ITALIAN-ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Where Did It Go BOB EJIKE rmx

I AM THE BEST AFRO MUSICIAN – KOLA OGUNKOYA. BOB EJIKE

I AM THE BEST AFRO MUSICIAN – KOLA OGUNKOYA. BOB EJIKE I AM THE BEST AFRO MUSICIAN – KOLA OGUNKOYA. BOB EJIKE

The Proprietor of Galaxy television, (one of the few Nigerian TV stations that is not bugged down with the endless bore of discussion programmes), Chief Steve Ojo is a friend of mine. The boisterous patriarch of the Nigerian modeling industry, who was my modeling agent in my younger days when I was a top model, had once mentioned that he wanted me to present a program on his station. On that account I went to Galaxy Television Station in Ikeja. Chief Ojo was clogged with various assortments of production materials, as he told me that Galaxy Television was in concert with Kola Ogunkoya’s Gbedu Music Village, and recommended that before anything, I should go and see the marvelous work that Ogunkoya was doing, and so I drove to the joint, which was opposite Bevista in Opebi. Kola Ogunkoya had arrived. Logically, in Nigerian music you arrive when you set up your own band, nightclub and record label. That is literally what Kola Ogunkoya, The Gbedu Master did to crown the success he attained performing in the USA. What’s the secret of his American success? Kola replied,‘I won’t say, the Americans appreciate my music because Fela had done a lot of work there, talk about African music, Nigeria has a name outside, Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, Dr. Victor Olaiya. My first show in America was the Chicago Jazz Festival of 1997, most artistes were playing Chicago blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, there was The Mighty Sparrow, I was billed to play before him then when I started playing people began to dance although they did not understand me, they said you sound like Fela and Mighty Sparrow said Fela was his friend so he hooked me up with an agent in New York’.

 

Kola Ogunkoya augmented his American six-man band to a seventeen piece afro music ensemble which performed every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at Gbedu Music Village, an open air affair complete with ultra modern musical instruments including an amazing array of exotic African drums, sophisticated recording equipment, an African bar (where you could eat delicious bush meat and wash it down with sweet palm wine from a calabash) and a thatch-roofed video watching centre. Everything spiced with an Africa touch. What factors facilitated the opening of Gbedu Music Village? The amiable and balding horns man responded, ‘I want to say that in Nigeria we have the advantage of cheap labor, this is my country, the players of instruments in my band understand my dreams, they understand what’s going on. I thank God things are moving up a little bit and I can make my living just playing African music and we need to do it manually my own way. To me I thank God that today my music is no longer called afro beat. I can wake up and say my name is Uchenna, what you call yourself is what people call you. I have spent many of my career years running away from the shadow of Fela, afro beat means African music and as far as that goes, Femi Kuti cannot be the king of African music because there are a lot of people in the industry who are senior to Femi.’

Kola Ogunkoya will not say if he is the king of afro beat, he simply tags himself The Gbedu Master and refers me to his website, Kola reflected pensively, ‘I never had money in mind when I set up this place, Americans are proud of their culture, their stars, their actors etc I have a country too so I said to myself I have to go back to Nigeria.’ The objective of Ogunkoya’s organization is to give hope to Nigerian budding artistes’. . Kola Ogunkoya, a maestro in his own right has six compact discs to his credit, namely Na je Je O (1988-1989), Original Blackman (1990) Loud in Washington DC (1997), Kola Jazz’s double cd’ (1998), Lolade (1999) and Sweetie Baby (2001). His music is a pleasing combination of old high-life, harmony with modern afro rhythm, and his biggest problem, like that of most Nigerian musicians is the demise of credible record companies formally operational within the nation’s territory. Kola Ogunkoya explained, almost in desperation. ‘The problem is distribution at the street level, I am trying to see who I will give my jobs to, my last albums were released under Ivory Music and EMI, but I don’t know what’s wrong with them, now I am working on a new album I hope to find a good marketing outfit. I AM THE BEST AFRO MUSICIAN – KOLA OGUNKOYA. BOB EJIKE 

Born in Owerri in the early 70’s and raised in the barracks by a disciplinarian cop daddy.

Kola Ogunkoya grew up speaking Igbo as his first language even though his parents who were Ijebus hail from Shagamu. He learnt Yoruba under duress as a student of Eko Boys High School, Okota, Community High School, Okota and Iponri Estate High School from which Kola ended his epileptic attempt at formal Education and ended up as a trumpeter with Victor Olaiya. He later

played with the Legendary Edi Okonta and Orlando Julius before forming the Jambo Express. Kola Ogunkoya introduced saxophone to fuji music when he worked as a session man for Wasiu Ayinde Marshal and Wale Abiodun. Ogunkoya believes that it is too early to judge his performance in the Nigeria music industry. His words ‘I think people out there will tell you that I am the best. I appreciate Lagbaja but I don’t envy him, we both have our different ways of improvisation. I am fascinated by Orlando Julius, Fela Kuti, Grover Washington Jr. Victor Olaiya, Edi Okonta, Hugh Masekela’. In 1996, Kola started playing every Friday at jazzville until the opportunity came for him to travel to the US, he made three trips to the USA and in the summer of 1997 he decided to relocate to America. Mr. Ogunkoya recalls, ‘US was tough, the agent was paying my rent but after the summer there were no more shows so I had to do job’. A Diploma in Computer Programming from Howard University made professional life easier for Kola and thus he sustained himself until his final decision to return home. The stage at Gbedu Village held such Nigerian artistic celebrities as Alariwo of Africa, Wale Thompson, Eddie Remedie, Olu Maintain, Tony Tetuila, Obesere and Akin Akindele.

Kola Ogunkoya has since relocated to the USA but his music is still popular online.

BOB EJIKE

DANIEL WILSON: NIGERIAN RAGA ORIGINATOR. BOB EJIKE

DANIEL WILSON: NIGERIAN RAGA ORIGINATOR. BOB EJIKE 

I do not consider Nigerian highways safe enough for me to travel on, apologies to those who hold a contrary view. Essentially the roads are death traps in the real sense of the term. Beside incessant potholes and sudden unprecedented diversions without warnings, there is the risk of armed banditry, which the law enforcement agents have proved incapable of tackling. There are no S.O.S rescue services and road maintenance is almost non-existent, beside the fact that demented alcoholics and drug-addicted maniacs are allowed to drive commercial vehicles, and these mentally unstable villains constantly operate at such breakneck speed that would give Michael Schumacher goose pimples. This is why throughout my artistic career in Nigeria I have always rejected engagements that take me out of Lagos State, irrespective of its obvious adverse effect on my professional mobility. When the movie industry virtually shifted to Aba, Enugu and Jos, I practically quit acting. I recall rejecting a row of five movies that came from producer Cardinal Onwutalu, because they involved shooting in the East, and I didn’t have the slightest intention of putting my life on the line on the death row, knowing full well that most Nigerian artistes of yore departed this world via our horrible roads. In Europe however, I am footloose hardly does a month pass by that the wanderlust does not find me driving or jetting to performances in some distant resort. You could of course question my patriotism and accuse me of cowardice, and I will not take offence since my old man did so too, but how can you change my view where my own father failed? My reason is simple; the first law of patriotism is self-preservation. I have lost so many of my dearest friends in that incessant carnage you call roads in Nigeria, and though I loved these friends greatly, I am not in any hurry to join them, and I suspect that they might still have been alive today if, like me, they had been so courageous, refusing to ply the ramshackle and bedraggled Nigerian roads. I will never forget my best friend Nwachukwu Nwosu, a tall handsome trailblazing medical student of University of Benin who lost his life in the hands of a drunken luxury bus driver outside the campus on his 21stbirthday. The vision of his father, an Anglican Bishop, placing his hand on his son’s chest in the last sacrament during the funeral will never fail to haunt me. But I have another friend who has functionally lived his life on the road, and the road has brought him fame and fortune. Ever before I met Daniel Wilson, he was already an established showbiz name in Rivers State. He was a regular raga act on Radio Rivers 2 FM station, which was in the 1980s, one of Nigeria’s most popular radio stations. His first album Uncle Style became a

household anthem in most of the South East, though majority of the people hardly understood what the rapper was talking about, as indigenous toasting was completely new in the Nigerian entertainment industry. I was aware that Daniel Wilson was studying theatre arts in University of Port Harcourt, and was some years junior to me in class, but I had never seen him until that day in 1985 when both of us were billed to play at The University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt Dancing Competition. When I got to the theatre, Daniel Wilson was practicing with the backing group Cloud 7. He was tall, dark and muscular with weaves of jerry curls hanging over his handsome and youthful oval face, his eyes were big and intense, his stare deeply penetrating, his nose was round, his thick lips perpetually curved into a smile, his charisma captivating. There was an abyss of enchanting innocence about his personality that subdued and seduced every audience. After the exchange of pleasantries, I politely demanded that Daniel stop his rehearsals so that I could do my finishing touches in accordance with the arrangement as he had been rehearsing with the band all afternoon. He immediately took offence, so our first encounter was an argument. But the moment the show commenced we became friends, and have remained very good friends till date. I was drawn in by Daniel Wilson’s sonorous, almost feminine voice, his highly developed singing techniques and his masterly stage control. But most of all, his courage, which made him dare to be different at a time when commercial success in Nigerian music meant imitating Kris Okotie, Jide Obi, Felix Leberty, Gbugbemi Amas, and Chris Mba. (who all sang an adaptation of  the African pop style developed by Ofege’s lead singer, Melvin Ukachi Uche).

Daniel Wilson took the suicide plunge by snubbing the popular trend, thus breaking the traditional norm that was imposed by frightened poorly financed record companies, who would never risk a dime by embarking on any project outside the norm. Admittedly the musical genre that Wilson was championing was alien, outlandish, complex, and to a large extent incomprehensible, bearing in mind that the bulk of the Nigerian record buyers were illiterate traders, who in most cases didn’t attend concerts. The stage performances were left for emancipated youths, students and yuppies. Wilson’s toast was too fast for the average Nigerian ears to understand what on earth he was talking about, and at that time, the listener just impatiently waited for him to finish rapping and hopefully sing, which he hardly did. That was at least for that time his undoing.

Most experienced Nigerian music observers know that there is a great difference between succeeding as a stage act and making a breakthrough as a recording artiste. Making it on stage is relatively simple, while recording success involves high risk financial investment on the record and video, with very little guarantee, which are often carried out by the artiste and his sponsors (not the

record company as frequently implied by the album sleeves), and thereafter the artiste, (and in most cases, not the record company) embarks on the costly ‘public relations’ tours to radio stations and television houses that eventually get the music and video to the public, if generously done. When all these rituals are performed right and the artiste becomes popular, he faces the other harsh reality,

that in Africa fame and money are distinct and separate, because poor economy means that a Nigerian music fan prefers a bowl of isiewu and bottles of Big Stout to the video CD of his star idol, as long as he can listen to the music and watch the video for gratis on radio and TV, and that the media fame of a musical piece is not synonymous with good sales, therefore being famous in the

mass media is not the same thing as being rich. This is the reason why seasoned artistes like Tunde Kuboye, Dede and Geraldo Pino have virtually kept out of the recording circuit, while maintaining buoyant stage performances, and smarter recording artistes take a second job that guarantees eba, since they can’t eat fame. But Daniel Wilson, more than anybody else, understood his innate capabilities, pitched against all the odds, he knew that he was the combination of all these artistic virtues, because of his witty stage craft, developed by Ola Rotimi in the formidable Uniport theatre arts department. Undaunted by the predictable commercial failure of his debut album, Wilson plunged into a recording and performing career and pushed and pushed the brick wall of conservatism until it gave way thereby changing the form of Nigerian pop culture forever, evolving and sustaining a Nigerian version of the Jamaican

raga music, which became more and more indigenized until it grew into a distinctively Nigerian art form, becoming the foremost ideological and musical framework with which Nigerian music found character and identity, Nigerian youth finding instant relevance and easy and lasting expression till today. But ironically few people remember that the originator was Daniel Wilson, long before TLZ, Sweat, The Mandators, Isaac Black, Oritz Wiliki, Majek Fashek, Ras Kimono, Felix Duke, Idris Abdulkarim, Plantashun Bois, Tony Tetuila, Daddy Showkey, Daddie Fresh and the other Ajegunle boys who became the musical heirs of Daniel Wilson. After my graduation, National Youth Service separated Daniel and I, but I still remember my trip with him from Enugu to Port Harcourt, shortly after the release of my debut album No Vacancy.

Throughout the travel my artistry was under endless tirades of Daniel’s merciless criticism as he took the album apart song by song and tore my efforts to shreds, but I realized that an artiste’s friend is not the person that praises his works, but rather the person that points out loopholes for correction in his opera. He had linked up with some Lebanese hoteliers with whom he presented a totally new concept of entertainment, a moving caravan, on which he performed live to the people in the street. Today many record companies use this system for advertising their new releases. By the time I left Nigeria for Europe Daniel Wilson’s 999 was topping the national charts. Many changes came into being within the next 13 years of my absence, but one major difference was that

Raga music had come to stay, no longer as a musical import, but as our own thing. Daniel Wilson was the first Nigerian artiste that visited me when I returned. His musical triumph had also taken him to far and near, enriching his experience and repertoire. He had registered himself in the national psyche as a phenomenon, annually picking up several awards and making amazing record

sales and performing in respectable shows. I visited his band which was led by Felix Duke in Abule-Egba, and I still could not come to terms with the fact that a celebrity who had made the kind of contribution Wilson had made to youth culture, mass education, social mobilization and the happiness of the average person would still be struggling with cosmopolitan survival. His luck however came with his marriage to Juliet, a soft-spoken beautiful woman of razor sharp intelligence and dazzling humility. I was a regular guest in their regal Lekki mansion, and Daniel never spared me for a day. He lashed out at my performance in virtually all my films, and refused to accept the excuse that that was the way the producer wanted it, and he forbid me to enter the music recording studio without him. He also forbid me to write any story about him, bluntly refusing to grant me any interview on the grounds that we are friends and he cannot imagine me as a journalist. When I was recording Does Your Mama Know? Daniel used to come to the studio by 3am, driving across The Third Mainland Bridge to Ikeja. ‘Aren’t you afraid of robbers?’ I would ask, and he would reply rather immodestly.

‘Bob have you forgotten my name?’ But modesty is not Daniel Wilson’s strong point, and this has earned him a lot of trashing from colleagues and the media. Never have I seen an artiste more confident and less diplomatic about the supremacy of his art. It took all my force of character to resist Daniels insistence that I turn my music into Calypso, which he visualizes as the genre of the future. The argument roared on between Daniel and my producer Chris Okoro (who was also producing Daniel’s album at that time). I knew that Wilson was about to embark on another gamble, which was unlikely to succeed as nobody else in Nigeria was interested in Calypso, but he was so convinced about his idea and there was no way to get him to listen to a different view. In the only profession where vanity is a virtue, modesty becomes the vice of indecision. His album came out, all Calypso, and predictably unsuccessful, but I have never doubted that Daniel Wilson knows where he is going, my only doubt was whether this was the right time to lead another musical exodus.

 

‘If you want to be a leader you cannot run with the pack’, he reminded me during our last meeting, putting his flashy jeep and luxurious compound at my disposition for the shooting of the video clip of Iyawo Mi and Fiesta. Thereafter I have recorded a single in Daniel’s luxurious home in Lekki Phase one and deliberately took my time to spend a holiday at my friend’s, that was before he was appointed Technical Advisor to President Goodluck Jonathan and he moved to Abuja and transmogrified into a politician as they come.

BOB EJIKE

IN THE STUDIO WITH NELSON BROWN BY BOB EJIKE

IN THE STUDIO WITH NELSON BROWN

BY BOB EJIKE 

DON JAZZY, LOULU AKINS AND NELSON BROWN

Almost certainly, whenever a hit came out of Nigeria, it’s color was Brown.
 

I spent two months with ace music producer Nelson Brown. Born in Epe, Lagos

state, of an Isoko soldier and trader parents, Brown lived in Agegunle, a breeding ground for different forms of talent. The young Onome started his musical journey in a church. At the age of 13, he was already a full blown musician.

Emotional and sometimes physical scuffles between him and his father who saw him as a loafer sent him out of his parent’s home and as a first child, he had to fend for himself and the other seven members of the family. Finally, he proved his father (whom he still strives to impress) wrong with albums such as Cashman Davies’s “Joromi” , Black reverends’ “Ayangba Girls”, Azados’ “you sis the one”, Sound Sultan, and Shiner Ray’s “Akwaoche”( which started a riot that cost several lives

and razed the Oyingbo market) Almost certainly, whenever a hit came out of Nigeria, it’s color was Brown. ‘what is the Magic?'

Nelson smiles boyishly, ‘it’s not just a magic, it’s knowing what the artiste wants, not all my 500 albums were successful, some were not well promoted so the public did not hear them, sometimes the artistes are not good or they don’t have the right material. A producer most be good and this involves making music for the public, not for himself. To achieve this, one must constantly study the market and give the people what they want’.

Brown and I have were working on a musical album entitled Afro Rock Fiesta, effecting such a project with Nelson Brown is every Nigerian musical artiste’s dream. Obviously, Brown had registered more successful records than everybody else in the country, monsters- hit like Baba Fryo’s Denge Poze, Daddy Showkey’s Diana, Daddy Fresh’s Faka Fiki Faka, and Elerugberu, Plantashun Boiz’ among 500 others, and for Brown, money is not everything.

He reflects philosophically: ‘You never know which one of these youngsters will be the next superstar, that’s why I give them my money and my time’.

He regrets turning down Tony Tetuila and took one feather off Nelson Brown’s hat. Brown has since learnt his lesson. He produces virtually every kid that comes his way, many a time for
nothing.

A comparism with his colleagues and predecessors such as Odion Iruoje, Sony Okosuns, Harry Mosco, Tony Okoroji, Pa Chris Ajilo, Lemmy Jackson, Leslie Bruner, Nkono Teles, the late Jake solo, Gordy Oku, Laolu Akins, Chris Okoro, Paul IK Dairo et al would amount to an injustice to Brown because he started out with most of these producers at a time when the Nigerian scene was

dominated by the reggae music of Tera Kota, The Mandators, Oritz Wiliki, Majek Fashek, Ras Kimono, etc. and while the others remained somewhat artistically static, Nelson Brown changed with time and took control of an entire generation of Nigerian recording artists leading them into the modern musical order. The music maestro admits that I was the first artist to pay him his worth, but no sooner did I pay him each day than he distributed the money to his artistes.

After nine and half years of recording in Nigeria, I had arrived at the realization that our beloved country is not a viable terrain for musical investment and growth, that having contributed my quota to development of almost every aspect of literary and performing arts, it was perhaps time to move on, when an innocent critique I did on a famous afro musician brought angry e-mails that reminded me that much of my 4000 songs have remained unrecorded. I decided to take the challenge off the pages of the newspaper, into the studios where it belongs, as that was the only way that the pugnacious argument could be of any use to anybody. To suddenly embark on this capital intensive project which would involve using both a digital studio for computerized equipment and an analogue studio for live instrumentation, I contacted Nelson Brown. Brown was however not the first producer I contacted for Afro Rock Fiesta. When I consulted Eddy Lawani, my former manager and showbiz consultant, explaining my intension to recreate a brand of afro rock music which had died with Osibisa, he was certain that the best bet for such a fusion of the

seasoned African root with contemporary musical forms was Laolu Akins especially with his seasoned African root with contemporary musical forms was Laolu Akins especially with his success with Shina Peters: I ran into Laolu Akins when I went to book Decca Records and after ventilating his frustration with the preponderance of hip hop music, he literally frightened me away with a production fee that was as much as my entire budget. But frankly speaking, I had gone to Akins out of respect for Eddy Lawani. Evidently I have my preference for a producer who is still in tune with the current trends in the industry, especially since this album is intended for the international market. Besides Akin was basically a pop producer when he launched a cynical Shina Peters with the all-time masterpiece ‘Ace’. I believe that Nelson Brown, with his Rap, Raga and hip hop background could bring into being an afro rock album that would change Nigerian music forever, putting it into main stream world music, a feat that not even Fela Kuti actualized.

Once arrangements were made and agreement concluded with Nelson Brown, I went shopping for percussive instruments, a blessing that God in his infinite mercies had endowed Africa with, but which is ironically often lacking in our music because of our incessant attempts at westernization.

At the end, I found 15 of them, sambas, bongos, maracas, various assortments of raffia, bead, bamboo and Iron shakers, wooden xylophones, gongs, bells, sticks etc.,

Sequencing at Agos studio was a mission impossible because Nelson Brown has a kind of cult followership among budding artiste, sometimes there were as many as ten people battling for his attention inside the studio while he records my music.

Brown and I built the musical backbone for seven songs, including Iyawo Mi, You Keep Me Guessing , Fiesta (duet with Stella d’light), Jealousy(Duet with Mr. Cool), Give Women A Chance, Mirror, Mirror, (On The Wall). Brown encouraged me to express myself for the first time as a multilingual performer thus there are intros, verses and rap in Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba and pidgin English. He had made a mission statement that challenged all my previous producers including the European ones, and he was visibly living up to it functionally, he imparted the best of creativity on my music, leaving nothing to chance. All the musicians that he hired were the best in the country (no second best). The choral group of thirteen singers, led by Joane (who has performed in almost all Nigerian successful hits), did a good job.

 

BOB EJIKE