Celebrity photographer, Toyin Sokefun- Bello, fondly called TY Bello, is 40.
‘The land is green’ crooner celebrated the milestone in faraway Dubai. Not only this, the birthday girl got a gift she has been longing for; a partnership with Canon. Excited about the gift, the mother of twins posted on the instagram’ I have fantasised about this for the longest time and it really is a dream come true and I look forward to the amazing collaborations together.’
Veteran actor, Richard Mofe Damijo, aka RMD, has gone down memory lane in what he calls his ‘lens flirt’ with celebrity photographer and musician, TY Bello.
According to the actor, their ‘affair’ started several years ago in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state and it was completely unplanned.
“We met at Meridien Hotel in uyo and after the pleasantries I spontaneously surrendered to her camera. The result was some awesome black and white photos one of which eventually became my very first Instagram post. The shoot probably lasted all of 20 minutes but it was a remarkable 20 minutes and after that encounter it became like an itch that would only be soothed with a more comprehensive shoot,” he recalls.
The actor remembered how he had several appointments with TY Bello which were a bust until another opportunity came recently
“Ty said she only saw water and sunset and canoes and piers. No fine boy photos. With Ty it’s a waste of time trying to argue when she makes up her mind.
“Again I submitted myself and went to Makoko slum, a liberating experience for me as I felt completely at home and had the time of my life watching her work her magic,” he added.
He described TY as a consummate Artist who loves and understands the beauty and pureness of light and photography. He also describes the recent shoot as a rare collection of photos that shows him in a light he loves.
“Having said all that though, I wonder if I get to be slayed again by her lenses when I turn 60 in 4 years, only God knows what she would see then, probably private jets and clouds,” he adds.
CELEBRITY photographer and musician, T.Y Bello is in a celebratory mood as her mother turned 77.
Taking to her Instagram page to celebrate the septuagenarian, the songstress showered accolades on her mother who she described as the most beautiful woman on the planet.
“My mother is a beautiful woman. I also thought she was the richest woman on the planet when I was 4 years old. I was so broken and in disbelief when she explained that she wasn’t. How could she not be the richest? I tried to do a headcount of everyone living at our house. Every niece, nephew, cousin, distant cousin, former neighbor, people staying over to be closer to law school… and countless strangers that she fed every day,” she recalls.
Among other things, she also described her mother as the toughest woman who had a great balance between discipline and liberty.
“My mother is a haaaaaaaard worker and I guess that’s where I get my resilience from. She also taught me how to be adventurous, to travel and to dance, to enjoy getting older and be grateful. She’s taught me how to fight for what I believe in and to have this north facing arrow on my head. I’m so proud of this woman. Love you momei. Happy Mother’s Day on Sunday, she concludes.
SINGER and celebrity photographer, TY Bello, was in Borno State recently for a visit to soldiers fighting Boko Haram terrorists and the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp. She shared some of her interesting yet terrifying encounters with the soldiers, civilian JTF and the IDPs through her Instagram account.
The singer posted a picture of a soldier X-ray scan showing an anti aircraft bullet lodged his throat.
She wrote; “Soldier X: While I made portraits of our wounded soldiers at the military hospital in Maiduguri, one of the soldiers made a statement that I haven’t been able to shake off. ‘One way you know a soldier has been hit is that they suddenly start shouting out names of family members’. This statement kept playing over and again in my mind, especially when I got the most colorful welcome from my family, barely a week away on this journey. Many soldiers play this long overdue welcome party in their heads daily, and the sad thing is that for some, it may never happen.
“I had long conversations with soldiers about how they got wounded in battle. They told me how grateful they were to be alive, some of their colleagues weren’t as lucky. I also got to speak with medical personnel, on the uniqueness of their work in a war against terror.”
She also announced that in due course, she will be sharing their stories especially that of Soldier X, who she never met, but made a photograph of his X-ray. “An anti aircraft bullet, big and strong enough to tear through the titanium body of an airplane, was lodged in his throat, and for some reason, it didn’t blow his head off, this soldier lived through his surgery and got to take the removed bullet home as a reminder,” she wrote.
The singer also hinted that she’s working on a new song when she posted a picture of her recording in the studio with the caption ‘New music loading’.
By now, almost everyone in the attentive audience in Nigeria and even abroad knows Olajumoke’s story.
If anyone quips “Olajumoke who?” at the mention of that name, simply add “the bread seller.” That should settle it. For she is the only person bearing that name and most recently in that line of business who has been the focus of media attention lately and, meaning no disrespect to other bearers of that evocative name, the only Olajumoke that seems to matter at this time.
Balancing a pyramid of loaves of Agege bread on her head as she made her rounds in one of the seedier neighbourhoods of Lagos, the winsome mother of two strayed into a photo shoot, of which the hip-hop artist Tinie Tempah was the subject. But when the shoot was published in the social media, it was the woman carrying a pyramid of neatly stacked loaves of bread on her head that caught public attention.
Everyone wanted to know her identity. The photographer, TY Bello, eventually located her, gave her a makeover, and published her pictures in This Day Style magazine.
Olajumoke’s life has not been and will never be the same again. The pictures catapulted her from obscurity – from near invisibility, despite that pyramid of loaves of bread – to celebrity. It is the stuff of fairy tales.
Banks that would have turned down her application for a loan on the threshold have now signed her up as brand ambassador. Were she minded to seek a loan from them now, they would gladly oblige. What collateral can be greater or more valuable than the star herself?
Her clients also include manufacturers of consumer goods, fashion houses and modelling agencies, and she is billed to figure as a face of Lagos as the state celebrates its 50th anniversary next year.
From the world of rowdy bus-stops and crowded buses and perhaps the occasional taxi cab, from the world of roadside meals washed down with “pure water” sachets, from nondescript clothing and flip –flops, she has been thrust into the world of limousines and airports and air travel and four-course meals in the swankiest restaurants and hotels and designer apparel and high-heeled shoes.
A property developer has offered her a luxury apartment that only the most upwardly mobile can aspire to live in or own in one of the most opulent neighbourhoods in town, and has thrown into the bargain a fund for the education of Olajumoke’s children up to university.
Without stating whether it has been so commissioned, an Instagram site has announced that it is accepting bookings from those who may need Olajumoke’s services. Business has been brisk, I gather.
The evangelical churches that promise deliverance and prosperity now daily invoke her as a “point of contact” in their supplication for transformative miracles in the lives of their teeming congregations.
She has been a subject of countless profiles in the national and international media and even her name has undergone some transformation of the eponymous kind: ThisDay’s Olusegun Adeniyi has coined the term Olajumokeism to denote the phenomenon that Olajumoke’s life emblematises.
The perceptive and engaging Punch columnist Abimbola Adelakun has in a sober piece pointed out that Olajumoke’s dizzying rise to stardom illustrates for the most part the failure of a system that afforded her no formal education and reduced her – and millions like her – to the drudgery and danger of street hawking.
But Adelakun’s is almost a lonely voice. Virtually everyone else is celebrating and wishing fervently that an Olajumoke would surface in their lives, now, in these disarticulated times.
I envy Olajumoke and her family their good fortune. But if it is not properly managed, they are going to pay a high price for it. Even the most sophisticated among us will find it difficult to handle a change of fortune so spectacular. For poor Olajumoke, it is a case of too much too soon.
Her anonymity – the anonymity that allowed her to be herself, to mind her business, to be not too concerned about what people are saying or thinking about her, to live her life quietly and unobtrusively and by her own rules and judgment, will be the first casualty of her new, treacherous world.
Lost also is the environment she has always known, now replaced by a world of minders and agents, and teeming with supplicants and opportunists and persons of dubious character and even more dubious motives. This setting opens the door to vicious exploitation – the type that has, even in better-regulated societies, brought down many a celebrity precipitously down from affluence to indigence.
Think also of what Olajumoke’s sudden fame will do to her husband Sunday, who makes a modest income from fitting aluminum door and window frames, and is probably only slightly more knowledgeable about the ways of the world, but is now thrust into Olajumoke’s new circle — the men and women, especially the men, who will spare no effort to make her believe that she deserves better.
If his wife’s name survives her quantum leap to fame, his family name probably won’t. I can almost see them taking her aside and telling her solemnly that Orisaguna simply won’t cut it and that if she wants to really get on, the name would have to be replaced by something more cadenced.
I am reminded of a certain actress originally named Norma Jeane, whose story has some parallels with Olajumoke’s. Her minders, sensing that she could not enter Hollywood with a name like that, changed it to Marilyn Monroe.
She became an instant hit.
Examples abound of persons who came into sudden fame and affluence but wished in retrospect that fortune had left them severely alone.
There is, to take a local instance, the butcher Olagunju from Ede, Osun State, known mostly by his first name like Olajumoke, who won £75, 000 on the Littlewoods pools in the 1950s. Back then, that sum put Olagunju in the league of some of the wealthiest persons in the British Empire.
Even with the strongest will in the world, you cannot have that kind of money and remain a butcher. Advice flowed from every corner urging upon him a lifestyle that matched his new wealth. More wives, to be sure. Landed property. Some business ventures.
They sold him land that belonged to the Nigerian Railway Corporation. His pools betting company was paying out much more than it was taking in, and was soon grounded. They made him a “father” of the Action Group, and he had to pay the dues that came with the honour. One organisation after another sought his financial support.
The money soon ran out. Thereafter, Olagunju would introduce himself wistfully as the “olowo Ede ojoun,” literally, the wealthy Ede man of yore.
To return to Olajumoke: Asked what she would like to do with her new life, she said she would like to go to school and train to become a lawyer. That is a good sign that stardom and occasion have not gone into her head.
The assets that have brought her fame will fade over time; other stars will take her place. Her dream is of a future that is secure.
Those who truly wish her well should help her keep that dream splendidly in view.
President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday conducted president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari on a tour round the presidential villa.
Spotted on official photography duty was musician and photographer, TY Bello. See more photos of the tour below.
Lara George nee Bajomo was a member of the former gospel trio KUSH, along with TY Bello and Emem Ema. .She has paid her dues as a gospel singer, having made many hit albums with lots of awards to her credit including: Voice of The Year, 2008, at the Nigerian Music Awards, as well as Song of The Year, 2009, Nigerian Gospel Music Wards amongst others. She got married to Gbenga George 10 years ago after the break-up of her group. The mother of two speaks with Adetutu Audu on her musical success after the KUSH break-up.
HOW would you say you fared last year?
It was a year of lots of goals for me.I shot and released three videos Dansaki,a new day and Ayin o and I did a lot of touring . I toured five American cities in the U.S .I was in Cotonou and I also did here in Nigeria. It was a very busy year.
This is a new year, what are your projections for the year?
For 2014. I am hoping to keep on releasing excellent work, record new work and consolidate and all the works I have done in the past.
What would you say is the secret of your towering career?
I honestly don’t feel successful yet. What I have brought me far is God, to be faithful in little so that when it is the bigger, I can do better. Be true to yourself and stay focused.
In music, you can be truly successful if you are not your own person.
Share with us the commercial success of my albums. Which is your favourite?
Dasanki is my most mature work. I grew in that album and still one of the albums I sit and listen to.
I think two of my favourites are Ijoba-Orun and recently…Dansaki…where do you get inspiration for these songs?
My songs are personal experiences. When Dansaki I was reflecting on all what God had done. It is not a small feat to be in the industry for 15 years as a woman who is married with kids,it is not easy to still be in the industry.
How did you get into music: Did you always know you would do music or is it something you just stumbled into?
I would not say that I knew, I would say it is something I always loved. Growing up, it was not a career option because my parents did not see music as something somebody serious wanted. It was just a distant love for me in my growing up days. I was always drawn to the music. When I got into secondary school, which was my first opportunity to be able to make my own choices, I joined the choir at Queens College, and it was such a wonderful experience. I just carried on from there; it was a step after the other: taking solos, enjoying the whole scenario, and by the time I got to university, I was fortunate to be a part of a wonderful girl-(musical) group that enjoyed so much success on the Nigerian scene, Kush, and that was an amazing experience.
Why Gospel Music? Because people would normally say it is easier to make money doing secular music. So why Gospel Music for you?
It is easier and the rules are fewer. There is more acceptability and I still ask myself why I choose gospel. Music is a responsibility apart from just being a talent. I think if God should give a huge talent, I should be able to encourage and impact people with my music. It remains something that would promote everything of God. I think that when you decide with your life to do something as important as music, you need to make an impact.
I read somewhere that at age six you had dreams of leading millions of people in worship to God. Looking back now would you say you are fulfilled?
I am on the path of fulfillment. I am in the right direction if I sum up all of my experiences, my stage and music for the past 15 years God has given a lot of influence over what people hear from me. I am glad that people get their circumstances change after listening to my music. That has always been my prayer and I feel I am on the path of fulfilling destiny.
After the KUSH break -up, when did it first occur to you that you could go solo? Before that moment did you ever doubt that you could make it as an artiste?
KUSH broke up in 2005.I was totally blank for one year. I didn’t want to think music at all. At some point I went back to the nine-to-five job, even on the job I couldn’t focus on anything. People who recognised me would come to me and said Lara, you don’t belong here. And one day I got back to the studio and since then, there has been no looking back.
Marriage and motherhood is a ministry. Do you agree?
I agreed 100 percent.
So what has been the secret of your success in marriage?
Marriage is a journey. Every day I wake up and pinch myself that Lara are you still here. I am grateful that God is helping to keep things together. Number one ingredient is openness, absolute sincerity to one another and accountability to God and one another. You should be able to give account of your time, money. For me it has been God and God alone. When you have God in the equation of marriage, it makes all things easy.
Your husband is your manager. How is this working for you?
It is perfectly working for me. It is important for me to carry my husband along. As a woman,you don’t need to make your man feel he is in the shadow. I have somebody I can trust looking out for me and that make it easier and somehow we became partners through this work. It is a beautiful experience. I really won’t have it the other way.
How do you revitalise your voice?
A lot of rest and sleep. When I am not working, I have to sleep. Rest is not me not doing anything, but a peace of mind that I have peace around me.