Issue 31 // May 2016
NEXT AFROPOLITAN VIBEs SHOW WILL BE ON FRIDAY JUNE 17TH, 2016 SEE YOU THEN! 1
Afropolitan Vibes
Issue 31 // May 2016
M
ay 2016 is a milestone in the history of Afropolitan Vibes because it marks the month we start to charge an entry fee. Until now, the 500 Naira charge was for entry into Freedom Park while the show remained free for everyone to attend. Naturally, the response to our decision has been mixed but it is gratifying to see the enormous support that we have had from those who understand the challenges we have faced in keeping the show going and maintaining a very high standard for the past three years. The charge is necessary if we are to sustain the show for the long haul. We have huge plans to make Afropolitan Vibes even bigger and better so it is important we set the structures in place to help make Afropolitan Vibes something the whole of Lagos can be proud of and around which people plan their holidays to the city. Preparations continue apace for the ď€ rst ever Afropolitan Vibes Music and Arts Festival which will take place in December 2016. We are both excited and daunted at the prospect. We will continue to keep you updated about our plans, so do be sure to log on to our website at www.afropolitanvibes.com to join our mailing list and check out our social media platforms regularly to keep up to date with the latest developments. Yo u s h o u l d s e i z e t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o c o n t a c t u s e a r l y a t info@afropolitanvibes.com to secure a position as sponsor or media partner or to hire one of the stalls.
We proď€ le our three guest artists: Mike Okri, Skales and Aramide. We feature some of our favourite pictures from the 36th edition of Afropolitan Vibes, which was held on April 15th 2016.
Editor: Abby Ogunsanya
Guest artists' pictures: Courtesy of subjects
Guest artist proď€ les: Kola Tubosun Dami Ajayi, Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Show pictures: Olorisupergal & Alleb Media
Graphic Design: Ayomidotun Freeborn
Printing: John Bola
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Contact and advertising enquiries: info@afropolitanvibes.com Tel: + 234-803-4937094
Issue 31 // May 2016
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kales belongs to the league of rappers who like America's T-Pain, turned coats to become singers. Their argument is that becoming a consummate musician is a calling greater than genre selection, but before Skales clutched the microphone in the rst place or honed his craft as an aspiring musician, he had a childhood. Born John Raoul Njeng-Njeng in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, Skales was bred in the same city by the industry of his single mother who held several jobs to support him. Of her many jobs was running a music store where she sold cassettes, where presumably Skales discovered the magic of music and his enduring love for it.
he collaborated with talented musicians like Banky W, Wizkid, Shaydee, Niyola and DJ Xclusive on songs like Baddest Boy, Get Down Tonight, Sun Mo Mi and Change. He also was on the line-up of the EME US Tour, performing in cities like New York, Atlanta, Washington DC and Chicago. At the expiry of his contract in 2014, he established his own record label OHK music and began to release new material.
His devotion to music will come later, sometimes in his late teens, circa 2000, when the new wave of Nigerian music had begun to hold sway. This renaissance which fortuitously coincided with the new millennium was tinged with American hip-hop. In that era, everybody wanted to spit rhymes, little wonder Skales was no different in his earlier ambitions to be a rapper.
In May 2015, he released his debut album called Man of the Year under the auspices of Baseline Entertainment. A mish-mash of predominantly afrobeats sound irting with crunk and dancehall, the album is an impressive debut made for dance with outstanding songs like Lo Le, Je Kan Mo, I am for Real and the Jaypizzle produced smash hit, Shake Body, with both English and French versions to ensure his spread across majority of Africa. The album also took him on tour to countries like Kenya, Malaysia, Cyprus, Ghana, Cameroon and Congo Brazzaville.
Currently a Lagosian, Skales, whose moniker is a smug acronym—Seek Knowledge and Large Entrepreneurial Skills—was said to have hitched a ride down south in pursuit of his dreams, but before his geographical descent and consequential professional ascent, he stopped over at Jos where he had a stint as a student of Banking & Finance at the University of Jos and more importantly, a student of music while associating with accomplished musicians the likes of Jeremiah Gyang and Chocolate City Lieutenant, Jesse Jagz. In 2008, he emerged as the winner of the Nigezie/Zain Tru Search Talent Contest, North Central region.
Barely one year after the release of his debut album, the MTN Nigeria Pulse ambassador is not showing any sign of fatigue having released two singles—Mu Jo and I Want Yo u — f r o m h i s f o r t h c o m i n g sophomore album.
Relentless in his pursuit for stardom, having arrived at Lagos, Skales signed his rst record deal with the Banky W/Tunde Demuren run Empire Mates Entertainment in 2009, his musical home for the next six years. Under their stables, he released a slew of commercial acclaimed singles including Mukulu and Kerisimesi, and was one of their main acts on the Empire Mates State of Mind debut compilation album released sometimes in 2012. On this project
Skales' facebook fan page: www.facebook.com/youngskales Twitter page: https://twitter.com/youngskales
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Issue 31 // May 2016
SKALES
MAN OF THE YEAR by Dami Ajayi
Dami Ajayi lives in Lagos and tweets from @damiajayi
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ARAMIDE SONGs IN THE KEY OF LOVE by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo Oris Aigbokhaevbolo lives in Lagos and tweets from @catchoris
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Issue 31 // May 2016
I
n 2013, a girl with a guitar appeared online, singing a stripped version of a pop song. The song was 'Ekuro', originally by Davido. The singer was Aramide. The combination opened the song to non-pop fans. The combination brought lovers of the original song to Aramide's music. The year before, she had covered 'Today Today', the wedding song by ELDee. As with 'Ekuro', this earlier cover emphasised the lady's vocals and ampli ed the instrumentation. In videos for both songs she is playing her own guitar. Aramide, born 1985, has played the guitar since she was 11, inspired by her father's jazz and soul records and by the music-rich space she grew up in. “My dad is a James Brown person,” she said in an interview with Rhodiesworld, “so I picked that along the line. The environment also enhanced my talent because I grew up in Jos, and everyone knows Jos is a music town.” Now grown, the singer claims not James Brown but the female powerhouses Erykah Badu, Miriam Makeba, Sade, and Angelique Kidjo as some of her inuences.
relationship, declaring no comebacks for a man named Bolaji. That was a song though. In real life, no such dramatic splits happened—at least not in public. Miss Sarumoh became Mrs Alli in April 2015. The lady who had devoted several songs to love, its triumphs and its challenges, received an ending that could have come from one of her own songs. More good things came her way, this time professionally. For her song 'Iwo Nikan', she was nominated and later won the award for Best Vocal Performance (Female) Category at the 2015 edition of the Headies Award. The other nominees were hardly pushovers: Waje, Simi, Yemi Alade, and the singer to whom she has been compared to, Asa
By 2006, Aramide (full name Aramide Sarumoh) had become secure enough in her gifts to enter for the popular singing contest Star Quest, and while she did not emerge winner, her music received attention. She left the scene and returned to school but the talent show had an effect. “Star Quest,” she said, “made it known to me as a person that this was what I wanted to do and I would really say it has opened a lot of doors for me in terms of meeting people and being sure of what I wanted.”
In February 2016, Aramide released the song 'Love Me' featuring that other fervent believer in love, Adekunle Gold. “If you love me today,” she croons on the chorus. “I go love you forever. You and me together.” Those words sound like they could be directed to a lover, a husband, a partner. As she said to Vanguard about the song, “I tried to create something that would remind people about how beautiful love is.”
One of such persons was Ayo Bankole who encouraged her love for making music. She later met rapper and record owner ElDee. He signed her to his Trybe Records, and the 'Today Today' and 'Ekuro' covers came out.
Fair enough. But then again, those words could have come from a passionate singer, one who is renewing her pledge to music itself. Not that the one excludes the other.
She would later leave Trybe Records for Baseline Records. Before that move, however, her own songs 'I Don't Mind' and 'It's Over' were released in 2012. The rst song was a deant cry, amidst horns, pledging loyalty to a lover in the face of criticism: Mr Lover appears to be broke, or older, or uglier—or maybe all three. “They say our love is no good,” she sings around a big band, throwback to seventies instrumentation. “I say we are misunderstood.” 'It's Over', on the other hand, announces the end of a
Twitter: @aramidemusic Website: www.aramidemusic.com
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Issue 31 // May 2016
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Issue 31 // May 2016
The Revolution of
Mike OKRI by Kola Tubosun
Kola Tubosun lives in Lagos and tweets from @baroka
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laid shirts and baggy pants, the charming young man with a con dent smile was Mike Okri. This was before the bald head and beaded necks of later years, a style evolution that de ned a different time, or the charming and affable man now returning home after many years on the trail, and sometimes under the radar, as one of Nigeria's pioneer pop musicians that de ned our memory of the nineties, along with Dizzy K Falola, Felyx and Mozyx, Alex O, Alex Zitto and Chris Mba among others. Okri's 1988 debut album Concert Fever featuring chart busters like “Omoge” and “Time Na Money” emerged in the Nigerian musical scene at an opportune time, with danceable, fashionable, beats that blended 90s American pop in uences in dressing and lyrics with local vernacular and pidgin English. The late eighties to early nineties in Nigeria had turned out to be a fertile ground for the fermentation of new musical blends that experimented with forms, borrowing popular styles from across the ocean into local beats and forms. On the one hand was Afro-Juju, popularised by Shina Peters whose debut solo album Ace in 1989 turned up the rhythm in the hip-hop space and winning fans across the age spectrum. It was followed two years later by Shinamania which took the tempo up one notch more. There was also Dayo Kujore's Soko Xtra and Dele Taiwo's Magic Moment - two notable acts whose energetic work joined in cementing that time as the cradle of modern Nigerian pop music. Mike Okri called his music, released under CBS Records (Nigeria), now Sony Music, “AFRO-MYSTIC-SOUL”. This was a nod, perhaps, to the inuence of Fela's Afrobeat which had by then become famous in and outside
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Issue 31 // May 2016
of Nigeria, and Soul Music, popularised by African Americans in the 50s and 60s as expressions of spiritual and artistic sensibilities with Jazz and Rhythm & Blues. What made this debut album a hit was, however, not just the dynamism and danceability of the beats, of which there was no denying, but also the didactic nature of the lyrics which - for some reason - struck Nigerians as proper within the context of their pop musical experience. “Time Na Money”, for instance, channeled a popular aphorism about the transience and cost of time into a tune that appealed both to the old and to the young in its simplicity, playfulness and directness:
Other songs on the album were “Me Sisi”, “You're Di One”, “Burnin”, “Oghenekewe”, “Make Up” and “Light of My Life”. His third studio album was called “CRACKS”. Late 1990, Okri left Nigeria for “greener pastures” which led him around entertainment centres around the United States. He did other jobs too, and also played to closed audiences while trying to raise a young family in a new country. While in California, he said, he recorded a self-titled album Rhythmysticals with Global V i l l a g e R e c o r d s , a Lo s A n g e l e s b a s e d Independent Record Label. He later also recorded a gospel-type album to document his evolution as a born-again Christian, proving to his fans nally that the preacher-man instinct that inspired earlier hits like “Time Na Money” never really left.
Use your time well No waka waka Plan your time well Do better thing. Money no dey come from heaven Do better thing, money go come Na true what I dey tell you so...
So who really was Mike Okri? Just a hardworking musician interested in documenting his cultural observations in danceable music, it would seem. He graduated from the TV College Jos, Plateau State, where he studied “Broadcast Journalism”. In his years of work, he has served as the Vice President of the Performing Musician Association of Nigeria (PMAN), as well as the Director in the membership board of the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN). Over the years, he has also won awards for his work in both the Nigerian Music Awards (NMA) and Fame Music Awards (FMA) respectively, including the Pan-African Music Awards in Ghana.
If America had Michael Jackson with Thriller, Bad, and Off the Wall, Nigeria was discovering its own new pop stars who not only spoke its language, but also carried its aspiration and hopes in their artistic expression. A few years later, in 1990, Okri released a second album called Rhumba Dance to wide acclaim, in collaboration with the now defunct Benson & Hedges Music. The title song combined an exotic but synthetic beat layered with keyboard accompaniments and a calland-response lead inviting the listener to come “rhumba to our desire” and “it's the rhythm of the night”. The album was a less populist, but not any less exhilarating intervention capable of holding its own amidst the changes that the country's musical taste was undergoing. Hits in the album included “Okpeke”, a song that - but for the synthetic instrumentation and pop feel - could as well be a typical song by Fela Kuti in its irreverence, playfulness, and style. Scholars interested in contrasting Okri's description of a fanciful city lady in “Okpeke” to Fela's depiction of same in “Lady” will have plenty to work with regarding style or attitude to women. The language, in both songs, was Nigerian pidgin, with smatterings of Yorub ̀ a,́ and other street slangs that drew in a listener until the end. What is “Omo Alatika Category C”? Let's ask Mike Okri.
However, great is his inuence on the culture of a particular time in Nigerian musical history that it won't matter which of the Mike Okris of his evolution we're meeting in person. His music changed and transcended that time and place, as it should.
facebook: www.facebook.com/mikeokri
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Issue 31 // May 2016
APRIL 2016 Edition
Issue 31 // May 2016