Tag: MohBad

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti had close to thirty years on stage before passing on at the height of his prolific

creative career. He left behind the legacy of Afrobeat, a distinctive sound which reverberated round

the world and drew considerable attention to the music scene in Nigeria. Afrobeat was the logical

successor to highlife but as earlier mentioned apart from the Kutis, not many musicians had the

courage to push Afrobeat forward until many years after Fela left the scene. Then, artists, mostly too

young to have had first hand experience of prime Fela began to experiment with sounds which were

arranged to form a new genre now called Afrobeats.

At the turn of this century the centre of Nigeria’s music scene seemed to have swung quite decisively

to Ajegunle, a sprawling, much crowded, multi ethnic and multi cultural suburb of Lagos. Artistes like

Fryo and Daddy Showkey began to produce what can be described as dance music with the music

providing a background to dances such as galala, konto and azonto. This marked a departure from

Afrobeat and the jazz infused music of Lagbaja who performed from behind the anonymity provided

by cloth masks. It is interesting to note that the existing streams of music at that time hardly

overlapped each other as the crowds which were attracted to the Motherland, venue of Lagbaja’s

shows would not have given any thought to paying a visit to Ajegunle to catch a Fryo show and vice

versa.

The era of the ascendancy of the thumping rhythm of music coming out of Ajegunle did not last long

however before musicians like 2face Idibia and P-square came on the scene to lay the foundation for

Afrobeats. This foundation was rapidly built upon by D’banj and spectacularly by Olu Maintain

whose monster hit Yahoozee took the country and the rest of the world by storm. Yahoozee, in spite

of its controversial title which appeared to eulogise advanced fee fraud dubbed 419 had everyone

including the then USA Secretary of state, the usually unflappable Colin Powell on their feet. At this

time Nigerian popular music appeared to be in a state of flux as acts such as 9ice and even Weird MC

dazzled for a while before retreating into the background as it were. However, this was only prelude

to the emergence of full blown Afrobeats with Davido, WizKid and Burna boy in the vanguard of a

music revolution which quickly crossed the boundaries of Nigeria and became a global phenomenon

in a way that even Fela’s music was not able to do. Colin Powell moved his distinguished body to

Yahoozee but this was a low key performance compared to the multitude of recognised celebrities

and world leaders who crowded dance floors everywhere you turned your attention to, to bugga

enthusiastically with Kizz Daniel. Now, there is no corner of the world into which Afrobeats has not

penetrated. It’s foremost exponents are being invited to play in all sorts of venues all around the

world and especially at most iconic sporting events. The closing ceremony at the football World Cup

in Qatar was graced by Davido whilst the half-time entertainment at the American version of the

World Cup, the Super bowl was provided by the Afrobeats (Nigerian) trio of Burna boy, Rema and

Tems. Even the House of Windsor was not left out of the rush as Tiwa Savage was one of the stand

out performers at the the long awaited coronation of King Charles III of England, signifying the

breaching of the formidable walls of conservatism by music made in Nigeria by Nigerians.

I am not quite sure why Afrobeats has swept the world as most assuredly it has done over the last

five years and I am not sure that anyone has bothered to study this phenomenon in any systematic

manner. However, it is safe to surmise that there is a complex mesh of reasons for the rise and rise of

Afrobeats.

Read Also: Fans contributed to MohBad’s tragic death, says Ruger

Highlife, like Afrobeat after it, was a polyphonic creation which captured the rhythms of musical

styles from all over the world. But, the extent of the mixing involved in these genre is nothing

compared with what you find in Afrobeats. To the mixture which birthed highlife and Afrobeat we

can add a whole lot of rhythms including indigenous music from many sources; reggae, hip-hop, rap,

even hard rock, have all found space within Afrobeats. This being the case, virtually everyone is able

to find some form of reference and association witchin Afrobeats. It is not unlikely that even more

people will be drawn into the enchanted circle of Afrobeats as it develops further along the path of

world domination of popular music.

At the time that Afrobeats began its ascendancy on the global music scene, there was a large,

Nigerian dominated African Diaspora waiting to receive it. Many of them were second generation

migrants who had been exposed to African music within their domestic space and were therefore

oriented towards Africa as far as their musical tastes were concerned. They quickly jumped on the

Afrobeats band wagon as soon as it rolled into town. The long established African Diaspora in the

Americas, the Caribbean and Europe were not tardy about coming on board and it appeared that

there was a readymade audience for Afrobeats all over the world so that there was no problem with

penetrating the market as soon as the product became available.

A very small but extremely influential group that enhanced the popularity of Afrobeats were

members of the global musical elite. Musicians such as Beyoncé, Madonna, Ed Sheeran, Justin

Bieber, Dred and Drake who have either released Afrobeats themed records or have collaborated

with Afrobeats stars like WizKid, Tems, Shatter Wale and others to popularize both Afrobeats as well

as the respective artistes globally thereby strengthening all the brands involved with these

collaborative efforts.

In those long gone days of analogue transactions, you had to walk into a shop and go through the

physical transaction of buying a record. Now you can buy your music at the touch of a screen. This

has made it easy for purchases to be made and tracked in real time. We know that Afrobeats musical

tracks are setting records in terms of sales in different parts of the world. The progress or otherwise

of the sales performance of records are now monitored in a way that it could not be done in the days

of highlife when in addition, all sales were strictly local. Today all the music streamed on Spotify,

Boom and other streaming services is paid for in foreign currency so that the leading exponents of

Afrobeats became instant multi millionaires, not in the local currency but in American dollars. This

has lifted them out of the local gig scene and catapulted them onto the most iconic stages of the

world. These music venues are being packed out by crowds which do not seem to get enough of the

musical offerings of their heroes and the financial fallout from this is simply fabulous. These stars are

not only rich but are famous, well beyond the fifteen minutes of fame allotted to the modern human

beings by Andy Warhol. Being an Afrobeats star has therefore become a massive deal and the path

to all that fame and fortune is littered by the broken and torn bodies of those who failed to make the

grade.

Mohbad was definitely not one of those who failed to make the grade as the torrential outpour of

grief which followed his demise testifies to, so eloquently. He did not get to perform at the 02 arena

and no makeshift stage was erected for any performance at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as was

the case with WizKid but given the trajectory of his all too brief career, such performances were

going to be a feature of his career had he lived. He had demonstrated enough talent in every aspect

of stage craft to suggest that he was destined for the top and a seat with the big boys had he lived.

This is why he was mourned so passionately with candle light parades in his honour in places all over

the world, in places where he had never been but where his musical foot prints have left indelible

prints. To borrow the words of Shakespeare, nothing became him in life as in the leaving of it but it

has to be said that it was the things he did in life that led to his glorification in death. People from all

over the world had been touched by the power of his musical genius and wanted more of it.

Unfortunately, there can’t be anything more from Mohbad.

There have been so many angles to the life of Mohbad that his passing is shrouded in mystery,

mystery which could not be resolved after his internment and has led to the exhumation of his body

in an attempt to answer a plethora of questions to be asked by a post-mortem examination, the

results of which are awaited with bated breath, especially by the multitude of people who are

convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that there is more than meets the eye in the matter of

Mohbad’s sudden death. It has not been difficult for me to resist the urge to add my own speculation

to what is already on ground.

By dying at twenty-seven, Mohbad has been enrolled in a unique club of artistes who share the

unfortunate distinction of dying at that age. Another distinction shared by the people in this club is

their undoubted musical genius. The first and perhaps the most intriguing member of the club is

Robert Johnson, an itinerant blues guitarist who wowed audiences principally in the Mississippi delta

in the nineteen thirties. His greatest claim to fame however resides in the story told about him to the

effect that he sold his soul to the Devil to acquire his virtuosity on the guitar. An aspect of this story

which I find most intriguing is the insistence that this transaction took place at a crossroads, the

residence of no less a presence than Esu Larooye, one of the gods associated with creativity in the

Yoruba pantheon of gods. Johnson was Afro-American and this fits very nicely into this narrative.

Johnson also loved his guitar, whiskey and married women with great passion and the expressed

suspicion is that he was poisoned by a jealous husband. As no post-mortem was carried out on his

body, this suspicion has never been confirmed and the answer has been interred with him in a grave

the whereabouts of which can only be guessed at.

No such fancies have been associated with other members of this club but they are nevertheless still

eminently worthy of mention. Artistes, especially those at the very top live on the edge where there

is very little space for other people. They may be surrounded by a retinue of hired help but are

forced into loneliness which colours their everyday existence. Many of them are haunted by their

extravagant musical gifts with which they can hardly cope. They then turn to alcohol, drugs and sex

to damp down the fires burning inside them. In doing so, they leave themselves open to the charge

of recklessness and personal endangerment which may alienate them from a lot of other people.

Jimi Hendrix, probably the greatest rock and electric guitarist that ever lived died at twenty-seven. So

did Janis Joplin, one of the most famous female vocalists of all time and definitely the best of her

generation. Another illustrious member of this club was Amy Whitehouse, another extravagantly

talented singer who left far too early in her career. One of the outstanding groups in an era of iconic

groups was the Rolling Stones. It was put together by the multi-talented Brian Jones whose

dissonance led to his expulsion from the Rolling Stones which he had founded and drowned in his

own swimming pool aged only twenty-seven. Other members of the band including Mick Jagger

who for good measure welcomed his eighth child at the age of seventy-nine are still rocking and

rolling on stage.

Like all those talented musicians, Mohbad has gone the way of all flesh way too early. The cause of

his death is yet unknown but his many admirers can be consoled by the body of work which he left

behind as evidence of his having been here and done something remarkable with the little time at

his disposal.

I must confess right at the onset that I had absolutely no knowledge of Mohbad until the day after his death was announced. That being the case, I must confess that his name in the title of this piece is no more than a convenient peg on which to hang this article. After all, I have very little knowledge of the artiste and even less about his artistic work. These notwithstanding, it would be negligent for a regular columnist to ignore the furore which the passing of Mohbad has generated in virtually all media outlets over the last two weeks.

The first time ever that I heard about Mohbad, real name,  Ilerioluwa Oladimeji Aloba was in a news feed which announced his sudden death. What drew my immediate attention to the subjet was his age. There is some element of waste when a twenty-seven year old person is reported dead especially when the death was sudden as it was in this case. The first thought in such circumstances is that there is more to that event than meets the eye. In the case of Mohbad such suspicion was justified by the fact that the young man had questioned the status of his safety shortly before he died in what has turned out to be inexplicable circumstances . Given this background, it is puzzling that he was rushed into his grave less than twenty-four hours after he died. It has even been said that his father had to be persuaded from lowering his son’s body into the grave as late as midnight on the day of his demise. One wonders why there was the need to dispose of his body with such  undignified haste.

Even under the most normal of circumstances, there is a great deal of sadness attached to the death of a twenty-seven year old.  At that age, one is confidently expected to be in prime physical, mental and psychological condition. At that age one is expected to be on the threshold of one career or the other after a long period of tutelage. At that age one would have invested in training for a career and thinking of settling down to begin to shoulder marital responsibilities. To put it into proper context, death at twenty-seven is a tragedy of monumental proportions not only for the immediate family of the victim but to society as well. Up till then, the dead person would have been a consumer of public amenities and just about to become a contributor to societal needs. It was from these points of view that I considered the report of the sudden demise of Mohbad.

Within twenty-four hours after I became aware of the person however, it became clear to me that Mohbad was not just any young man but one who had contributed much more to society than your typical twenty-seven year old. On the contrary, he was a big star, shining uncommonly brightly in a Milky way of stars, a young man of exceptional promise which made his demise all the more painful from both personal and societal points of view. I have always been in awe of people with any form of musical talent probably because my only talent in that direction is severely restricted to listening to the product of those to whom the Muses have been kind enough to admit into the brotherhood of Orpheus. He it was who was so gifted that he was able to charm his way into the underworld there to seduce Hades with his talent. He gave such a performance before the the Lord of the Underworld that his wife Euripides who had died was given leave to go back to the land of the living. Such is the power of music that according to the immortal bard, music is the food of love which sickens and dies in its absence. I have always wished that I had a modicum of musical talent but having lived so long without it, I have learnt to come to terms with my condition.

I have been a lover of music all my life, since I was first fascinated by the music of the young Victor Olaiya singing Mumude around 1958. However, I really arrived on the music scene in those halcyon days of the sixties, just after independence when music of all genres began to shake our air waves. Music was not only coming from Ghana, Britain and the USA but it was being made and released by a crowd of musicians right here in Nigeria, so much so that the music aficionado was spoilt for choice. Those were the heydays of highlife and there is little doubt that the high priest of highlife was Bobby Benson.

Bobby Benson had started his career as an entertainer in the period after World War II and formed a big band which played a broad repertoire of music styles and was fronted by his wife who danced to the melodies of her husband’s band. However, it was the time that highlife was taking shape and Bobby Benson became a pioneer of this genre which was to become very popular in both Ghana and Nigeria. It is not therefore coincidental that Bobby Benson who played trumpet, saxophone and piano had space in his band for a bevvy of young musicians who can now be regarded as having provided a backbone for the music genre which over a span of more than seventy years has refused to die. It might have changed shape and evolved in other directions but it has survived all kinds of tribulations and after all said and done, there is Afrobeats today because there was highlife and people like Bobby Benson who brought it to life. Bobby Benson was not just an entertainer who played highlife but a mentor to some of the legends who left their mark on the development of that musical genre. The alumni of the Bobby Benson school school of highlife music reads like a list of who is who in the field.

Read Also: Mohbad: We responded to police enquiry since September 28, says NDLEA

One of his earliest mentees was Victor Olaiya who in his prime was reverently referred to as the evil genius of highlife and was closest to being named as the official highlife musician to the nation as he played several gigs on official occasions. He was on the bandstand when Queen Elizabeth came visiting in 1956 and shared the bandstand with the great, Louis Armstrong to celebrate Nigeria’s independence in 1960. He was back three years later to celebrate with the country when she attained the status of a Republic. One other factor that is worthy of note is Victor Olaiya’s longevity as he was active on the music scene for more than sixty swinging years as band leader and front line trumpeter. There was also a time when he joined the soul music bandwagon at a time when that American export was sweeping the world.

Another Bobby Benson alumnus was Victor Uwaifo who first came to public attention for his high jump exploits as a student of St, Gregory’s  College in the fifties. Known for his virtuosity with the guitar, Uwaifo turned to, or rather, combined his music with academics and went all the way to becoming a Professor of fine arts at the University of Benin. Joromi, perhaps his best known work was a monster hit in 1966 but has retained a freshness which has continued to impress generations unborn at the time it was composed.

John Akintola Ademuwagun who left the sedate setting of the classroom for the hurly burly music world also served tutelage under Bobby Benson. Better known as Roy Chicago, he was one of the better known bandleaders in the sixties as his Abalabi Rhythm. Dandies fronted by the velvety voiced Tunde Osofisan churned out chart busters one after the other with onilegogoro composed by Jimi Solanke being the biggest hit of them all. At over eighty, Jimi Solanke is still making music in his own inimitable fashion. Roy Chicago’s greatest claim to fame was that he not only reached into the richness of Yoruba culture to create his own unique sound but somewhere along the way he introduced gángan into highlife.

Another product of the Bobby Benson school was the maestro from the creeks, the unforgettable Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson. Just writing that name has led to an attack of goose pimples brought on by the memory of the smoothness of his music. For good measure, Rex Lawson played trumpet with both Victor Olaiya and Roy Chicago before forming his own band. Unfortunately, his enormous potential was truncated by death at the age of thirty-three. His was a case of not how long but how well as he left behind a massive legacy in the minds of those who have been fortunate to have the opportunity of listening to the music of this honorary but highly appreciated Cardinal of the Church of highlife. Zeal Onyia and Eddie Okonta are two other giants of highlife who once studied at the feet of Bobby Benson.

All the musicians mentioned above were not only superb instrumentalists, they were all composers of the first order. Bob Dylan it was who won the Nobel prize for Literature for the sheer poetry of his songs and this is as it should be because what are songs if they are not poetry set to music? Apart from being poets, these musicians were also great instrumentalists coaxing beautiful sounds from their instruments with which they developed a familiarity reserved for parts of their body. They were not born with the virtuosity we have come to associate with them but learnt how to play them and then developed a familiarity with them through long bouts of assiduous practice. These men were however not just players of their instruments but were creators, explorers of uncharted territories who had to make things up as they went along. They were also men of iron discipline who had to convince other men to submit to their demonstrable superiority in skill and determination to make something out of practically nothing.

Bobby Benson and Co were all innovators but the man who took highlife forward was Fela Ransome-Kuti who came back from his musical studies in England and put a band he called Koola Lobitos together. Highlife was fusion music at its best as it contained elements from jazz, calypso, samba, ball room music and indigenous music all rolled together to produce a giddy mixture of sound and emotions which captivated a large audience in Ghana and Nigeria. Fela extended that tradition but unlike the pioneers who incorporated the big band sound of jazz giants like Louis  Armstrong, Count Basie and Duke Ellington into their music the jazz content in Fela’s music was the atonal jazz genre of bee-bop made popular by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davies. You either liked it or you did not, which is why music lovers of the time were almost equally divided in their appreciation or the lack of it for the music being played by Fela and his Koola Lobitos. As we moved into the seventies however Fela had an epiphany and began to play a brand of music which he called Afrobeat because it was the sound of Africa produced by a band which for emphasis was called Africa ’70. This medium crossed all boundaries both physical and psychological and became truly international as it left the shores of Africa for other parts of the world. By the eighties Fela, now known as Anikulapo-Kuti was perhaps the best known Nigerian outside the country both for his music and his activism which was directed primarily against the Nigerian state with whom he had a lot of beef to settle. He also gained instant fame or notoriety in some quarters when he married twenty-seven wives in one day. Fela was a classically trained musician and in the early days of Koola Lobitos, all the members played from the sheet music in front of them on the band stand! This was a departure from the older exponents of highlife who were taught to play by ear. Like them however Fela was an instrumentalists par excellence who made great music from his trademark trumpet, the saxophone and the electric organ. As it has turned out, the most famous alumni of the Fela school are his own sons, Femi and Seun who are keeping a family tradition in music going strong.

•To be continued……..