stay campaign (a campaign organised by Danial Kanu to protest the return to Democracy in Nigeria by removing of General Sani Abacha as the military Head of State) was ongoing in Abuja in 1998, he was invited by the organisers to perform for the protesters.
On the day of the march, Shata was forcibly removed from the stage after 'advising' Abacha to regard all the marchers present as sycophants, who will not be there for him when he needed them.
Shata's fans not only included powerful people such as Emirs, Politicians and Army Generals but also the Talakawa (lower class) of Nigeria who were numbered in millions.
In the First Republic in the 1950s he aligned himself to the left-wing NEPU as opposed to the right-wing NPC of Sir Ahmadu Bello and the emirs.
In the Third Republic he was elected as the chairman of SDP in Funtua Local Government Area, a position from which he was impeached due to his left-wing character and brush with the party's main benefactor in Katsina State, retired Major-General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua.
Shata did not participate much in the politics that ushered in the civilian government of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 due to ill-health.
Alhaji Shata suffered a debilitating illness that made him to be hospitalised in Kano and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.