Renowned gospel musician, Evangelist Funmi Aragbaiye, spoke with Tosin Adesile on her career and sudden disappearance from the industry, among other issues. Excerpts:
You disappeared from the music industry for a long time and returned. What went wrong then?
It is not really like anything went wrong but I can call it answered prayer. It is like when you pray for divine connection, contact, promotion and God suddenly decided to take you to places. Though I have always been travelling abroad but it’s like the job is taking a wider scope. So, that’s why for some time I have not been available to wax record or album as I used to do in the past.
But I’ll say it’s not only peculiar to FunmiAragbaye but the other artistes because the music industry is no longer what it used to be. You want an artiste to release an album, give it to a distributor at N40 or N50 when it’s being sold at N150.
So, the sudden disappearance was because I travel abroad a lot more than ever before. My job entails ministering in churches and secondly because of the problems in the entertainment industry.
What are the problems?
Like you do a production and you have to give it cheap to distributor for N50 and we all know the production cost of a CD is close to N100 or above. It’s like what you are investing in the production, you’re not getting it back. It’s difficult and you still have to do promotion and mass dubbing.
And mass dubbing sounds cost N 23 or N25. So to record an audio, you may have to spend N1.5million and to record a standard video in this country, you need more than N2 million. That is aside costume and other logistics and you want to sell it at N50. In how many years do you want to recover your production costs aside the problem of having a good marketer and the likes? I have fallen victim into the hand of some marketers that have absconded with my productions.
One of them collected the master tape of a song from me about nine years ago. He released the music into the market and sold. The master tape and royalty, I have not seen. I’ve reported him to all label owners and he has been summoned. He confirmed what happened and promises to return my master tape and royalty. Up till today, he’s nowhere to be found.
Why does making profit bother you considering this is the work of God?
I’m not talking about profit. Take all the shows I have done in the last 25years, I have never told any church whenever they engaged me to bring a dime. But my master tapes have been with one or two marketers and this has discouraged me a lot.
How did you find music or how did music find you?
The whole thing started in Ilorin in the early 70s. I was then living beside the ECWA Church in Ilorin where you have this Igbajapeople. If you’re used to Igbaja songs, you’ll know what I’m talking about. They used to have sonorous voices. That is where I started from.
There I started writing and composing songs. There, I started getting songs from my dreams. I’ll just wake up and be singing a particular song. God will then ask one to write it down and do a research in the Bible because my lyrics are taken from the Bible.
I remember the song that brought me to limelight, which is “Sioni o, Ilu ayo”, I got it from my dream and likewise all my lyrics. The “Mogbope Olorun”, I got the inspiration along Lagos/Ibadan expressway. When I was recording ”OlorunIgbala” in Lagos, I just slept off and got the song inspiration and many others.
At a particular time, your songs were the raves at birthday party, wedding etc. When you disappeared, lot of unedifying songs came. Does this make you feel guilty?
It’s because of the society we are in right away. Other artistes are springing up everywhere because of economic problems in the country. Everybody is now singing commercial music. There are calls and there are calls but there are some people that called themselves. So it’s like those who called themselves that have dominated the scene.
Why are many gospel artistes not doing well today?
The Bible makes it very clear that ‘by their fruit, you shall know them’. Whoever comes in and leaves the stage just like me must have had one problem or the other. It might be because some are not fully prepared for the work and that has to do with divine call we are talking about. You know God is a merciful God, he allows you to do whatever you like but when He is ready to strike, we’ll start to shout.
Aside from singing, what else do you do?
The work of an evangelist like me is to evangelise through songs. It’s not about singing alone, you still have to minister in church through songs and in word. So, it takes you to places. It is an enormous task. As a matter of fact, combining church business with any other work can be very difficult.
So, I minister everywhere all over in songs. So, that job alone is tasking and enormous for anybody that is divinely called to keep busy for the rest of his life. So I don’t have any job that I’m doing again. I started singing at live shows in 1989 when they were booking us for N600. People virtually drew me into it by force. When God said He’ll take me through the world, I didn’t know. From there people started inviting me for their wedding and birthday ceremonies.
Most of your earliest songs had messages for Nigeria, showing your passion for this country. How do you feel these days about Nigeria?
The more I travel, the more I pity my country. God does not make mistake. Nigeria is our Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, when I started, that was the message God gave me to preach the gospel of Christ. If you have listened to my song critically, I usually have different messages. I was caught up in the studio when June 12 crises started. The Lord said I should preach to them with Psalm 53.
I sang the song over 20 years ago and all these songs have won one award or the other. This was at a time when other artistes were are willing to play free of charge. I didn’t sing to suit the people there despite the fact that shakers of the society were there. In Nigeria, God’s message for us is to continue to be hopeful. When I see the way people scramble for visa, I feel sad.
During the Abacha regime, everyone was praying and God solved the problem. Now, we are relaxed again. People should continue to pray. Particularly what God is saying is that most of the problems we have today are man-made but His judgment will come upon people who are ruling us badly.
People at the helms of affairs are in Abuja. They are not plying bad roads. It is the masses that are at the receiving end. They only white -wash the roads the President wants to ply. I want to tell our politicians that government needs to work out low profile tenure.
Before I retired from the Ministry of Works and Transport in Ibadan, I Km road cost N8-10million and you even dualise it with at least a bridge. Now, we hear billions when they award such roads too.
