NEW YORK, NY.- High above Harlem in early August, Yeye Taiwo Lijadu sat surrounded by her collection of sacred objects. Shelves displaying statues and icons of some of the 401 deities associated with the Yoruba traditional religion Ifá — in which she’s an ordained priestess — stretched nearly to her apartment’s ceiling. Lijadu, 75, called this room “a museum of the ancestors.”

Less prominent were artifacts from her past as one of Nigeria’s biggest 1970s pop stars, when she was half of the vocal duo the Lijadu Sisters, with her identical twin, Kehinde. Beginning in 1963, when they were schoolgirls in a talent competition, the pair became fixtures on Nigerian television. They began releasing records in 1968, and by the mid-1970s they were larger than life; the cover illustration of their 1976 album “Danger” depicted them as superheroes, clad in matching red outfits with knee-high boots.

In Nigeria’s male-dominated music scene, the Lijadu Sisters were among the first — and fiercest — popular female artists, groundbreaking not only for their music (a mélange that included folky apala, funky Afrobeat and slinky disco) but also their feminism. In Jeremy Marre’s 1979 documentary “Konkombe: The Nigerian Pop Music Scene,” the sisters rehearse and record while taking turns feeding Taiwo’s infant daughter, trying to make their voices heard amid a studio full of male musicians and technicians. “Women suffered at the hands of men in Nigeria,” Lijadu recalled, alluding to an atmosphere of disrespect and sexual harassment.

But yesterday’s struggles have yielded to today’s admiration, as the pair have finally been accorded the acclaim their trailblazing influence deserves. After being out of circulation for years, all five of the Lijadu Sisters’ 1970s albums will be remastered and reissued by the Numero Group, beginning with the release next week of perhaps their most fully realized record, “Horizon Unlimited” (1979). But what should be a moment for triumph is filled with grief: Kehinde died in 2019 of breast cancer. “She was my life,” Lijadu said, “she was my everything.”

The Lijadu Sisters’ music was striking for its sisterly connection. Singing primarily in English or Yoruba, the pair showcased uncannily synchronized harmonies, conjuring a choir of two. Their songs have been sampled — without proper clearance — by artists including Nas and Ayra Starr and cited as inspirations by a new generation of female musicians including Tems and Hayley Williams.

“Their impact is really meaningful, not just to me but to a lot of young women who make alternative African music or live in a punk or alternative world,” Ghanian American singer-songwriter Amaarae said via email. “In the ’70s, they were pioneers of that movement, and their personas were always very no-nonsense and very passionate about their mission, which was about liberation, not only of themselves but for all the women they were making this music in support of.”

The rereleases will include the sisters’ rare 1974 debut album, “Urede”; copies are so scarce it took Eric Welles-Nyström, Taiwo’s manager, years to track down a recording. He also teamed with Numero Group to crack down on copyright offenders, with about 40 successful takedowns so far.

At home last month, Lijadu sported a brightly patterned teal Yoruba dress that she called “ordinary and everyday” but which she wore regally, accented with a rainbow of beaded necklaces. She was flanked by a bust of Kehinde, a modern take on what the Yoruba call “ere ibeji” — a statue of a deceased twin that becomes a receptacle for their soul.

“I’ve changed since my sister passed,” Lijadu said. “My sister has posted her face on my face. Looking in the mirror, I will ask myself, ‘Are you Kehinde or Taiwo? Which one are you?’”

Taiwo and Kehinde shared an apartment and bank account and raised their young children together, but their communion went deeper. “The very first time I interviewed them, it was like I was listening in stereo: two voices exactly the same, completing each other’s statements with the same hand gestures,” said Siji Awoyinka, a New York-based Nigerian-British filmmaker directing a documentary about the sisters. “It was surreal.”

The twins were born in 1948 in the north-central city Jos, and the family moved to Lagos when they were 2. Their father was a photojournalist who played the piano, while their mother worked in pharmacies and department stores and played harmonica. Their musical career began at age 10, after their mother, Adelaide, took them to see the British comedy “The Belles of St. Trinian’s,” inspiring Kehinde to compose lyrics in a school notebook. Moved by the song’s sophistication, the next day Adelaide brought home records by American artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles and Nat King Cole, and later introduced them to African musicians including Miriam Makeba, Haruna Ishola and Yusufu Olatunji.

Adelaide was the twins’ biggest booster, making their matching outfits, chaperoning them to gigs and giving them professional advice. “She said, ‘When you sing, it is your deliverance,’” Lijadu remembered. “‘Don’t just make music to dance — that will go away — but sing songs that address people’s concerns and lives. Sing songs that people can listen to today, in 200 years, in 500 years.’”

The first song Taiwo wrote, “Iya Mi Jowo,” became the sisters’ 1968 debut single for Decca. They recorded another 45, a cover of Mary Wells’ “My Guy” along with a song written by Taiwo’s first boyfriend, who was later killed as a soldier in Nigeria’s then-raging civil war.

The twins met Ginger Baker, the former Cream drummer who moved to Nigeria under the spell of African rhythms and set up the country’s first 16-track studio. Taiwo and Baker fell in love and dated for two years. Baker took both sisters on a 1972 world tour with Salt, a band he’d assembled of Nigerian musicians, but plans for an album were scuttled by Baker’s record label boss. “Robert Stigwood said ‘No!’ right in front of us,” Lijadu recalled.

They released their debut album, “Urede,” in 1974 on EMI Nigeria, then signed a four-album deal with the Decca imprint Afrodisia in 1976. Neither sister played an instrument or wrote music, so they created songs by humming tunes to the musicians they’d hired, a process that often took hours to get what they desired from the skeptical male players.

Many of their songs were fueled by propulsive talking drums. “Orere-Elejigbo” begins with an emphatic call to arms — “Get out! Fight! Trouble in the streets!” — before storming the dance floor with a fusillade of propulsive beats. “Cashing In” attacked rampant corruption by government ministers with sugary sarcasm, the sisters sweetly singing the chorus, “We’re cashing in!/Still poverty’s a common sight, common sight, common sight.”

During the 1970s, a series of military coups and kleptocratic dictatorships in Nigeria became a frequent topic of the sisters’ songs, and their critiques made them a target of harassment. During the historic FESTAC ’77 Pan-African cultural festival, they were accosted in Lagos by Nigerian soldiers. Seven months pregnant, Taiwo was struck in the belly by a rifle butt; she was hospitalized and the sisters were unable to perform. “Oppression and suppression: those were very depressing days,” she said.

Despite the hopeful title of “Horizon Unlimited,” an album filled with sunny melodies and seductive grooves, it would be the last new music released by the sisters. In 1988, they traveled to the United States on tour with juju music titan King Sunny Ade, and never returned to Nigeria. Lijadu is adamant the relocation wasn’t intentional. “We did not move,” she said. “Things happened and we got stuck. We had been protesting against the Nigerian government so much we had been marked.”

Settling in New York, they played some local gigs, but mostly worked as food vendors and made clothes to sell. The sisters aimed to record new material and even start their own label, but the plans never materialized. Without proper paperwork, they weren’t able to get green cards for their children back in Nigeria, and health issues soon became constant. In 1996, Kehinde was temporarily paralyzed after a fall. Taiwo suffered her own serious accident in 2008 when subway doors closed on her head. Their mother died back home, and on their 70th birthday, Kehinde’s son in Nigeria died suddenly.

“That was what killed my sister,” Lijadu said of Kehinde, who died a year later.

Taiwo sank into depression. A fan of the group since his childhood in Nigeria, Awoyinka began recording his conversations with Taiwo as a form of therapy, and her spirits lifted. This past April, Taiwo returned to Africa for the first time in 36 years — accompanied by Awoyinka and the bust of Kehinde — with a trip to Benin. There, she took the final step of her ordination and also performed a personal reparations ceremony at the home in Ouidah of her great-grandfather, Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Souza. She also saw her two children, ages 46 and 47, for the first time since they were 10 and 11.

With the Numero rereleases on the way, there are also plans for Lijadu to perform live, likely next year as the series culminates in a boxed set. Despite the long hiatus, she said she’s eager to perform again, and seemed to have lost none of her radical spark.

“If anything happens anywhere, I will speak out,” she said. “Not just against the Nigerian government, but anywhere there will be injustice, I will speak out about it. Speak the truth, and be damned if you don’t.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.