Issue 47 . December 2018 . Complimentary Issue
Issue 47 | December 2018
What is Afropolitan Vibes? Afropolitan Vibes is a monthly live music concert which exists as a platform for alternative music: a place where music lovers congregate to watch contemporary singersongwriters and musicians perform mostly original works that are firmly rooted in African musical origins of Afro-beat, Afro-funk, Afrohip-hop, Afro-pop and Highlife music. A host of talented artists gather to rehearse and then perform with Bantucrew on stage. The show was held monthly at Freedom Park’s main stage for four years from March 2013 - March 2017. The first of our now quarterly shows was held at Muri Okunola Park in Victoria Island on Friday 16th June. Show starts promptly from 8.00pm - 10.30/11.00pm.
BANTU BANTU’s Music is the soundtrack of Lagos. The bustling megapolis which the band calls home serves as muse and backdrop for the sonic adventures on their latest release “Agberos International”, an album that celebrates and explores the complexities and contradictions of navigating daily life in the city of dreams and chaos. The 13-piece award winning BANTU Music collective, and founders of the critically acclaimed concert series Afropolitan Vibes, effortlessly weaves a playful and danceable collection of songs and sounds that alternate between the political and satirical without missing a beat thus cementing their status as one of the most exciting live music experiences in Africa. Contact: info@bantucrew.com | www.bantucrew.com www.facebook.com/bantucrew | www.youtube.com/bantucrew
Afropolitan Vibes is co-produced by Ade Bantu and Abby Ogunsanya.
Palm Wine Tradition
Spread the word
Palm wine is now available at all our shows. As our palm wine is always freshly tapped in Sagamu in the early hours of the morning of each show, this luscious white liquid is guaranteed to be sweet and only mildly intoxicating as it is yet unfermented.
Join our Facebook page at facebook.com/Afropolitanvibes. Subscribe to our digital magazine at issuu.com/ afropolitanvibes and invite your friends next time.
Our palm wine is served the traditional way: the wine is available to buy per gourd (to share with friends/ family) or in individual calabashes.
The next Afropolitan Vibes show will be the annual Afropolitan Vibes Music Festival which will be held on March 15 – 16th 2019
Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are also available for purchase at the bar area where we encourage you all to come join us after the show for a drink and a chat.
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Issue 47 | December 2018
Editor's Note 2018 has been a very exciting year for us - we celebrated 5 years of Afropolitan Vibes as well as the 50th edition of our show. Looking back, there is a lot to be thankful for. What started as a small gathering of friends in an amphitheater has grown to a movement; a critical mass that has helped shape the conversation around live music. Together, we have created indelible memories with many more to come. Enjoy the last show of the year. We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year! We look forward to welcoming 2019 with you at the 3rd Edition of the Afropolitan Vibes Music Festival in March.
Ade Bantu MAGAZINE CREDITS
CONTACT US
Editor: Ade Bantu Guest artist profiles: IfeOluwa Nihinlola & Oris Aigbokhaevbolo Graphic Design: Ayomidotun Freeborn Show photos: Dohdohndawa Photography Guest artists’ pictures: Courtesy of artists
You can email us with your thoughts at info@afropolitanvibes.com. We respond to questions on all of our social media platforms.
We have a limited number of back issues of Afropolitan Vibes magazine. If you would like a copy, please contact us via email or on +234-803-493-7094. 5
SEPTEMBER EDITION
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Issue 47 | December 2018
REMINISCE
Alaga ibile is more than just a local rapper
It
by IfeOluwa Nihinola
is difficult to determine what drove Reminisce to produce ‘Ponmile’ in 2017. But it can’t be mere coincidence that in the year of #metoo Remilekun Abdulkalid Safaru produced a song where he inches towards vulnerability, albeit reluctantly. Or is it? If we played a game of word associations and asked what comes to mind when the name Reminisce is called, the response should always be sex. The man hasn’t found a rap verse he can’t infuse with graphic descriptions of coitus, usually as a way to boast about his prowess. So, when the macho lothario was heard pleading and grovelling about love, the response of many was a mixture of shock and admiration. That the rapper who sang ‘Tesojue’ could sing ‘Ponmile’ was a sign that maybe there’s hope that the prototypical male Nigerian rapper with his veneer of hyper-aggressiveness will finally find value in vulnerability. “When things no pure / Would you be my umbrella / When rain dey fall / If you no go dey there o / Je te te so / Kin ma lo pa ra mi si e l’orun,” he sings, telling his woman a lack of assurance that she’ll be with him will lead to his death. Manipulative? Yes, but a crack of emotion from a man who had made a career out of verses that sound like the masculine id in its basest libidinous form is always welcome. Consider, however, that in the song ‘If Only’, released in his first album Book of Rap Stories, Reminisce sings, “You’re all I want, you’re all I have, if you hurt me I’m gon’ bleed.” That emotion in Ponmile did not come out of a void. Before he became Alaga Ibile, one of Nigeria’s most respected hip hop artists and a leading “local rapper”, Reminisce was an MC in the American mode of the word. His first single ‘Ever Since’ featuring 9ice was delivered in fluent English with smart punchlines and references to Americans Mick Jagger and 50 Cent. The aforementioned ‘If Only’ was delivered in the same linguistic mode. There was lyrical competence to Reminisce’s performance, which was already a requirement for stardom in late 2000s and early 2010s Nigerian hip hop. But that competence did not mask the irony of listening to a man shouting that he’s from the streets of Lagos in a language that is anything but local to his home. Thankfully, Reminisce had already met the men at Coded Tunes, as part of a clique of rappers called Yabtown Squad. The influence of working in a space where ID Cabasa was producing beats, Lord of Ajasa was rapping in Yoruba and 9ice was singing his unique Fuji-based sound was bound to produce something better than an American clone. By the time Reminisce released ‘Kako bii chicken’ in 2011, the late Dagrin had already proven that a brashtalking, Yoruba-speaking rapper can be loved and adored. And Olamide, another product of the Coded Tunes pipeline, had shown that formula replicable in his ‘Eni Duro’. So, it should surprise no one that slim, bleach-haired Reminisce found his audience. “Mo n’awo ya, o n dun bi woofer” he sang in the first verse of ‘Kako bii chicken’, and it was obvious to Yoruba speakers that he wasn’t just moving on to greater things like he claimed in the song’s introduction but, with a line that is essentially translates to a boast about hitting a vagina till it sounds like a broken woofer, he was also settling for raunchier things. Four studio albums, two-time appearance on the Billboard World Music Charts and a mention in Time magazine in 2014 as one of seven “world rappers you should meet”, among other things are a reflection of Reminisce’s immense success. But he, like other local rappers of his ilk, still raps like one who is an underdog. Maybe they need that status to fuel their ambition, but it’s dissonant to hear Reminisce, Olamide and Phyno, kings of the streets, embrace the moniker ‘local rapper’, while also reminding the world that it started as a term of derision. 8
Issue 47 | December 2018
For Reminisce, there’s a chance he subconsciously regards ‘local rapper’ as derogatory because the term’s associations—dexterous at rapping only in the local languages; more singing, less rapping— don’t circumscribe him. He may be popular because he raps in Yoruba, but he’s just as good— if not better—when he raps in English. He often ditches his mother tongue for whole verses just so he can stunt in the queen’s language as he does in ‘Asamalekun’, one of his most popular tracks. And this desire to be more than a label extends beyond his use of language. He may be the alter ego of boys and men with self-images nested in their groin, but when he raps in ‘Where I come from’ or names an album Baba Hafusa, he’s telling the audience to see him for just who he is— orphan of parents he loves, father of daughters he cherishes. Reminisce is at his best when he’s rapping short verses on laid-back beats like he’s performing off the dome in a cypher. But short verses are also his achilles heel. An economy, according to critic Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, “that is the bane of the Reminisce rap track.” Reminisce released ‘Ajigijaga’ earlier this year, referencing a wellknown menacing character from Yoruba movies. It’s a quintessential Reminisce track: short, laid back and lyrical in Yoruba as it is in English. He says just enough to make you draw parallels between him and the famed character, but not more. Even if there’s a lot to be said, Reminisce never loses himself in the beat. Thank goodness for his acting debut in Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys as Makanaki, where he plays a criminal character with panache, finally putting his everpermanent scowl to good use. We now have images to attach to his verbal menace. There’s a chance we’ve been reading Reminisce all wrong. In singles and features released after ‘Ponmile’, he has returned to the comfort of his sexual word play. (So, pump the brakes on the vulnerability takes.) For all of his vocal myth making, however, Alaga Ibile’s life as a star has been largely free of sexual drama. Maybe it’s all just performance, or maybe it isn’t. But when Aga—chair(man), as he’s sometimes called— chooses to show the world that behind that scowl is a human being who hurts, perhaps we should just nod our heads and move it along. He may be local, but he contains multitudes, too.
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Issue 47 | December 2018
FALANA AltĂŠ Royalty by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
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Issue 47 | December 2018
The
video for ‘Ride or Die’ features some striking scenes of a dark-skinned singing woman. At first her surroundings are spare, bare. There is a horse at some point, a car spewing coloured fumes at another. The only unity to these scenes is the singer herself unusually costumed. When first I saw it, I thought the last scene devolved into a picture of the singer on a vintage car wreathed with flowers—well, until the singer blinked. No surprise then that those clothes are from such designers as Orange Culture and Andrea Iyamah, and the video was directed by Daniel Obasi. The music itself, an up-tempo love song delivered in a soulful voice, is delivered by the mononymous Falana. If you wanted an introduction to what is called the alte scene, you could do a lot worse than tracking down all of those names. With the Ride or Die video, the lady has somehow brought parts of the scene together. “I like seeing how other designers, and pieces from their different collections, can intermingle,” she told Vogue about the video, a statement that can be extrapolated to the artist’s own life. She represents such a confluence in life. Her music takes elements from soul, jazz, poetry but is quite percussive. She has been in a video featuring Wizkid and listens to Bjork and names Bez as an artist she would like to work with. She was born in Canada but has lived in Cuba. Little wonder then, she named her first EP Things Fall Together, an inversion of either the Achebe title or the original W.B Yeats line. With an artist with as much influences as this, who can tell what the more influential source is? What is clear is that Falana has absorbed sounds and influences from all of these places. She is sui generis: Her music is hard to place—but she listened to the Lijadu Sisters, King Sunny Ade and Yinka Ayefele as a child. Later she became interested in Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse and Lauryn Hill, whose Grammy-winning album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill informs her songwriting. Today, she says her music is soul fusion—a mix of Afrobeat, soul and Jazz—and says her time in Cuba helped harness her own sound. In 2016, she embarked on a series of pop-up concerts around Lagos. The concept, she said in an interview with Music In Africa was “exploring and re-inventing spaces in Lagos. A music experience can go beyond the music; the environment you are in, the energy, all influence how you vibe as an audience member. So I just wanted to invest in curating a whole experience. “There is an appetite for many different types of music, in Nigeria specifically, so I feel privileged to be a part of the narrative that is broadening what is available. I also love performing live, and I wanted to be able to share that in Lagos as well.” She has shared this love of performing live with the Afropolitan Vibes audience before. That was back in 2014. At the time she starred alongside Yemi Alade and General Pype. This time, she has Reminisce and Moelogo as co-headliners. The times and crew might have changed—But the love Falana has for the stage, one has to believe, is unwavering.
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Issue 47 | December 2018
MOELOGO In-between and beyond by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
Two
of the best albums from Nigerian artists this year—MI Abaga’s Rendezvous and Show Dem Camp’s Palmwine Music II—feature one man. He was born Mohammed Animashaun in Lagos. But these days you would find the man now known as Moelogo in the UK, where he relocated to 2001. By the time his breakout track Pangolo was released a dozen years later, he had worked with the well-known British acts Kano and Chipmunk. He had also performed in the Gambia with Jamaican act Busy Signal. He is the first UK Afropop act to get signed to Island Recorrds. His first EP, Moe is My Name, Music is My Logo, dropped in 2013 and then he got a Giggs feature in 2014. These moves by a relatively young artist were noticed by the MOBO Awards in both 2015 and 2016. The latter year also saw the release of his second EP, Ireti. By then his music had mellowed from the club-pop of ‘Pangolo’ to a decidedly cooler sound. The notion he seemed to be showcasing is not just uniqueness—he has said a reason he makes music is “One of the main reasons I make music is to let my pain out and be true to myself rather than trying to fit into what everyone else is doing” but also his versatility. “I can call Bayo today or tomorrow and be like ‘yo! let’s do a rock song’, and it could be a rock song but it could still have that element of Afrobeats in it because I’m an African person so I’ll always portray that in my music,” he told Purple Rust in 2015, before adding, “I feel like my music is for everyone. I’m tryna make music that everyone can relate to – that Indians, Chinese people can listen to even though they don’t understand what it is…” Perhaps the true breath of his eclecticism is most evident in the array of artists he has worked with since ‘Pangolo’. Giggs, Kano and Chipmunk might represent the UK set. But Ghana’s Sarkodie put a call through to the man through the UK act DJ Abrantee. A producer they had in common was the link to get to Davido. Both featured on the remix of 2016’s ‘Penkele’. As a measure of his awareness of African, the song takes its title and some cues from an older track by juju master King Sunny Ade. “I'm not really picky but I need the person to be musical and spiritual,” he said about working with producers in Nigeria and the UK. “Energy is very important. Once the energy is right, anything can happen. Music will flow. You start thinking of things you were not thinking of before and you start bouncing off each other’s energy and ideas.”
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Issue 47 | December 2018
More collaborative songs with acts that have contributed music to Afropop in this generation have followed ‘Penkele’. Mr 2kay and YCee have been on the same song with Moelogo. He worked on a song with Falz, Simi and producer Sess dedicated to the late radio personaility Tosyn Bucknor. Adekunle Gold, though, is the most repeated offender in this regard. The pair have worked together on several tracks, including 2017’s ‘Only Girl’. Recently, he posted a tweet apparently in praise of their music chemistry. “I’m surrounded by talented human beings and AG is one,” he tweeted. He might have been talking about Adekunle Gold, but, with the sheer number of musical situations he has made work, he could just as well be talking about himself.
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Issue 47 | December 2018
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