Tag: music

The rise of Nigeria to global cultural stardom

To the sprawling and visually unprepossessing Tripple C events  centre on Alara Street, Yaba for the funeral reception of Femi Esho, the recently departed showbiz impresario, Highlife musician, cultural entrepreneur and walking museum of art history on a hot and sultry afternoon about a fortnight ago. With a watery apocalypse  threatening to overwhelm the entire national firmament all the way from shell-shocked Maiduguri to the Benue River corridor, and with the toxic politics of NNPC threatening to compromise national security, only a crusty curmudgeon will fail to cut the nation some slack at this perilous moment.

  It is just possible that while national attention is wholly diverted on politics and its toxicities, the nation may be making some impressive strides in other areas of development without the prodding of the state. The implications may eventually lead to a modification of the postcolonial state itself and its invasive and authoritarian proclivities. Political contradictions often resolve themselves in dramatic and unexpected ways. No individual in history has ever been known to exercise full and complete suzerainty over a people and a nation or even an empire for very long. The dispersal of power and the micro-plurality of dominion, particularly in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation ensure that.

    There is only so much a particular leader can do at a particular period.  As De Gaulle famously puts it, the graveyard is filled with the bones of indispensable men.  When Winston Churchill was quizzed as to why he remained glum and unresponsive before an excited and rapturous crowd cheering him on shortly after leading his country to victory after the Second World War, the eccentric aristocrat retorted that if it were to be that he was being led to the execution stakes, the same crowd would be cheering and applauding. Shortly thereafter, the old soldier, statesman, exemplary English patriot and Nobel laureate in literature, was booted out of office by grateful compatriots in appreciation of his pains and effort.

   This afternoon, the crowd that came to bid Femi Esho goodbye was unbelievable in its magnitude and sheer multiplicity.  Although dominated by artistic types and recuperating veterans and virtuosos of Fela’s hand to hand combat and counter-cultural sieges, they came from all walks of life. The triple-decked hall thronged with joyous humanity. These were Esho’s people and his principal constituency. The din and commotion suggested a carnival that would have been a tad threatening and unwieldy but for the fact that like Esho himself, a man of unaffected grace and kindness, the crowd radiated goodwill and positive vibes. As somebody who has been inducted to studying crowds and power for over fifty years, one can always tell which crowd would go rogue at any point.

   It was the type of sending off reserved for princes and nobilities. As a man of the people who know that fine and exalted music is never made by ordinary people but by anjonu and irunmale touched by the irrational dynamics of genius and the unsparing muse of creativity, Esho himself would have appreciated the delicate ironies. It took the guide about ten minutes to negotiate the passage clogged with revelers and well-wishers to get to the table of the chief mourner and brother in law to the late Esho, Tunde Fagbenle ably assisted by his younger brother, Dotun, a high chief of Igbajo, and his friends, Taiwo Adedoyin, the veteran journalist  and scion of Egba nobility and Akin Fatunke, the notable publicist. Gbenga Omotoso, the well-respected  Commissioner of Information and Strategy, Lagos State, later joined.  Although older by about a year, Femi Esho, an infinitely polite and quintessential gentleman, always called his brother in law “uncle” and treated him with utmost respect and deference.

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   It was just as well.  Fagbenle, an inveterate hell-raiser and rebel against social conventions, does not take hostages or prisoners of war. Journalist, irrepressible columnist and ancient publisher of the rested London-based , Nigeria Home News, Fagbenle is a social gadfly and witty conversationalist not to be crossed lightly.  His eyes welled up with mirth and mischief as he sighted his old sparring partner. But while responding adequately to his acerbic jabs, one’s mind had strayed to more important matters. It was almost twenty two years earlier on December 4, 2002 that one had journeyed all the way from his Georgia base for the formal presentation of our last novel, Bulletin from the Land of Living Ghosts. The selfsame Tunde Fagbenle was the organizer and brain behind the launch.

   Ably chaired by Aremo Olusegun Osoba, the then Executive Governor of Ogun State through the instrumentality of a mutual friend , Niyi Omoruyi Alonge, the well-attended event was graced by the old titanic trio of Pa Abraham Adesanya, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Sir Olaniwun Ajayi. So was our old teacher at Ife, Chief Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo. Dele Alake stood in for his boss, the then governor of Lagos State, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu. Governor Bisi Akande was represented by Ayo Afolabi. It was so to say the last snapshot of a mighty but gradually disappearing river. Although at that point in time, there were already some rumblings in the House of Oduduwa, they were kept under the lid by the authority and undisputed legitimacy of the heroic triumvirate.

    As tested warriors and bare-knuckle political gladiators, they had emerged from the struggle against military autocracy as authentic heroes and saviours of their people against feudal tyranny. Their mind was concentrated rightly and justly on the struggle of the moment which was the protection of Yoruba collective interest in a unitarist federation rigged against rationality. But even at that point in time, events were conspiring to dispossess them of their Yoruba stronghold. In retaliation for their humiliating him in the previous election, Obasanjo had already detonated a twin-bomb under them and was merely waiting for the rubble to clear. Tinubu at that point in time appeared to have discovered their political naivety and vulnerabilities and was no longer willing to put up with their meddlesome supervisory role. Osoba was quietly cocking a snook at them in a cloak and dagger confrontation reminiscent of ancient palace intrigues. Bisi Akande never forgave them for hounding his beloved patron, mentor and benefactor to death.

  In the event, and with sober retrospection, the book launch turned out to be the high noon of authority and prestige of the great Yoruba leaders. As it so often happens in history, the moment of consecration is also the moment of desecration and desacralization.  Afenifere and its political launch pad, the AD or Alliance for Democracy, became irrevocably and irretrievably fractured. While the AD appears to have expired quietly after several mishaps and misalliances, Afenifere has continued to weather the storm of adversity in a diminished and attenuated form with its identity and ownership bitterly contested and often misappropriated.

   That afternoon and in a development laced with great ironies, one’s attention, despite the political theatre unfolding among the Yoruba grandees and political luminaries, was completely riveted on a lone musician at the corner of the hall dishing out memorable highlife music from a glorious and forgotten era. It was the unforgettable Alaba Pedro who soon thereafter was to join his ancestors without aplomb and fanfare. It was as if one was in eager communion with the inner essence of the Yoruba people: great music, great dancing , high drama and lyrical grandiloquence amidst outstanding culinary feats. The title one had given to a write up to commemorate the book launch was quite revealing: And There Shall be Music Again. In the essay, one had lamented the dearth of music in the country, the disappearance of secondary school musical prodigies and their groups such as Ofege, Sound Incorporation from Government College, Ibadan led by the silken and telegenically appealing Dave Yomi Adeola and the wonderful Loyola College boys with our childhood friend, Israel Babayomi Taiwo, now a medical doctor, strumming away on the lead guitar like an enraptured votary. Every secondary school student could boast of a note book filled with songs and their enchanting lyrics with the pictures of the various artistes pasted in the top corner. We had concluded the essay with the rousing prediction that at some point in the future, music would be back in the country.

    There is a difference between callow predictions about the future and the real thing. Twenty two years after, music is back in the country and in a more exponential manner. While politics continues to disgrace the nation, music continues to grace it. A new generation of Nigerian musicians has exploded on the global scene. Everywhere in the metropolitan capitals of the world, Nigerian music and cuisine are on the menu, so are Nigerian actors, dramatists, sartorial stylists and other cultural entrepreneurs. In every part of the modern world, there is a small corner which is forever Nigeria.

  The earnings and revenues accruing from these lofty ventures are humongous and incredible to say the least, given the virtual evisceration of the naira and they can be directly impactful and consequential for the nation. The state has no influence in these matters and they can actually be directed against it with baleful consequences as David Adeleke, aka Davido, has proved in his native Osun State and may yet prove in his mother state of Edo.

  Just as one was about to depart the scene after the memorable farewell to Esho, a young man who had been sitting quietly and soberly a few seats away was thrust upon one for recognition. He was the son of Tunde Thomas, aka, Tunde Nightingale, the late urbane crooner and gentleman of owanbe juju music. He was also a budding musician. Before him, Bayode, the son of Victor Olaiya, had also stormed the stage in a memorable rendition of one of his father’s old classics. The late Esho has also contributed a footballer and a musician to the global scene. Nigeria’s musical sun has risen and the sons and daughters also rise. Let us give honour and praise when it is due.